An (only) apparent case of hyper raising in Spanish

Abstract

This paper deals with an apparent case of hyper raising in Spanish ("Juan parece que llegará tarde", lit. *John seems that will be late) and concludes that no actual raising takes place: that is, the allegedly A-moved subject appearing to the left of the raising predicate (Juan) is actually in an A-position in the left periphery of the matrix. The thesis defended in this paper has been challenged recently by Fernández-Salgueiro (2011), who proposes an analysis in terms of A-movement. In this paper I will argue against his view (i) by showing that it leads to empirical and conceptual inconsistencies and (ii) by providing evidence of the A-status of the subject. Further, I will argue against an alternative approach that takes "parece que" to be a grammaticalized adverb as suggested by Cross (1945) and Bolinger (1946).