Lasnik (2001) examined the subject of object shift and concluded that if the verb does not raise in front of the object that was shifted, the resulting sentence is grammatically incorrect. When the object shift is applied to the sentence, "Carol read a book," it becomes, "Carol a book read," or "Carol a book did read." Neither of the latter is acceptable or understandable to the recipient as written. This case casts considerable doubt on Chomsky's EPP theory to be applied in every case.

Rosengren (2002) argues that the EPP is not feature driven and that it does not result in the erasure of features. It is further argued that it is not directly related to the condition of being a subject. Therefore, in the case of expletives, there is no association between the subject and the expletive. Rosengren further argues that languages can be divided into EPP and non-EPP...
[ View Full Essay]