Severing the Distribution of PRO from Case

Deriving the distribution of PRO in a principled manner is a central task for the theory of control. Traditionally, Case has been identified as the key to this problem: PRO was argued to bear no Case at all, or some special (‘‘null’’) Case. I argue that PRO bears standard case like normal lexical DPs; clear evidence comes from languages with case‐concord (Russian, Hungarian, Icelandic). Moreover, PRO (and obligatory control) may occur in finite clauses (Hebrew, Balkan languages). Conclusion: PRO's distribution must be completely divorced from Case, possibly because abstract Case does not exist. The alternative is to tie the distribution of PRO to the specific values of [T] and [Agr] on the I0and C0heads of the embedded clause ( Landau 2004 ). A feature‐based algorithm predicts the distribution of PRO in a variety of clausal complements. It is shown that the system naturally explains some intriguing correlations between obligatory control and agreement in Basque and Welsh complementation structures.