Agreement and Flotation in Partial and Inverse Partial Control Configurations Cilene Rodrigues 1. Introduction Traditional classifications of control distinguish two types: obligatory control and non- obligatory control. Recently, it has been demonstrated that obligatory control should also be divided into two types: exhaustive and partial control (Cf. Landau, 2000). This more refined view of obligatory control is taken to be evidence against the Movement theory of Control (MTC - Cf. Hornstein, 2001), the argument being that partial controlled PRO does not behave like a trace. In this paper, I contribute to advancing our understanding of control by looking at agreement and flotation in control configurations and developing an analysis for partial control is resulting from movement plus stranding. The paper is organized as follows: Sections 2 discusses cases of past participle agreement in control configurations, showing that exhaustive and partial controlled PRO does not trigger φ-feature agreement independently of its controller. In view of this, section 3 evaluates the Movement and the Agree-based theories of Control, concluding that partial control cannot be the result of Agree. Section 4 suggests that partial control involves movement plus stranding of an associative null pronoun. In section 5, inverse partial control in Spanish is introduced, and I show that it also fits a movement plus stranding analysis. Section 6 is dedicated to the conclusion. 2. Control and agreement In Romance, “epicene” DPs like victim are invariably feminine ([+Fem], henceforth), though semantically they can refer to either male or female entities. Thus, when an epicene noun is combined with a participial form, the latter records feminine gender agreement. This is observed in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. (1) a. La vittima fu aggredita/*aggredito dai fascisti (It.) the victims-Fem was.3sg attacked-Fem/*Masc by fascists b. La víctima 1 fue atacada 1 /??atacado 1 en la calle (Sp.) the victim-Fem was-3Sg attacked-Fem/-Masc in the street c. A vítima 1 foi atacada 1 /??atacado 1 na rua (Port.) 1 the victim-Fem was-3Sg attacked-Fem/-Masc in.the street ‘The victim was attacked by (the) fascists/on the street’ It is well-known that Past Participle agreement is subject to locality. An DP α agrees with a past participial form β only if α is the closest DP that c-commands β. The French data in (2) and (3), for instance, show that a past participle agrees with a direct object only when the later moves to the left of the former. Researchers have taken this contrast to reveal that a past participle agreement is a spec-head relation. That is, in order to trigger φ-feature agreement on a participial form, a DP has to move to/through 1 The Portuguese data reported throughout the paper are from European and Brazilian Portuguese. Thus, when not explicitly differentiated, the term Portuguese refers to European and Brazilian Portuguese.