On the resilience of obligatory control in inflected infinitives under object control verbs

Abstract

This study investigates the interpretation of inflected infinitives under object control verbs in European Portuguese. It contrasts the behaviour of two different types of control verbs, represented by obrigar ‘force’ and convencer ‘convince’, and belonging each to one of the two classes of control verbs established by Landau (2015). It is argued that inflected infinitives under different object control verbs show a different behaviour: whereas inflected infinitives under convencer ‘convince’ do not maintain obligatory control readings (as previously shown by Barbosa, 2021), under obrigar ‘force’ and similar verbs an obligatory control reading is maintained. This empirical observation is in agreement with the predictions of Landau (2015), to the extent that, in the set of verbs that Landau associates to predicative control, agreement inflection does not block control, even though some further questions are raised to Landau’s analysis. In the present study, a correlation is established between different types of object control verbs, their semantics, and the availability of non-controlled inflected infinitives.