Lin (2010) argues that an analysis without a Tense category for Chinese can better explain four syntactic properties of the language than an analysis with it: (a) no copula verb, (b) no expletive subject, (c) possibly no finite vs. nonfinite distinction, and (d) possibly no case-driven A-movement. In this article, we consider data from a variety of languages as well as some Chinese data that Lin does not take into account. We show that there is no principled reason for relating these four properties to syntactic Tense.

Hornstein (1999) put forward two thought-provoking ideas that generated a stimulating debate on control: (a) A-movement out of CP complements of control verbs is a design feature of Universal Grammar as first suggested by Kuno (1976) , and (b) obligatory control (OC) is an instance of A-movement. This article presents new evidence from Kirundi (Bantu) that supports (a) but defies (b), a paradox that is only apparent. Four sets of facts are discussed: antilocality in promise- constructions, control obviation in inverse OC constructions, passivization in transitive expletive OC constructions, and OC in long-distance inversion constructions. These facts are shown to challenge the movement account of OC while supporting (a) and the PRO-based account.

One standard assumption of the Minimalist Program is that formal, (grammatical) features are the only features that trigger the “dislocation” property of C HL . On the basis of two syntactically related properties of Fóngbé nonfinite clauses-object shift and verb doubling-I argue that pure phonological features can be overtly attracted. Three consequences follow: (a) the operation Attract F cannot be reduced to, Agree, (b) the concept of strength is inescapable, and (c) some of the effects of strength are PF-driven properties, hence not true imperfections.

This article argues for a restrictive asymmetric checking theory according to which only formal features of functional heads need to be checked for convergence. This theory enables us to dispense with several economy conditions assumed within Chomsky's (1995) checking theory: the Equidistance Condition, Last Resort (Greed), the multiple-Spec hypothesis, and the assumed null cost of Merge as a feature-checking operation. Empirical data supporting these arguments come mainly from Kirundi (Bantu) subject-object reversal and transitive expletive constructions.