(12) Gweld y ci y mae’r dyn.
see the dog wh be-the man
‘‘It is seeing the dog that the man is.’’ (Sproat 1985: 178)
McCloskey also notes that the participle and object can be the focus
of the ach ‘‘only’’ particle, an honor reserved only for constituents in
Irish (McCloskey 1983):
(13)Nı
´
raibh me
´
ach ag de
´
anamh grinn.
neg be.past I only prog make fun
‘‘I was only making fun.’’ (McCloskey 1983: 20)
There thus seem to be numerous examples of VP-like constituents in
VSO languages, lending some support to the idea that VSO order is
derived from some structure that has a VP constituent.
There are, however, some problems with such an analysis. It is not at all
clear that these structures are headed by verbs. In the traditional gram-
mar of Irish, all of the constructions discussed above involve a ‘‘verbal
noun’’ (see Willis 1988,Borsley1993, 1997,DuYeld 1996, Guilfoyle 1997,
Borsley and KornWlt 2000, Carnie 2006bforadiscussionofthese‘‘mixed’’
categories in Celtic). Within the LFG framework, I argue in Carnie
(2006a) that if these structures are analyzed as NPs then some otherwise
baZing properties of Irish copular constructions follow naturally. I claim
there that Irish has a full NP structure but a Xat clausal structure. Irish is
not only verb initial but more generally predicate initial:
(14)Is9 dlı
´
odo

´
ir (e
´
) Liam
decl lawyer (agr) Liam
‘‘Will is a lawyer.’’
What is surprising is that when the predicate is a noun, it may be
complex10 (15a, b). This is in contrast to verbal structures where the
object may not be adjacent to the tensed verb11 (15
c).
9 I assume here, following O
´
Se
´
(1990), Doherty (1992), and Carnie (1995, 1997) that Is
here is not a true verb but a complementizer indicating declarative mood. See the above-
mentioned work for evidence in that regard.
10 See Carnie (1995, 2000), Doherty (1996, 1997), Legate (1997), Lee (2000), Massam
(2000), Travis and Rackowski (2000), and Adger and Ramchand (2003) for alternative
analyses of these kinds of construction.
11 Kroeger (1993) presents remarkably similar data from Tagalog predicate-initial struc-
tures and uses this to argue that Tagalog is non-conWgurational, and has a completely Xat
structure both in verbal and non-verbal constructions. Kroeger’s analysis cannot be
extended to Irish which diVers in some signiWcant ways from Tagalog, including the fact
that Irish has strict VSO order.
230 controversies
(15) (a) Is [amhra
´
na
L

bhuailWdh an pı
´
obaire] ‘‘Ma
`
iri’s Wedding’’.
decl song wh play.fut. the piper
‘‘Ma
`
iri’s Wedding’ is a song which the piper is going to play.’’
(b) Is [fear alainn] Liam.
decl man handsome Liam
‘‘Liam is a handsome man.’’
(c) *D’ [o
´
l tae] Sea
´
n.
past drink tea Sea
´
n
‘‘Sean drank tea.’’
I proposed that a system like LFG allows a straightforward explanation
of the diVerences among verbal and non-verbal predicates in these
constructions. Following Nordlinger (1998), I proposed that phrase
structure categories vary not only over category (as is standard in
X-bar theory) but also over phrase-level. These elements vary both in
terms of category (N, V, A, P, etc.) and in terms of phrasal level (word/
head, phrase, etc.). I notate this variable as X
P
.12 This variable will

interact with the set of phrase structure rules to produce situations
where verbal predicates can only be heads, but nominal predicates can
be heads or phrases. In particular, this will occur because Irish has an NP
rule, but not a VP rule. Consider the following Irish c-structure rules:
(16) (a) S ! X
P
NP NP
"¼# ("SUBJ)¼# ("OBJ)¼#
(b) NP ! Det N NP
"¼# "¼# ("OBJ)¼#
The head ("¼#) of the sentence rule is variable in terms of both
phrasality and category: X
P
, meaning that either a phrase or word
can be inserted into this position. There is no VP rule,13 so an N, NP,
or V can all feed into this position. Because of the phrasal variable X
P
,
either words or phrases may appear in the predicate position. Nominal
predicates are allowed to surface either as simple nouns or as complex
NPs. By contrast, with verbal predicates, only the verb with no mod-
iWers or complements is allowed in this position. This is because Irish
12 Nordlinger (1998) uses C, Bresnan (2001) uses X (italicized).
13 See Borsley (1989, 1996) for the claim that the subject argument with Wnite predicates
in the VSO language Welsh is a second complement, rather than a subject, which provides
some support for the lack of a VP proposed here.
phrasal categories and cartography 231
has an NP rule (as attested in other positions, such as the subject
position), but no VP rule. Returning now to the constituency tests
from Irish participle constructions, since these are at least partly

nominal in character, the fact that such a constituent exists follows
from the NP rule does not necessarily argue for a VP.
Other arguments against a Xat, VP-less, structure for VSO lan-
guages comes from tests of the relative prominence of subjects and
objects. This of course assumes that subject–object asymmetries are
deWned over tree structure (using, for example c-command) rather
than over argument structure or functional structures as in HPSG,
LFG, and RRG. If one does not accept that subject–object asymmet-
ries are best expressed by c-command then the following arguments
evaporate.
In Xat structure, subjects and object are each other’s sisters. Given
this, we expect that there will be no structure-dependent subject–
object asymmetries in VSO languages. The evidence seems to point
away from this. For example, in Irish, a reciprocal14 in subject position
cannot be bound15 by an object (16b), but the reverse is grammatical
(17a).16
(17) (a) Chonaic Sea
´
n agus Ma
´
ire lena che
´
ile.
saw John and Mary with.their other
‘‘John and Mary saw each other.’’
’(b) *Chonaic lena che
´
ile Sea
´
n agus Ma

´
ire.
saw with their other John and Mary
‘‘Each other saw John and Mary.’’
14 A brief comment about reXexives in Irish is in order here. Strangely, Irish seems to
allow completely unbound instances of the reXexive particle in emphatic contexts:
(i) Chonaic se
´
fein an re
´
altlong.
saw he self the starship
‘‘Himself saw the starship.’’ (referring to a particular person in the discourse setting)
Because of this emphatic use of the reXexive morpheme, which in such contexts seems to
have little or nothing to do with true anaphora, I avoid using reXexives as examples of
anaphora in this book and use reciprocals, which do not have this emphatic reading,
instead. See O
´
Baoill (1995) for discussion.
15 Here, we operate under the standard, but not incontrovertible, assumption of
Reinhart (1981, 1983) that binding theory makes reference to the relations of c-command,
rather than simple linear precedence.
16 DuYeld (1995) presents similar evidence of subject–object asymmetries which are not
dependent upon binding theory. He notes that, in Irish, resumptive pronouns are allowed
in object position, but are not allowed in subject position.
232 controversies
Similar eVects are seen in Niuean (Seiter 1980, Woolford 1991) and
Berber (Choe 1987). Sproat (1985) and Hendrick (1988, 1990) show that
subject and object arguments in Welsh and Breton diVer with respect
to parasitic-gap eVects. Anderson (1984) presents evidence from con-

trol in relative clauses in Kwakwala (Kwakiutl) that show similar
eVects. On the other hand, Craig (1977) and Woolford (1991) present
data from argument prominence in Jacaltec Mayan in favor of a Xat
structure. The binding facts in Jacaltec seem to indicate that the object
does indeed mutually c-command the subject, as would be predicted in
a Xat-structure analysis. An R-expression embedded in the subject NP
cannot be co-referent with an object pronoun:17
(18) (a) Xil [smami naj pel] Ø
i
.
saw poss-father cl Peter him
‘‘Peter
i
’s father saw him
j
’’.
*‘‘Peteri’s father saw him
i
.’’
This data could be analyzed as a condition-C eVect (Chomsky 1981),
where the object c-commands the R-expression in the subject NP:
()S c-command
V
saw
NP
NP
N
father
NP him
D

CL
N
Peter
Thus, Jacaltec might well be a candidate for a Xat-structure VSO
language, as Woolford claims. The problem with such an analysis,
however, is that Jacaltec does show standard subject–object asymmet-
ries. For example, just as in English, reXexives are not permitted in
subject position (Craig 1977). Similarly, only subjects are available for
the rule of Promotion discussed by Craig. This phenomenon, similar
to subject-to-subject raising, is seen in the following example:
(20) X’iche smunla naj.
asp.abs.3.began erg.3.work cl
‘‘He began to work.’’
17 Due to constraints on disjoint reference, the object pronoun must surface as null in
this construction; see Craig (1977: 158).
phrasal categories and cartography 233
Perhaps, then, the eVect seen in (18) is due to something other than
condition C. The ungrammaticality of (18) with the coreferent reading
could be due to a condition-B violation on the object pronoun. The
R-expression possessor of the subject NP is functioning like the sec-
ondary head of that NP,18 thus its features percolate to the higher NP
node and trigger a condition-B violation. The subject NP c-commands
the object. Note that this kind of head-like behavior of possessors is
found in many languages; for example, Japanese allows passivization of
possessor NP (Terada 1991). This kind of analysis is too complex to
elaborate on here, can be concluded that it is more consistent with the
other evidence from Jacaltec, which suggests that subject–object asym-
metries do occur in the language. Aissen (2000) presents a diVerent
analysis of these facts; she claims that they are not due to the binding
theory at all, but that they are due to eVects of obviation, where the

head of the genitive (father) is forced to be marked as an obviative,
which in turn is incompatible with a subject position. Under both
these analyses, these facts cease to be evidence in favor of the Xat
structure approach.
Borsley (1989) argues that VP constituents exist in VSO languages
at an abstract level. Working in GPSG (although see Borsley 1996 for
an update of this analysis in HPSG, using a lexical rule), he proposes
there is a metarule, similar to the Subject–Aux-inversion rule, which
licenses a verbal projection with two NP complements from rules
with a single complement. VPs in this system never exist in the
constituent structure, only in the licensing rules; see Dowty (1996)
for a discussion of VSO languages using categorial grammar. In this
system, VP constituents also exist only at the abstract tectogramma-
tical level.
11.3.3 The VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis (VPISH)
On the basis of the discussion above in sections 11.4.1 and 11.4.2, let us
adopt the idea that there is at least a constituent that corresponds to
the verb and its complement. The traditional view was that this was the
18 See Napoli (1989) for a related discussion of how the embedded PP in NPs like that
Xower of a girl is the semantic head of the NP. This is shown by the fact that verbs
selecting [þhuman] complements can select for such NPs, despite the fact that the
syntactic head of the NP is [Àhuman]. For example, the verb marry can only take
[þhuman] complements, yet the sentence I want to marry that Xower of a girl is (sexism
aside) grammatical.
234 controversies