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5.2.2.2.Subject raising infinitivals

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The infinitival clauses with te-infinitives discussed in this section differ from the ones discussed in Section 5.2.2.1 in that they do not involve the implied subject PRO, but take a lexical subject which is subsequently raised to the subject position of the matrix clause in order to receive nominative case. The difference between control and subject raising infinitivals is indicated schematically in (469).

Example 469

[NPi Vfinite [infinitival clause PROi

... te Vinf ...]].

[NPi Vfinite [infinitival clause ti

... te Vinf ...]].

Typical examples of verbs triggering subject raising are the evidential modal verbs in (470a&b), but there are also verbs that occur incidentally in subject raising constructions, like dreigen and beloven in (470c).

Example 470

Modal verbs: blijken'to turn out', lijken'to appear', schijnen'to seem'

Modal verbs (formal): dunken'to seem/be of the opinion', heten'to call/count oneself', toeschijnen'to seem', voorkomen'to appear'

Other: dreigen'to threaten' and beloven'to promise'

This section is organized as follows, subsection I starts by introducing the term subject raising and provides some general syntactic properties of subject raising constructions, subsection II continues with a more detailed discussion of the subject raising verbs in (470), subsection III concludes with the discussion of a more restricted type of expression, which we will refer to as passive subject raising constructions.

I. General properties of subject raising constructions
II. Subject raising verbs
III. Passive subject raising construction

[+] I. General properties of subject raising constructions

Subsection A shows that subject raising constructions can be distinguished from control constructions by means of pronominalization, subsection B discusses two different analyses of subject raising verbs, namely, as main or non-main verbs; we will show that, in keeping with our definition of non-main verbs (verbs lacking argument structure), we have to do with main verbs, subsection C concludes by pointing out a number of characteristic syntactic properties of subject raising constructions.

[+] A. Subject Raising versus control infinitivals: pronominalization

Consider the examples in (471). Example (471a) shows that blijken'to turn out' is a monadic verb that may take a finite subject clause, which is introduced by the anticipatory pronoun het'it' (we ignore for the moment that in some cases blijken may also take an indirect object); that the clause functions as a subject is clear from the fact illustrated in (471b) that substitution of a lexical DP/referential pronoun for the pronoun het leads to ungrammaticality.

Example 471

a.	Het	bleek	[dat	Jan	een auto	gekocht	had].
	it	turned.out	that	Jan	a car	bought	had
	'It turned out that Jan had bought a car.'

b.	*	Marie/Zij	bleek	[dat	Jan	een auto	gekocht	had].
		Marie/she	turned.out	that	Jan	a car	bought	had

At first sight, the primeless examples in (472) seem to contradict the claim that blijken is monadic. The noun phrases Jan and Jan en Marie clearly function as the subjects of these sentences, as is clear from the fact that they agree in number with the verb blijken. There are nevertheless reasons for assuming that these nominative subjects are not arguments of the modal verb blijken but of the infinitival verb embedded under it. The most important reason for assuming this is that it is not possible to pronominalize the italicized parts of the examples in (472) while maintaining the nominative DP; pronominalization also requires the subject of the infinitival to be omitted. This is shown in the primed examples in (472).

Example 472

a.	Jan bleek	een auto	gekocht	te hebben.
	Jan turned.out	a car	bought	to have
	'Jan turned out to have bought a car.'

a'.		Dat	bleek.
		that	turned.out

a''.	*	Jan bleek	dat.
		Jan turned.out	that

b.	Jan en Marie	bleken	een auto	gekocht	te hebben.
	Jan and Marie	turned.out	a car	bought	to have
	'Jan and Marie turned out to have bought a car.'

b'.		Dat	bleek.
		that	turned.out

b''.	*	Jan en Marie	bleken	dat.
		Jan and Marie	turned.out	that

In this respect, subject raising constructions conspicuously differ from control constructions such as (473a), in which pronominalization of the infinitival clause cannot affect the nominative subject of the matrix clause, as shown by (473b).

Example 473

a.	Jani	probeert [PROi	dat boek	te lezen].
	Jan	tries	that book	to read
	'Jan is trying to read that book.'

b.		Jan probeert	dat. /	*Dat probeert.
		Jan tries	that	that tries

The contrast between the examples in (472) and (473) suggests that the nominative noun phrases Jan and Jan en Marie in (472) originate as part of the infinitival clause and are raised to the subject positions of the matrix clauses, as in the representations in (474).

Example 474

Jani bleek [ti een auto gekocht te hebben].

[Jan en Marie]i bleken [ti een auto gekocht te hebben].

The movement is normally taken to be an instantiation of NP-movement, which implies that the motivation of this movement is the need of the noun phrase to be assigned case: the noun phrase cannot be assigned case from within the infinitival clause, for which reason it is raised to the subject position of the sentence where it can be assigned nominative case.

[+] B. The status of the subject raising verb: main or non-main verb?

It seems that the standard analysis in (474) has no implications for the status of the subject raising verb: it seems compatible with the traditional claim that modal verbs like blijken'to turn out', schijnen'to seem' and lijken'to appear' are non-main verbs, but also with the claim that they are main verbs. In fact, it is not immediately clear whether the two positions are really different from a syntactic point of view, given that they both maintain that the subject of the sentence, Jan/Jan en Marie, is an argument of the predicate in the te-infinitival. However, the two claims do make different predictions concerning the examples in (475), at least if we adopt our earlier definition of non-main verbs as verbs that do not assign thematic roles. Example (475a) shows that lijken'to appear' is a dyadic verb that selects an experiencer argument in addition to a clausal subject. If the subject raising construction in (475b) involves a non-main verb, and if non-main verbs are not able to select arguments, we wrongly predict that the experiencer argument cannot be realized in this construction. This implies that, according to our definition of non-main verbs, modal verbs like blijken, schijnen and lijken are also main verbs in subject raising constructions.

Example 475

a.	Het	lijkt	mij	[dat	Jan	goed	past	in onze groep].
	it	appears	me	that	Jan	well	fits	in our team
	'It appears to me that Jan will fit well in our team.'

b.	Jani	lijkt	mij [ti	goed	in onze groep	te passen].
	Jan	appears	me	well	in our team	to fit
	'Jan appears to me to fit well in our team.'

The subject raising analysis of infinitival constructions with blijken, schijnen and lijken is essentially identical to the analysis of examples such as (476), in which these verbs take a complementive; these constructions are traditionally analyzed as copular constructions. The primed examples show that the nominative noun phrase is generated as the logical subject of an embedded predicate, with which it forms a so-called small clause, and is subsequently raised to the subject position in order to receive nominative case.

Example 476

a.	Jan bleek/leek/scheen	erg aardig.
	Jan turned.out/appeared/seemed	very nice
	'Jan turned out/appeared/seemed very nice.'

a'.

Jani bleek/leek/scheen [SCti erg aardig].

b.	Jan bleek/leek/scheen	een goede vriend.
	Jan turned.out/appeared/seemed	a good friend
	'Jan turned out/appeared/seemed a good friend.'

b'.

Jani bleek/leek/scheen [SCti een goede vriend].

The main difference between subject raising and complementive constructions is the status of the complement of the verb; is it an infinitival clause (that is a verbal predicative phrase) or a small clause (a predicate of some other category)? It therefore does not come as a surprise that examples such as (476) alternate with the those in (477), which contain an infinitival copular construction.

Example 477

a.	Jan bleek/leek/scheen	erg aardig	te zijn.
	Jan turned.out/appeared/seemed	very nice	to be
	'Jan turned out/appeared/seemed to be very nice.'

a'.

Jani bleek/leek/scheen [Clauseti erg aardig te zijn].

b.	Jan bleek/leek/scheen	een goede vriend	te zijn.
	Jan turned.out/appeared/seemed	a good friend	to be
	'Jan turned out/appeared/seemed to be a good friend.'

b'.

Jani bleek/leek/scheen [Clauseti een goede vriend te zijn].

On this view there is no need for assuming that blijken, schijnen and lijken are ambiguous: we are not dealing with a set of modal and a set of copular verbs, but simply with a single category that takes a predicative complement that may either have the form of an infinitival clause or of a small clause; in both cases the subject of the predicate is raised to the subject position of the clause headed by the modal verb in order to receive nominative case.

[+] C. Syntactic properties of subject raising constructions

The conclusion from subsection B that subject raising verbs are main verbs raises several questions, which will be discussed in the following subsections.

[+] 1. Om + te-infinitivals are excluded

Subject raising verbs differ from control verbs in that they do not take om + te-infinitivals. The unacceptability of the subject raising construction in (478b) is easy to account for, given that Section 5.2.2.1 has independently established that om + te-infinitivals are syntactic islands for movement, and can therefore be assumed to block subject raising. It is, however, less clear why (478c) is unacceptable, especially since (471a) has shown that similar constructions are possible with finite clauses; this unacceptability is possibly due to the fact that there is no suitable controller available for the implied subject PRO (cf. Bennis & Hoekstra 1989a).

Example 478

a.	Jani	schijnt [ti	de boeken	gestolen	te hebben].
	Jan	seems	the books	stolen	to have
	'Jan seems to have stolen the books.'

b.	*	Jani	schijnt	[om ti	de boeken	gestolen	te hebben].
		Jan	seems	comp	the books	stolen	to have

c.	*	Het	schijnt	[om PRO	de boeken	gestolen	te hebben].
		it	seems	comp	the books	stolen	to have

Such an account of the unacceptability of (478c) would leave unexplained, however, why the (c)-example in the parallel set of examples in (479) is unacceptable as well, given that the experiencer object me of lijken'to appear' could in principle function as a controller for PRO. We will not pursue this issue here and leave it for future research.

Example 479

a.	Jani	lijkt	me [ti	de boeken	gestolen	te hebben].
	Jan	appears	me	the books	stolen	to have
	'Jan appears to me to have stolen the books.'

b.	*	Jani	lijkt	me	[om ti	de boeken	gestolen	te hebben].
		Jan	appears	me	comp	the books	stolen	to have

c.	*	Het	lijkt	me	[om PRO	de boeken	gestolen	te hebben].
		it	appears	me	comp	the books	stolen	to have

[+] 2. The complement is a transparent infinitival (verb clustering and IPP)

The examples in (478a&b) in the previous subsection show that infinitival clauses of subject raising constructions must be transparent for NP-movement. This is consistent with the fact that such clauses are transparent infinitivals in the sense defined in Section 4.4.3: subject raising constructions exhibit verb clustering (and thus require the embedded infinitival clause to be split), and the te-infinitive seems to trigger the infinitivus-pro-participio (IPP) effect on the matrix verb in perfect-tense constructions. The former can be illustrated by the contrast between the two examples in (480).

Example 480

a.	dat	Jan	de boeken	naar Groningen	schijnt	te sturen.
	that	Jan	the books	to Groningen	seems	to send
	'that Jan seems to send the books to Groningen.'

b.	*	dat	Jan	schijnt	de boeken	naar Groningen	te sturen.
		that	Jan	seems	the books	to Groningen	to send

That subject raising constructions exhibit the IPP-effect is less easy to illustrate given that many speakers tend to object to perfect-tense constructions with evidential modal verbs; see Haeseryn et al. (1997:958) and also Schmid (2005:27), who claims that subject raising constructions tend to resist perfectivization cross-linguistically. Nevertheless, it seems that some speakers do at least marginally accept perfect-tense constructions such as (481), and then always prefer the IPP-effect; replacement of the infinitives schijnen, lijken and blijken in (481) by the corresponding participial forms geschenen, geleken and gebleken indeed greatly worsens the results; see Reuland (1983: Section 3.2) and Rutten (1991:70).

Example 481

a.	%	dat	Jan de boeken	naar Groningen	heeft	schijnen	te sturen.
		that	Jan the books	to Groningen	has	seem	to send
		'that Jan has seemed to send the books to Groningen.'

b.	%	dat	Jan de boeken	naar Groningen	heeft	lijken	te sturen.
		that	Jan the books	to Groningen	has	appear	to send
		'that Jan has appeared to send the books to Groningen.'

c.	%	dat	Jan de boeken	naar Groningen	heeft	blijken	te sturen.
		that	Jan the books	to Groningen	has	turn.out	to send
		'that Jan has turned out to send the books to Groningen.'

Note in this connection that Van der Horst (2008:1464&1796) claims that constructions with schijnen have exhibited the IPP-effect already since the 18th century, which he illustrates with a single example only. However, his claim can easily be substantiated by means of a Google Book search on the string [ heeft schijnen te]. Van der Horst (2008:1769) also provides a number of recent IPP-cases with blijken, and a Google Book search on the string [ heeft blijken te] again provides a number of additional cases. There are, however, also a number of relevant hits for [ heeft geschenen te] and [ heeft gebleken te]. Van der Horst does not discuss cases with the verb lijken, and a Google Book search on the strings [ heeft lijken/geleken te] did not result in any relevant hits either, but see Haegeman (2006) for the claim that lijken does occur in the perfect tense. The results of our searches are given in Table (482); the reported results were checked manually and exclude hits from linguistic sources.

Example 482

	infinitive	participle
schijnen'to seem'	12	2
blijken'to turn out'	11	6
lijken'to appear'	0	0

The results in (482) are, of course, based on older written sources and are certainly not representative of present-day use. Unfortunately, the results of our Google searches on the strings [heeft modalinf/part te] are far too polluted by irrelevant cases (often machine translations from English) to allow anything enlightening to be said about the frequency on the internet of genuine cases of constructions such as (481) with and without IPP, apart from the fact that the numbers are low anyway. We therefore have to leave this issue to future research, and provisionally assume that, insofar as perfect-tense forms of subject raising constructions are possible at all, they preferably exhibit the IPP-effect.

[+] 3. Subject Raising verbs are unaccusative

A more technical question raised by assuming that subject raising verbs are main verbs concerns the argumental status of the infinitival clause: Is it an internal or an external argument of the modal verb, that is, are we dealing with unaccusative verbs?
The unaccusative analysis seems a plausible one; because the subject of the infinitival clause uncontroversially surfaces as the nominative subject of the matrix clause, it seems unlikely that the infinitival clause is generated as the external argument of the matrix verb given that such arguments normally must surface as the subject of active constructions—this would make subject raising impossible. If the infinitival clause is generated as an internal argument of the verb, there is no external argument and we may conclude that, as a result of this, the subject of the infinitival clause is able to raise to the subject position of the higher clause.
That we are dealing with unaccusative verbs is also supported by the fact that blijken takes zijn in the perfect tense (in non-IPP-contexts): Dat is/*heeft gebleken'That has turned out'; selection of the perfect auxiliary zijn is a sufficient condition for assuming unaccusative status. The complementive constructions in (483) show that schijnen and lijken do not allow zijn in the perfect tense; that these verbs seem to prefer hebben is, however, not a problem given that the selection of zijn is not a necessary condition for assuming unaccusative status; cf. Section 2.1.2.

Example 483

a.	Jan heeft/*is	me altijd	aardig	geleken.
	Jan has/is	me always	kind	seemed
	'Jan has always seemed kind to me.'

b.	Jan	?heeft/*is	altijd	aardig	geschenen.
	Jan	has/is	always	nice	appeared
	'Jan has always appeared kind.'

[+] 4. Passivization

The conclusion that subject raising verbs are unaccusative correctly predicts that such verbs do not allow impersonal passivization. This is illustrated in (484) for the verb lijken in the three syntactic contexts in which it may occur. The reason why the nominative subjects cannot be suppressed in the primed examples is that they are not arguments of the passivized verb but originate as arguments of the complements of this verb; for convenience, the (split) complements are in italics in the primeless examples.

Example 484

a.	Het	lijkt	me	dat	Jan	morgen	komt.	finite subject clause
	it	appears	me	that	Jan	tomorrow	comes
	'It appears to me that Jan will come tomorrow.'

a'.	*	Er	wordt	me geleken	dat	Jan morgen	komt.
		there	is	me appeared	that	Jan tomorrow	comes

b.	Jan	lijkt	me	morgen	te komen.	subject raising
	Jan	appears	me	tomorrow	to come
	'Jan appears to me to come tomorrow.'

b'.	*	Er	wordt	me	geleken	morgen	te komen.
		there	is	me	appeared	tomorrow	to come

c.	Jan	lijkt	me geschikt	voor die baan.	complementive
	Jan	appears	me suitable	for that job
	'Jan appears suitable for that job to me.'

c'.	*	Er	wordt	me geschikt	geleken	voor die baan.
		there	is	me suitable	appeared	for that job

The (b)-examples in (485) show that passivization of the embedded infinitival clause is possible; the (a)-examples are simply given for comparison. As predicted by the subject raising analysis, passivization of the infinitival clause also affects the nominative subject of the subject raising construction as a whole; the internal argument of the infinitival verb, de auto, surfaces as the nominative subject of the construction as a whole, while the subject of the active construction, Jan, is suppressed; in short, it is the derived subject in (485a') that becomes the nominative subject of the entire construction.

Example 485

a.	Het	lijkt	me dat	Jan	de auto	repareert.	finite subject clause
	it	appears	me that	Jan	the car	repairs
	'It appears to me that Jan is repairing the car.'

a'.	Het	lijkt	me dat	de auto	gerepareerd	wordt.
	it	appears	me that	the car	repaired	is
	'It appears to me that the car is being repaired.'

b.	Jan	lijkt	me de auto	te repareren.	subject raising
	Jan	appears	me the car	to repair
	'Jan appears to me to repair the car.'

b'.	De auto	lijkt	me gerepareerd	te worden.
	the car	appears	me repaired	to be
	'The car appears to me to be repaired.'

Finally, consider the examples in (486) adapted from Bennis & Hoekstra (1989c:172); the judgments hold only for speakers that allow passivization of the idiomatic expression de strijdbijl begraven'to bury the hatchet/to make peace'. The fact that the idiomatic reading is preserved in (486b') can be taken as in favor of the claim that the noun phrase de strijdbijl is base-generated as part of the infinitival clause: since phrasal idioms are listed in the lexicon, the expression de strijdbijl begraven must be inserted into the structure as a unit.

Example 486

a.	Het	schijnt	dat	Jan en Marie	de strijdbijl	hebben	begraven.
	it	seems	that	Jan and Marie	the hatchet	have	buried
	'It seems that Jan and Marie have buried the hatchet.'

a'.	Jan en Marie	schijnen	de strijdbijl	te hebben	begraven.
	Jan and Marie	seem	the hatchet	to have	buried
	'Jan and Marie seem to have buried the hatchet.'

b.	Het	schijnt	dat	de strijdbijl	begraven	is.
	it	seems	that	the hatchet	buried	has.been
	'It seems that has been buried the hatchet.'

b'.	De strijdbijl	schijnt begraven	te zijn.
	the hatchet	seems buried	to have.been
	'The hatchet seems to have been buried.'

[+] 5. Subject raising is excluded in nominalizations

Subject raising requires the te-infinitival to be a complement of a verb; the primed examples in (487) show that whereas non-raising constructions such as (487a) have nominal counterparts, subject raising constructions such as (487b) have not.

Example 487

a.	het	schijnt	[dat	Jan ziek	is].
	it	seems	that	Jan ill	is
	'It seems that Jan is ill.'

b.	Jani schijnt [ti	ziek	te zijn].
	Jan seems	ill	to
	'Jan seems to be ill.'

a'.	de schijn	[dat Jan ziek is]
	the appearance	that Jan ill is
	'the pretense that Jan is ill'

b'.	*	Jansi	schijn [ti	ziek	te zijn]
		Janʼs	appearance	ill	to be

This suggests that te-infinitival complements of nouns differ from those of verbs in that they are not transparent. This is in line with Koster's (1984b) claim, discussed in Section 5.2.2.1 that te-infinitival complements of nouns do not involve obligatory control either.

[+] 6. Conclusion

The facts discussed in the previous subsections conclusively show that subjects of subject raising constructions cannot be analyzed as arguments of the subject raising verb but originate as arguments of the embedded infinitival verb, subject raising occurs out of te-infinitival complements of certain unaccusative verbs (but not of their corresponding nominalizations)

[+] II. Subject raising verbs

Subject raising verb normally have a modal meaning. This is especially clear for the modal verbs blijken'to turn out', lijken'to appear', and schijnen'to seem' in (470a), which are traditionally analyzed as (semi-)auxiliaries in this context, but it also holds for verbs like beloven'to promise' and dreigen'to threaten' in (470c), which are used more incidentally in this construction. The following subsections briefly discuss these verbs in more detail, subsection A begins by having a closer look at the modal verbs blijken, lijken and schijnen, subsection B discusses the verbs in (470c) while Subsection C concludes with the more formal modal verbs in (470b) as well as a number of other potential cases from the formal register.

[+] A. The verbs blijken, schijnen and lijken

Adopting the categorization of modality proposed by Palmer (2001), which is discussed more extensively in Section 5.2.3.2, sub III, we may classify verbs like blijken'to turn out', lijken'to appear', and schijnen'to seem' in (488) semantically as evidential modals, in the sense that they can be used to indicate what kind of evidence there is in favor of the truth of a certain proposition p: see Van Bruggen (1980/1), Haeseryn et al. (1997:1007-8), Vliegen (2011) and Koring (2013) for discussion. The verb blijken suggests that there is conclusive evidence to conclude that p is true, in the sense that on the basis of this evidence most people would conclude that p is true. The verb lijken expresses that there is evidence in support of p but that the evidence is not yet conclusive; on the basis of the evidence one can only provisionally assume that p is true. The verb schijnen, finally, expresses that there is no identifiable evidence that supports p; the evidence may or may not exist—we are dealing with hearsay/rumors.

Example 488

a.	Uit zijn verklaring	blijkt	[dat	Jan de dader	is].	conclusive
	from his statement	turns.out	that	Jan the perpetrator	is
	'His statement clearly shows that Jan is the perpetrator.'

b.	Het	lijkt	mij/haar	[dat	Jan de dader	is].	not yet conclusive
	it	appears	me/her	that	Jan the perpetrator	is
	'It appears to me/her that Jan is the perpetrator.'

c.	Het	schijnt	[dat	Jan de dader	is].	hearsay
	it	seems	that	Jan the perpetrator	is
	'It seems that Jan is the perpetrator.'

[+] 1. The verb blijken'to turn out'

The verb blijken expresses that there is factual evidence in support of the proposition expressed by the argument clause. Use of this verb further suggests that the truth of the proposition can at least be intersubjectively established on the basis of the evidence available, that is, most people who consider this evidence carefully would come to the same conclusion. Example (489a) shows that the nature of the factual evidence submitted can be specified by means of an adverbial uit-PP if the clause is finite, but not in the corresponding subject raising and complementive constructions in (489b&c); the latter examples nevertheless imply that the truth of the proposition expressed by the infinitival/small clause can be intersubjectively established. Adverbial uit-PPs of this type are normally not found with the verbs lijken and schijnen; see Table 3 in Vliegen (2011).

Example 489

a.	Uit zijn verklaring	blijkt	[dat	Jan de dader	is].
	from his statement	turns.out	that	Jan the perpetrator	is
	'His statement clearly shows that Jan is the perpetrator.'

b.		Jan blijkt	(*uit zijn verklaring) [ti	de dader	te zijn].
		Jan turns.out	from his statement	the perpetrator	to be

c.		Jan blijkt	(*uit zijn verklaring) [SCti	de dader].
		Jan turns.out	from his statement	the perpetrator

Note in passing that examples such as (489) are perfectly fine if the preposition uit is replaced by volgens'according to': this may be due to the fact that the complement of the volgens-PP does not refer to the evidence on which the speakers bases his judgment of the truth of the proposition, but to the "judgment" provided by some source. While example (489) expresses that the speaker concludes from Jans statement that Jan is the perpetrator, an example like Volgens zijn verklaring blijkt dat Jan de dader is attributes this conclusion to Jan himself.
It seems often implied that there is a specific set of individuals who have drawn the conclusion from the available evidence. With a finite complement clause the person(s) responsible for the conclusion can be expressed by means of a dative object (often the first person, plural pronoun ons'us'), which the literature normally refers to as the experiencer. The verb blijken should therefore be considered a nom-dat (dyadic unaccusative) verb. The addition of an experiencer leads to a degraded result in the corresponding subject raising and complementive constructions.

Example 490

a.	Er	is	ons	gebleken	[dat	Jan de dader	is].
	there	is	us	turned.out	that	Jan the perpetrator	is
	'We have concluded that Jan is the perpetrator.'

b.	Jan	bleek	(*ons) [ti	de dader	te zijn].
	Jan	turned.out		us	the perpetrator to be
	'Jan turned out to be the perpetrator.'

c.	Jan bleek	(*ons) [SCti	de dader].
	Jan turned.out	us	the perpetrator
	'Jan turned out to be the perpetrator.'

It should be noted that the use of an experiencer object is limited even in the case of finite argument clauses: it seems easily possible in perfect-tense constructions but is generally rejected in simple past/present constructions. The contrast is also clear from our Google search (31/1/2014): whereas the string [er is ons gebleken] resulted in 52 hits, the strings [ er blijkt/bleek ons dat] resulted in no more than 9 relevant hits (all from very formal texts).

[+] 2. The verb lijken'to appear'

The verb lijken indicates that the claim that the proposition expressed by the argument clause in (488a) is based on unmentioned evidence available; we are in a sense dealing with a subjective assessment of the evidence by a specific set of individuals, which includes the speaker by default. Example (491a) shows, however, that this set can also be made explicit by means of an optional experiencer object, in which case the default reading can readily be cancelled. The availability of an experiencer object shows that, like blijken, the verb lijken should be considered a nom-dat (dyadic unaccusative) verb. However, lijken differs from blijken in that the experiencer may also appear in the corresponding subject raising and complementive constructions in (491b&c).

Example 491

a.	Het	lijkt	mij/haar	[dat	Jan de dader	is].
	it	appears	me/her	that	Jan the perpetrator	is
	'It appears to me/her that Jan is the perpetrator.'

b.	Jani	lijkt	mij/haar [ti	de dader	te zijn].
	it	appears	me/her	the perpetrator	to be
	'Jan appears to me/her to be the perpetrator.'

c.	Jani	lijkt	mij/haar [SCti	de dader].
	it	appears	me/her	the perpetrator
	'Jan appears to be the perpetrator to me/her.'

It seems that lijken differs from the other two verbs in that it can easily take a finite clause introduced by the linking element (als)of'as if'; the judgments on examples (492b) with schijnen vary from speaker to speaker, which is indicated by the percentage sign; we will briefly return to this issue in Subsection 4.

Example 492

a.	Het	lijkt	alsof	Jan de dader	is.
	it	appears	as.if	Jan the perpetrator	is
	'It appears as if Jan is the perpetrator.'

b.		Het	%schijnt/*blijkt	alsof	Jan	de dader	is.
		it	seems/turns.out	as.if	Jan	the perpetrator	is

This claim that modal lijken can be supplemented by an alsof-complement may be apparent, however, given that the verb lijken also occurs as a PO-verb with the meaning "to resemble/look like"; cf. example (493a). Since Section 2.3.1, sub VI, has shown that anticipatory pronominal PPs can often be omitted, it seems plausible to assume that example (492a) is a shorter form of example (493b) and thus does not involve the modal verb lijken.

Example 493

a.	Jan lijkt	op zijn vader.
	Jan resembles	on his father
	'Jan resembles his father.'

b.	Het	lijkt	erop	alsof	Jan de dader	is.
	it	looks	like.it	as.if	Jan the perpetrator	is
	'It looks like Jan is the perpetrator.'

Example (494a), on the other hand, shows that (492a) can be extended with an experiencer object; the fact illustrated in (494b) that the experiencer and the anticipatory pronominal PP cannot co-occur therefore militates against the elision analysis. The bracketed numbers indicate the number of hits of our Google search (5/2/2013) for the search strings [ het lijkt mij/me alsof] and [ het lijkt mij/me erop alsof]. For completeness' sake notice that some speakers report that they consider example (494b) marked as well.

Example 494

a.	Het	lijkt	mij	alsof	Jan de dader	is.	683
	it	appears	me	as.if	Jan the perpetrator	is
	'It appears to me like Jan is the perpetrator.'

b.	*	Het	lijkt	mij	erop	alsof	Jan de dader	is.	12
		it	appears	me	like.it	as.if	Jan the perpetrator	is

This leads to the conclusion that the evidential modal verb lijken can be supplemented by an alsof-complement after all.

[+] 3. The verb schijnen'to seem'

An experiencer object is unlikely with the verb schijnen in examples such as (488c), and the same holds for the corresponding subject raising and complementive constructions in (495). The reason is that schijnen indicates that the truth of the proposition is based on rumors/hearsay; contrary to blijken and lijken, postulation of the truth of the proposition is not based on evidence available to any identifiable individual in the domain of discourse—it may in fact be entirely lacking.

Example 495

a.	Jani	schijnt	(mij/haar) [ti	de dader	te zijn].
	Jan	seems	me/her	the perpetrator	to be