Case Assignment Conditions

A noun or pronoun expression is assigned case by the closest case-assigner which c-commands it (in consequence of the Earliness Principle) and is assigned

(i) accusative case if c-commanded by a transitive head (e.g a transitive verb like meet, or a transitive preposition like with or a transitive complementiser like for or for)

(ii) nominative case if c-commanded by an intransitive finite complementiser (like that, that, if or the null declarative main-clause complementiser ø )

(iii) null case if c-commanded by a null intransitive non-finite complementiser ø