(Pseudo-)Inflected infinitives and Control as Agree

Abstract

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. AbstractThis 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, 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 bear morphological inflection but which cannot license nominative, occurring in non-standard varieties of European Portuguese: they are considered the result of the spell out of the Agree operation that takes place in control contexts.

Representation and Processing of the Inflected Infinitive in Brazilian Portuguese: an eye-tracking study

“…Modesto's article fed a lot of research on (partial) control and restructuring (LANDAU, 2013(LANDAU, , 2015GRANO, 2012GRANO, , 2015WURMBRAND, 2015;MODESTO, 2016aMODESTO, , 2016b and motivated a return to the study of nonfinite inflection in EP (cf. SHEEHAN, 2014SHEEHAN, , 2016GONÇALVES;DUARTE, 2014). In fact, such latter works attested the judgment-data used in Modesto (2010), i.e.…”

Agreement at PF: An Argument from Partial Control

“…According to Gonçalves, Santos & Duarte () and Sheehan (to appear), such sentences are also acceptable to some speakers of European Portuguese (EP), although the issue is complicated by the coexistence of dialects in which inflected desiderative complements are uncontrolled. Recall that a mismatch in syntactic number under PC is not possible in English‐type languages (cf.…”

“…Further doubts are cast by Gonçalves et al. (), who observe that “mismatch in person is generally rejected.” A survey I carried out among native speakers of EP obtained the following results. Of 17 speakers, 14 completely rejected sentence (36).…”

“…Second, the distribution of such inflected OC complements is lexically restricted in complex ways, even in those dialects that allow them (for recent analyses that begin to unravel these issues in BP and EP, see Modesto , to appear; Sheehan , to appear; and Gonçalves et al. ). These problems might find a solution in a closer consideration of the special (and fragile) morphological status of the infinitival inflection, a topic that goes well beyond the goals of this paper.…”

Crowdsourcing and Minority Languages: The Case of Galician Inflected Infinitives1

“…Given that examples like these are also occasionally attested in European Portuguese (Gonçalves et al, 2014), despite native speakers’ judgments, it is an important question how native speakers rate the acceptability of such examples in Galician. Are they part of the grammar of native speakers or artefacts of overenthusiasm, as Gondar claims?…”