Coerced inflected infinitives in Portuguese
-
Ana Maria Martins
and
Jairo Nunes
Abstract
In configurations where inflected and uninflected infinitives may alternate in Portuguese, the option without overt agreement may be incompatible with adjectival predicates, passivized verbs, or reflexive clitics and is subject to a puzzling dialectal variation among speakers. This paper argues that the infinitival form without agreement may be analyzed by speakers as involving a T head with no ϕ-features, a T head with just a number feature, or a T head with just a person feature. Each of these specifications has different consequences for minimality computations when adjectival predicates, passives, or reflexive clitics intervene between T and the subject, yielding the dialectal variation found.
References
Ambar, Manuela. 2000. Infinitives vs. participles. In João Costa (ed.), Portuguese syntax: New comparative studies, 14–30. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780195125757.003.0002Search in Google Scholar
Ambar, Manuela & Ángel Jiménez-Fernández. 2017. Overtly/non-overtly inflected infinitives in Romance. In Martin Everaert & Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), The Blackwell companion to syntax, 1996–2037. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.10.1002/9781118358733.wbsyncom122Search in Google Scholar
Barbosa, Pilar & Eduardo Buzaglo Paiva Raposo. 2013. Subordinação argumental infinitiva. In Buzaglo Paiva Raposo Eduardo, Maria Fernanda Bacelar do Nascimento, Maria Antónia Coelho da Mota, Luísa Segura & Amália Mendes (eds.), Gramática do Português, 1989–1977. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.Search in Google Scholar
Boeckx, Cedric, Norbert Hornstein & Jairo Nunes. 2010. Control as movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511761997Search in Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The minimalist program. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Michael Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken Hale: A life in language, 1–52. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/4056.003.0004Search in Google Scholar
Duarte, Inês, Ana Lúcia Santos & Anabela Gonçalves. 2016. O Infinitivo flexionado na gramática do adulto e na aquisição de L1. In Ana Maria Martins & Ernestina Carrilho (eds.), Manual de linguística portuguesa, 451–480. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783110368840-019Search in Google Scholar
Hornstein, Norbert. 1999. Movement and control. Linguistic Inquiry 30(1). 69–96. https://doi.org/10.1162/002438999553968.Search in Google Scholar
Hornstein, Norbert, Ana Maria Martins & Jairo Nunes. 2008. Perception and causative structures in English and European Portuguese: ϕ-feature agreement and the distribution of bare and prepositional infinitives. Syntax 11(2). 198–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9612.2008.00105.x.Search in Google Scholar
Kato, Mary A., Ana Maria Martins & Jairo Nunes. 2023a. Português brasileiro e português europeu: Sintaxe comparada. São Paulo: Contexto.Search in Google Scholar
Kato, Mary A., Ana Maria Martins & Jairo Nunes. 2023b. The syntax of Portuguese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9780511842931Search in Google Scholar
Kratzer, Angelika. 1996. Severing the external argument from its verb. In Johan Rooryck & Laurie Zaring (eds.), Phrase structure and the lexicon, 109–137. Dordrecht: Kluwer.10.1007/978-94-015-8617-7_5Search in Google Scholar
Martins, Ana Maria. 2001. On the origin of the Portuguese inflected infinitive: A new perspective on an enduring debate. In Laurel Brinton (ed.), Historical Linguistics 1999: Selected Papers from the 14th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, 9–13 August 1999, 207–222. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.215.15marSearch in Google Scholar
Martins, Ana Maria & Jairo Nunes. 2017. Identity avoidance with reflexive clitics in European Portuguese and minimalist approaches to control. Linguistic Inquiry 48(4). 627–649.10.1162/LING_a_00256Search in Google Scholar
MaurerJrTheodoro. 1968. O infinitivo flexionado português: Estudo histórico descritivo. São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional.Search in Google Scholar
Mensching, Guido. 2000. Infinitive constructions with specified subjects: A syntactic analysis of the Romance languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780195133035.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Nunes, Jairo. 1995. Ainda o famigerado se. D.E.L.T.A. 11(2). 201–240.Search in Google Scholar
Nunes, Jairo & Eduardo Paiva Raposo. 1998. Portuguese inflected infinitivals and the configurations for feature checking. Paper presented at 21st GLOW Colloquium, University of Tilburg, 15–18 April.Search in Google Scholar
Ormazabal, Javier & Juan Romero. 2024. The modularity of agreement variation. Isogloss 10(5/4). 1–26. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/isogloss.389.Search in Google Scholar
Pires, Acrisio. 2006. The minimalist syntax of defective domains. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.98Search in Google Scholar
Raposo, Eduardo Paiva. 1987. Case theory and Infl-to-Comp: The inflected infinitive in European Portuguese. Linguistic Inquiry 18(1). 85–109.Search in Google Scholar
© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- AGREEment and ellipsis
- Coerced inflected infinitives in Portuguese
- Agreement without agree: scattered, not distributed, agreement across modules
- Two routes to predicate ellipsis in Spanish: the clitic versus focus strategy
- Rethinking Right-node Raising
- No ellipsis-contained antecedents: adjunct-licensed ellipsis in Spanish
- Sloppy symmetry under ellipsis
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- AGREEment and ellipsis
- Coerced inflected infinitives in Portuguese
- Agreement without agree: scattered, not distributed, agreement across modules
- Two routes to predicate ellipsis in Spanish: the clitic versus focus strategy
- Rethinking Right-node Raising
- No ellipsis-contained antecedents: adjunct-licensed ellipsis in Spanish
- Sloppy symmetry under ellipsis
