Infinitive Research Articles

Inchoative verbs in constructions with infinitives in 16th‒17th century Russian sources: Searching for the difference

The article focuses on the study of differences between phase verbs in constructions with infinitive clause in the 16th‒17th century Russian writing. The verbs under discussion are: načati, počati, jati, učati, and stati, as well as the verb byti, which does not belong to phase ones, but competes with them in the simple future tense form. The study is limited to the constructions with auxiliary verbs in the perfective present tense form, i. e., those that refer to the future. The data was collected from the Middle Russian subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus. Contexts from the corpus are classified according to the following parameters: auxiliariness, infinitive, agency/non-agency and telicity/atelicity/punctivity of the predicate in the infinitive form, aspectual semantics of the construction (phasal, iterative, habitual, general factual, durative-continuative meanings), the type of the clause in question, the date and the title of the source, its register and genre. It was found that each periphrastic construction has a unique set of properties associated with the paradigmatic limitations of the auxiliary verb, tendency to occur in a certain clause type, register and genre. The constructions are sensitive to various semantic features of infinitive and aspectual semantics of the context. It is argued that constructions with the verb učnu are less associated with the expression of inchoativity since they are attested in the contexts uncommon for inchoative verbs. Two distinct clusters of periphrastic constructions are distinguished: older constructions with the verbs načnu, počnu and imu and newer ones with the verbs učnu, stanu and budu.

THE PEDAGOCIAL POTENTIAL OF POPULAR MUSIC LYRICS IN TEACHING GRAMMAR IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOMS: SENTENCE STRUCTURES IN ENGLISH

Popular music is an integral part of the cultural landscape of the modern world, and its influence on language and communication cannot be overstated. This paper examines the advantages of integrating popular music lyrics into foreign language classrooms, with a particular focus on sentence structures. Using a corpus of 802 songs with more than 200 million views on YouTube, the research aims to explore the accuracy of popular music lyrics with respect to different sentence structures and subject-verb agreement. The initial hypothesis suggested that popular music lyrics would predominantly contain grammatical errors, which our analysis revealed showing that 396 songs were grammatically correct (49.37%), while 406 songs contained errors (50.62%), resulting in a total of 1506 syntactic errors, 794 of them being related to sentence structure errors and 417 to the incorrect subject-verb agreement. The remaining errors (295) were related to double negatives, which we did not analyze in this paper. The most frequent sentence structure errors included the omission of auxiliary verbs (470 instances), auxiliary verbs that were used as main verbs (110), incorrect verb order (76), bare infinitives that were used as auxiliary verbs (77), and incorrect use of objective pronouns (61). The study utilized a combination of manual and descriptive analysis to investigate the potential benefits of incor- porating popular music lyrics into foreign language classrooms. The findings indicate that such integration can help students develop meta-language awareness and expose them to various language registers. Overall, the research demonstrates the pedagogical potential of popular music lyrics as a resource for foreign language instruction, particularly for teaching grammar and syntax. By using popular music lyrics in foreign language classrooms, educators can cre- ate an engaging and diverse learning environment that helps students comprehend and utilize language in various contexts, ultimately leading to more effective language learning outcomes.

Towards a typology of semantic development of the verbs meaning ‘see’: Evidence from Tatyshly Udmurt

The article deals with a previously undescribed construction in Tatyshly Udmurt (< Uralic),which consists of a grammaticalized verb aˀǯ’ə̑nə̑ ‘see’ (адӟыны in Standard Udmurt) and a lexical verb in the infinitive. I discuss the semantics of this construction and the related distributional restrictions, as well as some of its morphosyntactic properties. The data were collected in fieldwork by elicitation. The construction in question indicates that the situation described by the infi nitive has negative consequences. From the morphosyntactic point of view, the components of the construction cannot be separated or switch places; the construction only allows the habitual reading in the present tense (being used without this restriction in the other tenses), it cannot fall under the scope of question or of negation. The semantic pattern of the construction under discussion is analyzed against the typological data on the possible development of the verbs meaning ‘see’. As far as I could find out, no examples which could be considered parallel to my data were previously attested. An explanation involving Turkic contact influence (plausible for some other phenomena in Tatyshly Udmurt) is problematic in this case, since there is no evidence of a similar construction in Turkic. A possible parallel is provided by the constructions with the items okazyvaetsja ‘it turns out’ and ja vižu ‘lit.: I see’ in Russian. Both these constructions also point at the situation of discovery and express contrast, which refers, however, to the speaker’s expectations rather than the evaluation of a situation as undesirable.

The role of infinitival clauses in the dialogues of German-speaking children and adults.

The present study aims at analysing the role of infinitival clauses (INFCs) in German child-adult dialogue. In German subject-less INFCs are a grammatical sentence pattern. Extensive corpora of spontaneous speech between 6 children aged 1;5 to 2;10 and adults were analysed applying structural and contextual analyses. We extended Freudenthal, Pine and Gobet's (2010) model of lexically specific learning to include INFCs in adult input. Results show that frequencies of adult INFC and MOD+INF clauses are related to child INFCs. We interpret these results as reflecting shared verb vocabulary and, regarding INFCs, as an adaptation of adult CDS to child grammatical structure. While most child INFCs have modal meaning, some occur in non-modal contexts. The majority of child INFCs are subject-less clauses with final infinitives and therefore grammatical. Results are discussed in terms of the pragmatic function of child and adult INFCs and the role of adult INFCs in German CDS.

표찰에 의한 이동과 인상 구문

This paper proposes a novel analysis of Spanish raising constructions in which the verb ‘parecer’ selects the infinitival clause and its subject raises to the matrix clause. According to the labeling algorithm proposed by Chomsky(2013, 2015), I argue that movement of the subject of the infinitival clause is due to determine the label for the syntactic object {DP, vP} in that DP and vP are non-heads and do not share a prominent feature. Furthermore, I analyze the raising constructions with postverbal subject in which the subject of the infinitival clause is not raised to the subject position of the matrix clause. I claim that the verbal phrase moves from the syntactic object {DP, vP} to prevent label failure. Based on the concept of external pair-merge of heads proposed by Epstein et al.(2016), it is argued that, in the course of the derivation, C and T in the infinitival clause and R and v* in the matrix clause undergo external pair-merge, respectively, and then the phasehood of C of the infinitival clause and that of v* of the matrix clause are cancelled.

The trajectory of the “Možno ja X?” construction: variation in speech acts of request in contemporary Russian

I explore the ongoing language change in which the impersonal modal word možno ‘can, be possible’ takes a personal clause (možno + nom) as its complement instead of the Experiencer in the Dative case (možno + dat) and the infinitival clause in the speech act of request in Contemporary Russian. The corpus-based evidence reveals that the construction možno + dat is gradually being replaced by možno + nom. I discuss various syntactic and pragmatic factors such as verb class, aspect, transitivity and politeness strategies that motivate the choice of a specific modal construction. Methods of statistical modelling, used to sort out the most significant factors contributing to the choice of construction, show that the most important factor is the date of creation of the text. I propose a scenario for the development of the možno + nom construction. First, možno began to be used as a tag-question after both infinitive and personal clauses. The requester marked by the Dative has been steadily replaced by the more agentive Subject in the Nominative case. Then, by analogy with the možno + dat construction, možno was placed at the beginning of the sentence and was reanalyzed as a constructional unit with the following structure: možno + finite clause, in which možno functions as a sentence adverb.

Satakuntalaisuus puheessa -korpus ja siitä tehtyjä synkretismihavaintoja

Satakunta in Speech, a research project at the University of Turku, started in 2007. Since the beginning, the goal of the project was to study the current dialects around the province of Satakunta, one of the historical provinces and administrative units in Finland. Yet, dialectically the province is divided into two; the dialectal boundary between 1) the Southwestern Dialects and 2) the Dialects of Häme and the Transitional Dialects is traditionally considered one of the most distinctive in Finland. To further showcase the corpus compiled over the course of the project and challenges in annotation, we assess several types of syncretistic phenomena fairly widespread in contemporary Satakunta dialects and vernaculars: merging together of certain cases, finite and infinitive verb forms. Our aim is to make tentative and qualitative observations on the subject, which calls for a more thorough examination.

On the Syntax of the Russian Control Verbs Pomoč ' 'Help' and Pomešat' 'Hinder'

Abstract: This paper examines sentences with the verbs pomoč' 'help' and pomešat' 'hinder' in Russian and demonstrates that, although they are usually listed among object control predicates, these verbs appear in a wide range of constructions that cannot be accounted for by a straightforward control analysis. To explain the distribution of pomoč' and pomešat' , I argue that they are, in essence, ditransitive, similarly to 'give' or 'send': they require a Goal (a person or a situation that will be helped/hindered) and a Theme headed by a silent noun HETP/HINDRANCE. A dative DP, either [+sentient] or eventive, a subjunctive čtoby -clause, or a non-finite clause with an overt subject, when present, should be analyzed as a Goal. A controlled infinitival clause is merged as a modifier within the Theme NP. The approach is extended to control collocations such as 'give a chance'. It further offers an opportunity to develop a uniform structural representation for various verbs of object control that will reduce the differences between them to particular properties of the Theme.

Rhotics in final syllable coda of infinitive verb forms in "Caipira" Portuguese spoken in São Paulo State

Rhotics in final syllable coda of infinitive verb forms in "Caipira" Portuguese spoken in São Paulo State

The Effects of Misconceptions Syntactic Concepts on Writing Performance - A Case Study at a University in Vietnam

The current research paper was carried out at a university in Hanoi, Vietnam in order to investigate the effects of misconceptions between Vietnamese syntactic concepts and those in English on writing performance. The design of the study was “qualitative case study”. The case was selected from 116 students who have finished their first year studying in different disciplines such as Business Administration, International Business, Banking and Tourism Administration … The scope of the study was the misconceptions on syntactic terms in three categories; verb-related, noun-related and adverbial related errors. The findings were that the verb-related errors such as wrong tenses, infinitive phrases and omission of ‘be’ are frequently found; 31.9%, 30.9% and 29.3% respectively. The errors related to determiners and conjuncts make up 47.8% each. Most of the participants do not understand the meaning of syntactic terms in English.

The significance of the open source structure of the abstract Alfa in the fifteen Monologues Imam Ali bin Al Hussein bin Ali bin Abi Talib - may peace be upon them - (d. 95 AH)

The research is concerned with the bare infinitive construction ofthe Fa in fifteen munajat. There are (69) bare infinitives (fea'l, fa'al, fi'al, feail, feial), and concentrating on how Imam Ali bin Hussein bin Ali bin Abi Talib, (peace be them) selected and used them with regard to their implications as he witnessed the practice of linguistic quotations and borrowing.
 The study concluded that the infinitive structure of the fifteen Munajat was carefully employed in accordance with what was settled by the morphological connotations of those constructions that were later codified. The linguist should direct the unique propaganda of language and research attention to it for investigation and studying by the use of linguistic and literary methods at all levels

Excluded entailments and the de se/de re partition

ABSTRACT We show that some PRO-sentences (sentences containing an unpronounced subject in an infinitive clause) appear to receive de re interpretations when they occur in suitable discourse contexts or linguistic environments. This finding is surprising given the received view that such sentences are unambiguously de se [Morgan. 1970. “On the Criterion of Identity for Noun Phrase Deletion.” Papers from the Sixth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society, Chicago, IL, 380–389; Chierchia. 1990. “Anaphora and Attitudes de se.” In Semantics and Contextual Expression, edited by R. Bartsch, J. van Benthem, and P. van Emde Boas, 1–32. Dordrecht: Foris]. We argue that these apparent de re readings are not genuine readings assigned by the grammar, but rather arise via a pragmatic process that results in what we call ‘excluded entailments’. The interpretation of PRO-sentences thus shows a certain amount of pragmatic latitude that is reminiscent of other cases of non-literal language, such as examples of ‘pragmatic slack’ first discussed in Lasersohn [1999. “Pragmatic Halos.” Language 75: 522–551]. However, we show that there are crucial differences between the puzzling data at hand and more familiar cases of pragmatic slack, and argue that they constitute a different class of non-literal meaning that has received less attention in the literature. This class of meanings is akin to that introduced by the modifier ‘in effect’. Our view has consequences for semantic methodology, understanding the limits of non-literal language use and interpretation, and the division of labour between semantics and pragmatics in the analysis of attitude reports.

Subject Control Infinitive Constructions in Early Modern English

This study aims to analyze and describe infinitive sentences with verbs of volition such as desire, wish, want, hope, intend, promise, determine, command in Early Modern English within a generative framework. It is argued that the infinitival clauses have a thematic subject PRO controlled by the matrix subject. It is proved that complex sentences with infinitive complements of matrix predicates of volition obtain subject control function. The findings show syntactic peculiarities of infinitive complementation of monotransitive verbs of volition as subject control infinitive constructions in the studied period of English. Having taken into consideration subject control properties of matrix verbs of volition, direct object monotransitive infinitive function, complementary nature of infinitives, it has been assumed that an infinitive clause generates in a complementizer phrase CP domain, putting forward three possible variants of syntactic analysis of the infinitive types’ configurations as: SVOd (to / bare INF clause), SVOd (NP to / bare INF clause), SVOd (wh- to INF clause) with ‘two-argument arrangement’ of matrix verbs and the infinitive clause as an object predicative complement.

Produktivitas Sufiks -te dan -shu dalam Bahasa Jepang

This study is a corpus-based analysis that aims to investigate the productivity of the -te and -shu suffixes as agent-forming suffixes in Japanese as well as the structure of noun formation by adding these two suffixes. The theories used in this research are the theory of productivity by Baayen (1992) and the theory of Japanese morphology by Tsujimura (2013). Based on the results of the analysis on the Japanese News 2020 100K corpus, it was found that the suffix -te is more productive as a form of agent nominals. The suffix -te when attached to an infinitive verb denotes a person who conducts a certain action while the suffix -shu when attached to a Sino-Japanese verbal noun, noun, or bound morphemes denotes one’s profession.

Translation and Analysis of Infinitives of the Little Prince’s Novel: A Descriptive Analytical Study

The study aimed at analyzing infinitives in the translation of The Little Prince’s novel from English to Indonesian. The main objectives of this study are (1) to analyze how the infinitives in the Little Prince’s novel were translated by the translator, and (2) to describe what kind of infinitives in The Little Prince’s novel, and to identify the strategies that were used by the translator. For the purpose of this study, the writer used a descriptive-analytical study. The source of data is the novel entitled The Little Prince and translation. The researcher found four infinitives in the novel entitled The Little Prince, namely, bare infinitive, to-infinitive, split infinitive and infinitive phrase. The data of infinitives that were analyzed are 150 data. 48 data are to infinitives, 32 data are bare infinitives, 20 data are split infinitives, and 50 data are phrase infinitives. For bare infinitive, most of the data showed that the strategy used was literal; for to-infinitive, most of the data showed that the strategy used was unit shift; for the split infinitive, most of the data showed that the strategy used was compression, and for the infinitive phrase, most of the data were unit shift. The translation of infinitive in The Little Prince novel is accurate, acceptable and readable.

Analysis of Infinitive Phrases in Novel By J.K.Rowling ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’

Infinitive phrase may function, not as a main verb of a clause, but as another part of speech—either as a noun, adjective, or adverb that takes the form of “to + verb” in its simplest form. This research is done to find out the types of infinitives found in the novel written by J.K. Rowling, ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’ and the function of infinitives found in the novel written by J.K. Rowling, ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’ done by 7 students of Magister of English Education of Lampung University. This study uses a qualitative descriptive approach, and the data is taken from the novel written by J.K Rowling ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone’ page 1-8, 33-40, 65-72, 97-104, 129-136, 161-168, and 193-200.From the results and discussion, it can be concluded that not all students look for the same forms and classification of the infinitive, but the dominant types used in the novel is the to-infinitive.

Non-finite Verb Movement in Romance

AbstractSince Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP.Linguistic Inquiry20. 365–424, it is well known that Romance finite verbs move into the I-domain. However, the relationship between finiteness and verb movement has not yet been investigated in detail. The aim of the present study is to trace and analyse verb movement in various types of non-finite and semi-finite clauses in Romance, including infinitives with specified subjects, inflected infinitives, bare infinitival clauses, Aux-to-Comp (cf. Rizzi, Luigi. 1982.Issues in Italian syntax. Dordrecht: Foris), past participial clauses, and gerunds. It is shown that all types of Romance non-finite verbs move high, with the exception of French absolute participles and French infinitives. The picture of non-finite movement is thus more uniform than that of finite verb movement (cf. Schifano, Norma. 2018.Verb movement in Romance. A comparative study. Oxford: Oxford University Press). A unified account is proposed: non-finite verbs all need to be anchored to the speech act through a higher clause, which requires them to be in a local relation with the anchoring head Fin (cf. Groothuis, Kim A. 2020.Reflexes of finiteness in Romance. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Unpublished PhD thesis).

Non-finite Verb Movement in Romance

AbstractSince Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP.Linguistic Inquiry20. 365–424, it is well known that Romance finite verbs move into the I-domain. However, the relationship between finiteness and verb movement has not yet been investigated in detail. The aim of the present study is to trace and analyse verb movement in various types of non-finite and semi-finite clauses in Romance, including infinitives with specified subjects, inflected infinitives, bare infinitival clauses, Aux-to-Comp (cf. Rizzi, Luigi. 1982.Issues in Italian syntax. Dordrecht: Foris), past participial clauses, and gerunds. It is shown that all types of Romance non-finite verbs move high, with the exception of French absolute participles and French infinitives. The picture of non-finite movement is thus more uniform than that of finite verb movement (cf. Schifano, Norma. 2018.Verb movement in Romance. A comparative study. Oxford: Oxford University Press). A unified account is proposed: non-finite verbs all need to be anchored to the speech act through a higher clause, which requires them to be in a local relation with the anchoring head Fin (cf. Groothuis, Kim A. 2020.Reflexes of finiteness in Romance. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Unpublished PhD thesis).

Register effects and the Spanish adjectival construction sin + INF in historical corpus data

This study analyzes the usage of the Spanish adjectival sin + infinitive verb construction (un libro sin terminar ‘an unfinished book’) and the no + past participle construction (un libro no terminado ‘an unfinished book’) in historical corpus data, with the objective of quantitatively assessing Pountain’s (1993) analysis of the emergence of adjectival sin + INF as motivated in part by register formality. A logistic regression analysis finds that the usage of adjectival sin + INF over no + PP is significantly favored by the text register of Prose Fiction, and significantly disfavored by the register of Legal Texts. Furthermore, this preference increases with time in the register of Prose Fiction. These findings support Pountain’s claim, in showing that register effects significantly influence the usage of the novel construction. Ultimately, this study stresses the importance of measuring register effects in the analysis of language change in corpus data.

On Evidentiality and Perception Ambivalent adjectives in the Spanish non-finite complements of ver

In this paper, I will pay attention to the behavior of adjectives such as altísimo and torpe, called ambivalent (Luján 1981) or underspecified (Fernández Leborans 1995), due to the fact that they can be combined with both the copulative verb ser and the copulative verb estar in languages such as Spanish. More specifically, I am interested in two structures, both of them dependent on the Spanish verb of perception ver. In the first, altísimo and torpe combine with the copula estar in infinitive clauses. In the second, subordinate infinitive clauses are headed by the copula ser. I will try to elucidate which is the contribution of the copulative verbs to the interpretation of these structures. With Escandell-Vidal (2018), I assume that the adjectives altísimo and torpe in combination with estar give rise to an evidential effect: the spatio-temporal situation to which the property they denote is anchored is conceived as a situation of visual experience. In the first of the structures I am interested in, the source of information is likewise encoded in the verb of perception. Therefore, the research question that will guide this study is whether the evidential content is actually being expressed twice.