Os verbos ir, dever e poder e seus infinitivos: sintaxe interna e externa.

This paper investigates both internal (i.e. the morphophonological structures) and external (i.e. the relation with the other constituents of the sentence) syntactic properties of infinitives occurring with the verbs ir ('go') dever ('must') and poder ('can/may'). More specifically, this paper shows that the syntactic and semantic behavior of those infinitives is captured by three major properties, namely, (i) the constituency of a single syntactic unit with ir, dever and poder, (ii) the morphosyntactic dependency on the auxiliary/modal that is selected, (iii) the reading of potential event. Thus, departing from those properties, the present study proposes a Distributed Morphology-based approach (HALLE; MARANTZ, 1993) analysis and, alternatively, a Minimalist-based approach (CHOMSKY, 1993) analysis, in order to show that, regardless the theory assumed, by considering the same group of features, the empirical phenomena underlying the relation between ir, dever and poder and their infinitives can be captured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]