THE VIRTUES OF CONTROL AS MOVEMENT Cedric Boeckx and Norbert Hornstein Abstract. Control has played an important role in theoretical debates within the Minimalist Program. This is so because control implicates notions such as module, h-role, the Last Resort nature of syntactic operations, movement, binding, chains, Case, complementation, and more. Hornstein (1999) has controversially claimed that control is a subspecies of movement. That is, control is just like familiar instances of raising, except that it involves movement into an additional h-position. If correct, the movement analysis has important conceptual and empirical repercussions, some of which are examined here. 1. Preliminary Remarks Typical minimal pairs like those in (1) and (2) reveal an asymmetry that Rosenbaum (1967) used to argue for a distinction between raising and control constructions. (1) a. John seems to have examined Bill. b. Bill seems to have been examined by John. a and b are synonymous (2) a. John tried to examine Bill. b. Bill tried to be examined by John. a and b are not synonymous Since Rosenbaum’s seminal study, asymmetries like the one just illustrated (see Davies & Dubinsky 2004 for a comprehensive survey of such asymmetries) have standardly 1 been treated as the result of distinct processes underlying raising and control. Whereas raising is a case of movement (3), control is the result of a rule of construal relating PRO to its antecedent (4). (3) John i seems to have [t i examined Bill] (4) John i tried [PRO i to examine Bill] Analyzing raising and control as disjoint processes seems to us to have missed an important fact: that the asymmetry observed in (1) and (2) is not an inherent property of processes (passivization, movement, construal, etc.) but rather results from the thematic difference between seem and try . Specifically, control 1 For an early dissenting voice, see Bowers 1973. Ó 2006 The Authors Journal compilation Ó 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Syntax 9:2, August 2006, 118–130