Abstract
Since Aoun 1979 noticed the parallelism between Case and θ-role, Chomsky 1981 and other grammarians have been attempting to reduce the Case Filter to the θ-criterion by imposing the Visibility Condition on θ-role assignment, whose essential effect is that a category is visible for θ-marking only if it is assigned Case. In this article, I will cast doubts on the Visibility Condition and claim that a more plausible version of the Visibility Condition should be that a category is visible for θ-marking only if it is [-V]″. This is tantamount to adopting Emonds' 1985 assumption that θ-role assignment is autonomous from Case assignment.
