Infinitival Syntax

This monograph offers a new analysis of West Germanic ‘Infinitivus Pro Participio’ (IPP) constructions, within the framework of Optimality Theory. IPP constructions have long been problematic for syntactic theory, because a bare infinitive is preferred over the expected past participle. The book shows how the substitution of the past participle by the infinitive in IPP constructions can be captured straightforwardly if constraints are assumed to be violable. The basic idea is that IPP constructions are exceptional because they violate otherwise valid rules of the language. Thus, IPP is a ‘last resort’ or repair strategy, which is only visible in cases in which the past participle would be ‘even worse’ . Furthermore, as the choice of Optimality Theory naturally leads to a crosslinguistic account, the book systematically examines and compares infinitival constructions from seven West Germanic languages including Afrikaans, Dutch, German, West Flemish, and three Swiss German dialects.

Barbara Schlücker, Freie Universität Berlin, on Linguist List Vol.16.3587, 2005:
The comparative approach of this study is very attractive. First, although it has often been noted in the literature that IPP can be found in several languages, the studies so far are restricted to Dutch and German. The study at hand fills this gap. Second, a lot of data are given and they are presented in a very thorough and systematic way. Third, and what is most important, the study succeeds in giving an analysis which goes beyond an analysis of IPP for the individual languages.