Exceptional Case Marking

Exceptional Case Marking is non-canonical structural case assignment to an embedded subject by a certain class of verbs, such as believe, which have the (exceptional) capacity to govern the embedded subject position of their infinitival complement.

In Chomskyan syntax, the term refers to a biclausal construction in which the subject of the embedded clause receives the Case marking from the matrix clause.

Example
English Masha believes [Jorge to be innocent]. Here the embedded-clause subject Jorge is analyzed as Case-marked by the matrix verb believes.

The fact that the complement clause is transparent for government is exceptional, and has been accounted for in terms of CP-reduction (S-bar-deletion). As a result the complement does not constitute a barrier to government.

Synonyms
There are a number of terms for the same construction, but they tend to imply a different analysis:
 * accusativus cum infinitivo
 * subject-to-object raising

Origin
The term was introduced by Chomsky 1981.

Link
Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics