Starting from the observation that the standard concepts used for analyses of the syntax of A-positions (EPP, abstract Case) are simply stipulations, this paper proposes that the effects of the EPP and of Case Theory can be derived from an independently motivated component of the grammar, namely the theory of syntactic categories. More precisely, it is argued the EPP and Case phenomena can be analyzed in terms of a model of categorial bonding in which categories interact in order to compensate for deficiencies in their feature matrices.