Abstract
Traditionally taken as one of the nominals forms of the verb, infinitives in Portuguese, in spite of their morphophonological homogeneity (-r), appear in a range of morphosyntactic contexts. This paper argues that all these contexts can be reduced to three, namely, a nominal, a verbal and a “mixed” – in the sense of Chomsky (1970). Specifically, by assuming Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz, 1993), it proposes a step-by-step morphosyntactic and semantic derivation of the contexts where the /R/-morpheme appears, also addressing the issues involving tense and aspect in these forms. In summary, we argue that nominal, verbal and mixed infinitives share the same derivational path up to AspP, which – we claim – is underdetermined, thus competing with (perfective) participles and (imperfective) gerunds. Above AspP, the first bifurcation is between no and T. Projecting no generates a predicate of events. By projecting T (in verbal and mixed infinitives), the system has a three-way path: T[+tense], where T will be futurate in relation to the finite matrix verb; T[–tense], where T will be simultaneous /anaphoric in respect to the finite matrix verb; or T[ ], where there is no c-commanding T and then, as last resort, the grammar will change this phrase into a predicate of events.
Highlights
Known as one of the nominal forms of the verb1, Portuguese infinitives are orthographically represented by an -r adjacent to a verbal stem, as in canta-r2 (‘sing’) and in spite of constituting a morphophonological group, since they are all expressed with /R/,3 they are not morphosyntactic homogeneous
As for mixed infinitives, they are embedded in DPs, they project T, which is supported by three additional tests, namely, (i) they assign nominative Case to the subject (Modesto, 2007), as in (19); (ii) they are modifiable by TP-adjuncts (Zucchi, 1993) differently from nominal infinitives, as in (20); (iii) they host a landing site for a moved clitic (Iordăchioaia, 2013), which is a property of T, but not N’s, as in (21)
If the so-generated TP is embedded, it will receive a temporaldependent reading, but if the TP(-clause) appears as a subject or embedded in a PP, it will receive a non-dependent reading. These temporalindependent infinitives fall into what we called “mixed infinitives” and this is a matter we will explore in § 4, where we claim that TP/infinitives that are introduced by determiners or occur as subjects do not present the usual tense-relation to the matrix clause, when TP/infinitives are embedded; for instance, in (38b)–(38c), the “generic” reading underlying tocar violão (‘play the guitar’) does not seem to convey a temporal reading, in the same way the sentences in (16)–(18) do
Summary
Known as one of the nominal forms of the verb (aside from gerunds and participles), Portuguese infinitives are orthographically represented by an -r adjacent to a verbal stem, as in canta-r2 (‘sing’) and in spite of constituting a morphophonological group, since they are all expressed with /R/,3 they are not morphosyntactic homogeneous. Semantically, scholars have provided a formal analysis for verbal infinitives, as Chierchia (1985), Abusch (2004); Silvano & Cunha (2016) on EP and Ferreira (2020) on BP. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate on the characterization of the morphosyntax and semantics of Portuguese infinitives, by proposing a morphosemantic derivation that generates the most common structures associated with the /R/-morpheme: a nominal, a verbal and a “mixed” one – as we call it. We provide a formal analysis for the subatomic semantics derived from the infinitive(s) structure. We show that all instances of infinitive can be accounted for by the same formal pieces in a high compositional fashion tying together morphosyntax and semantics
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