Search

This paper focuses on the description and analysis of an anomalous or non-normative plural agreement phenomenon that certain Spanish verbs, named "terciopersonal" o "pseudopersonal" in the literature, present when combined with an infinitive clause whose verb selects a plural NP as its direct object (Te cuestan hacer las tareas más fáciles 'It's hard for you to do the easiest tasks'). After describing the phenomenon, we show that the finite verb does not present all the characteristics that are usually attributed to auxiliaries and we defend that the theory of nexus and junctures proposed in role and reference grammar is a useful analytical tool in order to account for the structures under study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a novel account for the overuse of free morphemes and underuse of bound morphemes in English as a second language (L2) based on the framework of Distributed Morphology. It will be argued that an Economy Principle 'Do everything in Narrow Syntax (DENS)' operates in the L2 learner's computational system. Consequently, derivation in Morphology becomes as limited as possible except when applying Vocabulary Items to syntactic objects (Vocabulary Insertion). This results in non-target-like use/acceptance of certain morphemes: Bound morphemes are often omitted in early L2 grammar, and alternative free morphemes may apparently be used instead. Two types of data, namely the overuse of be reported in previous research, and the preference of to- infinitives over -ing gerunds in early L2 grammar, will be presented in support of the proposal, and the plausibility of the operation of DENS will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we study the linguistic variation of the ser de + infinitive construction with passive interpretation (Eso es de aplaudir) with examples taken from CORPES and Corpus del Español (Mark Davies). The consultation of both corpora has allowed us to confirm that the construction not only has more vitality in American Spanish, but that it presents two uncommon variants in European Spanish: it appears with accusative clitic (Eso es de aplaudirlo) and with the particle se (Eso es de admirarse). We will argue that this behavior responds to two different analyses: a passive one, which would explain the absence of a direct complement in general Spanish or the presence of particle se in some American varieties, and an impersonal active one (present mostly in Central America), which would in turn justify the presence of the accusative clitic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current Spanish, there are different examples of infinitives introduced by a seemingly superfluous preposition: the infinitives can be preceded by the preposition de (Le dijo de ir), by the preposition a (Lo mandó a callar) and by the preposition para (Le dijo para ir de inmediato). The aim of this paper is to show that the presence of this preposition is intimately linked to the original final value of the infinitive and that this origin is translated in the current syntax of the exhortative and volitive verbs and in the lexical and grammatical aspect that the infinitive can express, according to the syntactic context. From the history of the language, it is intended to explain the current state of the infinitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Biuletyn Polskiego Towarzystwa Językoznawczego is the property of Polish Linguistic Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper reports quantitative research on the parts of speech of English words using the data from British National Corpus. Most of the part-of-speech investigations focus on the rank-frequency distribution. However, in English and many other languages, we can find that partd of speech can be ambiguous. For example, hope can be a noun and a verb. Such words are called polyfunctional words, while other words, which belong to only one part of speech, are called monofunctional words. The number of parts of speech that a word belongs to is referred to as polyfunctionality. First, we study polyfunctionality distribution of English words and find that the Shenton-Skees-geometric and the Waring distributions capture the data very well. Then, we group words according to their part of speech, e.g., monofunctional nouns, like Saturday, and polyfunctional nouns, like hope (noun, verb) compose noun group, and try to work out a general model for all the groups. The result is that the extended positive binomial distribution captures all the groups except the article group, because of the sparsity of the data. Last, we study the diversification variants. Since there are polyfunctional words in each group - e.g., in a noun group, a polyfunctional noun may also be a verb, we consider the "verb" function as a diversification variant and try to model the rank-frequency distribution of variants with the Popescu-Altmann function, as used in the previous investigation. The results show very good fit for all groups exzept conjunction group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how competent speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) sound depending on variable number inflection of infinitive verbs (INF). Recent research has shown high rates of inflected infinitives in syntactic contexts in which it is prescriptively optional, such as adverbial clauses (CANEVER, 2012, 2017). According to that work, inflected infinitives also occur in nonstandard contexts, such as complements of auxiliary verbs, which can be taken as cases of hypercorrection. Informed by these findings and given the prestige usually associated with overtly marking verbal agreement in Brazil (SCHERRE; NARO, 2006, 2014), this study uses a modified matched-guise task (LAMBERT et al., 1960) in order to check whether speakers sound more educated, more intelligent and more formal in their INFflex-guise, and whether these perceptions vary significantly according to the syntactic context, the grammatical person and listeners' social characteristics (e.g. age). Results show that speakers are judged as more competent-sounding in their uninflected (INFø) guises, contradicting the initial hypothesis. However, further analyses show that this effect is stronger in the hypercorrect context as opposed to the syntactic context in which INFflex is more frequent. These results indicate a relation between frequency of occurrence in production and sociolinguistic perception, with higher rates of use translating into more neutral perceptions. Moreover, older respondents presented stronger reactions to INFflex guises, while younger respondents' judgments tended to be more neutral. Such age effects suggest a change in progress in the sociolinguistic perceptions associated to (INFflex). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Romance clitic left dislocation is widespread across all kinds of nonroot contexts, but it is forbidden in infinitive wh‐relatives. This article investigates the extent and nature of this restriction and the consequences it raises for the truncation and intervention analyses of the left periphery of embedded sentences. We will show that current proposals cannot account for the whole gamut of data. In consequence, we will propose that infinitive wh‐relatives display a maximally syncretic left periphery, whereas infinitive wh‐interrogatives have a full‐fledged left periphery, crucially involving ForceP, because they are selected by a higher predicate. This crucial difference between infinitive relatives and interrogatives will also be shown to be consistent with the existence of specialized complementizers for the former but not the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a broad overview, seen from the perspective of Diachronic Construction Grammar, of the readings and values developed in Latin by the construction soleo+INF. The evidence provided and the analysis of the various factors involved in the interpretation of this periphrasis show that its original and basic value is not the expression of habitual aspect, as traditional models maintain, but a typifying meaning that should be considered in the framework of the continuous aspect. On the other hand, the structural possibilities and the behavior of soleo+INF in Latin allow to set an interesting reference framework to explain some particular uses of soler+INF in the earliest stages of the Spanish language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a diachronic study of the inchoative periphrases comenzar a and empezar a + INFINITIVE drawing upon grammaticalization theory, in an attempt to contribute to the history of Spanish and, particularly, to the studies focused on verbal periphrases. Based on the results of an analysis of a large number of documented occurrences between the 11th and 21st centuries, we propose that the lexical meaning of words to be relevant in the construction of grammatical pieces; therefore synonymy seems to play an important role in shaping the grammar of a language. As we will see, alternation of the studied forms shows that both coexist nowadays, and that their use is conditioned both by contextual and chronological factors, because both express the same semantic values. Since the use of empezar a + INFINITIVE increases around the 19th century, we reflect on other change processes linked to verbal periphrases during this period, and on their importance in the syntactic periodization of Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the evolution of the Spanish verbal periphrasis llegar a + INF (lit. to arrive to + INF) following the theoretical methodology established by Diachronic Construction Grammar. The study proves that llegar a + INF forms a radial category in Spanish in which different, closely connected microconstructions are grouped together. The evolution of the periphrasis begins in the 13th century, with microconstructions that express (i) the ending of a series of previous events, (ii) ability and (iii) achievement. Focusing values were added in the 16th century, and finally, in the 17th century, a construction emerged that expresses possibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the syntactic and semantic properties of the periphrasis . From a semantic point of view, it is usually assumed that this construction denotes imminent future. We offer arguments against this characterization. These arguments are based on several asymmetries between and the periphrasis , which expresses imminent future. Therefore, we defend that does not denote imminent future and, in particular, that it expresses certain preconditions linked with the realization of the event denoted by the infinitive. From a syntactic point of view, we show that is not derived from , through the ellipsis of the adjective listo, although, according to our proposal, the denotation of both constructions are similar. The reason is that when refers to the previous conditions associated with an event, it does not show the behavior of a copulative construction, contrary to what happens with and with a purpose meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central object of the present research is the constituent order of head and modifier in auxiliary constructions, namely infinitive + finite auxiliary vs. finite auxiliary + infinitive and participle + finite auxiliary vs. finite auxiliary + participle. The texts under investigation are the llati medieval of Catalan diplomas of the 10th to 13th century, the Usatici Barchinonae of the 12th century and the Usatges de Barcelona of the 13th and 15th century. The issue is whether and to what extent the syntax of the documents edited in the llatí medieval and the Usatici Barchinonae shows features of the developing Catalan syntax, in which the order head + modifier, i.e. finite auxiliary + infinitive and finite auxiliary + participle, becomes the preferred argument structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article provides a typological commentary on the article by Nikki van de Pol (2019) on the history of the English gerund. It is shown that in spite of certain idiosyncratic aspects, the history of the verbal gerund illustrates a well-known grammaticalization path of verbalization, whereby deverbal nouns are first grammaticalized into nonfinite forms (participles, infinitives, converbs), and may later be integrated into the verbal paradigm. It is further suggested that the mixed behavior attested for the verbal gerund, which deviates both from the nominal and from the clausal prototype, may be universally supported by constructional polysemy and blending with constructions which have further progressed on the verbalization cline. • Provides typological perspective on the history of the English verbal gerund. • Demonstrates that verbalization is a common typological grammaticalization path. • Discusses universal constraints on category-mixing in gerund nominalizations. • Admits construction blending as a general factor in verbalization scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will provide a new argument for post-syntactic morphology. The empirical evidence comes from so-called displaced morphology in German verb clusters, where the non-finite verb form selected by a given governor does not appear on the immediately dependent verb but rather on the linearly last verb of the selector's complement. The placement of the morphology thus partly depends on linear notions and not exclusively on hierarchical relations. I will provide an analysis within Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz in The view from Building 20. Essays in linguistics in honour of Sylvain Bromberger, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 111–176, 1993), where exponents for non-finite morphology are inserted into separate functional heads which are linearized after their VP-complements. At a late stage of the PF-derivation, the exponents are associated with their verbal hosts by means of Local Dislocation, an operation that applies under adjacency (Embick and Noyer in Linguist Inq 32(4):555–595, 2001). As a consequence, the non-finite morphology always comes last in the selector's complement. Displacement arises once the immediately dependent verb is not the last verbal element in the complement of its selector; this is generally the case in strictly ascending orders, while in the strictly descending 321 order the morphology is faithfully realized. The placement operation is thus always the same, displacement only emerges as a side effect of certain cluster orders. Further evidence for a post-syntactic approach to the placement of non-finite morphology and against a pre-syntactic perspective comes from the absence of semantic effects under displacement, the emergence of non-finite verb forms specified for more than one non-finite category under multiple displacement and the distribution of default forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interrogative warum connected with a bare infinitival VP forms a specific kind of root structures in German. wh-root-infinitives in general are subject to certain syntactic and interpretative restrictions. The subject argument of the infinitival verb cannot be expressed by a lexical NP; it is identified with the speaker, instead. Due to the lack of finiteness these infinitives are restricted to a non-past, prospective, modal interpretation. warum-infinitives share these properties. But differing from other instances of wh-infinitives they are systematically ambiguous, as they provide a second reading with a non-prospective interpretation referring to a present or past event in which the subject argument is identified with the addressee. It will be argued that the availability of this second reading has to be ascribed to a pragmatic inference which refers to presuppositions of questions in general and of causal questions in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the emergence and evolution in Spanish of three verbal constructions that share the same form as the Spanish verbal periphrasis for expressing future time, namely, 'to go + inf'. Specifically, those constructions are verbal periphrases expressing the past tense, the completive and focus values. The past periphrasis and the completive one share the same etymology as the future tense periphrasis: a construction in which the verb ir 'to go' expresses an advance in time. The omission of the indication of the place towards which the movement takes us will allow us to stop focusing on a destination in order to envisage the event expressed by the infinitive of the construction. On the other hand, the focus construction constitutes a further evolution of the completive periphrasis. From the 18th century onwards, the distribution of these three periphrases is the same as that of modern Spanish: the past periphrasis has disappeared from the language and the other two are maintained in contexts of communicative proximity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated certain properties of non-finite clauses in Thai, that is, matrix clause predicates, clause markers, and modal auxiliaries in the clausal complements. Two types of resources were employed. The first one was constructed based on the obligatoriness and optionality of thîi càɁ, a marker for irrealis complements (Singhapreecha 2010). The second database was obtained from a translation into Thai from De Jonge's (1998) Spanish subjunctives. Three hypotheses were formulated. Firstly, thîi càɁ is obligatory with matrix predicates neutral to irrealis mood, optional with those implicitly irrealis, and absent with experiential clauses. Secondly, predicates taking (purposive and imperative) subjunctives occur in the absence of tense and modal auxiliaries, and definitive elements are not accommodated in hypothetical clauses. Thirdly, with predicates taking indicatives, tense/aspect markers are likely, but not modals of possibility. Data from a series of questionnaires conducted with Thai informants confirmed the first and second hypotheses. The third hypothesis was partially confirmed. While tense markers were favored as predicted, modals of moderate to weak obligation/possibility were acceptable. This study suggests, in respect to modality and indicatives, a sense weaker than certainty be allowed in evaluating a past or hypothetical event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study undertakes a syntactic and textual analysis of independent infinitives in French, i.e., interrogative infinitives, exclamatory infinitives, injunctive infinitives and narrative infinitives. The main purpose of this research is to illustrate the functions of these infinitives at the sentence level and at the textual level. Although these infinitives are considered independent constructions, it is necessary to take into account cotext and context so that users of the language can understand them in a more comprehensive way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several reasons have been proposed for the decline of infinitival complementation in Ancient Greek: the fact that the infinitive became morphologically restricted, the inherent redundancy of the Classical complementation system, and language contact. In this article, I explore yet another reason for the decline of the infinitive: I argue that the system of infinitival complementation became fundamentally ambiguous in its expression in later Greek. As has been noted previously, the loss of the future and perfect tense had a serious impact on the use of infinitival complementation. However, rather than there being an ‘omission' of temporal distinctions, as previous studies have claimed, I argue that the present and aorist infinitive became polyfunctional, being used for anterior, simultaneous, and posterior events. Next to temporal ambiguity, a second type of ambiguity occurred: ‘modal' ambiguity or ambiguity with regard to the speech function of the complement clause. Already in Classical times, the present and aorist infinitive could be used after certain verb classes to encode both ‘propositions' and ‘proposals' (offers/commands), an ambiguity which continues to be found in later Greek. The study is based on a corpus of documentary texts from the Roman and Byzantine periods (I–VIII AD). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the contrast between two kinds of clausal complements in the shell noun construction in Portuguese, namely finite clause complements introduced by the conjunction que 'that', as in a ideia de que éramos vigiados 'the idea that we were being watched' and inflected infinitive complements, as in a idéia de tomarem chá 'the idea (for them) to have tea'. The aim is to reveal which factors motivate the choice of either the finite complement or the inflected infinitive construction. Three successively more detailed quantitative corpus analyses were carried out: a collostructional analysis, a distinctive collexeme analysis and a logistic regression analysis. The results show significant differences in the constructional preferences for most nouns, but also reveal 13 nouns that frequently combine with the two complement clause constructions. With these 13 nouns, it was found that a higher degree of complement clause autonomy, complexity and verbality favored the use of the finite clause alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt is made to arrange chronologically the particular stages of the diachronic process of the refinitivization of the infinitive based on their synchronic reflections observable in the contemporary Finnish language. The paper begins with an overview of the morphological and syntagmatic properties of various Finnish infinitive types, and a presentation of the adopted taxonomic approach as opposed to the transformational one. The main part contains a discussion on the details and the substantiation of the particular proposed chronological arrangement of the stages of the process of refinitivization of the infinitive in Finnish. A total of six stages of this process are distinguished, as a consequence of which the connection between the infinitive and finite verb tightens to such an extent that the finite verb metamorphoses into an auxiliary verb, whereas the infinitive metamorphoses into the only carrier of lexical meaning in a new compound verb form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the syntactic representation and processing characteristics of null subjects of inflected nonfinite clauses in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). After reviewing some literature on generativesyntax Control and discussing the peculiarities of BP diachrony, we present an eye-tracking experiment which proves that a control interpretation of null subjects of inflected nonfinite clauses is not only psychologically real in BP, but it is actually the preferred option in a task in which a strict comparison with arbitrary PRO is entertained. We then discuss the implications of the experiment to syntactic theory and the analysis of Control and speculate on the role of third factor explanations in the architecture of human language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to examine gerundial constructions found in some ninth-century legal documents produced in the Lombard duchy of Salerno and passed down by the so-called Codex diplomaticus Cavensis. Special attention is devoted to three kinds of constructions: the complement gerund governed by nouns, the gerund of purpose, and the adverbial gerund. In the first two of these syntactic domains, the variation between both different types of gerundial structures and infinitive constructions is analyzed, enabling us to observe both the spectrum of syntactic variability of the gerund and the dynamics of variation between these two verbal moods. To interpret this alternation, especially on dependence on nouns, a crucial role is played by sociolinguistic factors. In the last of the mentioned domains, the alternation between gerund and present participle is investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deficits in the production of verbal inflection (tense marking, or finiteness) are part of the Optional Infinitive (OI) stage of typical grammatical development. They are also a hallmark of language impairment: they have been used as biomarkers in guiding genetic studies of Specific Language Impairment (SLI), and have also been observed in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). To determine the detailed nature of finiteness abilities in subgroups of ASD [autism with impaired language (ALI) vs. autism with normal language (ALN)], we compared tense marking abilities in 46 children with ALI and 37 children with ALN with that of two groups of nonverbal mental age (MA) and verbal MA-matched typically developing (TD) controls, the first such study described in the literature. Our participants' performance on two elicited production tasks, probing third-person-singular -s and past tense -ed, from the Rice/Wexler Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (TEGI, Rice and Wexler, 2001), revealed extensive deficits in the ALI group: their ability to correctly mark tense was significantly worse than their much younger TD controls', and significantly worse than that of the ALN group. In contrast, the ALN group performed similarly to their TD controls. We found good knowledge of the meaning of tense, and of case and agreement, in both ASD groups. Similarly, both ASD groups showed distributions of null or overt subjects with nonfinite and finite verbs in line with those found in young TD children. A key difference, however, was that the ALI group used (rather than simply omitted) the wrong tense in some sentences, a feature not reported in the OI stage for TD or SLI children. Our results confirm a clear distinction in the morphosyntactic abilities of the two subgroups of children with ASD: the language system responsible for finiteness in the ALN group seems to be functioning comparably to that of the TD children, whereas the ALI group, despite showing knowledge of case and agreement, seems to experience an extensive grammatical deficit with respect to finiteness which does not seem to improve with age. Crucially, our ALI group seems to have worse grammatical abilities even than those reported for SLI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two issues in Prov 1:1-7 have not been adequately accounted for in the interpretation of the passage as a whole: (1) the grammatical agent(s) of the infinitives in Prov 1:2-4, 6; and (2) the intended audience of Prov 1:1-7. By attributing a distinct agent to 1:4, most interpreters include the "simpletons" and "youth" of 1:4 in the audience of Proverbs, sometimes adding an ideal audience indicated rhetorically in 1:5-the "wise one" who hears. I argue that Prov 1:1-7 casts the "wise" as the ideal, intended audience rather than the "simpletons" and "youth" of 1:4. By addressing pertinent grammatical and rhetorical factors in Prov 1:1-7 in a consistent fashion, I offer a coherent reading of Prov 1:1-7 that views this passage as a tightly knit structure and addresses a single, intended audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studii de Ştiintă şi Cultură is the property of Studii de Stiinta si Cultura and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The diachronic trajectory of weak pronoun placement in infinitival clauses that follow a preposition has the up-and-down profile of what Gertjan Postma has termed a ‘failed change’. Proclitic placement increases in frequency throughout the late Middle Ages but then declines, disappearing altogether in the early modern period. The present article reports the results of a detailed quantitative survey which tracks this diachronic event for approximately 350 years at the decadal level. The findings reveal with some precision the quantitative curve described by this failed change and enable a number of hypotheses to be constructed in relation to the event’s nature, as well as its place within developments in the infinitival subsystem overall. In addition, the case study presented here suggests that failed changes are not necessarily capable of being modelled as a single Hubbert curve, as Postma proposes. Instead, a model involving two independent but abutting S-curves may be more appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Classical Greek has a particularly rich complementation system, in later times there is a tendency towards the use of finite complementation. In this context, Cristofaro (1996) has claimed that the Classical opposition whereby the accusative and infinitive is used for non-factive complements, and ὅτι with the indicative and the accusative and participle for factive ones, is disappearing, ὅτι being used as a 'generic' complementiser. In this article, I investigate to what extent Cristofaro's (1996) claim of the pragmatic neutralisation of complementation patterns can be upheld, and whether it could be claimed that a new pragmatic opposition, in terms of 'register', is being established. For this purpose, I turn towards documentary papyri, a corpus which is particularly fruitful for socio-historical investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historical development and the linguistic triggering environments for Oberfeld formation in German subordinate clauses represent long-standing research questions in Germanic Linguistics, dating at least as far back as Jacob Grimm's famous Deutsche Grammatik . The present corpus study traces this historical development back to the 17th century. The study is based on three text corpora. For contemporary German, two syntactically annotated newspaper corpora were consulted: the TüBa-D/Z and TüPP-D/Z treebanks, 1 1 TüBa-D/Z: http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-1778-0000-0005-896C-F ; TüPP-D/Z: http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-1778-0000-0007-5E99-D which provide linguistic annotations for articles published in the daily newspaper die tageszeitung (taz). For diachronic data, the corpus collection Deutsches Textarchiv (DTA) 2 2 http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/ was utilized. The DTA contains texts ranging from 1610 to 1900. All three corpus collections are part of the Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN) initiative 3 3 http://www.clarin.eu/ and will be developed further as part of the CLARIN research infrastructure. The study demonstrates the added value that annotated corpora can provide for in-depth studies in historical syntax. At the same time it showcases the added value of interoperable language resources for linguistic investigations that require access to and analysis of multiple linguistic resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It seems established that infinitives used in declarative infinitive clauses (DeclarInfCl) convey relative temporality in Classical Greek, with the aorist infinitive referring to anteriority, the present infinitive to simultaneity, and the future infinitive to posteriority. In Hellenistic/Roman Greek and in Early Byzantine Greek, by comparison, DeclarInfCl do not display the same variety of infinitive forms. These periods appear to avoid the aorist infinitive while manifesting a very common use of perfect infinitives and stative present infinitives in DeclarInfCl. These tendencies stand in a complex relation to other developments in the post-Classical period. This paper accounts for what appears to be the decline of the aorist infinitive in DeclarInfCl, claiming that this phenomenon is most likely related to the perfect infinitive adopting the function of conveying anteriority in DeclarInfCl. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the acquisition of sentential complementation under causative, perception, and object control verbs in European Portuguese, a language rich in complement types, including the typologically marked inflected infinitives. We tested 58 children between 3 and 5 years of age and 24 adults on a sentence completion task. The results support two main hypotheses concerning children’s initial biases in representing complement structure. The first pertains to argument structure—a verb selects only one internal (propositional) argument (Single Argument Selection Hypothesis), the other to syntactic structure—propositional complements are complete functional complements (Complete Functional Complement Hypothesis). These initial biases lead children to avoid raising-to-object and object control structures, in favor of finite complements and inflected infinitive complements, the latter appearing in both target and nontarget contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution is a review of Chapter 5.2 of Broekhuis & Corver's (2015) Syntax of Dutch (pp. 765-935). The chapter describes Dutch infinitival constructions from a formal perspective. In this review I share several theoretical, descriptive and methodological considerations, which relate to the status of control as a purely syntactic phenomenon, the semantic and geographic variation of Dutch causative constructions, and the problems with using Google counts from the World Wide Web when writing a (formal) grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a partial control configuration the denotation of the controller is properly included in the understood subject of the infinitive. This paper proposes a compositional semantics for partial control-the first such proposal that we are aware of. We show that an account of what determines whether a given predicate licenses partial control follows naturally from the analysis without additional syntactic assumptions. At the heart of the proposal lies the idea that partial control predicates are attitude verbs and as such, quantify over a particularly fine-grained type of modal base-so-called centred worlds. Unlike in traditional semantics for attitude reports, however, the lexical entry of these predicates requires that the property expressed by the control complement is applied not to the coordinates of this modal base, but rather to world, time and individual arguments that stand in a systematic relationship to those coordinates. This makes sense of the observation, going back to Landau (), that the ability of a control predicate to license partial control is intimately connected to its temporal properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much difficulty in the analysis of Latin constructions with dominant participles is caused by a typologically unusual pattern of subject agreement: instead of being assigned case according to their subject function (like, e.g., the accusative subjects of infinitives), subjects of participles appear in the same case as the participle itself. This study presents evidence against deriving dominant participle constructions from participles' attributive uses and argues that they should instead be analyzed as a syntactic nominalization in which the participle is the head that agrees with its subject in case. Our account relies on two separate components: (i) a clausal nominalization rule, introduced at the level of phrase structure, and closely resembling the structure of the English gerund; and (ii) a subject agreement rule, treated as a lexical property of Latin participles, and common to all their uses (not just the dominant use). Our synchronic account is supported by diachronic evidence, which suggests that the dominant participle construction developed in Latin through reanalysis of the absolute participle construction (shared by many ancient Indo-European languages). The change involved the introduction of a clausal nominalization rule, while the subject agreement rule was likely present from early on and not affected by the change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is devoted to a construction in a specific Flemish dialect, in which infinitives are used in fragment answers in contexts where this would be unacceptable in other varieties. Questions such as Waar is mijn boek? 'Where is my book?' can be answered with constructions such as Op tafel liggen 'lay.INF on the table'. We apply an analysis in terms of ellipsis to these infinitival constructions. However, we find fragment answers with infinitives in contexts where the assumption of ellipsis is problematic, since there is no plausible underlying structure available. We show that the use of this construction has extended to contexts in which the infinitive independently expresses the clausal tense features. Our description of the construction is based on a questionnaire study in which around thirty speakers were tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the patterns of variation and change undergone by a syntactic variable in Early Modern Spanish grammar, namely the alternation between deber ‘have to, must, should’ and deber de + infinitive ‘have to, must, should’ as a modal periphrasis. Based on a 1,500,000-word corpus of immediacy texts (private letters, memories) the results of this variationist study suggest that throughout the 16th century, but more especially during its second half, the prepositional periphrasis gradually became more common, above all in stylistic contexts predominated by the spontaneity and proximity of the relationships between the interlocutors. It was also more frequently found in contexts involving members of northern speech communities, particularly males, the young and the middle-low social strata, the incidence being especially high at the points where some of these groups intersect. All this suggests a change from below in the Golden Age period, which reached considerable dimensions in a relatively short time but was destined to stagnate and later decline just as quickly in the centuries that followed as a result of some structural features, such as the special “visibility” of the preposition, which could have led to the stigmatization of the periphrasis in a similar way to what happened in other Spanish syntactic phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across Bantu, several polysemic markers expressing progressive aspect and so-called predication focus have been reported (Güldemann 2003; Hyman and Watters 1984). In this article, we examine two such markers in Kikongo (Bantu, H16), i.e. the fronted-infinitive and the locative-infinitive constructions. We provide an in-depth synchronic description of the pragmatic and syntactic behaviour of both verbal constructions and suggest a historical evolution for each of them. We evoke the term 'event-centrality' to cover the different uses of both constructions and suggest that the fronted-infinitive construction's progressive meaning evolved from its use as predication focus marker, and vice versa, that the locative-infinitive construction's predication focus meaning evolved from its use as a progressive marker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most striking features of children’s early multi-word speech is their tendency to produce non-finite verb forms in contexts in which a finite verb form is required (Optional Infinitive [OI] errors, Wexler, 1994). MOSAIC is a computational model of language learning that simulates developmental changes in the rate of OI errors across several different languages by learning compound finite constructions from the right edge of the utterance (Freudenthal, Pine, Aguado-Orea, & Gobet, 2007; Freudenthal, Pine, & Gobet, 2006a, 2009). However, MOSAIC currently only simulates the pattern of OI errors in declaratives, and there are important differences in the cross-linguistic patterning of OI errors in declaratives and Wh- questions. In the present study, we describe a new version of MOSAIC that learns from both the right and left edges of the utterance. Our simulations demonstrate that this new version of the model is able to capture the cross-linguistic patterning of OI errors in declaratives in English, Dutch, German and Spanish by learning from declarative input, and the cross-linguistic patterning of OI errors in Wh- questions in English, German and Spanish by learning from interrogative input. These results show that MOSAIC is able to provide an integrated account of the cross-linguistic patterning of OI errors in declaratives and Wh- questions, and provide further support for the view, instantiated in MOSAIC, that OI errors are compound-finite utterances with missing modals or auxiliaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the grammaticalisation of venir into an aspectual auxiliary of immediate anteriority, against the traditional approach (Gougenheim 1971 [1929]) according to which venir de + inf, would express recent past and so would be a temporal auxiliary. On the basis of the (revised) Reichenbachian model, it shows that venir de + inf bears upon the relationship between R and E (aspect) and not on the relationship between R and S (time). This analysis explains why venir, in this periphrasis, is defective (i.e., why venir cannot be conjugated in the passé simple or in any compound tense). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews findings about linguistic features of Portuguese as a heritage language (PHL) in contact with English and German. The paper reviews some of the issues that have been uncovered in relation to morphosyntatic and sociopragmatic knowledge among heritage speakers of European and Brazilian Portuguese. The paper also discusses a few possible directions for future research in PHL that might shed light on morphosyntactic issues and on whether certain features illustrate examples of attrition or incomplete acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The two most commonly adopted basic positions on the origin of the Portuguese inflected infinitive are based on the work of José Maria Rodrigues (1914) and Theodoro Henrique Maurer (1968). The former, advocating a morpho-phonological («evolutionary») type of approach, held that the inflected infinitive is a direct descendant of the Latin imperfect subjunctive, both in form and in certain functions, presuming that this «subjunctive» remained in use until the 15th or 16th centuries. Maurer, however, supporting a «creationist» theory, claimed that this verbal mode expanded from the impersonal infinitive, which became inflected. Here we shall try to present empirical foundations for the theory which seems more realistic, according to data from medieval texts. We are convinced, in fact, that given the plausibility of both theories, the question cannot be resolved by morpho-phonological means, since the hypothesis of an inflected infinitive by analogical addition of personal suffixes leads to exactly the same result as the hypothesis of development from the imperfect subjunctive. Therefore, only a detailed analysis of the semantics and pragmatics of this verbal mode as seen in medieval Portuguese documents can lead to new and more valid results, since they can clarify whether, in use, the inflected infinitive is closer to the imperfect subjunctive or to the uninflected infinitive. As we shall see, a careful inventory of the occurrences of the forms of the inflected infinitive allows us to conclude that they are normally found in all characteristic structures of the uninflected (therefore, Romance) form, and are only seen exceptionally, and in later documents, in imperfect subjunctive constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the bilingual compound verb hacer ‘to do’+VerbEng, consisting of the Spanish verb hacer ‘do’ and a bare English infinitive (e.g. hacer smoke ‘to smoke’). In studies of Spanish/English bilingual speech, hacer+VerbEng has received attention due to its linguistically hybrid nature. Examining 116 tokens of hacer+VerbEng from 12 speakers of the New Mexico Spanish-English Bilingual Corpus, we test the claim that this construction has developed out of a higher cognitive load or lexical gap experienced by bilingual speakers, create a discourse profile of the construction, and propose an overview of the bilingual behaviors that contribute to the emergence of this bilingual compound verb. The construction is not found in conjunction with significantly higher rates of disfluencies, which weakens the previously made assertions that it is produced to compensate for a lexical gap. We find that hacer+VerbEng is a productive bilingual construction in which hacer serves as a tense, aspect and mood marker and the English infinitive provides the lexical content. Linguistic behavioral profiles reveal that combining languages within a single prosodic unit is correlated with higher rates of hacer+VerbEng. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at analyzing the role of the preposition when it is used together with non-finite forms of the verb. We will examine the following aspects: the mixed features of the infinitive (substantival and verbal), the types of prepositions which can be combined with the non-finite forms of the verb (lexical, semi-lexical and functional), the ability of the preposition to generate a prepositional syntactic group, the setting/non-setting of a thematic role, the syntactic positions held by the infinitive with preposition. If the rule says that the preposition has a case government, we ask ourselves what happens to it in the presence of non-finite forms of the verb. Therefore, one of the discussed topics is the obstruction of the case government/practising it under the substantival features of the non-finite forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Object infinitive constructions are the most frequent type of non-finite complement clauses, in which the object infinitive may occur either marked (a to-infinitive) or unmarked (a bare infinitive). From a historical viewpoint, the bare infinitive is the preferred form in Old English, the number of examples being comparatively small however. This picture changed in Middle English and especially in early Modern English, when the to-infinitive begins to outnumber the bare infinitive in this kind of clause. The verb make, among others, is considered to be an exception to this, as it is observed to accept both variants from Middle English, even though it later progressed towards the final adoption of the bare construction in Present-Day English. Fischer associates this development of make with the introduction of the verb cause into English, which took over the indirect causation formerly expressed by the verb make, the latter "slowly finding itself restricted to the bare infinitive, expressing only direct causation" (1997, 127). The present paper investigates the construction make to vs. make ø in late Middle English and early Modern English medical writing with the following objectives: (a) to analyse the distribution of the marked and the unmarked infinitive with this verb in the period 1350-1700; (b) to classify the phenomenon according to different text types; and (c) to evaluate the contribution of the following factors in the choice of one particular infinitival form: (i) the presence of intervening elements between the verb and the object infinitive; (ii) the size of the object phrase; and (iii) the morphology of the matrix verb. The data used as source of evidence come from the Corpus of Early English Medical Writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the syntactic properties of a construction with aller 'to go' and venir 'to come' followed by an infinitive, where these verbs express the speaker's emotions (surprise, annoyance, disapproval, etc.) about the event, and particularly about the agent responsible for bringing it about. It is shown that the infinitive following expressive aller and venir does not have clausal properties: it cannot be preceded by perfect auxiliaries nor can it bear sentential negation. In contrast with other uses of aller and venir (periphrastic future/past, conjectural, etc.), which are shown to be raising verbs, expressive aller and venir are argued to be functional verbs, merged into a functional head within the same clause as the infinitive (Cardinaletti and Giusti 2001, Cinque 2001, 2004a), in the modal domain below TP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a comprehensive account of differential object marking in Estonian, with an emphasis on da-infinitive constructions, which exhibit greater variation in object case. I show that there are a number of construction-specific factors influencing the total vs. partial object opposition in Estonian, as well as factors (such as word order) which are relevant in a number of da-infinitive constructions but not in finite clauses. Moreover, even non-finite clauses which do not support an imperfective aspectual interpretation may feature partial objects, because they fall into a gray area between the prototypical total object construction and the prototypical partial object construction. The distribution of nominative and genitive total objects is also discussed: while total object case can typically be explained by the need (or lack thereof) to morphologically distinguish the object from the subject and is therefore a construction-specific feature, there are two constructions in which both nominative and genitive total objects appear. These constructions illustrate that the case of the total object depends heavily on the extent to which the construction resembles the prototypical +overt subject or -overt subject constructions. Examples such as these suggest that some types of object case variation in Estonian lack a functional explanation and are better understood by appealing to cognitive processes such as analogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes a fresh look at Accusative-cum-Infinitive or "AcI" constructions occurring with verbs of sensory perception in Old English (OE). It has often been assumed that these structures functioned in much the same way in OE as in Present- Day English (PDE), where they are used to report the direct perception of an event. While my research suggests that this was indeed the general rule in OE too, a limited number of cases are attested which do not fit the modern pattern. Some of these appear to express a form of indirect perception, much like PDE I saw that they had left. Others might still be direct perception reports, but of entities rather than of events. This latter possibility has repercussions for the syntactic analysis of AcI in OE. Kirsner & Thomson (1976) argue convincingly that PDE perception verbs have a twoplace argument structure, the subject NP of the complement clause being assigned accusative case structurally, without being an argument of the perception verb. The possibility of understanding the accusative NP to be the object of the perception may indicate that a three-place analysis was marginally possible in OE. I suggest that this may be the diachronic residue of an earlier NP + modifier construction, in a context where VOSI enjoyed a wider variational space than is often assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We shall focus our attention on a kind of grammatical interference, the interference of infinitive. Firstly we'll realize a contrastive synchronic analysis among Spanish, Galician and Portuguese, according to use contexts in the paradigm. Secondly, we shall present a diachronic propose referred to a possible Latin syntactic antecedent in the past imperfect of subjunctive for this peculiar verbal form, the Iberianromance inflected infinitive. That reopens the discussion about its innovative or conservative nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is copular clauses in Brazilian Portuguese like Mulher(es) é complicado, in which the predicate exhibits an unmarked form for gender and number (masculine singular), despite the presence of the feminine and/or plural form of the noun in subject position. We reject the analyses that propose that (i) there is a hidden infinitive clause in the subject position, (ii) the agreement is an instance of semantic agreement, and (iii) the DP subject is in A-bar position, and argue that the subject is a Small Nominal (they are not projected as full DPs) which lacks index features that trigger external agreement (Pereltsvaig 2006). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]