Infinitive Research Articles

Third person accusative clitic pronouns as object agreement marks in Brazilian Portuguese

Even though Brazilian Portuguese (BP) has replaced its third person accusative clitic pronouns (ClA3) for strong pronouns, they have not completely disappeared: although they are not acquired during the first years of BP native speakers’ linguistic development, they are a topic taught in Brazil classrooms. However, they seem to behave differently from the other clitics (which occur in proclisis to the main verb). Nunes (2015) suggests that they have been reanalyzed as object agreement marks, given their tendency to be placed in post-verbal position of verb forms that can independently carry subject agreement marks, to occur in proclisis with verbs whose subject agreement mark is occupied, and not to occur next to verbs in the past participle or in the gerund, since they do not have a position for agreement. In order to control some linguistic and sociolinguistic variables, this study had the objective to gather experimental data regarding the idiosyncrasies the ClA3 have using a sentence rewriting task including the ClA3 “o” and the clitic “me”. There were differences between the use of these two pronouns, having the clitic “me” followed the general tendency of BP, being placed, almost exclusively, in proclisis to the verb it is an argument of. Enclisis, on the other hand, was more productive with the ClA3, namely with non-inflected infinitive verbs. However, proclisis to the main verb was also a widely used option by the participants, including in contexts Nunes (2015) did not predict it to occur. It is concluded that, at first sight, Nunes’s (2015) hypothesis was not backed by the data obtained here. Nevertheless, the difference in the speakers’ behavior regarding the two pronouns used in this study cannot be disregarded, what suggests they are likely to have a different nature, although they do not seem to be object agreement marks.

Control in Romanian and Se constructions

In this paper, we account for different patterns found in complement clauses of se constructions in Romanian and Spanish. In Romanian, a se construction cannot host an infinitival complement, an apparently controlled clause, whereas in Spanish a se construction can. However, when an additional se is added to the complement clause (a “double se construction”), the Romanian structure becomes grammatical, while the Spanish equivalent becomes ungrammatical. The Romanian patterns have been previously argued in Giurgea & Cotfas (2021) to be cases of control, with a failed agreement relation forcing the obligatory presence of se in the complement. We propose an alternative based on two major differences found in Romanian and Spanish. First, in se constructions, Spec, Voice is saturated by the external argument in Spanish, but it is unsaturated in Romanian. We argue that this prevents the external argument in Romanian from acting as a controller. Second, Romanian infinitival clauses appear to share properties with finite clauses, in contrast to Spanish. We argue that the grammatical Romanian double se construction is not an instance of control and suggest that it is the finite nature of the infinitival complement that allows for a double se construction.

Asymmetry in Russian metalinguistic comparatives: corpus and experimental evidence

The paper reports a corpus and experimental study of three types of Russian asymmetric metalinguistic comparatives (lučše, skoree, and bol’še meta-comparatives), two parts of which belong to different syntactic categories and/or have different morphological forms. We discuss their morphological and syntactic properties and uncover diversity among their types and various grammatical patterns that they allow. From a morphological point of view, infinitives in meta-comparatives tend to be imperfective, and finite verbs in the subjunctive and indicative mood are generally perfective. From a syntactic point of view, asymmetric meta-comparatives are either bi-clausal, bi-phrasal, or mixed (clausal-phrasal). The bi-phrasal variety shows functional homogeneity. Lučše meta-comparatives are more frequent in the corpus and are evaluated as more grammatical than skoree meta-comparatives. Furthermore, the asymmetric pattern ‘noun phrase + infinitive clause’ is evaluated as more grammatical than the pattern ‘finite clause + infinitive сlause’ for lučše meta-comparatives, while there is no such contrast between these patterns for skoree meta-comparatives. Our study sheds light on the grammatical portrait of Russian meta-comparatives as well as on the use and evaluation of asymmetric meta-comparatives in a natural language in general and thus contributes to the discussion of grammatical asymmetry in parallel syntactic structures, such as comparative and coordinated structures, among others.

Spanish causatives

Spanish, contrary to Catalan, French and Italian, allows causees to appear in pre-infinitival position. This paper takes as initial point of departure the asymmetries between the pre-infinitival position vs. the post-infinitival discussed in Ordóñez and Saab (2017). I provide a cartographic account in which more than one site for causees must be posited. This proposal follows the same reasoning that posits more than one subject position in the clausal spine (see for instance Cardinaletti 2004). I characterize the higher pre-infinitival position as a criterial position in the sense of Rizzi (2006, 2007). Following that proposal, I address the question of the interaction of case in this higher causee projection. I adopt Baker and Vinokurova’s (2010) proposal that UG must allow two ways for case resolution: case via agreement and dependent case. I will show that Spanish spoken in Catalonia is uniform in its case assignment solution of dative case for causees. I propose that the higher causee projection is an applicative head which assigns dative uniformly. However, for Catalan, Italian and French and many other dialects of Spanish, case assignment depends on the transitivity of the infinitival verb. In these varieties I invoke dependent case.

On the nature and organisation of morphological categories: verbal aspect through the lens of associative learning

The process by which awareness and/or knowledge of linguistic categories arises from exposure to patterns in data alone, known as emergence, is the corner stone of usage-based approaches to language. The present paper zooms in on the types of patterns that language users may detect in the input to determine the content, and hence the nature, of the hypothesised morphological category of aspect.The large-scale corpus and computational studies we present focus on the morphological encoding of temporal information as exemplified by aspect (imperfective/perfective) in Polish. Aspect is so heavily grammaticalized that it is marked on every verb form, yielding the practice of positing infinitival verb pairs (‘do’ = ‘robićimpf/zrobićpf’) to represent a complete aspectual paradigm. As has been shown for nominal declension, however, aspectual usage appears uneven, with 90% of verbs strongly preferring one aspect over the other. This makes the theoretical aspectual paradigm in practice very gappy, triggering an acute sense of partialness in usage. Operationalising emergence as learnability, we simulate learning to use aspect from exposure with a computational implementation of the Rescorla-Wager rule of associative learning. We find that paradigmatic gappiness in usage does not diminish learnability; to the contrary, a very high prediction accuracy is achieved using as cues only the verb and its tense; contextual information does not further improve performance. Aspect emerges as a strongly lexical phenomenon. Hence, the question of cognitive reality of aspectual categories, as an example of morphological categories in general, should be reformulated to ask which continuous cues must be learned to enable categorisation of aspectual outcomes. We discuss how the gappiness of the paradigm plays a crucial role in this process, and how an iteratively learned, continuously developing association presents a possible mechanism by which language users process their experience of cue-outcome co-occurrences and learn to use morphological forms, without the need for abstractions.

Модальные предикаты в конструкциях с инфинитивом в русской письменности XV–XVII вв.: семантика и дистрибуция

The paper is dedicated to the analysis of competition between modal predicates in constructions with an infinitive clause in Middle Russian writing. The focus is on the constructions with modal predicates (verbs, nouns, adjectives, predicatives) podobati, nadlezhati, nalezhati, dolzhenstvovati, iměti, dolzhenъ, dolzhno, nadobě, nadobětь, nadobno, nado, nuzhno, nuzha, nuzhda, combined with an infinitive. The data were collected from the Middle Russian Subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus, from the 15 th – 17 th century sources. Frequency, semantics, distribution in various writing genres, and dynamics of change are studied. It is shown that the systems of modal predicates in higher and lower code writing were significantly different, the literary language had a broader system, while in lower code writing the predicates of the group nadobě, nadobětь, nadobno were predominantly used, and the predicate dolzhen was employed occasionally. At the same time, the group nadobě, nadobětь, nadobno does not have a clear semantic specialization and is quite often used to express different types of necessity, while constructions with podobati show deontic necessity, and constructions with iměti express ontological necessity. In the late Middle Russian period, the process of gradual restructuring of the Middle Russian system of modal predicates begins: new types of predicates emerge and start to compete with the old ones.

A ADAPTAÇÃO DE INSTRUMENTOS TECNOLÓGICOS E O PROCEDIMENTO AVALIATIVO NA EDUCAÇÃO INCLUSIVA

The present study has as its theme “the adaptation of technological instruments and evaluative procedure in inclusive education”, in view of numerous concerns about the infi nitive verb evaluate.The objective of this article is to recognize and apply diff erent methodologies that increase inclusion policies to enable the learning of students with autism in regular schools. It is considered that in the evaluation it is fundamental to recognize the dissimilarity of the abilities of each student, using in this procedure inclusive approaches with adaptive investments to ensure a fair and meaningful learning. The fundamentals of the approach have a qualitative character, where the main procedures used were data collection, interviews, reports and observations, in the approach of monitoring and evolution involving the student of 1st year of high school: Maria Isadora Gonçalo de Melo, accompanied by the teacher of the AEE (Specialized Educational Service) Bruna Freitas Ricarte de Melo holder of the state school Plácido Aderaldo Castelo in the municipality of Caririaçu state of Ceará. . The results showed that the student with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), present diffi culties and slowness in learning, in the specifi c case of the student under study, also has low vision, where the challenges increase. However, it is important to rely on didactic resources and understand that the teaching methodology is vast and fl exible, thus increasing the quality of teaching. Other technological resources that deserve to be highlighted: AT (Assistive Technology), ICTs (Information and Communication Technology), Platform 123 autism among others, which undoubtedly provides quality in teaching, autonomy and independence in development within the limitations of the learner.

Brazilian Portuguese argument ellipsis

The present study puts forward a novel analysis of argument ellipsis (AE) in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), according to which AE in BP takes place in a clitic doubling configuration, where the clitic is a phonologically null clitic and AE targets the clitic doubled DP. The clitic doubling analysis accounts for a number of the properties of AE in BP. Specifically, it accounts for the ability of AE to target object DPs; for the inability of AE to target subject DPs, including not only subjects of finite clauses but also subjects of small clauses and infinitival clauses; and for the inability of AE to target non-specific indefinite DPs and idiomatically construed DPs. The present study also reviews the influential anti-agreement theory of AE and argues that it does not offer a viable account of AE in BP, as it both undergenerates and overgenerates AE in BP.

Frequency and Functions of Non-Finite Clauses in Native and Non-Native Academic Texts

Non-finite clauses are one of the elements considered as an index of syntactic complexity, which is a distinguishing feature of academic register. In this sense, the current study aims to reveal the frequency and syntactic functions of non-finite clauses in the academic writings of non-native and native English students. In order to reach this aim, a specialized corpus with two sub-corpora consisting of the MA and PhD theses of natives and non-natives was compiled. The native and non-native corpora were similar in terms of size and the topics of the texts. The data were analyzed using the Antconc concordancing tool, and the log-likelihood tool was used to calculate the significance of the findings. The result of the study showed that non-natives significantly underused the non-finite clauses in their academic texts compared to their native counterparts. Although there is a statistically significant difference in terms of the overall frequency of non-finite clauses, the distribution of the forms of the non-finite clauses was found to be balanced in NS and NNS texts. That is, both NSs and NNSs used bare infinitives less frequently and to infinitival most frequently in academic papers. In terms of the syntactic functions of the non-finite clauses, adjectival (adnominal) was used more frequently and nominals were used less frequently in both corpora. The findings of this study were compared with the previous findings, and educational implications were presented.

Infinitival clauses with dative subjects: goal-oriented directedness in space and time

Abstract Infinitival clauses are known to represent a caseless domain for the subject. Nevertheless, Russian is often cited as an exception to this property. It has a so-called “dative-infinitive construction” (DIC), in which an overt subject appears in dative case. Dative morphology also appears in certain control environments, resurfacing on a semi-predicate, which has been taken as evidence of case presence on PRO. This paper scrutinizes various types of DIC and proposes their unified analysis, relying on two theoretical tools: the framework of Distributed Morphology and the Universal Spine Hypothesis. Examining the building blocks of the infinitival clause in Russian, this paper argues against a covert-modal hypothesis. The dative case is attributed to a to-like functional head, Goal, which anchors the infinitival clause to a contextually salient point in time or a world of evaluation. Within the clausal spine, GoalP can either immediately dominate VoiceP or be immediately dominated by CP. The proposed analysis builds upon the concept of “goal-oriented directedness”, borrowed from the cognitive-functionalist literature and formalized in a generative perspective. Application of this analysis to control environments leads to a conclusion that two types of infinitival domains should be differentiated in Russian: full-fledged (GoalP-containing) CPs and bare infinitival phrases.

Ungrammatical Construction: An Analysis of the Causes and Types of the Ungrammatical Construction

The present research is about analysis on ungrammatical constructions encountered in the texts written by the 3rd semester undergraduate students of English Language Education Program of Tanjungpura University. The objective of the study is to describe the types of the ungrammatical constructions and the causes of the ungrammatical constructions. The method of research is descriptive. The research participants were 34 students of the 3rd semester undergraduate students of English Language Education Program of Tanjungpura University. The data were collected from corpus written by the students. The ungrammaticalities occurred in the students’ text. They were 496 errors encountered by the students. 312 errors related to phrasal errors and 184 related to clausal errors. The phrasal-related errors affected the area of noun phrase (37%), gerund phrase (13%), verb phrase (17%), infinitive phrase (12), prepositional phrase (12%), adjective phrase (7%), and adverb phrase (2%). The clausal-related errors were alternating form (49%), omission (33%), simple addition (15%), double marking (2) and misplaced subject and verb (1%). The sources of these errors were interlingual (2,9%) and intralingual (97,1%).

Субституция инфинитивного предложного оборота и эллипсис for с именной группой в инфинитивном обороте на материале англоязычного экономического дискурса

The aim of the study is to determine how substitution and ellipsis are used within the syntax of the English-language economic discourse as exemplified by the English-language magazine ‘The Economist’. The scientific novelty of the study lies in identifying the substitution of the prepositional infinitive phrase in the active voice by the passive attributive infinitive and in detecting the ellipsis of the preposition ‘for’ with the noun phrase in the for-to-infinitive construction with the active infinitive expressing passive relations. As a result, the researcher identified possible words in the prepositional infinitive phrase in the active voice replaced by the passive attributive infinitive: ‘for everybody’ / ‘for no matter who’ / ‘for all persons in general’ / ‘for anybody who is going to (wants)’ / ‘for anybody’ + to + the active infinitive. In addition, the explicates for the ellipted ‘for’ with the noun phrase in the for-to-infinitive construction were also identified: ‘for the one/ones in question’, ‘for the one/ones concerned’, ‘for the one/ones involved’. The use of the attributive infinitive expressing passive relations was systematised. The rule for choosing the voice for the post-attributive infinitive expressing passive relations was formulated: the retroactive infinitive is used if the subject performing the action expressed by the infinitive is known; if there is no information about the doer, the passive infinitive is used.

Comparison of Rajvanshi and Nepali languages on the basis of sentences

In this research article, the sentence structure of the Rajvanshi language is compared to that of the Nepali language, and their similarities and differences are examined. This article is based on qualitative field and library research. This article's information was gathered from both primary and secondary sources. For this purpose, primary data was gathered from Rajwansi native speakers in three distinct Jhapa district locations, and secondary data was gathered from Rajwansi and Nepali language grammar and language (especially Rajwansi language) writings. Thus, the available facts have been interpreted and analyzed using the descriptive method and comparative analysis as a theoretical foundation. The conclusion of this study is that the construction process (structural structure) of all sentence categories (simple sentences, complex sentences containing infinitive verbs, compound sentences, and mixed sentences) in the Rajwanshi and Nepali languages is identical.

The Syntax and Semantics of the Double-faced Prepositions besides and beyond

Over time, lexical items are recycled and take on different or additional meanings from the ones they originally had. Somewhat surprisingly, items may take on converse meanings. This is the case with the prepositions besides and beyond, which may signal either inclusion or exclusion, depending on the context. An etymological examination shows that over time, both words have undergone semantic extension from their original spatial meanings. Syntactically, the primary functions of the two are as prepositions and adverbs. Quantitative results show that while nowadays beyond functions primarily as a preposition, besides functions equally often as an adverb and a preposition. The converse meanings of besides and beyond are shown here to depend on whether the context is assertive or non-assertive. Both words form part of a large group of prepositions of inclusion and exclusion which share both semantic and syntactic features. Syntactically, what is remarkable about all of them is their ability to occur not only with nominal complements but also with that-clauses, bare infinitives, and adjective phrases. One of the issues discussed in this article is what is the best syntactic analysis of these structures.

An fMRI study of inflectional encoding in spoken word production: Role of domain-general inhibition

A major issue concerning inflectional encoding in spoken word production is whether or not regular forms (e.g., past tense walked) are encoded by rule application and irregular forms (e.g., swam) by retrieval from associative memory and inhibition of the regular rule. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the involvement of domain-general inhibition, thought to be underpinned by right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), right pre-supplementary motor area (SMA), and right basal ganglia. Participants were presented with infinitive verbs that take either regular or irregular past tense. They switched between producing the past tense of these regular and irregular verbs in one block, and between inflecting or reading these infinitive verbs aloud in another block. As concerns corticobasal areas, compared to reading, inflecting activated left IFG and left preSMA/SMA. Regulars yielded higher activation than irregulars in these frontal areas, both on switch and repeat trials, which did not differ in activation. Switching between inflecting and reading activated left preSMA/SMA. These results indicate that inflectional encoding, and switching between inflecting and reading, engage frontal areas in the left hemisphere, including left preSMA/SMA for both and left IFG for inflecting, without recruiting the domain-general inhibition circuitry in the right hemisphere. We advance an account of inflectional encoding in spoken word production that assumes a distinction between regulars and irregulars, but without engaging domain-general inhibition.

FUNCTIONAL PARADIGM OF NON-FINITE CLAUSES WITH A NON-FINITE WHICH IS PART OF A PREDICATIVE CONSTRUCTION (ON THE MATERIAL OF ENGLISH ONLINE NEWSPAPER ARTICLES)

The article homes in on establishing the functional paradigm of non-finite clauses in Modern English. The data for the research has been drawn from English online newspaper articles the Evening Standard, the Guardian, the Times. The research corpus comprises 254 non-finite clauses per 976 thousand words from the texts under analysis. The novelty of this investigation lies in the fact that it views non-finite clauses in the functional aspect with a non-finite as part of a predicative construction. Non-finite clauses are a concise means of expressing thoughts and being such they can make the idea get manifested in a shorter but more attractive way. The use of non-finites demands a more sophisticated kowledge of language and more cognitive effort for perception and interpretation. This last statement may explain the reason why newspaper register abounds in non-finites while informal English does not. As the result of the analysis there have been established the functions performed by (a) the infinitive clauses with the infinitive as a secondary predicate in the subjective predicative construction, the objective predicative construction, the for-to-infinitive construction and the absolute with the infinitive construction; (b) the ing-clauses with the present / perfect participle and the gerund as a secondary predicate of the objective / subjective / prepositional absolute with the participle construction and of the gerundial predicative construction correspondingly; (c) the ed-clauses with the past participle as a secondary predicate of the objective / subjective / prepositional absolute with the participle construction.

Categorial Conflict between Phrasal-Prepositional Verbs and Infinitives: The Great Complement Shift

The development of grammatical forms and synchronic effects has captured a considerable interest of researchers across the globe. The research of this phenomenon is done to understand how certain linguistic forms arise and interact with other forms. Literature also discloses that a number of studies has addressed grammaticalisation of prepositions, which has somehow resulted in categorial conflict. However, there is dearth of literature that deals with /to/ to distinguish between phrasal-prepositional verbs and infinitives as a way of resolving the conflict. Again, some of the L2 students confuse complementation of /to/ in the phrasal-prepositional verb look forward to with that of the infinitives. They fail to draw a line of demarcation between the two constructions. Therefore, this qualitative study seeks to explore the status of /to/ in the phrasal-prepositional verb and infinitive clauses. It also identifies the category label of /to/ and describes its complementation. The study purposively and conveniently extracted data from Scott’s (2022) compilation of both application and cover letters. Following the Minimalist Program, the study reveals that /to/ in both the phrasal-prepositional verb and infinitives have gone through the process of grammaticalisation. It is noted that in the phrasal-prepositional verb, /to/ is still a preposition while in the infinitive clauses, it has gone through the great complementation shift known as decategorisation and extension, hence variation in category labelling. The study also presents that the structures of the phrasal-prepositional verb and the infinitive clauses vary based on the theory and concepts adopted. As a result, it is concluded that due to grammaticalisation of /to/ in both phrasal-prepositional verb and infinitive, their complementation differs.

Negative Concord and locality in Russian

AbstractThis article addresses locality conditions on Negative Concord (NC) in Russian. We examine long-distance licensing of “negative”ni-pronouns in subject- and object-control infinitives. Existing theories of negative concord rely in one way or another on the movement of negative concord items (NCI): either as a direct licensing condition, or as a prerequisite for entering a local configuration with the licensor. Consequently, theories predict thatni-pronoun movement to the matrix clause (i.e., the local domain of the matrix licensor) would increase acceptability ofni-licensing. Using experimental data, we explore various linear positions available forni-pronouns in the matrix clause and in embedded infinitival clauses. We show that movement is not required for long-distance licensing, and that derived positions ofni-pronouns are independent ofni-licensing. We argue that althoughni-licensing and movement both obey locality constraints, they differ as to the type of locality required. This article presents evidence for recent proposals that movement and agreement have different properties with respect to locality constraints.

Sesotho control verbs with the reflexive prefix: A morpho-syntactic analysis

This article examines the Sesotho control structures to account for their dual behaviours resulting from the attachment of the reflexive prefix. The reflexive is a morpheme that is annexed to a verb to show that the subject acts upon itself. It is observed that some control verbs yield acceptable syntactic constructions when the reflexive attaches, while others yield unacceptable results. Using the minimalist programme (merge and adjunction) the investigation reveals that both the acceptability and unacceptability of reflexive control structures result from the effect the reflexive has on the argument structure of the verbs. The absorption of the internal argument renders two-argumentstaking verbs unacceptable as PRO subject of the infinitive clause lacks reference. In the case of three-argument-taking verbs, the absorption of one of the arguments leaves a controller for PRO, hence the acceptability of the structures. It can, therefore, be concluded that both acceptability and unacceptability of control verbs with the reflexive prefix can be accounted for in terms of the argument structure.

Дативный субъект и предикативность: к типологии инфинитивных групп в русском языке

The article deals with two interrelated theses, often found in works that are more or less focused on generative grammar: 1) any infinitive group is a clause; 2) each infinitive clause contains the position for a dative subject, including the zero one (PRODAT). A clause is interpreted as “minimal grammatical unit corresponding to a proposition” (S. S. Sai). The focus is on infinitive groups that function as 1) the semantic component of the compound verb predicate(nachal izuchat’ francuzskij‘started learning French’), 2) object (poprosil zhenu prigotovit’ obed‘asked the wife to cook dinner’), 3) adverbial modifier (poshel otpravlyat’ pis’mo‘went to send a letter’), 4)subordinate clause (chtoby otpravit’ pis’mo‘...to send a letter’). A distinction is made between complete and incomplete clauses. Complete ones contain a dative subject, which, when expressed by zero, is easily restored, and fully reflect the structure of the proposition. Only such infinitive clauses are characterized by predicativity; these include subordinate clauses. Incomplete infinitive clauses in the role of an object and an adverbial modifier (“sentential actant” and “sentential circonstant”) cannot contain a pronounced dative subject. Constructions with incomplete clauses cannot be recognized as polypredicative, but they can be recognized as polypropositive. Some examples, designed to prove the presence of a zero dative subject (PRODAT) in them, are considered, the ungrammaticality and inconsistency of these examples with the usus is demonstrated. It is concluded that in such cases there is no syntactic position for the dative subject, while semantically the subject is transmitted into an incomplete infinitive clause from the “matrix clause”.It is proposed to refer to such constructions as merged clauses. For constructions with infinitive groups arising from the phase or modal modification of a simple verbal predicate, it is considered expedient to retain the traditional name of the compound verbal predicate, since such constructions are not only monopredicative, but also monopropositive. The concept of an infinitive clause is not applicable to such constructions.