Another Type of "Raising"

This paper is concerned with the curious difference in terms of "raising" between languages like English on the one hand and languages like Tagalog on the other. In English raising is possible only out of (certain) infinitival clauses. In Tagalog "raising" is possible out of seemingly "tensed" clauses. It is shown that "raising" in Tagalog involves A'-dependendes created by null operator movement (cf. Maclachlan 1996). Following Takahashi 1997, I propose that this movement is feature movement. In Tagalog, unlike in English, the feature movement in question out of "tensed" subject position is allowed beeause (i) subject position is properly governed due to the weak D-feature and the strong V-feature ofT, and (ii) semantically, Tagalog does not have a tense system; temporal relations are expressed in terms of different combinations of aspects. Under the proposed analysis, the cross-linguistic "raising" difference between the two languages stems solely from their lexical differences with respect to Tense, lending support to the principles-and-parameters view on parameterization.