A Smuggling Approach to Raising in English (Collins 2005)

 In this squib, I analyze raising constructions involving an overt experiencer,  as in the following example  (I indicate lower occurrences or ‘traces’’ with the ( . . . ) notation):

(1)  John seems to Mary [(John) to be nice].

The issue that (1) poses is the following: given the Minimal Link Condition (MLC) or Relativized Minimality (RM), why doesn’t the DP Mary block movement of the DP John from the embedded clause to the matrix Spec,IP? In this squib, I will suggest a solution to this problem based on smuggling. The  basic idea is that VP-movement smuggles the embedded subject John past the experiencer Mary, thus avoiding a violation of the MLC/RM.

A Smuggling Approach to Raising in English

Collins, Chris. 2005. A Smuggling Approach to Raising in English. Linguistic Inquiry 36.2, 289-298.