Non-canonical Control in a Cross-linguistic Perspective

Control, typically defined as a specific referential dependency between the null-subject of a non-finite embedded clause and a nominal co-dependent of the matrix predicate, has been subject to extensive research in the last 50 years. Most researchers in this field of study agree that a distinction between Obligatory Control (OC) and Non-Obligatory Control (NOC) is relevant to the typology of control phenomena. Based on this division, the canonical case of OC is a referential dependency between a unique nominal argument of a clause-embedding predicate and the null-subject of an infinitival complement of this predicate, as illustrated in (1).