Infinitive Marker Research Articles

Production of infinitives by 5-year-old children with language-impairment on an elicitation task

The infinitive productions of eight 5-year-old children with specific language impairment (SLI) on an elicited production task were compared with the infinitive productions of 25 3- to 5-year-old children with normally-developing language (NL). The basic infinitive structure itself did not seem to be a problem for these children since all eight of the children with SLI produced infinitival complements with at least five different main verbs. However, other aspects of infinitive sentences which must be learned as a lexical property of specific verbs appeared to present more difficulty for some of the children with SLI. Individual children with SLI showed limited or no subcategorization for ditransitivity (production of both an NP and an infinitival complement) or for infinitives with a lexical complement subject. In contrast to previous reports, only one of the children with SLI omitted the infinitive marker to more than once. Reference errors were consistent with what has previously been reported for NL children.

Norwegian og and å – a Cognitive View

Written Norwegian has two words, the co-ordinating conjunction og and the infinitive marker å, both of which are pronounced [o] in Spoken Norwegian. In this paper, an attempt is made to show that [o] in Spoken Norwegian constitutes a single polysemous word. Furthermore, it is argued that Spoken Norwegian [o], in all its usages and meanings, is a descendant of Old Norse ok “and”, while the Old Norse infinitive marker at has not survived in Spoken Norwegian.

On the Categorial Status of the Infinitive Marker To in the History of English

On the Categorial Status of the Infinitive Marker To in the History of English

On the German infinitival marker zu and the analysis of raising constructions

This paper argues, within the Government-Binding framework, that the German infinitive marker zu is a complementizer morpheme, not an INFL morpheme, as is standardly assumed; and that subject-Raising is possible in the presence of a complementizer, again contrary to the standard view. Treating zu as a complementizer allows for a simple and unified account, not previously available, for the absence of interrogative infinitives, of accusative subjects, and of verb-second effects in infinitives containing zu. The existence of subject-Raising in constructions with zu-infinitives creates a problem insofar as subject-Raising entails S'-deletion — i.e. the absence of a complementizer — according to the standard version of the theory. Since, however, by contrast with other languages, there is no independent evidence for S'-deletion in the relevant constructions of German, it is argued here that the relevant part of the theory — the Empty Category Principle — should be revised so as to permit Raising without S'-deletion in just the German case. The second part of the paper makes a specific proposal to this effect within the terms of Chomsky's (1986) ‘Barriers’ framework.

Comparison in Bambara an infinitival verb phrase

An infinitival verb phrase is generated to express comparison in Bambara. In particular, the comparative verb INFINITIVE MARKER + INTRANSITIVE phrase has the structure: VERB + NP + POSTPOSITION. The structural constraints on the comparative verb phrase are not specific to comparison, but are the more general constraints resulting from concatenating verb phrases. However, a special structural and pragmatic relation is established between the head clause and the comparative infinitival verb phrase. This relation has consequences for the structure of the NP in the comparative phrase and for deletion of lexical items within the comparative phrase. In this respect, the comparative infinitival phrase behaves differently from non-comparative infinitival verb phrases.