Eduardo raposo 1987 inflected infinitives and v to comp (original) (raw)
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Clara Vanderschueren/Ludovic De Cuypere (to appear). The Inflected/Non-inflected Infinitive Alternation in Portuguese Adverbial Clauses. A Corpus Analysis*
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Linguistics, 2018
Traditionally, the infinitive has been characterized by its defective morphology within the verbal paradigm: just like the gerund and the participle, it is usually associated with the feature of non-finiteness, which is reflected in its lack of tense/mood/aspect and person/number markers. However, in some cases, this characterization is in conflict with the existence of some infinitival constructions that involve inflection for person and number. This phenomenon has been captured by a variety of terms, such as “the personal infinitive,” “the conjugated infinitive,” or “the inflected infinitive.” This article uses the term “inflected infinitive” because it is the most transparent and the most widespread one among the current body of studies. The quintessential example of the inflected infinitive is the Portuguese one. However, one also finds the inflected infinitive in other Romance languages such as Galician, Mirandese, and some dialects of Sardinian. Furthermore, it is also atteste...
(Pseudo-)Inflected infinitives and Control as Agree
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory, 2014
This paper discusses the distribution of inflected infinitives in standard and non-standard European Portuguese. In the standard variety, inflected infinitives are generally available in non-obligatory control contexts (subject and adjunct clauses), but can only occur in obligatory control contexts when the temporal orientation of the complement is not specified by the matrix verb. An explanation for this fact is offered along the lines of an Agree theory of control. This analysis also accounts for the possibility of controlled inflected infinitives, which occur in non-standard varieties of European Portuguese. Controlled inflected infinitives bear morphological inflection but do not license nominative. We argue that these non-standard inflected infinitives make the Agree operation underlying control visible (this operation does not have a morphologically overt counterpart in the standard grammar of EP). We also argue that some speakers accept these pseudoinflected infinitives as a strategy to make partial control readings explicit in independent tense contexts.
In contemporary European Portuguese, causative and (direct) perception constructions represent two syntactic contexts in which an alternation between inflected and non-inflected infinitive exists. Aiming to find a ratio governing such an alternation, a study on the constructions at issue was made using the CETEMPúblico corpus. The different types of constructions found in the corpus were organized in different classes according to (1) the type (Infl/non-Infl) of infinitive and its semantics, (2) the case and the form (lexical or cliticized) of the causee/perceived subject, and (3) the degree of iconicity of the construction. Significant differences between causative and perception constructions emerged, the concept of semantic integration being the most relevant parameter in the inflected/non-inflected infinitive alternation. Some unexpected data showing irregular use of the inflected infinitive were integrated in the analysis and in the classification of EP causative and perception constructions.
Inflected infinitives in Brazilian Portuguese and the theory of control
In this chapter, we describe the distribution of inflected infinitives in BP, and discuss the possible interpretations of their subjects when null. In so doing, we address the debate between Modesto 2010 and proponents of the movement theory of Control (MTC, particularly Boeckx and Hornstein 2006 and Rodrigues and Hornstein 2013) as to whether inflected infinitives constitute a serious argument against the MTC; and whether gender agreement with epicene nouns in finite embedded clauses in Brazilian Portuguese and Italian constitutes a valid argument in favor of the MTC. The facts supporting the later argument are in fact inconclusive, as argued by Modesto. The facts involving the former argument were tested using a grammaticality judgment task, presented here. The experiment indicates that inflected infinitives are perfectly grammatical in obligatory Control contexts; but its grammaticality is uncertain in non-control ones, supporting Modesto’s claims. The chapter concludes that, after discounting the interference of written language, the behavior of inflected infinitives in BP is explained by recent linguistic theory that assumes PRO to be a minimal pronoun (Kratzer 2009, Landau 2015).
Tensed and non-tensed nominalization of the infinitive in Portuguese
Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, 2013
This text presents an analysis of three types of nominalization of the infinitive in European Portuguese, characterized by distinct syntactic and semantic properties but all indicated by the presence of a determiner to the left of the infinitive. In the nominal infinitive, which has more nominal than verbal properties, a process is denoted, which is why culmination verbs are forbidden in most cases. In the literature it has also been stated that transitive verbs cannot be used as nominal infinitives. However, the presence of some aspectual modifiers that force a durative and unbounded process reading may allow the occurrence of these verbs. There is also the possibility of nominalizing a full infinitival clause, denoting a fact. Since this contains verbal and tensed properties, it may contain the inflected infinitive and in most cases involves the so called Aux-to-Comp movement, it is thus analyzed here as the nominalization of CP. 1 I thank Belinda Maia for helping me in collating the examples in CetemPublico corpus and Petra Sleeman for suggestions regarding a previous version of this text. I also thank the audiences of the Workshop on Tense and Aspect in Generative Grammar.
Brazilian Portuguese inflected infinitives and the dynamic nature of language
""Unlike other Romance languages, Portuguese allows for optionally marked plural infinitival verbs in a number of syntactic contexts, even according to normative grammars (Maurer, 1968). Considering that the exact range of optionality is unclear, this study advances an understanding of the phenomenon by offering quantitative evidence on the use of inflected infinitives in an 11-million-word written corpus of academic Brazilian Portuguese. Its main goal is to identify general patterns of usage, which is crucial to an empirical definition of the variable. Data extraction was done automatically by means of the software R (R, 2011; Gries, 2009). Distributional patterns reveal a high frequency of inflected infinitives in adjunct clauses (75%) (e.g. sentem-se livres para exporem ‘feel free to expose(INF3rdPl)’, nominal complements (94,5%) and adjectival complements (89%), contexts usually cited as optional. Infinitive complements of modal and aspectual verbs, usually cited as non-variable contexts, proved to be contexts in which the inflection is not likely to occur (respectively, 0.3% and 5%). However, the few occurrences in these “non-variable” contexts (e.g. poderiam serem ‘could be(INF3rdPl)’ or começam a serem ‘begin to be(INF3rdPl)’) suggest that the use of the inflected infinitive has been expanding in a number of nonstandard contexts in Brazilian Portuguese. The extension of the infinitive inflection to nonstandard synctactic contexts, which has also been attested in spoken language (e.g. podem fazerem ‘can to do(INF3rdPl)’, têm que repensarem ‘have to rethink(INF3rdPl), vão responderem ‘will answer(INF3rdPl)’), can be accounted for by two factors: (i) the high frequency of occurrence of the inflection in so-called optional contexts, such as adjunct clauses, nominal and adjectival complements, and (ii) a ‘notion of correctness’ dynamically associated (Campbell-Kibler, 2009) with plural verbal agreement in Brazil. These considerations guide a discussion as to how human language should be conceived: as a complex, dynamic and adaptative system (Mufwene, 2008; Kretzschmar, 2009; Beckner et al., 2009), in which linguistic innovations and social evaluations that arise in local interactions may be reinforced and result in changes in the communal level."