Teza doctorala despre infinitiv in limbile romanice

Pragmatic Causation in theRise of the Romance Prepositional

Infinitive

A statistically-based study with specialreference to Spanish, Portuguese and

Romanian

Dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Kim Schulte

Trinity CollegeDepartment of Spanish & Portuguese

University of Cambridge

30 September, 2004

Contents

Preface v

Declaration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vAcknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viA brief resume of chapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

1 Motivation and theoretical parameters 1

1.1 Why Romance? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 The choice of languages examined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.2.1 Spanish and Portuguese: internally motivated divergence . . . . . . . . . 31.2.2 Romanian: evolution in isolation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1.3 Theoretical parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1.3.1 Categories and constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61.3.2 Categories in diachrony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

1.3.3 Dependent clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91.3.4 Prepositional constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

1.3.5 Compound prepositions and conjunctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161.3.6 Arguments for the continued use of traditional category labels . . . . . . 17

1.4 Pragmatic causation in syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191.4.1 Synchrony: pragmatic factors in syntactic choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

1.4.2 Diachrony: pragmatic factors in syntactic change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211.5 Statistical analysis: reasons and methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

1.5.1 Why statistics? – The motivation for a statistical approach . . . . . . . . 231.5.2 Data selection and statistical procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

2 From Latin to Romance 312.1 Finite subordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

2.1.1 Conjunctional subordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312.1.2 Asyndetic finite dependent clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

2.1.3 Hypotaxis with underspecified subordinator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352.2 Infinitival subordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

2.2.1 Subject infinitives without overt subject S2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362.2.2 Object infinitives without overt subject S2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

2.2.3 Infinitives with overt subjects: the AcI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372.3 Non-infinitival nominal dependent clauses in Latin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

2.3.1 The gerund . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412.3.2 Participial dependent constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

2.3.3 The gerundive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452.3.4 The supine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

2.4 The fate of Latin nominal dependent structures in Romance . . . . . . . . . . . . 472.4.1 Loss of the gerundive in Romance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

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2.4.2 The supine in Romance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472.4.3 Underspecified gerundial and participial clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492.4.4 Prepositional gerunds and participles in Romance . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512.4.5 Overt subjects in gerundial and participial clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

2.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

3 The infinitive in Spanish and Portuguese today 573.1 Non-overt subjects of infinitival clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

3.1.1 Some different approaches to the syntax of infinitival clauses . . . . . . . 573.1.2 An integrated syntactico-pragmatic approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 633.1.3 The dominant role of coreferentiality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

3.2 Infinitives with overt subject in Spanish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733.2.1 Overt S2 in finite clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733.2.2 Overt S2 in Spanish infinitival clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 753.2.3 Referential properties and discourse pragmatic function . . . . . . . . . . 763.2.4 Distribution of the OSI in Spanish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 793.2.5 Position of the overt subject in Spanish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

3.3 Overt subject marking in Portuguese infinitival clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 843.3.1 The syntax of the inflected infinitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 853.3.2 The OSI-construction as alternative to finite dependent clauses? . . . . . 883.3.3 The ambiguity parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 913.3.4 Position of the overt subject in Portuguese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

3.4 The infinitive: nominal or verbal? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 953.4.1 The one-dimensional continuum model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 953.4.2 Classification of the Latin infinitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 963.4.3 Is the Romance infinitive verbal or nominal? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

4 Diachronic development of the infinitive in Spanish 1054.1 Prepositional and non-prepositional infinitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1054.2 Prepositional infinitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

4.2.1 Semantically underspecified constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1084.2.2 Decreasing frequency of por + infinitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1094.2.3 Increasing frequency of existing prepositional infinitives . . . . . . . . . . 1104.2.4 A special case: al + infinitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1124.2.5 The rise of new prepositional infinitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1134.2.6 Semantic grouping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

4.3 Infinitival clauses and their finite counterparts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1204.3.1 Prepositional infinitives postdating their finite counterparts . . . . . . . . 1214.3.2 Prepositional infinitives predating their finite counterparts . . . . . . . . . 1234.3.3 Conjunctional and prepositional clauses present from the earliest texts . . 1244.3.4 Finite and infinitival clauses by semantic class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

4.4 Discussion of the Spanish diachronic data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1284.4.1 The central role of subject reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1304.4.2 Coreferentiality and pragmatic relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1324.4.3 Statistical peculiarities during the Golden Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

5 Portuguese and Spanish developments compared 1375.1 Similarities and differences in diachronic development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

5.1.1 A comparison of the overall frequency of prepositional infinitives . . . . . 1375.1.2 Similar developments in Spanish and Portuguese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1385.1.3 Portuguese prepositional infinitives predating their Spanish counterparts . 1405.1.4 Underspecified prepositional infinitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

CONTENTS iii

5.1.5 Discussion of the data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1435.2 OSIs and the inflected infinitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

5.2.1 History of the Portuguese personal infinitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1445.2.2 The history of Spanish OSI construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1495.2.3 OSI in Spanish and Portuguese: the larger diachronic picture . . . . . . . 152

6 The infinitive in Romanian 1576.1 The present-day situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

6.1.1 Exclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1586.1.2 Temporal and modal auxiliary verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1586.1.3 Infinitival indirect Wh-questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1616.1.4 Intrinsically coreferential verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1626.1.5 Optionally coreferential main verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1646.1.6 Non-coreferential main verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1656.1.7 Subject complements and impersonal expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1666.1.8 Prepositional complementizer or morphological marker? . . . . . . . . . . 167

6.2 Synchronic use of prepositional infinitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1686.2.1 Finite and non-finite adjuncts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1686.2.2 Noun complements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1696.2.3 Summary and analysis of the synchronic data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

6.3 Diachronic development of the prepositional infinitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1716.3.1 The situation in Old Romanian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1716.3.2 The evolution of the prepositional infinitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1736.3.3 The proportion of infinitival and finite clauses through time . . . . . . . . 176

6.4 Pragmatic causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1776.4.1 The subject of Romanian infinitival clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1776.4.2 Romanian in comparison with Spanish and Portuguese . . . . . . . . . . . 179

6.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

7 Relevance and reanalysis: prepositional complementizers 1857.1 The emergence of prepositional complementizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

7.1.1 The origin of prepositional infinitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1857.1.2 From adjunct to complement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

7.2 Subsequent development of prepositional complementizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1887.2.1 Romanian: analogical levelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1887.2.2 Maintaining a balance between several complementizers . . . . . . . . . . 190

7.3 Diachronic statistical development of de and a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1917.4 Ongoing grammaticalization of para/pra in Portuguese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1937.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

8 Conclusion and scope for future work 195

References 197

Appendix A: Spanish texts 207

Appendix B: Portuguese texts 213

Appendix C: Romanian texts 221

Preface

Declaration

This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome ofwork done in collaboration. It does not exceed the limit of 80,000 words set by the Modern andMedieval Languages Degree Committee.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor Chris Pountain, as well as Teresa de Carlos, Rosalina Gulao,Martin Maiden, Peter Matthews, April McMahon, and Francis Nolan for making my universityeducation a pleasant and interesting experience.

I am also grateful to my first Spanish teacher, Monika Palm-Coenen, and to Dominic Church,Guy Deutscher, Paul Heggarty, Luisa Miceli, Marcus Meyer, Urs Schulte, Alexandra Stavinschi,and Janick Wrona for their personal and academic support.

Special thanks to Kai for his indispensable assistance in all computational matters, to MarcusBruggen for his help with SympaTeX, and of course to my mother and father.

Finally, I am also grateful to Trinity College for the vast amount of money ungrudgingly spenton me. Virtus vera nobilitas.

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Summary

The dissertation examines the development of ‘prepositional infinitive’ constructions, which areabsent from Latin but have since developed in the majority of the Romance languages.

After a discussion of the motivation for a statistically-based approach and some theoretical issuesthis involves, the dissertation begins by comparing the types of clausal subordination availablein Latin with those available in modern Romance, and with a detailed analysis of the factorstriggering the choice of dependent infinitives, with and without overt subject, in modern Spanishand Portuguese.

This is followed by a diachronic statistical analysis in which the evolution of individual prepo-sitional infinitive constructions in Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian is charted from the timeof the earliest preserved documents onwards.

The analysis of the data reveals that the relative chronology of these constructions’ emergenceand rise in frequency is very similar within each of the three languages; what differs considerablyis the point in time at which prepositional infinitives appear in the respective languages, andtheir rate of expansion.

This is linked to the fact that, across all three languages, the statistical likelihood of speakersusing certain constructions more frequently than others plays a central role in the way preposi-tional infinitives have evolved, and consequently also in their present-day distribution.

A BRIEF RESUME OF CHAPTERS vii

A brief resume of chapters

Chapter 1: Motivation and theoretical parameters

The first chapter begins by explaining why the Romance languages are a valuable field of studyin Historical Linguistics, and why the specific languages chosen for this study were picked. Thisis followed by a section discussing some fundamental theoretical parameters and definitions ofterms.

The final two sections illuminate how pragmatics can interact with syntactic change, and howdiachronic statistical analysis can reveal such processes, leading on to a discussion of the sourcesused to provide the data, and of the principles and procedures applied.

Chapter 2: From Latin to Romance

Chapter 2 provides a survey of the different types of finite and non-finite dependent clauses inLatin, and to what extent they have survived into Romance.

Special attention is paid to the link between the syntactic construction chosen for a dependentclause and the semantic as well as pragmatic implications of this choice. In particular, themechanism of semantic underspecification is found to be exploited for the purpose of pragmaticbackgrounding.

Chapter 3: The infinitive in Spanish and Portuguese today

Chapter 3 consists of four main sections. The first section examines the ways in which a subjectis assigned to infinitival clauses. After a presentation of a number of existing syntactic andsemantic models, a decision tree model integrating syntactic and pragmatic factors into a singlesystem is presented and exemplified. It is then discussed how the pragmatically most likelypattern, coreferentiality, becomes entrenched as the default pattern of subject assignment, andhow the existence of such established patterns are exploited semantically.

The second and third sections examine infinitival clauses with overt subjects in present-daySpanish and Portuguese, respectively. Several existing analyses regarding this area of syntaxare presented, as well as statistical analyses that suggest that the primary function of theseconstructions is pragmatic, though a different one in each of the two languages.

The final section discusses the question whether it can be said that the infinitive has becomemore nominal or more verbal today than it was in Latin. An approach placing the infinitivealong a continuum between the two extremes is discussed, and an alternative two-dimensionalclassificatory model is proposed. This model, which looks at the internal and the external syntaxof infinitival clauses as two separate parameters, is then applied to the infinitive in Latin, mod-ern Spanish, and medieval Spanish. Finally, a possible link between the demise of morphologicalcase and an increase in the use of infinitives is discussed.

Chapter 4: Diachronic development of the infinitive in Spanish

Chapter 4 consists mainly of a statistical analysis of the evolution of the prepositional infinitivein Spanish since the early Middle Ages. In the first section, usage frequencies of the prepositional

viii PREFACE

infinitive are presented, sorted both by individual preposition and by semantic criteria.

This is followed by a statistical comparison of finite and infinitival dependent clauses throughtime, and by a discussion of the results and possible reasons for the developments observed.

Chapter 5: Portuguese and Spanish developments compared

The first part of Chapter 5 compares the diachronic statistical development of a number of in-dividual prepositional infinitives, as well as of this group of constructions as a whole, in Spanishand Portuguese, pointing out similarities and differences in the chronology of developments inthe two languages. In the light of this data, the likelihood of the previously suggested pragmaticmechanisms being the driving force behind the spread of the prepositional infinitive in bothlanguages is then reassessed and confirmed.

The second part of the chapter consists of a detailed diachronic analysis of infinitival clauseswith overt subjects. A separate diachronic analysis of these constructions for Spanish and Por-tuguese is followed by a comparison of those developments, in which it is concluded that theirorigin is largely similar, but the subsequent development has led to their differing present-dayusage patterns.

Chapter 6: The infinitive in Romanian

Chapter 6 begins with a discussion of the status of the infinitive in Romanian, and of the claimthat it plays only a marginal role in modern Romanian syntax. This is followed by a surveycomparing the use of the infinitive in Romanian with that in the other Romance languages.

Attention then focuses on the prepositional infinitive, both on its synchronic distribution andon its diachronic development. The final section analyses and evaluates the data and comparesthe findings with the corresponding results for Spanish and Portuguese in the previous chapters.The similarities that can be observed are shown to be the result of more frequent pragmaticusage patterns becoming entrenched at the expense of less frequent ones.

Chapter 7: Relevance and reanalysis: prepositional complementizers

Chapter 7 traces the prepositional complementizers a and de, which often have a purely func-tional role in modern Romance, back to their origin as a meaningful part of adverbial clausesvia a progressive process of reanalysis and semantic bleaching, and offers a tentative explana-tion for the different results of this process in Ibero- and Daco-Romance. This is supported bythe presentation of a similar, ongoing process, the incipient reanalysis or grammaticalization ofPortuguese para/pra, which may currently be on a path towards becoming a complementizer.

Chapter 8: Conclusion and scope for future work

In the final chapter, the differences and similarities between the individual languages, presentedin the previous chapters, are summarized. The results lead to the conclusion that the pragmaticsof language usage have played an important role in the development of the prepositional infini-tive, regarding the way it has spread as well as the functional shifts it has experienced throughtime. Though there are certain differences in the way prepositional infinitives are used in the

A BRIEF RESUME OF CHAPTERS ix

three languages, it is observed that the pragmatic mechanisms involved in their developmentare in many ways the same.

This raises the question whether we may be dealing with universally valid pragmatic principles.To determine whether this is the case, a more extensive cross-linguistic analysis going beyondthe Romance domain is called for.

Chapter 1

Motivation and theoreticalparameters

1.1 Why Romance?

This dissertation is a study of a specific area in the syntax of one branch1 of a particular lan-guage family, but many of the observations and conclusions drawn are not necessarily limitedto the Romance languages, as they illuminate more general mechanisms in the syntactic andsemantic evolution of languages.

As Jaeggli (1986: ix) points out, the Romance languages “have [in recent years] been inves-tigated in depth to gain insights into issues concerning abstract formal structures, matters oflinguistic variation [...] and theories concerning language change”, and their study has had an“impact on the development of ideas in linguistics.”

The Romance languages traditionally have a privileged position among the languages subjectedto linguistic analysis. This is partly due to the fact that, for cultural reasons, many linguists arewell acquainted with certain Romance varieties, particularly French, and with their historicalsource language, Latin.

However, there are also more scientific reasons that make Romance a particularly rewardingarea of research, especially for the linguist with diachronic interests. First, this branch of Indo-European is among the best documented of the world’s languages, with the earliest Latin textsdating back to well before the third century B.C., and we have a rich and varied range of docu-ments from many geographically diverse Latinized areas.

This does not mean that the available documents provide information about all stages or regis-ters of the language or languages spoken by the population. In particular, there is a large gapin our knowledge of the period between the first century A.D. and the appearance of the firstvernacular texts. Though “written Latin from every century survives on manuscript” (Wright,1982: ix), they do not represent the precursors of what became the Romance Languages, but acontinuation of an older linguistic norm. The exact linguistic situation during this period is sub-ject to a great deal of controversy; for instance, it is not clear when speakers began consciouslyto distinguish between their vernacular and the formal Latin used in official contexts. Indeed,there is evidence that even during the ‘Classical Latin’ period, an evolved form of popular Latinwas already in use, either only in some less educated classes of the population, or perhaps in

1The Romance languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, can of course be subdivided intofurther sub-branches.

1

2 CHAPTER 1. MOTIVATION AND THEORETICAL PARAMETERS

everyone’s spoken language. The situation is further complicated by the fact that regional fea-tures would have started to develop even during the time of the Roman empire, and there isconsiderable disagreement among scholars as to whether there was widespread Latin/vernacularbilingualism, and what the exact relationship between Late Latin and Early Romance was. Inhis article on the highly variable use of the term ‘Vulgar Latin’, Lloyd (1979) presents a widerange of theories on the exact nature of the language linking Classical Latin and the Romancelanguages; Wright (1982) examines the period between the end of the Roman Empire and theappearance of the first vernacular documents, concluding that speakers did not, before thatpoint, understand the variety of Latin they spoke as anything other than Latin.

That the spoken language of the day differed increasingly from Classical Latin is documentedby the fact that the Council of Tours in 813 refers to the common spoken language of the day asRUSTICA ROMANA LINGUA, which is understood to have a linguistic status similar to thatof THEOTISCA LINGUA, i.e. German. By the time of the first preserved documents in localvernacular, i.e. in the 9th century in France2, in the 12th century in Iberia, and as late as the 16th

century in Romania, we are clearly dealing with languages that are different both from Latinand from each other. Though some information about the earlier stages of Romance is providedby regularly occurring ‘mistakes’ and glosses in Latin texts, many details of the linguistic evo-lution during this period can only be reconstructed. But whilst most linguistic reconstructionarrives at a hypothetical protolanguage, the Romance languages offer the advantage that theClassical Latin documents provide ample information where a reconstruction must ultimatelylead; its accuracy can thus easily be verified. For instance, the absence in Classical Latin ofthe construction examined in this thesis, the ‘prepositional infinitive’, means that its emergencemust be reconstructed as part of the interim linguistic stages.

A further reason why the Romance languages are of particular value in Historical Linguistics isthe fact that the documented development of several sister languages can be compared over aperiod of several centuries between the Middle Ages and today. Beyond the mere observationthat branching development has led to the numerous differences between the modern Romancevarieties, this allows us to trace back some of these developments to their point of origin. Thismay allow us to pinpoint the factors involved in causing a change to occur in one variety butnot in another, and to identify which conditions may be responsible for similar but independentdevelopments in more than one variety. Such findings will add to our understanding of linguisticchange and its causes on a more general level, and be of assistance in the reconstruction of lesswell-documented language families.

1.2 The choice of languages examined

A detailed analysis of the evolution of the syntactic structure under investigation cannot, here,be undertaken for all Romance languages and varieties, even if it was possible to define a seriesof discrete varieties. This study will focus mainly on Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian; thedifferences and parallels observable between these sample languages can provide particularlyvaluable insights into the processes involved, for the following reasons.

2The Serments de Strasbourg (842 A.D.) are the earliest known Romance vernacular text.

1.2. THE CHOICE OF LANGUAGES EXAMINED 3

1.2.1 Spanish and Portuguese: internally motivated divergence

According to one of the traditional classificatory systems of the Romance languages, Spanishand Portuguese are representatives of Western Romance3, and geographically located in theextreme West of the Romance-speaking area in Europe. Not only are the territories in whichthese two languages are spoken adjacent, but also largely isolated from non-Romance languagesfrom a geographic point of view. Two pre-Latin substrate languages of Iberia, Basque and Ibero-Celtic have left some phonological, morphological and lexical traces, but no substrate featuresare known to have entered the Romance syntactic system (Lapesa, 1980: 36-52), so syntacticdifferences between Spanish and Portuguese cannot be attributed to different substrate influence.

It is unlikely that the varieties (or mixtures of different varieties) spoken by the Roman colo-nizers varied greatly or in any systematic way between the areas that now constitute Spain andPortugal. Nor did the subsequent impact of linguistic contact with non-Romance languages,in particular with Arabic, have a significant differentiating effect across the Iberian Peninsula.On the one hand, the territories of modern-day Spain and Portugal were not separate countriesunder Moorish rule, and thus subjected to broadly the same cultural influence. On the otherhand, though the Moors invaded Iberia in 711 A.D., had occupied most of it by 718 A.D., andremained a powerful cultural influence until the end of the 15th century, the linguistic impact oftheir presence did not go much beyond lexical borrowing. Galmes de Fuentes (1996) identifies anumber of syntactic and stylistic Arabisms in medieval Castilian prose, many of which are, how-ever, merely an increased use of structures already present in Old Spanish, such as an increaseduse of infinitives as true verbal nouns (ibid., 174-179). Some Arabisms, such as paranomasticconstructions of the type burla burlando, he says, entered the popular language and resurfacedin the popular literature of the Golden Age, but “los arabismos sintacticos, que de la lengualiteraria del XIII no habıan pasadao a la coloquial, desaparecen definitivamente, por lo general,en los siglos de presion latinizante.”(Galmes, 1996: 233) Most historical accounts of Spanishand Portuguese (e.g. Green, 1988; Parkinson, 1988) do not note any significant lasting syntacticinfluence of Arabic, whilst Lapesa (1980: 151-152) mentions that verb-first word order is morecommon in Spanish and Portuguese than in other Romance varieties, which may be attributableto Arabic or Hebrew influence (Crabb, 1955).

With a common ancestor language and common external influence, Spanish and Portuguesehave nevertheless developed in markedly different ways in some areas, most obviously perhapsin their phonology, but also in certain areas of morpho-syntax. One of these areas, the differinguse of the infinitive, is the topic of this study. As the external conditions and influences do notdiffer significantly, the motivation for their diverging development must – barring random orspontaneous changes – be differing patterns of usage in the different speech communities. If, forinstance, a structure is used in a potentially ambiguous way more frequently by the membersof one of the communities, this will increase the likelihood of its reanalysis, as illustrated in thefollowing example of ambiguity between pluperfect indicative and imperfect subjunctive:

1. Span.: Me informo que talvez lo hiciera el dıa anterior.me inform3rd.sg.pret that perhaps it do3rd.sg.past.subj the day previous.

He informed me that perhaps he did it the previous day.

3This classification is originally put forward by Wartburg (1950) based on the merger of the Latin vowelsI/E and U/O in ‘Western Romance’. The validity of a genetic classification based on a single vowel merger isdubious and much disputed; numerous alternative classifications based on lexical and syntactic features have beenproposed, a number of which are listed in Posner (1996: 196-202). Nevertheless, the similarity between Spanishand Portuguese in comparison with other Romance varieties is largely undisputed.


2. Port.: Informou-me que o fizera talvez no dia anterior.inform3rd.sg.pret that it do3rd.sg.pluperf.indic perhaps in.the day previous

He informed me that perhaps he had done it the previous day.

In the Spanish example, hiciera is past subjunctive; in the Portuguese sentence, the cognatefizera is pluperfect indicative. Both sentences are, nevertheless, grammatically correct and se-mantically virtually equivalent.

Until the end of the Middle Ages, Spanish, like Portuguese to the present day, preserved thepluperfect indicative function of the -ra-paradigm inherited from Latin (FECERAT)4, but itsubsequently came to be used as the imperfect subjunctive.5 There is no compelling structuralneed for such a shift; on the contrary, it leaves Spanish without a synthetic pluperfect, while the-ra-form takes on a function for which the (largely)6 synonymous -se-form is already available.So what might the motivation for such a shift be? A facilitating factor is definitely the cross-linguistically attested conceptual link between temporal remoteness and non-assertion/counter-factuality, as found, for instance, in the English backshift of tenses in counterfactual conditions.But if this were the only factor, and if we accept that the source language and the external influ-ences were the same for both languages, we should expect the same development in Portuguese.

The decisive difference lies not in the structure itself, but in its actual usage by members ofthe two speech communities. The examples above illustrate the potential structural ambiguitybetween a pluperfect and a past subjunctive, but give no indication how likely it is that suchambiguity will actually arise in real communicative contexts. Occasional ambiguity is unlikelyto have a structural effect, but if structure A (the pluperfect) can equally be understood to bestructure B (the imperfect subjunctive) in a large number of pragmatic contexts, this can leadlanguage users to perceive a lack of functional opposition, which in turn facilitates full reanalysis.

What this implies is that structural differences between Spanish and Portuguese are the con-sequence of differences in actual language usage, which consists of individual utterances. Eachutterance is itself the result of an individual cognitive process by a speaker, in the course ofwhich he can make certain choices. Such a choice can be arbitrary, but may frequently be deter-mined by social and cultural factors, such as whether the speaker feels that one construction issituationally more appropriate in terms of style, register, expressive force, etc. than the other.These social conventions will unavoidably vary between different linguistic communities, andtherefore so will the overall usage frequency. But the more often a certain construction is usedin a language, the more likely it is to become entrenched as the typical or default construction,which in the case of originally ambiguous constructions results in reanalysis and syntactic change.

The fact that usage-based pragmatic differences are likely to be the main factor responsible fordifferential developments in Spanish and Portuguese makes the two languages a valuable objectof comparative linguistic research, since a wider range of potential causes would unavoidablyobscure the role played by each one.

4Penny (1991: 171)5Note that the -ra-form retains numerous non-subjunctival uses in different varieties of Spanish; for a full

account, see Hermeren (1992).6Martinell Gifre (1985) argues that the degree of subjunctivity of the -ra-form is weaker than that of the

-se-form.

1.2. THE CHOICE OF LANGUAGES EXAMINED 5

1.2.2 Romanian: evolution in isolation

The situation of the third language examined, Romanian7, stands in marked contrast to that ofSpanish and Portuguese described above. In the traditional division of the Romance-speakingworld into Eastern and Western Romance8, Romanian falls into the Eastern Romance category,but it differs particularly strongly from other Romance languages (including Eastern Romancevarieties) due to its geographical and long-lasting cultural isolation from the rest of the Romance-speaking area. There are two principle sources for non-Romance features in Romanian.

On the one hand, Roman rule in the Dacia province was limited to a period of approximately 150years, a fact that may be credited for the comparatively high degree of substrate influence fromthe local pre-Roman Thracian, Illyrian, Getian and Dacian populations. Substrate influence isunderstood to be responsible not only for a considerable number of lexical items (cf. Poghirc,1969: 327-356; Russu, 1981), but also for phonological, morphological and syntactic featuresshared with Albanian, such as the morpheme //-ne// on the disjunctive pronouns mine, tine,sine, and the ‘possessive article’ (cf. du Nay, 1996: II.F).

On the other hand, Romanian has been strongly influenced by areal convergence within theBalkan Sprachbund. Sprachbunde or linguistic convergence areas, as first identified by Tru-betzkoy in 1928 (Trubetzkoy, 1930: 17-18)9, contain “languages belonging to more than onefamily but showing traits in common which are found not to belong to the other members of(at least) one of the families” (Emeneau, 1956: 16). The Balkans are one of the most frequentlystudied Sprachbunde, in which varying degrees of convergence between Greek, Albanian, Slavic,Romance, Turkish and Hungarian have been identified.

Under these circumstances, it comes as no surprise that many structural changes, among whichthe area of clausal subordination has acquired a prominent position, have been attributed eitherto straightforward borrowing or to linguistic convergence (e.g. Joseph, 1983). This has, in fact,been such a dominant theory that scholars like Baric (1961) often feel the need to justify anytheory that proposes independent development and language-internally motivated changes.

It can, however, be argued that the long period of isolation from other Romance varieties,especially in its formative phase during which an absence of linguistic norms and standardsprevailed in the speech of the people, makes Romanian a particularly valuable object of com-parative Romance philology. Though influence from the extremely varied surrounding linguisticarea presents us with a wide range of potential factors contributing to structural changes, acentral concept in the Sprachbund theory is the idea of mutual influence and joint parallel de-velopment, rather than unidirectional borrowing. This implies that there is some likelihood ofstructural shifts being internally motivated, even if they occur in a similar fashion in surroundingareas.

If it can be shown that comparable internally motivated changes have taken place in Ibero- andDaco-Romance, particularly if the resulting structures in Romanian are not Sprachbund featuresshared with other Balkan languages, this would suggest that linguistic drift may be involved.This could either be the type of drift described by Sapir (1921: 150 ff.), in which the linguisticstructure inherited from an earlier stage of a language, in this case Latin, favours certain types

7I will be primarily concerned with Daco-Romanian. Any reference to a different Daco-Romance variety willbe pointed out as such.

8cf. footnote 3.9In fact, Trubetzkoy had previously already coined the Russian term jazykovoj sojuz in 1923, but as the pub-

lication was concerned mainly with theological rather than linguistic issues, linguists adopted the correspondingGerman term, first used by him in 1928.


of change. Alternatively, we may be dealing with a more universal or “natural” drift, explainedby Aitchison (1991: 133-134) as the indirect result of “universal mental tendencies” that causesimilar patterns of change in different, not necessarily related languages.

Romanian can thus provide linguistic insights not available from any of the varieties in thedialect continuum between Apulia and the Algarve, in which cross-dialectal influence and bor-rowing is much more difficult to disprove10.

One point to keep in mind in any study comparing Romanian and other Romance varieties is thefact that certain strata of Romanian society were subjected to intense contact with French, andto a lesser degree with Italian, in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Apart from vastamounts of vocabulary, this has allowed some French syntactic patterns to enter the language.In literary register this is indisputable11, but as the use of French was essentially limited to theeducated classes, it is doubtful how much genuine syntactic borrowing into the spoken languageof the people took place. It appears more likely that independently evolved cognate structureswere already present, and that French influence merely reinforced or modified their usage. Infact, Sørensen (1957: 133) even goes as far as claiming that “it is a necessary condition that thereshould exist in the receiving language certain innate tendencies and possibilities with which theforeign idiom does not clash”.12 It is, however, necessary to take this ‘re-Romancing tendency’(Mallinson, 1988: 418) into account to avoid premature conclusions about parallel developmentsin the two languages.

1.3 Theoretical parameters

The approach chosen for this dissertation is a cognitive, construction-based one. Though refer-ence to work conducted within other frameworks will be made at various points, the object andmethodology of the present study differs fundamentally from that of many formalist approachesin that its primary aim is not to provide an abstract description of linguistic structures beyondthe observable level. Instead, it attempts to provide explanations for syntactic changes by fo-cusing on the effects of observable usage patterns, usage frequency and the role of the languageuser.

1.3.1 Categories and constructions

Whilst grammarians and linguists traditionally attempt to subdivide language into discretecategories, Croft (2004) convincingly proves that uniform syntactic categories can neither beestablished among different languages, nor within a single language.

Syntactic categories are generally understood to consist of elements that have the same syntacticdistribution; membership of a particular category can be established by verifying whether or notan element does or does not participate in the same range of constructions or transformationsas its fellow category members. However, Croft shows that membership of classes established bythis method varies considerably, depending on which distributional tests one chooses to consider

10This is not to say that the same feature cannot arise independently in separate dialects of the continuum.The inflected infinitive in Portuguese and Old Neapolitan (cf. Ledgeway, 2000: 109-14) is just one example.

11An example of this is the influence of French on the resurgence of the passive with a fi, (Mallinson, 1988:418)

12A similar observation is made by Pountain (1994: 121; 1999: 36-38), stating that syntactic influence fromEnglish does not lead to significant structural innovation in Spanish, but rather encourages the fuller and moreeffective use of similar structures already present.

1.3. THEORETICAL PARAMETERS 7

diagnostic of class membership.

A simple Spanish example of this is the distinction between the classes ‘direct object’ and‘oblique object’. One distributional test to establish which of these two classes a constituentbelongs to is whether or not it is linked to the verb by a preposition. According to this criterion,‘el gato’ in (3a) and ‘cien kilos’ in (5a) are direct objects, whereas el profesor in (4a) is not.

3. a. Pedro acaricia el gato.Peter strokes the cat.

b. El gato es acariciado por Pedro.The cat is stroked by Peter.

4. a. Pedro habla con el profesor.Peter talks to the teacher.

b.∗El profesor es hablado por Pedro.13

The teacher is talked (to) by Peter.

5. a. Pedro pesa cien kilos.Peter weighs 100 kg.

b.∗Cien kilos son pesados por Pedro.100 kg are weighed by Peter.

A second test that might be applied to determine membership of the class ‘direct object’ ispassivization: direct objects can appear as the subject of a corresponding passive sentence,whereas oblique ones cannot. According to this criterion, ‘el gato’ in (3b) is again classified asdirect object, and ‘el profesor’ in (4b) once again does not fall into this class. But ‘cien kilos’in (4b), which the previous test identified as a direct object, is not a direct object according tothe second test, as it cannot appear as the subject of the passivized sentence. In other words,whether or not something can be classified as a direct object depends on the distributional testswe choose to apply; different tests provide conflicting classifications.

One way of dealing with this difficulty is simply to pick one distributional test as the author-itative one. For instance, one might decide that the absence or presence of a preposition isthe determining factor for classification, and that ‘cien kilos’ is thus a direct object, but thatsome exceptional feature prohibits it from participating in the passive construction. However,this would arbitrarily give primacy to one distributional test over another: had we decided thatparticipation in the passive construction is the determining factor for classification, ‘cien kilos’would not be considered a direct object. As there is no good reason why one of the distributionalpatterns should be given primacy over the other, Croft concludes that syntactic categories areconstruction-specific, rather than being valid for a language as a whole.

According to this approach, (3-5) can be said to represent three different constructions: (I) onethat permits a prepositionless argument and also permits this argument to appear as the subjectin the corresponding passive sentence (3), (II) one that permits a prepositionless argument butdoes not permit it to appear as the subject in the corresponding passive sentence (5), and (III)one that permits neither a prepositionless argument, nor its appearance as as the subject in thecorresponding passive sentence (4). Each of these three constructions is restricted in terms ofthe range of verbs14 that can participate in it. Verbs such as acariciar ‘to stroke’, ver ‘to see’,

13This sentence becomes no more grammatical in Spanish if one were to incorporate the preposition con in anyway.

14The category such as ‘verb’ and ‘transitive verb’ are, of course, themselves construction-specific. Traditionalterminology is used here for the sake of simplicity.


leer ‘to read’ can participate in (I), as can pesar ‘to weigh’ (e.g. ‘Pedro pesa la fruta.’/‘La frutaes pesada pr Pedro.’ (Peter weighs the fruit./The fruit is weighed by Peter.)) In construction(II), a wide range of verbs can participate, including most transitive verbs. The range of verbsthat can participate in (III) is somewhat smaller; it includes pesar ‘to weigh’, medir ‘to measure’and costar ‘to cost’. It should be noted that the meaning of each construction goes beyondthe sum of its components’ meaning; for instance construction (I) with pesar has a somewhatdifferent meaning than construction (III) with pesar.

In this section it has been argued that there are no absolute syntactic categories. That is notto say that it is pointless or impossible to group together certain elements that show certainparallels in their syntactic behaviour across constructions (cf. Section 1.3.6). But rather thandefining membership in a category for the language as a whole on the basis of one randomlychosen distributional test, it is more appropriate to establish classes of elements on the basis oftheir distribution pattern in a particular construction.

1.3.2 Categories in diachrony

As already mentioned in Section 1.2.1, it is largely uncontroversial that most syntactic changeis triggered by various types of reanalysis. The principle of reanalysis is such that the seman-tic contributions of the components in a particular construction, itself conveying a particularmeaning, are remapped among these components. Crucially, the construction as a whole doesnot take on a radically new meaning in this process, nor can any formal changes be observed.In other words, reanalysis is initially only a mental remapping of which components within theconstruction correspond to which components of its meaning. The reanalysis first becomes vis-ible in the subsequent process of ‘actualization’, constituted by the use of the construction innovel ways that are compatible with the reanalysed structure, but would be incompatible withthe original one.

An important point to be made is that change triggered by reanalysis is not an abrupt processthat causes a sudden switch from one category to another. Consider the case of the Romancedefinite article, derived from the Latin demonstrative ILLE. Its increasing use in Late Latin,in contexts that do not require a demonstrative pronoun, is a clear instance of reanalysis. Butrather than suddenly switching from the category ‘pronoun’ to the category ‘article’, it was usedin a gradually increasing number of contexts, initially where a demonstrative pronoun mighthave been appropriate at an earlier stage, then gradually spreading to contexts where ClassicalLatin would under no circumstances have permitted the demonstrative pronoun. In other words,neither the category ‘demonstrative pronoun’, nor the category ‘definite article’, as defined onthe basis of modern Romance, would be an appropriate choice for its status during the transi-tional period.

Other cases of reanalysis show a similar defiance of categorizability. In early French, for in-stance, the particle pas appears to fall somewhere between the categories of ‘emphatic particle’and ‘negative marker’ (cf. e.g. Price, 1984: 252; McMahon, 1994: 163). The gradual natureof the increase in the negative force of pas was made possible by the continuing presence of theoriginal negative marker ne, so that varying degrees of negative force could be attributed to eachof the elements while the negative force of the complete construction ‘ne...pas’ remained unaf-fected. Similarly, a+infinitive in the earliest Romanian documents must be situated somewhereon the borderline between final adjunct and complement (cf. Section 6.3.1, example (310)).

What these examples show is that in a diachronic syntactic study of any kind, much care has


to be taken with the use of concepts that may be appropriate for synchronic linguistic ana-lysis. Following Croft (2001, 2004), it was argued in Section 1.3.1 that syntactic categoriesare construction-specific; this section has provided evidence that, diachronically speaking, con-structions themselves are variable entities which are subject to gradual, non-discrete change. Asynthesis of these two observations must lead to the conclusion that using a fixed set of discretecategories would be methodologically inappropriate for the examination of syntactic change. Itwould, in fact, defeat the purpose of diachronic linguistic analysis, which is to examine the pathalong which structures have evolved, if we were to force all evolutionary stages into a single,rigid syntactic framework.

Syntactic categories can, however, be a useful descriptive tool if they are not used as a strait-jacket that a language must be forced into at any cost, but are understood merely as cornerstonesbetween which the elements of a language are located and can move around freely; in Section1.3.6 it will be further discussed in how far the concept of syntactic categories is compatiblewith the description and analysis of syntactic change.

1.3.3 Dependent clauses

In a study that investigates the development of constructions involving clausal subordination,it is important to discuss some different proposals regarding the nature and categorizability ofsubordinate clauses. The discussion in this section will centre on whether a discrete subdivisionis realistic and useful, especially in a framework that assumes structural changes to be gradualand construction-specific.

The term dependent clause will be used to refer specifically to subordinate clauses that aredependent on a main clause15. The term ‘dependent clause’ covers all clauses which, dependingon theoretical framework or personal preference, are variably referred to as complement clauseor clausal argument on the one hand, as well as those known as adjuncts, adverbial clauses orperipheral elements on the other. Such a categorical distinction between different types of de-pendent clauses is not made by all linguists; the term complement, from French complement, hastraditionally been used in Romance linguistics to refer to both types of dependent clauses16 butthe use of which clashes with the more restricted use of complement in recent syntactic theo-ries. Doubts concerning the validity of a clear distinction between these two types of dependentclauses have also been raised by cognitive linguists over the past years (cf. e.g. Langacker, 1987).As the distinction between complements and adjuncts is usually understood to be semantic aswell as syntactic, these two areas will be discussed separately.

The semantic complement <—> adjunct continuum

Among the semantic criteria most frequently proposed for the distinction between complementsand adjuncts (e.g. Matthews, 1981: 124-25) is the clearly semantic notion of whether the respec-tive element is necessary as an integral participant or part in an event, or whether it providescircumstantial or additional background information to the event. For instance, in a sentencesuch as (6), ‘su cartera’ is a necessary part of the event, whereas the location ‘en el parque’ isa circumstantial dependent that provides additional background information about the event;

15These terms will be used throughout most of the present dissertation, but when discussing generative theories,I will adopt the corresponding labels ‘embedded clause’ and ‘matrix clause’.

16Pountain (1998: 395-405), for example, subdivides complement clauses into ‘object complements’, ‘subjectcomplements’ and ‘prepositional complements’, the latter (e.g. ‘...sin ella decir nada.’) largely corresponding towhat in other frameworks might be considered an adjunct.


hence the term peripheral element, which is often used interchangeably with adjunct.

6. Juan busca su cartera en el parque.John searches his wallet in the park

John is looking for his wallet in the park.

The standard formal semantic analysis of the complement/adjunct distinction is that the comple-ment [su cartera] is a semantic argument of the head [busca], whereas the adjunct [en el parque]is a functor that has the searching event [Juan busca su cartera] as its argument. This explainswhy a verb such as buscar can semantically require an object that is searched for, but cannotrequire an adjunct. Instead, it is the adjunct [en el parque] that requires an event as its argument.

Langacker (1987: 278 ff.) argues that such unidirectional semantic valence relations are aninadmissible oversimplification, because localizable activities such as buscar necessarily requirea location, as well as a searcher and an object that is being looked for. This is not the case forall predicates, as the unacceptability of (7) shows.

7. ∗Juan heredo mil millones de pesetas en el parque.John inherited 1000 million of pesetas in the park

∗John inherited a billion pesetas in the park.

One might say that verbs like heredar ‘to inherit’ and enviudar ‘to be widowed’ are not seman-tically subcategorized for place, nor for purpose, as shown in (8).

8. ∗Juan enviudo para...John be-widowed3rd.sg.subj in-order-to...

∗John was widowed in order to...

Langacker (1987: 300) observes that the distinguishing feature between typical ‘complements’and typical ‘adjuncts’ is their degree of importance in the characterization of the event, whichhe refers to as ‘salience’. Thus, ‘en el parque’ is less salient, i.e. less central to the event, than‘su cartera’ in (6). As the entities involved in an event can have a varying degree of salience, thisimplies that, from a semantic perspective, the complement–adjunct distinction is also gradient(cf. also Deutscher, 2000: 9; Croft 1988: 108, 2001: 280).

What must also be taken into account is the pragmatic level, as the discourse situation is acrucial element in determining how central (salient) or relevant a particular piece of informationis for a satisfactory description of an event. If we consider, for instance, a verb such as Spanishleer ‘to read’, the central or relevant additional information will frequently refer to the item orinformation that is being read, as in (9) or (10). Alternatively, many discourse situations do notrequire this additional information, and providing it would in fact flout the Gricean ‘maxim ofrelevance’, as in (11).

9. Estoy leyendo un libro.I am reading a book.

10. Estoy leyendo que el presidente esta muerto.I am reading that the president is dead.

11. ¡No quiero escuchar musica! ¡Estoy leyendo!I don’t want to listen to music! I’m reading!


But there are, similarly, discourse situations in which it is irrelevant to the interlocutors whatis being read, but highly relevant, and thus central to the event, where the reading takes place,as in (12).

12. - ¿Por que no te llevas el libro a casa?- Prefiero leer en la biblioteca. (∗Prefiero leer. ∗Prefiero leer el libro Corazon tan blanco.)

- Why don’t you take the book home?- I prefer to read in the library. (∗I prefer to read. ∗I prefer to read the book A Heart soWhite.)

In (12), [location] is thus the most central and salient element; in this particular discoursesituation it is so crucial that it must obligatorily be mentioned. Mentioning the [patient], onthe other hand, is unacceptable due to a lack of situational relevance.

Sentences (11-12) illustrate the variability of the salience parameter. The event or activity ofreading necessarily involves something being read, but it also necessarily involves a place, a time,etc. Which of these pieces of information are sufficiently relevant to be mentioned is primarilya matter of discourse pragmatics; it would be inappropriate to claim that any particular one ofthem is a priori more central, necessary or obligatory for the description of the event.

It would, however, be an overstatement to claim that the choice of dependents is governedentirely by the discourse context. There are, for instance, transitive verbs like perseguir ‘tochase’, which obligatorily require the [patient] role to be filled, even in contexts where it mightnot be of any pragmatic relevance.

13. ∗Estan persiguiendo.They’re persecuting.

Estan persiguiendo a alguien.They’re persecuting someone.

Such apparently arbitrary lexical restrictions can be explained in terms of entrenchment andconventionalization. Depending on the meaning of a verb, a certain type of additional informa-tion may be particularly relevant in the majority of contexts in which the verb is used. Withperseguir, for instance, it is highly likely that the ‘chased object or being’, i.e. the [patient]will be mentioned, since it is usually of central importance to the act of chasing. Similarly, boththe [theme] and [goal] of poner ‘to put’ are generally sufficiently relevant to be mentioned.As a result, these lexically specific patterns become entrenched and conventionalized, thus turn-ing into syntactic rules or argument structures. This leads straight into the next section, thediscussion of syntactic criteria for the distinction of complements and adjuncts.

Complements and adjuncts as syntactic categories

It is an undeniable fact that certain verbs require certain semantic roles to be obligatorily filled,as discussed above for perseguir and poner. First of all, it must be pointed out that such rulesare synchronic, and by no means cast in stone, but merely the result of the way the individualverb is most frequently used. If, for instance, ‘following’ became a popular sporting activity(like ‘hunting’) in which the object to be followed was highly predictable or irrelevant, it is likelythat speakers would at some point start omitting this information, as its predictability wouldmake it redundant in the context of the sporting activity. This pragmatically triggered changein usage could then easily become generalized, leading to a change in the argument structure ofthe verb and allowing the use of perseguir without an overt direct object.


Nevertheless, synchronically perseguir requires the semantic role [patient] to be filled, whereasothers, such as [time], need not be. But, as a consequence of the argument against univer-sal categories presented in Section 1.3.1, this has no further implications for the status of the[patient] role. All it tells us is that Spanish has a construction containing a verb and an oblig-atory [patient] which perseguir can participate in.

The usual way of determining whether an element has the status of complement or adjunct isby means of a number of distributional tests (cf. e.g. Radford 1988: 226-86). In Section 1.3.1,a logical argument against the usefulness of distributional tests for the purpose of syntacticcategories was presented, based on the fact that distributional patterns in different constructionsdo not match, which makes it is an essentially arbitrary decision which test should be diagnosticof syntactic category. This is confirmed, for the classification of dependent elements, by thefollowing examples.

The ‘do so’ (pro-V-bar) test

As briefly mentioned above, the verb poner ‘to put’ requires both the semantic roles [theme]and [goal] to be occupied (14); for the verbs comprar ‘to buy’ and olvidar ‘to forget’, on theother hand, only [theme] is obligatory (15-16).

14. Pedro pone el libro en la mesa.Peter puts the book on the table.

∗Pedro pone el libro.Peter puts the book.

15. Pedro compra el libro en la tienda.Peter buys the book in the shop.

Pedro compra el libro.Peter buys the book.

16. Pedro olvida el libro en la mesa.Peter forgets the book on the table.

Pedro olvida el libro.Peter forgets the book.

If we were to take obligatoriness as the criterion for complement status, the dividing line wouldhave to be drawn between the complement ‘en la mesa’ in (14) on the one hand, and the adjunct‘en la mesa/tienda’ in (15-16) on the other.

A different test to determine complement status, based on the generativist assumption thatadjuncts are structurally more distant from the verb than complements, predicts that hacerlo‘do so’ cannot stand for constituents below the V-bar-level. This means that hacerlo can replaceeither the verb with its complements and adjuncts, or the verb with its complements but withoutits adjuncts, but not the verb without its complements. The ungrammaticality of (17b), in whichhacerlo cannot replace ‘poner su libro’ without ‘en la mesa’, thus confirms the status of ‘en lamesa’ as complement of poner, while the fact that it can replace ‘comprar su libro’ without ‘enel mercado’ in (18b) confirms the status of ‘en el mercado’ as an adjunct of comprar.

17. a. Pedro va a [poner su libro en la mesa]V y Juan va a hacerloV tambien.Peter will put his book on the table and John will do so, too.

b. ∗Pedro va a [poner su libro en la mesa]V y Juan va a hacerlo en la silla.Peter will put his book on the table and John will do so on the chair.


18. a. Pedro va a [[comprar su libro]V en la tienda]V y Juan va a hacerloV tambien.Peter will buy his book in the shop and John will do so, too.

b. Pedro va a [[comprar su libro]V en la tienda]V y Juan va a hacerloV en el mercado.Peter will buy his book in the shop and John will do so in the market.

However, if we consider (19), this test for complement/adjunct status fails to match the resultsof the test for obligatoriness illustrated in (14-16): according to the pro-V-bar test, en la mesain (19) is a complement of olvidar, whilst the obligatoriness test categorizes it as an adjunct.

19. ∗Pedro va a [olvidar su libro en la mesa]V y Juan va a hacerlo en la silla.Peter will forget his book on the table and John will do so on the chair.

Once again, it has been shown that syntactic categories are not definable beyond the level ofindividual constructions, as their distribution among constructions does not match.

Clausal complements

The final example of a distributional mismatch in the area of complements and adjuncts concernsclausal complementation. Clausal complements are frequently defined either as “clauses whichare arguments of a predicate” or as “clauses that function as subject and/or object of a verb”.Despite the fact that ‘argument’ is an essentially semantic notion, whilst ‘subject’ and ‘object’are purely syntactic categories, there is a tendency to equate the two definitions. Givon (1993:515), for instance, claims that “sentential complements are propositions functioning in the roleof either subject or object argument of the verb.” Even more explicitly, Noonan (1985: 42)writes: “By complementation we mean the syntactic situation which arises when a notionalsentence or a predication is an argument of a predicate. For our purposes, a predication can beviewed as an argument of a predicate if it functions as the subject or object of that predicate.”Noonan’s examples further imply that object complements function as direct objects of verbs.Leaving subject complements aside for the time being, the general assumption that a complement‘functions as’ the (direct) object of the main verb is accurate for sentences such as (20-22).

20. Direct object NP:

Quiero un cafe.I want a coffee.

21. Finite DO complement:

Quiero que tomes un cafe.I want you to have a coffee.

22. Infinitival DO complement:

Quiero tomar un cafe.I want to have a coffee.

There is, however, a class of main verbs that participate in a less straightforward complementa-tion pattern. Consider example (23).

23. Pedro cuenta que has fracasado.Peter tells that you have failed.

∗Pedro cuenta tu fracaso.Peter tells your failure.

Pedro cuenta de/sobre tu fracaso.Peter tells of/about your failure.


If ‘functioning as’ is to be understood as ‘having the same distribution as’, then we face a seri-ous problem explaining why the clausal complement does not require the preposition that thecorresponding NP does. Ascribing ‘dummy status’ to the preposition does not resolve the issue,as it nevertheless constitutes an additional element that cannot be accounted for if object NPsand complement clauses are considered to occur in the same syntactic environment.

The reason for this mismatch is a conflation of the semantic and the syntactic level. The sen-tences in (23) are semantically, but not syntactically equivalent. Deutscher (2000: 7-13) drawsa clear distinction between an object, “a syntactic surface category, recognizable (with varyingdegrees of confidence across languages) by factors such as case marking, word order, or pas-sivization”, and an argument, which is “a (semantic) category which denotes intimacy in therelation between an element and its predicate.” If we understand complements only to be thesame type of argument as the corresponding nominals, but not the same type of object, thiscan account for the absence of the oblique marker (i.e. the preposition) in the examples above.While different semantic case-roles are explicitly marked by prepositions such as de and sobre,the corresponding finite complements with que do not always require this overt marking; theymerely mark an “intimate link between the predicate and its clausal argument.”17(Deutscher,2000: 10)

This constitutes yet another distributional mismatch: clausal complements, so-called ‘objectclauses’, occur in a far wider range of syntactic environments than canonical NP direct objects.Whilst the construction in (20-21) assigns them to the same category, thus making them inter-changeable, the two different constructions in (23) require a clear distinction between dependentclauses and object NPs.

1.3.4 Prepositional constructions

In line with the argument that categories are defined in terms of the constructions they parti-cipate in, presented in Sections 1.3.1 and 1.3.2 following Croft (2004), I will limit my definitionof the term ‘preposition’ to its role in relation to the constructions under investigation, depen-dent clauses.18 I will adopt a broad formal definition of the term ‘preposition’ as a componentof Spanish constructions involving a dependent clause; the same definition also holds for Por-tuguese and Romanian.

In general terms, a preposition can be defined as the element [P] in constructions of the generictype shown in (24).

24. [ [MAIN CLAUSE] [P] [INFINITIVAL DEPENDENT CLAUSE] ]

A construction of this type is presented in (25), in which the [INFINITIVAL DEPENDENTCLAUSE (IDC)] represents the purpose of the [MAIN CLAUSE (MC)].

25. [ [MC] [para] [IDC] ]

[ [Trabaja] [para] [ganar dinero] ]He works to earn money.

17With reference to the corresponding English that.18This does not in anyway imply a denial of the fact that the same lexical elements also participate in other

constructions, notably in connection with NPs. However, there is no uniform class of prepositions shared byboth construction types, which is evidenced by the fact that certain ‘NP-prepositions’ available for the nominalconstruction are not available for the prepositional infinitive construction; for Spanish this group includes detras‘behind’, sobre ‘over’, durante ‘during’, etc.


That the overall meaning of this construction depends partly on the lexical meaning of thepreposition itself is clearly visible from the fact that para has final meaning in other construc-tions as well. But at the same time, it is the construction as a whole that carries the followingrelational meaning:

{[IDC] stands in relation to [MC] in the way specified by [para]}

How much the preposition’s lexical meaning contributes to the meaning of the construction asa whole is a construction-specific parameter19; this is illustrated by the construction in (26).

26. [ [MC] [a] [IDC] ]

[ [Aprende] [a] [leer] ]He learns to read.

In contrast to the construction with [para], this construction carries the meaning:

{[IDC] stands in relation to [MC] in a way specified by [MC]},

not

∗{[IDC] stands in relation to [MC] in the way specified by [a]}.

It is not difficult to see that the relation expressed in [[MC] [a] [IDC]] corresponds closelyto what might be termed a typical ‘complement relation’20, while [[MC] [para] [IDC]] corre-sponds to an ‘adjunct relation’. The advantage of this construction-based model, however, isthat it can also account for the intermediate stages between the two extremes, as the followinganalysis of the diachronic development of the construction [[MC] [a] [IDC]] exemplifies.21

Originally, the meaning of the construction [[MC] [a] [IDC]] can be assumed to have been:

{[IDC] stands in relation to [MC] in a way specified by [a] (in its final meaning)}.

But this meaning gradually evolved to finally arrive at its present-day meaning:

{[IDC] stands in relation to [MC] in a way specified by [MC]}.

This is due to a process of reanalysis, described in more detail in Chapter 7, during which thesemantic contribution of a to the meaning of the construction gradually diminished. During thetransitional stage, the semantic contribution of the construction as a whole can be assumed tohave been neither the original one, nor the present-day one, but rather a combination of thetwo, something like:

19That the lexical meaning of the preposition is not necessarily linked to the meaning of the construction iscorroborated by the cognate construction in Old Romanian, where the preposition had disappeared from thelanguage as a whole, but occurred in the infinitival construction in a range of variably complement- and adjunct-like usages (cf. Section 6.3.1).

20However, according to Givon (1984: 519), the presence of a complementizer of this kind nevertheless tendsto constitute a lesser degree of integration between the main clause and its complement than there would be inthe absence of a complementizer.

21Cf. Chapter 7. for a detailed account of this process.


[IDC] stands in relation to [MC] (a)in a way specified by [a] (in its final meaning) AND/OR22

(b)in a way specified by [MC]}.

The weighting between the components (a) and (b) gradually shifted from predominantly (a) topredominantly (b), until (a) was finally lost altogether. This process will be discussed in moredetail in Sections 4.4 and 7.1.

The fact that it has been possible for the construction with [a] to evolve independently, acquiringan overall meaning that differs from that of other similar constructions such as the one with[para], indicates that we are, indeed, dealing with two separate constructions. Whilst theseconstructions do, in the modern language, represent opposite ends of the semantic complement–adjunct continuum, the construction-based model proposed here provides a method of analysisthat can account for less clear-cut cases as well as gradual transition between the two extremes ofthe continuum. A currently incipient case of this kind, the Portuguese construction with [para],will be presented in Section 7.4. The fact that the preposition a has, in this construction, lostits lexical content and become a purely functional element justifies giving it a separate label; asthe construction it forms part of expresses a prototypical semantic complement relation, I willuse the term prepositional complementizer, retaining the element ‘prepositional’ to indi-cate that it is nevertheless located on the continuum shared with other prepositional dependentclauses.

1.3.5 Compound prepositions and conjunctions

Compound prepositions

The term ‘preposition’ will, in this study, be understood to include etymologically monomor-phemic prepositions as well as ‘compound prepositions’ such as Spanish ‘en vez de’ ‘insted of’,Portuguese ‘apesar de’ ‘despite’ or Romanian ‘ın loc de’ ‘instead of’. Though it is uncontro-versial that such ‘compound prepositions’ contain an element that corresponds etymologicallyto a noun, they have become fully grammaticalized prepositions. A range of features of these‘compound prepositions’ supports this analysis.

Most importantly for this study, ‘compound prepositions’ occur in the same construction typeas the etymologically monomorphemic ones. For instance, the constructions in (27) are entirelyparallel, both in form and in the meaning their constructional meaning.

27. [ [MC] [para] [IDC] ]

[ [Trabaja] [para] [ganar dinero] ]He works to earn money.

[ [MC] [en vez de] [IDC]

[ [Trabaja] [en vez de] [dormir] ]He works instead of sleeping.

The meaning in both cases is:

{[IDC] stands in relation to [MC] in the way specified by [P]}.

22The juxtaposition of AND and OR represents the gradient nature of the weighting between these components:even when one component is the predominant one (OR), the other one may also apply to a lesser extent as well(AND).


Regarding the semantic status of the noun, its literal meaning is no longer present: neither doesthe notion ‘despite’ contain a component of regret or worry, nor does ‘instead of’ necessarilyinvolve a turn, place, or location. Syntactically, too, such ‘compound prepositions’ are fullygrammaticalized. Their distribution is equivalent to that of non-compound prepositions, andthey consist of invariable morphological sequences with no possibility of other lexical or mor-phological elements being inserted. Furthermore, if the etymologically separate elements werestill to be understood as separate syntactic constituents, the lack of an article would constitutea syntactic anomaly in all three languages.23 The fact that they retain an orthographic formthat to some extent reflects their etymological origin must thus not be understood as indicationof non-prepositional syntactic status.

Compound conjunctions

In the statistical section of this study, comparisons will be drawn between the diachronic de-velopment of prepositional infinitives and the corresponding finite dependent clauses. The con-structions these finite clauses occur in are similar to the prepositional construction(s) introducedin Section 1.3.4 and can, correspondingly, be described generically as in (28).

28. [ [MAIN CLAUSE] [CONJUNCTION] [FINITE DEPENDENT CLAUSE] ]

In the same way that was explained for the prepositional construction, all elements that canoccupy the [CONJ] position can be defined as conjunctions; again, this is a construction-specificclassification. The majority of conjunctions are, from an etymological point of view, ‘compoundconjunctions’, e.g. sin que ‘without’, antes de que ‘before’; also porque ‘because’ and aunque‘though’. The meaning of the constructions that these conjunctions participate in is similar tothat of constructions with the semantically (and often morphologically) related prepositions. Itis perhaps worth mentioning that the construction for the conjunction que has a meaning thatsemantically resembles that of the construction of prepositional complementizers such as a.

1.3.6 Arguments for the continued use of traditional category labels

Having rejected the principle of uniform syntactic categories, synchronically among differentconstructions as well as within individual constructions through the course of their develop-ment, the traditional category labels are nevertheless useful.

This is because in many cases, a correspondence among distributional patterns can be identifiedfor a comparatively large group of elements that do show a correspondence in their behaviouracross constructions and through time; these elements can be considered prototypical elementsof a traditional ‘cross-constructional’ syntactic category.

A prototypical member of such a traditional category would be one that passes a certain num-ber of distributional tests. Which specific tests we choose to include in the list will remainessentially arbitrary, but we would be guided by the aim to group together a relatively largenumber of elements that show a relatively high degree of cross-constructional correspondence.A prototypical Spanish direct object complement, for instance, might be defined as one that isobligatory, must appear in a position right-adjacent to the verb, and can function as the subjectof a passive sentence; semantic criteria can also be included, so we might add the requirementfor it to have the semantic role [theme]. This selection of criteria is based purely on the factthat all of them are satisfied in a relatively large number of cases in a specific language24; the

23Normally, a noun that has a (prepositional) modifier must also have an article.24Certain distributional correspondence patterns are also cross-linguistically common, but by no means univer-

sal.


more criteria we pick, the smaller the number of prototypical cases we will be left with.

Having defined a prototypical member of such a cross-constructional category, it is also possibleto identify less typical cases that satisfy some, but not all of the criteria selected. If a suffi-cient number of criteria are satisfied, we might still include these non-prototypical cases in thecross-constructional category. However, there will also be cases that share certain features withthe prototypical members of one cross-constructional category, but a similar number of featureswith the prototypical members of another or several other cross-constructional categories.

It must be emphasized that such a classificatory system contains several arbitrary elements andtherefore has no analytic value in itself; it is nothing more than a convenient shorthand way ofsaying that a group of elements shares a certain number of features which happen to co-occurquite often; non-prototypical members can further be defined in terms of the specific featuresthey do not share with the prototypical members.

As long as the syntactic elements we are analyzing generally match the syntactic prototypeswe have defined, using the established category labels is convenient and largely unproblematic,especially if they are defined on the basis of what is common and typical in the analyzed language.

But applying the same category labels to diachronic syntactic analysis can prove more prob-lematic. If the category labels we try to use are defined on the basis of typical combinationsof features and distributions of the modern language, this must not necessarily match the mosttypical combinations at an earlier stage of the same language. Indeed, it is the very object ofdiachronic syntactic analysis to identify and examine those elements that have changed, whichincludes changes in individual distribution patterns.

A second difficulty is that syntactic change is a gradual process, and it is not necessarily clearwhether a criterion for membership in a cross-constructional category is satisfied or not. In thecase of semantic criteria, this is uncontroversial, as semantic shift is in most cases gradient; recallthe case of French pas in Section 1.3.2, in which the particle pas took on a gradually increasingdegree of negative force over the centuries. That the semantic distinction between traditionalcategories such as complement and adjunct is also gradient was discussed in detail in Section1.3.3.

Similar problems arise when checking whether a specific distributional criterion is satisfied. Avery practical difficulty is the fact that native speaker judgements are unavailable for earlierstages of the language. Though it is possible to determine whether a syntactic structure wasgrammatical at the time on the basis of the documents we have, the absence of a structure fromthe available corpus cannot be understood as proof that the construction was ungrammatical atthe time; the strongest legitimate conclusion would be that it was not particularly commonlyused. This leads straight to a second, more fundamental issue: even if a few sporadic instances ofa structure can be found, does this make it a fully integrated part of the language? Throughoutthe statistical sections of this study, it will become apparent that syntactic structures do notappear suddenly as a fully-fledged part of the language, but enter it gradually, their frequencyincreasing over time. This permits an analysis by which the grammaticality of a structure isgradient, its rise in frequency mirroring an increasing degree of grammaticality. Though rejectedby some theoretical frameworks, the gradient nature of grammaticality is a well-known fact thatcan frequently be observed when asking informants for native speaker judgements about a struc-ture that occurs only sporadically; the answer in such cases will often be something like: “Onemight say that, but one wouldn’t normally.”

Though the non-discrete nature of linguistic change adds to the difficulty of applying traditional

1.4. PRAGMATIC CAUSATION IN SYNTAX 19

category labels, these problems are not necessarily insurmountable; where a criterion for mem-bership in a particular cross-constructional category is only partially satisfied, such cases can beunderstood to be less prototypical than other cases that fully satisfy the same criterion.

It may therefore be concluded that traditional category labels, though essentially arbitrary, canbe usefully applied in the description of language change, as long as we keep in mind thatmembership in these categories is not a binary property. This is particularly important whenexamining changes in which an element shifts from being a prototypical member of one categoryto being a prototypical member of a different one; in such cases, there is bound to be a stageof ambiguity somewhere along the way, for which neither of the two labels would be adequate.Such a situation will be presented in Chapter 7.

1.4 Pragmatic causation in syntax

Pragmatics is perhaps the subdiscipline of linguistics most closely related to semantics, and is“usually conceived as a branch of semantics concerned with the meanings that sentences havein particular contexts in which they are uttered” (Matthews, 1997: 290). At the same time,however, it is perceived as opposed to truth conditional semantics based on Frege’s (1892) Prin-ciples of Compositionality, which constitutes the core of much of modern semantics25. It wasoriginally conceived by Morris (1971: 43-54) as opposed to syntax as well as semantics, coveringthe field of relations between signs and their interpretants.

A discussion of the intricate subdivision of language into such categories is not the aim of this dis-sertation. It will be assumed throughout that the meaning of any utterance is the compositionalproduct of the semantic content of the individual words it contains, the syntactic structures cho-sen to combine them, and the (linguistic and extra-linguistic) pragmatic context of the utterance.

The focus will be on the interface between meaning and syntax. It is assumed that the objectiveof any normal utterance is to convey information as precisely as necessary but also as economi-cally as possible, in line with the Gricean Maxims of Conversation (Grice, 1989). To attain thisobjective, the language user can make syntactic choices, and these choices are influenced by thesemantic content as well as the pragmatic context of the individual utterance.

An important factor in this process is speaker expectation: everyone has certain patternsof expectations concerning the way in which the elements of a sentence are likely to interact;these expectation patterns are a reflection of our knowledge and experience of the way thethings represented by the words interact in the real world. Speaker expectation is, thus, theproduct of word and construction meaning plus the individual speaker’s experience. The relativepredictability of how entities in the real world tend to interact allows the speaker to develop hisown expectation patterns, but such expectation patterns cannot themselves be understood aspart of semantics, as they are merely a default interpretation that is applied if no contextualindications specify a different pattern of interaction, as illustrated in the following Spanishexample.

29. Las dos chicas se miran.the two girls REFL look3rd.sg.pres

The two girls look at each other.

25“Formal semantics ... is generally taken to be complementary with pragmatics, ... the study of that part ofmeaning which is not purely truth conditional...” (Lyons, 1981: 170-171)


30. Las dos chicas se miran en el espejo.the two girls REFL look3rd.sg.pres in the mirror

The two girls look at themselves in the mirror.

It can be observed that, according to our knowledge of the real world, the default assumption(29) for mirarse with two agents is one of reciprocity, but that certain contexts can override thisdefault interpretation in favour of a literal reflexive interpretation (30).

Throughout this dissertation, it will become apparent that default assumptions, conditioned bywhat is perceived to be the pragmatically most likely relationship between constituents, are acrucial factor synchronically in the choice and analysis of syntactic structures, and consequentlyalso diachronically in syntactic change.

1.4.1 Synchrony: pragmatic factors in syntactic choice

Syntactic choice is an omnipresent feature of language, as a speaker is obliged to choose aparticular structure for every sentence he utters. In the majority of cases, the semantic contentof a sentence is directly responsible for determining, or at least severely limiting, the syntacticoptions a speaker has. A transitive verb like Spanish castigar ‘to punish’, for instance, projectsthe semantic need for the semantic roles [Agent] and [Patient] to the syntactic level, at whichthe corresponding [Subject] and [Object] represent the semantic roles. An alternative projectionwould be the corresponding passive clause, in which the prepositional phrase represents theagent and the subject represents the patient.

31. Pedro castiga al perro.[Peter punishes]S [DO-MARKER+the dog]DO

Peter punishes the dog.

32. El perro es castigado por Pedro.[the dog]S is punished [by Peter]PO

The dog is punished by Peter.

Banal as this example may be, the point is that while part of the syntactic structure is deter-mined by the semantic content of the sentence, the speaker is left with more than one syntacticoption for his sentence. Whilst even strict followers of formal syntactic models generally acceptthat argument structure and verbal subcategorization are at the interface between semanticsand syntax, the corresponding interface between pragmatics and syntax is less widely recog-nized. This is partly due to the fact that pragmatic meaning is an even less uniform categorythan straightforward semantics. For the choice between the active and the passive constructionin the example above, there are at least two rather different pragmatic factors involved. Oneis register, the other is topicalization. Colloquial Spanish has a certain resistance to the use ofthe ser-passive, whilst journalistic register involves a much more frequent use of the structure.Furthermore, ‘el perro’ is topicalized in sentence (32) but not in (31). It is obvious that suchnotions cannot be integrated into any syntactic theory in which syntax is an autonomous entity;the fact that speakers can choose among structures calls for an analysis of what influences ordetermines this choice, be it the linguistic or social context, discourse pragmatics, or speakerexpectation.

Until not too long ago, pragmatics was often sidelined by linguists because it was regarded asintrinsically difficult to systematize, due to its dependence on individual contexts and utter-ances. Indeed, during most of the 20th century, Structuralists as well as Generativists were

1.4. PRAGMATIC CAUSATION IN SYNTAX 21

almost exclusively concerned with understanding and describing the abstract underlying systemin language(s), consciously disregarding the role of the speaker in their analysis.

In recent years, however, a renewed interest in pragmatic causation within syntax has arisen,and linguists have begun to follow in the footsteps of such scholars as Whitney (1875) and Breal(1983 [1897]), who “believed that language has to be defined in relation to human thought andaction.”(Nerlich, 1996: 70-71) In Romance Linguistics, the pragmatic approach to syntax hasbeen revived by such scholars as Manoliu-Manea, Klein-Andreu, Silva-Corvalan, and Pountain,and it has successfully been applied to such complex areas as the choice of mood in the fi-nite complement (Klein, 1975), the various syntactic functions of the reflexive verbal structure(Pountain, 2000). Person assignment in infinitival clauses, an area that is of direct relevance tothis study, has been examined from a pragmatic point of view by Comrie (1984, 1985) cross-linguistically, and by Pountain (1995, 1998a) for Spanish and Portuguese.

1.4.2 Diachrony: pragmatic factors in syntactic change

It is widely accepted that reanalysis, as briefly exemplified in Section 1.2.1 above, is a majorfactor in syntactic change, whether seen as a component of grammaticalization (following Meil-let, 1912), or as an autonomous mechanism in its own right (cf. e.g. Harris & Campbell, 1995:61-93, Croft 2000: 117-44). In fact, Harris & Campbell argue that “Alteration of syntacticpatterns takes place by means of specific mechanisms of change. We hypothesize that there areonly three basic mechanisms: reanalysis, extension, and borrowing.”

There appears to be less clarity or consensus regarding the reasons for language users to re-analyse some structurally ambiguous constructions, but not others; explanations range from theinfluence of language contact to increased functional efficiency or linguistic optimality (cf. e.g.Langacker, 1977).

With the renewed interest in pragmatics and the interface between linguistic performance andunderlying structure, the important role of pragmatics as a central factor in language changehas also gained widespread recognition. Traugott & Dasher (2002: 1), for instance, “show thatthere are predictable paths for semantic change [which] recur so often and across totally unre-lated languages [because they are] intrinsically bound up with the cognitive and communicativeprocesses by which pragmatic meanings come to be conventionalized and reanalysed...”. Similarprinciples are also understood to be involved in many instances of syntactic change, such asstructural reanalysis, as exemplified in Harris & Campbell (1995: 61-96).

One way in which pragmatics contributes to the process of reanalysis is by virtue of the fact that,in the real-world context of utterances, certain patterns of interaction or relation between theentities represented by the constituents of a sentence are more likely to occur than others. Asthese patterns are generally known to the language user, he can, therefore, expect particularlycommon or likely relational patterns to be the norm. Confronted with structurally ambiguousutterances, it is thus only natural for him to choose the interpretation that most closely rep-resents the expected default situation. This is a specific form of the mechanism of pragmaticinference (Croft, 2000: 133), in which a contextual parameter that frequently co-occurs with astructure is reanalysed as part of the structure itself, and the former meaning of the structureeventually gets lost.

A simple illustration is the currently ongoing process of reanalysis of the verb tener in Spanish.The original meaning of tener is ‘to have, to hold’, but it is currently acquiring the additional


function of auxiliary marker of perfectivity when used with the past participle of a growingnumber of transitive verbs26. In sentence (33), it is used in its original meaning.

33. Ahora tengo el coche, comprado y pagado.now I.hold the car, bought and paid

Now I’ve got the car, bought and paid for.

Relatively frequently, for example in the presence of a pronominal object, the verb tener andthe past participle will appear next to each other, as in (34).

34. Ahora lo tengo [comprado].now it I.have bought

Now I’ve got it, bought.

Anyone who knows how the real world functions will realize that if someone has got somethingthat has been bought, the most likely scenario is that he/she has bought it. In the vast majorityof communicative situations, tengo in sentence (34) can thus be understood to express perfectiveaspect without jeopardizing the functionality of the communicative process. Whilst the speakermay intend to say sentence (34), the hearer may inadvertently parse it as (35).

35. Ahora lo [tengo comprado].

now it [I.have bought]

Now [I have bought] it.

The final step in this process of reanalysis is for the re-parsed structure to be transferred fromsuch ambiguous contexts to sentences with a structure that does not allow for ambiguity, as in(36).

36. Ahora [tengo comprado] el coche.

now [I.have bought] the car

Now [I’ve bought] the car.

In this case, an important precondition for reanalysis is the fact that the language user knows,from his experience of the real world, that the possession of an object usually entails its previousacquisition. But this alone may not be sufficient to trigger reanalysis. A second pragmatic fac-tor that comes into play are the Gricean maxims of quantity and relevance, according to whichthe hearer will expect any utterance not to contain more information than required, and onlyrelevant information, and he will interpret the utterance to best satisfy these maxims. Thus,sentence (34) is reanalysed as (35) because the latter contains information about the process ofbuying as well as the status of ownership; in the absence of any contextual cue to the contrary,the hearer must therefore assume that all extractable information is deemed relevant by thespeaker. In Chapter 7, it will be shown that the relevance parameter is a crucial factor in thedevelopment of Romance prepositional complementizers.

At this point it must be pointed out that we are talking about individual utterances, reana-lyzable only where the pragmatics of the available linguistic and extra-linguistic context do noteliminate the structural ambiguity. Syntactic change will, however, not be triggered by anysingle individual utterance. But if the proportion of contexts in which reanalysis can and doestake place is high, this will lead to a situation in which the reanalysed interpretation becomes

26For a detailed synchronic description of its usage, see Harre (1991).

1.5. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: REASONS AND METHODS 23

the default analysis, as mentioned in Section 1.2.1 above and discussed further in 1.5.1.

The final step, the analogical extension of the reanalysed structure to syntactic contexts inwhich the original usage would not be possible, can be seen as part of a grammaticalizationprocess, with several of the typical hallmarks described by Lehmann (1985: 306-308). Amongother things, reanalysed tener is becoming increasingly semantically bleached, turning into afunctional aspect marker that can be used in an increasing number of syntactic and semanticcontexts. Sentence (36) illustrates how the syntagmatic variability of auxiliary tener is reduced,as it must immediately precede the past participle.

In what manner the extension of the perceived equivalence to other contexts proceeds is oneof the central questions this dissertation examines. The data regarding the evolution of theRomance prepositional infinitive suggest a gradual extension, item by item, in a way similar tolexical diffusion of sound changes, as proposed by Sturtevant (1917) and Wang (1969). Crucially,such diffusional extension does not mean that a change must necessarily spread in a regular fash-ion to all structurally equivalent environments.

Such gradual diffusion is linked to the fact that reanalysis is itself not a discrete process. Asingle structure can, even synchronically, be used in its original and its newly acquired, re-analysed sense. In genuinely ambiguous contexts, (34) and (35) are not distinguishable, eithersyntactically or pragmatically, and there is, indeed, no reason to assume that the speaker makesa clear choice between the two. This non-discrete nature is also reflected semantically by thefact that, depending on the context, the auxiliary tener can retain a variable degree of thesemantic notion ‘to hold’. ‘Lo tengo pensado’ ‘I’ve thought it out’, for instance, retains somesense of holding the result of ones thoughts in ones mind. On the other hand, in ‘hace comotres meses lo tengo perdido en este maldito cuarto’27, ‘it’s about three months since I lost it inthis damned room’, the semantics of the verb perder and our knowledge of the way things in-teract in the real world makes it obvious that losing something generally rules out still holding it.

Summing up, it can be said that syntactic changes of this type are made possible by the factthat a construction is used ambiguously in certain pragmatic contexts. If such ambiguity occursfrequently, this allows for a gradual extension to contexts in which the reanalysed meaning ismore central than the original one, and finally to contexts in which the original meaning ispragmatically unlikely or logically impossible. As the process of extension is a gradual one, thecontexts it spreads to first are those that are most similar to the originally ambiguous one. Forinstance, the fact that tener can, at present, only function as auxiliary with transitive verbsshows how a certain link to its original meaning and argument structure still exists.

1.5 Statistical analysis: reasons and methods

1.5.1 Why statistics? – The motivation for a statistical approach

Much of this study is based on statistical data. Contemporary syntacticians sometimes arguethat statistics are not relevant in syntax, as the primary object of syntactic analysis is to deter-mine the grammaticality or ungrammaticality of constructions, and to identify the underlyingstructures they are governed by.

However, such a narrow approach to syntax overlooks the fact that some structures are usedmore commonly than others, and that acceptability or grammaticality of a structure can be

27Sergio Madrigal Gonzalez: Los amantes, http://www.geocities.com/albisamm/1999/v-30/serg-30.html


gradient, as briefly discussed in Section 1.3.6.

Furthermore, such a limited approach cannot do justice to the diachronic dimension. It deliv-ers a series of separate synchronic snapshots, but is unable to relate them to one another ina meaningful way. If we accept that pragmatically-based syntactic changes do not occur in adiscrete fashion, then the transitional period must be accounted for as a process, not a series ofdiscrete grammars, especially if the aim is to explain, rather than merely describe, the change. Adifferent approach is thus necessary to analyse development through time, which, as describedin section 1.4, is linked to the frequency with which a particular construction is used: morefrequent use of a structure means that the structure has become more acceptable or normal forlanguage users; such increased ‘normality’ generally leads to loss of expressive force, to semanticbleaching and grammaticalization.

The concept that the quantitative study of language is important for our understanding of lin-guistic structure and change, as first proposed by Zipf in his Introduction to Dynamic Philology(1935), was only adopted sporadically by others until the late 1970s. In recent years, however,the renewed interest in pragmatics, paired with the advent of digital technology and the avail-ability of large annotated text corpora, has led to a marked rise in studies of token frequency28.Wanner (2003) goes so far as to claim that all linguistic research is overtly or implicitly corpus-based, as the utilization of linguistic data without corpus (or questionnaire) is merely anecdotal,producing accidental results.

In current theories of language change, frequency plays an important role. In cognitive lin-guistics, a central notion is that of the ‘construction’ (eg. Langacker, 1987), essentially a con-ventionalized, entrenched routine (Croft, 2004). Viewed diachronically, new constructions thusemerge when a particular pattern occurs often enough to become entrenched and conventional-ized. In grammaticalization, which by some linguists has been elevated to a theory in its ownright (Bybee et al., 1994: 4; Heine, 1997: 6), one of the central principles is an increase in thefrequency of the structure undergoing grammaticalization, which is seen as a cause for semanticand phonological bleaching (cf. e.g. McMahon, 1994: 160-173).

One way of applying and testing such theories is by means of synchronic corpus analysis, whichcan yield valuable information concerning changes in progress, as shown in numerous contribu-tions to a collection of papers on Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure (Bybee &Hopper, 2001). However, such accounts fall short of revealing long-term developments and canoften merely speculate what the eventual outcome of a change in progress will be.

Partly due to the technical difficulties involved in compiling the appropriate corpora, statistically-based diachronic studies were, for a long time, comparatively scarce, but this has been changingin recent years. Dealing with pragmatic factors involved in changing patterns of clausal com-plementation, there are textually-based studies by Deutscher (2000) on the emergence of finitecomplementation in Akkadian, and by Schøsler (2000) and Van Reenen & Schøsler (1993) oninfinitival complementation in Old French.

These recent advances make a comparative study based on the diachronic development of tokenfrequency particularly timely, as the additional comparative dimension will not only allow fora more informed evaluation and interpretation of the data for individual languages, but alsoenable us to identify more general, cross-linguistic patterns of development.

28Token frequency is based on the real number of occurrences of a particular feature, conceptually opposed tothe number of types of structures the feature is found in.


The usefulness of comparative diachronic statistics

Tracing back the usage of a structure can be expected to provide information about the contextsit originally emerged in, as well as the way in which it subsequently evolved in the respectivelanguages. As pointed out in Section 1.4.2, a crucial variable in pragmatically-based change ishow frequently utterances containing the structure occur in actual language usage.

If the usage of the same structure differs among related languages, tracing it back as far aspossible in the individual languages may allow us to establish whether it is likely that there isa common origin, or whether it might be safe to claim that it has emerged independently ineach language. Such polygenesis can be coincidental, or it can be due to the presence of thesame factors in all the languages involved. Even if the structure only evolves after the languagesare clearly separated, this does not necessarily rule out common causation: as pointed out inSection 1.2.2 above, common inherited structures may predispose the respective languages tochange in similar ways, or independent but similar changes in more than one language may becaused or favoured by more general pragmatic and cognitive principles which are not specific toany one language or even language family. Parallel changes in more than one language, even ifthey take place independently, can therefore well have a common cause29.

Diachronic statistics, i.e. charting the frequency of a construction through time, is a methodto reveal its evolutionary path. The limited amount of textual data from the past makes itimpossible to determine the exact point in time at which the construction was first used. If wedo find a single token, it might nevertheless not be an integral part of most speakers’ languageat that time. On the other hand, the structure might have already been in use long beforeit first appears in a preserved document. If, however, a statistically relevant change in usagefrequency can be detected, this provides information about more general trends in the overallway speakers use the language.

These trends can then be compared across languages to reveal similarities and differences in theway the structure has evolved. Where the use of the structure diverges between two languages,usage frequency data allows us to pinpoint at what stage of a structure’s development, andin which contexts, speakers of language A began regularly to use it in a way that speakers oflanguage B did not.

Parallel developments are likely to be triggered by the presence of similar conditions or princi-ples in both languages; by comparing the paths along which related constructions emerge andgain popularity in each of the two languages, the principles and conditions common to both canbe identified as the relevant ones. This will be one of the objectives of the comparison of theSpanish and Portuguese data in Chapter 5.

A further use of comparative statistical analysis is the fact that it has some predictive potential:if the distribution and development of a structure in language A resembles that found duringearlier stages of development in languages B and C, this suggests not only similar causation,but also that the future development in A may proceed along similar lines as it has done in Band C. This situation, it will be seen in Chapter 6, applies to the use of prepositional infinitivesin present-day Romanian.

29Contact between the languages can complicate the analysis; see Section 1.2.2.


1.5.2 Data selection and statistical procedures

The diachronic corpora analysed in this dissertation are made up of the texts listed in appen-dices A, B and C for Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian, respectively.30 Though some efforthas been made to provide a varied sample of texts, any such selection must be arbitrary to acertain extent. Due to the relatively large number of texts and the length of the period underinvestigation, it is hoped that any local imbalances will not have a significant effect on the gen-eral conclusions that can be drawn from the statistical analysis.

The corpora do not contain Latin American texts, as including them indiscriminately would riskdistorting the data by ignoring split developments between the Old and New World varieties.A separate analysis of the differences between the Iberian varieties and their Latin Americancounterparts would, nevertheless, be of great interest and a promising object of future research,particularly because any split development could be compared to the earlier split between Span-ish and Portuguese.

Any approach concerned with the usage frequency of linguistic structures should be based onthe greatest possible corpus of data, so that it can be assumed to be largely representative ofthe language as a whole. Being representative does not merely require a large number of textsor words; the corpus must also be made up of a balanced mixture from a variety of backgrounds,linguistic registers, specialist jargons, and other varieties that make up the language in question,as it is beyond the scope of this study to produce differentiated series of data for such individualsubvarieties. The need for a balanced mixture faces us with a number of practical difficulties.

Any diachronic study will unavoidably suffer from a lack of varied data for past periods. Inparticular, it is generally impossible to find extensive documentation that accurately representsthe spoken language of past periods31; this is particularly deplorable because spoken languageis generally (but not always32) the source of innovation. As a rule of thumb, the further wego back, the less likely it is for a text to reveal features of the popular, spoken language: theearliest Romance prose texts tend to be written in formal register, as they are generally le-gal, theological/religious and historical. Whilst a great deal of work has been done to compilecorpora of modern spoken language and other linguistic registers, the absence of equivalentdiachronic data leads to an unavoidable discrepancy between contemporary and historical sur-veys. With this in mind, care is called for in evaluating any apparent sudden structural changesthat coincide with the transition from historical textual data to the more comprehensive mod-ern corpora. Many innovations originally arise in the spoken language and later permeate thewritten registers. On the other hand, structures can remain present in the oral domain for along period of time without gaining more formal status. In addition, account must be taken ofthe fact that the presence of a tangible pragmatic context allows speech to be less precise andfar more deictically determined. Though invaluable for the analysis of synchronic choices andtheir causes, spoken corpora must, thus, be taken cum grano salis from a diachronic perspective.

The limited number of texts available from some earlier periods does not give the linguist agreat range of choice. Text type, register, and many other parameters that have a direct ef-

30More extensive digitalized diachronic corpora have become available in recent years, most notably MarkDavies’s fully annotated Corpus del Espanol, but were not yet in the public domain at the time the statisticalwork for this dissertation was begun.

31Baum (2003: 49) goes as far as to say that there can be no authentic documents of (spontaneous) spoken lan-guage before the advent of the “new media”, thus implicitly doubting the reliability of any written representationof the spoken language.

32Learned features, in the Romance languages generally borrowed from or calqued on Classical Latin, usuallyenter the language via the written medium, cf. Pountain (1998b)


fect on stylistic and syntactic choices (linguistic conservatism, incorporation of learned features,etc.) vary considerably. Even in the most comprehensive of corpora such variation cannot beavoided, as certain text types are often limited to, or dominant in, a certain period, but maybe rare, obsolete, or still a thing of the future at another time. Particularly problematic in thisrespect is the fact that there are so few early medieval texts at our disposal that it is necessaryto use lyrical material, despite the well-known fact that poetic licence allows the use of atypi-cal structures, with the purpose of maintaining poetic parameters such as rhythm, rhyme, andassonance. Word order is among the greatest sufferers in this respect. It might therefore beargued that texts of such diverse types represent ‘separate grammars’, and basing a statisticalanalysis on them would be an artificial conflation of these grammars. But this could be saidof any statistical analysis, as variation in grammatical usage among speakers means that anylanguage or variety, viewed beyond the idiolectal level, consists of multiple grammars to someextent. It is, indeed, one of the strengths of the statistical approach that such variation is takeninto account, without giving undue weight to structures that are marginal for the language as awhole. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that the somewhat unbalanced use of texts fromthe earlier stages of the languages under investigation might distort the analysis. To minimizethe effects of any such potential distortion, two mathematical algorithms, described in detailbelow, will be applied to the data gathered.

Another issue that must be addressed in a study making extensive use of historical literarymaterial is the subdivision of languages into discrete historical periods such as Old Portuguese,Golden Age Spanish, or Post-war Romanian, tacitly implying that these are uniform entities.This is clearly an idealization, as there is social, regional and diachronic variation in any languageat any time. At the same time, there is some justification for such a classification, especiallywhen dealing with literary writing: during culturally comparatively uniform periods, certainstylistic and linguistic norms become the accepted standard, and it becomes almost obligatoryfor authors to comply with these norms if they want to gain recognition in society (cf. Baum2003: 49-50); such norms can remain comparatively unchanged over a period of time.

Support for the idea that there is less potential for linguistic change during periods of socialand cultural cohesion also comes from anthropological linguistics. According to the punctuatedequilibrium model, applied to historical linguistics by Dixon (1997), languages tend to diversifyin short periods of intense social upheaval, remaining in a relatively stable state of equilibriumduring periods of social stability. However, the diachronic data presented in this thesis, it willbe seen, suggest no such obvious correlation between social or cultural and linguistic stability;on the contrary, the long-term developments investigated here appear to be largely unaffectedby changes in society.

Variation in content and register between individual texts, combined with the author’s personalstyle and preferences, possible regional elements33, and learned or foreign influence34, has theeffect that, even in texts written at virtually the same time, a particular syntactic structurecan be far more frequent in one than in the other. As the objective of this study is not the

33The very earliest text in this study, the Cantar de mıo Cid, is an example of a text that has been argued tohave regional Aragonese features. Menendez Pidal (Cantar de mio Cid, 1908-1911) believes that it was writtenin the region of Medinaceli, in the border area between Castile and Aragon. But Colin Smith (Poema de mioCid, 1972) claims it is equally likely to have been written in Burgos, by a “poeta burgales”. It has also beenclaimed by some that certain supposedly Aragonese features might be the result of the text being translated fromAragonese.

34Learned influence can be expected to be stronger in more formal register, particularly in religious and legaltexts; foreign influence is particularly likely in texts that are translations into Spanish, such as Dichos de Sabiosy Philosofos by Jacob Cadique de Ucles translated from Catalan (1402) and De las mujeres ilustres en romance(Zaragoza: 1494) as well as Laberinto de amor (1546), originally written in Tuscan by Boccaccio.


description and characterization of individual texts or authors, but general trends of linguisticdevelopment, it is desirable to eliminate the potentially distorting effect of individual texts thatcan never be a precise representation of the way language was generally used at the time.

One way to eliminate such distortion would be to simply not include a text in a graph if itstoken frequency deviates from that in other texts from roughly the same time period by morethan a certain percentage. The drawbacks of such a method are that any cut-off point wouldnecessarily be arbitrary, and that it would completely ignore the eliminated texts for formalreasons, without taking into consideration that they are, nevertheless, representative of the waythe language was used by certain speakers in certain contexts, and that the usage they documentis thus equally part of the language as a whole.

To avoid discarding any of the gathered data, but to nevertheless generate graphs that aresufficiently smoothed to allow the viewer to visualize the respective construction’s long-termdevelopment, two different methods of converting the data from individual texts into represen-tations of the general trend of the respective construction’s linguistic development are chosen.

One standard statistical way of identifying trends is by means of a linear regression line basedon the values of a scatter plot. The goal of linear regression is to adjust the values of gradientand of intercept with the y-axis to find the line that best predicts y from x. This is done byminimizing the sum of the squares of the vertical distances of the points from the regressionline. The gradient (m) of the regression line and its intersection point with the y-axis (c) canbe calculated with the equations

m =

∑i

(yi−y)(xu−x)

∑i

(xu−x)2 and c = y −mx, where y =

∑i

(yi)

nand x =

∑i

(xi)

n

in which x and y are the mathematical means of the year and the construction’s usage frequency,respectively.

The disadvantage of using regression lines is that they are by definition linear, but syntacticdevelopment must not necessarily proceed in a linear way. In order not to ignore the fact thatthe usage of a structure may increase, decrease or remain stable at different times during theinvestigated period, a second algorithm providing moving averages over shorter time periods isused. The equation for this curve is as follows:

y′j = 19

j+4∑i=j−4

yij

For the beginning and the end of the time scale, where the number of preceding or followingtexts is insufficient for the basic equation above, this must be refined to form averages overcorrespondingly shorter periods:

y′j =

max[j+4,n]∑i=min[1,j−4]

yij

max[j+4,n]−min[1,j−4]

The intervals for which this algorithm generates averages are small enough to show any signif-icant steps in the curve, but large enough to give it a sufficient degree of smoothness for the


viewer to be able to identify a coherent development. In the graphs presenting the develop-ment of one single structure on its own, the actual values from the individual texts are shownas points in the diagram; this is generally omitted in comparative diagrams for the sake of clarity.

The problem of statistical classification

A fundamental problem in diachronic statistical analysis is the apparent paradox between havingto classify constructions into discrete categories on the one hand, and using the results of thisanalysis to draw conclusions about changes in language that proceed in an essentially gradualfashion.

In order to chart the evolution of a specific construction, it is necessary to decide, for eachindividual token, whether or not to count it as an instance of the examined construction or not.Where there is a clear one-to-one correspondence between form and meaning, classification iscomparatively straight-forward. But meaning is frequently context-dependent; examples (37-40)illustrate how clauses dependent on a main verb such as tener cuidado ‘to be careful’ can belinked by a number of different prepositions.

37. Tienen que tener cuidado de poner multiplicadores o divisores comunes a ambos terminosde la fraccion.35

must3rd.pl que have care of putinf numerators and denominators common to both terms of the fraction

You have to be careful to add the same numerators and denominators in both terms ofthe fraction.

38. Los grupos de rock-punk deben tener mucho cuidado con hacer algo que pueda ser con-siderado comercial.36

the groups rock-punk must3rd.sg have much care with doinf something that can be considered commercial

Punk rock groups must be very careful of doing things that might be considered commer-cial.

39. Solo ten cuidado en no hacer apuestas demasiado arriesgadas.37

only haveimptv care in not doinf bets too risky

Only be careful not to make too risky bets.

40. Tenga cuidado para no escoger el mismo color para el fondo y el texto.38

haveimptv care for not pickinf the same colour for the background and the text

Be careful not to pick the same colour for the background and the text.

From a truth-conditional perspective39, it would be difficult to claim that the choice of preposi-tion in these sentences makes a semantic difference: in all four cases, the respective prepositionintroduces the matter in which care has to be taken. But merging infinitival clauses with thesefour prepositions into a single semantic class would nevertheless be a fallacy, as they are fre-quently in semantic opposition, e.g. in ‘vuelve de/para hacer compras’ ‘she comes back fromshopping/to go shopping’.

35Lola Archive, Oral Corpus36http://www.mtvla.com/news/noticias/articulos\ completos/2000/mayo/0518\ deadken\\nedys.htm37http://www.comal.com.mx/horos34.html38http://www.aciprensa.com/t-animo.htm39Rather than changing the truth-conditional meaning of the dependent clause, the choice of preposition is

here determined by pragmatic factors. Para, con and en give a more vivid quality to the dependent clausethan the default complementizer de, which is pragmatically neutral. Out of a sample of 667 instances of tenercuidado+de/con/en+infinitive, 90.5% take de, 7.4% en, and 2.4% con.


On the other hand, formally equivalent constructions can be used to mean different things,depending on context, or they can be genuinely ambiguous, leaving us with no means of discreteclassification. A good example of such a structure is de/di/da+infinitive, which in all Romancelanguages has multiple semantic functions. It can link direct object complements as well asconditional, temporal, causal, and numerous other circumstantial clauses to the main verb,and in many cases neither the construction, nor the pragmatic context, allows an unambiguousclassification. In the Spanish sentence (41), for example, it is not clear whether the infinitivalclause is temporal or conditional; in this context, the distinction is in fact hardly relevant, andit may be doubted whether even the speaker unambiguously means one or the other.

41. De pensar que a mi nina le pudieran hacer algo parecido se me ponen los peso ... pelosde punta.40

DE thinkinf that to my girl to.her they.could do something similar...

When/if I imagine that they could do something similar to my girl, it makes my hairstand on end.

The fact that certain structures cannot be assigned to discrete semantic classes poses a problemfor statistical analysis, which by its very nature depends on categorization of the gathered data.There are two simple yet unsatisfactory strategies to overcome this difficulty.

One possibility is to count only those instances of the construction that are sufficiently close toone of the semantic prototypes, and discarding all ambiguous tokens. However, keeping in mindthat this study is based on the assumption that pragmatically-based syntactic change progressesvia a stage of ambiguity, this would mean discarding the tokens carrying the greatest signifi-cance in this process. An alternative solution, creating a separate class for ambiguous tokens,would also miss the point, as ambiguity is not a discrete category (cf. Section 1.4), and differingdegrees of ambiguity are, indeed, a central part of reanalysis.

This dilemma, for which there is no simple, wholesale solution, can only be resolved by exam-ining each ambiguous instance of a construction in its context. It can then be decided whetherthe context provides sufficient additional information to allow us to assign a particular token toone or the other semantic category, or alternatively to consider it genuinely ambiguous, in whichcase the strategy adopted in this thesis is to count it as half a token for each of the two respectivesemantic categories. In this way, a gradual statistical shift from one semantic prototype towardsthe other can be represented in terms of the two predefined semantic types.

A change in the overall number of tokens of a construction that is undergoing a semantic shiftcan also provide useful insights. The extension of a construction’s use to an increased number ofcontexts will be reflected by an increased overall frequency of the structure. In particular, thisapplies to constructions undergoing grammaticalization, as one of the typical features of thisprocess is an increase in obligatorification (Lehmann, 1985: 307-308), resulting in more frequentusage. In the statistical sections of this thesis, it will be seen that tracing the overall usagefrequency of individual construction types through time allows us to draw conclusions about thecauses behind their evolution, in particular by comparing their statistical development, bothlanguage-internally and among languages.

40Lola Archive, Oral Corpus

Chapter 2

From Latin to Romance

In Classical Latin, the system of complementation and clausal dependency is, in principal, sim-ilar to that of modern Romance, in that it includes finite and infinitival clauses as well as othernominal1 dependent structures. Their distribution, however, is somewhat different from that inany modern Romance variety.

The fact that the general typology in this area remains similar does not necessarily mean thatall present-day structures are inherited, or indeed that all Latin structures have survived insome form or another. On the contrary, as a closer look will reveal, infinitival complementation,for instance, shows a partial or complete loss of its main Latin pattern, the AcI2, whilst itsmodern use following a preposition constitutes an innovation. Prepositional infinitives are, infact, a structure that is patently absent from Classical Latin, but appears to be the driving forcebehind the overall increase of infinitival dependent clauses. The range of nominal constructions,on the other hand, has undergone dramatic reduction as well as functional shifts, but appearsto have escaped complete extinction3.

2.1 Finite subordination

2.1.1 Conjunctional subordination

Compared with the developments in the area of non-finite subordination, finite subordination inLatin does not differ greatly from the corresponding systems in modern Romance in its overallstructure, though certain differences are worth noting. In addition to the purely functional4

complementizing particles QUOD5 and UT/NE for indicative and subjunctive complements,respectively, there is a range of other hypotactic conjunctions with varying semantic content.The choice of mood6 for the dependent verb V2 is partially predictable from the conjunction,as certain conjunctions entail a certain modality. For instance, the semantics of QUASI ‘asif’ logically require V2 to be irrealis, a modality that generally triggers the use of subjunctivemood. QUONIAM, which expresses an affirmative ‘because’, on the other hand, is closely asso-

1I will, generally, treat infinitival structures as distinct from other nominal dependent structures. In how farthe Latin and Romance infinitives can be considered non-nominal will be examined in Section 3.4.

2ACCUSATIVUS CUM INFINITIVO, Accusative and Infinitive; see section 2.2.3 for a more detailed discussionof this phenomenon.

3It should be noted that Romanian does follow all of these trends, but not always to the same degree.4Functional is to be understood as opposed to particles that have semantic content.5QUOD can also function as a causal conjunction, and it is not always possible to categorize it unambiguously

as one or the other, as shown in sentence (45) below.6Verbal mood is generally retained the standard Romance languages, though some (e.g. Romanian, French)

have undergone a partial erosion of the corresponding morphological marking.

31

32 CHAPTER 2. FROM LATIN TO ROMANCE

ciated with assertive7 statements. For other conjunctions that require a specific mood, such asSIMULATQUE+indicative ‘as soon as’, the semantic motivation is less obvious. The majorityof conjunctions, however, do not predetermine the mood of V2, which is instead determined bythe semantics and the pragmatic context of the sentence.8

Despite a general correspondence of the indicative mood with assertive statements and of thesubjunctive with desiderative, potential, irrealis and interrogative content, this is not an absoluterule. One of the reasons for this lack of straightforward correspondence9 is a general tendencytowards analogical levelling, with the subjunctive being the unmarked or default mood for de-pendent clauses. A similar trend can be observed today, e.g. Spanish ‘el hecho de que’ (‘the factthat’), which usually requires use of the subjunctive despite the fact that its complement is, inmany cases, very much realis.

A further reason for the imperfect correspondence between semantic modality and morphosyn-tactic mood is the polysemy of UT, which can function as both a desiderative and a consecutivedependency marker. Use of the subjunctive with desiderative UT can be assumed to have spreadfirst to sentences with consecutive UT, and once consecutive UT-clauses regularly took the sub-junctive, to other consecutive conjunctions.

This development is supported by the fact that there is an area of overlap between the desider-ative and consecutive notions, i.e. wishing for something to happen and causing it to happen.

42. desiderative UT

ARISTIDES NITEBATUR UT COGNOMINE IUSTUS SIT APPELLATUS.A strove that epithet just wassubjctv named

Aristide strove to be given the epithet The Just.

43. consecutive UT

ARISTIDES ADEO EXCELLEBAT ABSTINENTIA, UT COGNOMINE IUSTUS SITAPPELLATUS.10

A so.much excelled abstinenceAbl.Sg that epithet just wassubjctv named

Aristide excelled by his integrity to such an extent that he was given the epithet The Just.

44. Other consecutive conjunctions

ARISTIDES ADEO CORRUPTUS ERAT, QUIN COGNOMINE IUSTUS SIT APPEL-LATUS.A so.much corrupt was that.not epithet just be3rd.sg.subj named

Aristide was so corrupt that he was not given the epithet The Just.

A further instance of extension of subjunctive usage is found in complements containing theopinion of someone other than the speaker.

45. ATHENIENSES SOCRATI CRIMINI DEDERUNT, QUOD ADULESCENTES COR-RUMPERET.11

Athenians SocratesDat.Sg crimeDat.Sg gave that adolescentsAcc.P l corrupt3rd.sg.subj

The Athenians accused Socrates of corrupting the young generation.

7Assertion can be understood as realis through a pragmatic filter: the speaker is convinced of the reality ofhis statement, or wants to convince the listener of it.

8Only with these conjunctions does mood actually carry any meaning of its own.9“Im obliquen Konjunktiv treten ferner (an sich indikativische) Gliedsatze auf...” (Bayer & Lindauer, 1974:

210)10Cit. Ernstberger & Ramersdorfer (1997, L.72)11Cit. Bayer & Lindauer (1974: 210)

2.1. FINITE SUBORDINATION 33

Sentence (45) raises the question what this oblique subjunctive has in common with the coreirrealis notion of the subjunctive. Modern Romance usage of the subjunctive with declarativeverbs may supply a clue here: it conveys an absence of assertion by a speaker who does notwish to commit himself to the validity of the quoted opinion (46), or even wishes to express hisdisagreement with it (47).

46. Cree que tenga que regresar con el padre de mi hijo...12

He thinks he has to return with the father of my son.

47. ¿Quien dice que tenga que ser como otros dicen? ¿Quien dice que tenga que ser transpar-ente?13

Who says that it has to be like others say? Who says it has to be transparent?

The fact that a subjunctival dependent clause introduced by QUOD as in (45) can be eithera direct object complement, a causal adjunct, or really something in between the two14 pavesthe way for a further erosion of the clear pattern QUOD+indicative, thereby facilitating theextension of QUOD to other types of subjunctival clauses and eventually allowing QUOD andits Romance reflexes to oust UT/NE completely.

The differences with respect to Romance: typological observations

The functional merger of the semantically unmarked conjunctions QUOD and UT/NE to QUE15

might be seen as a structural shift in the system of conjunctional dependency marking, but con-sidering that mood is usually marked unambiguously on the verb in most Romance varieties, themerger is merely a reduction of redundant mood marking. French and Romanian are two notableexceptions to this: whilst in French “the present subjunctive is differentiated from the indicativeonly in comparatively few forms” (Posner, 1996: 141) as the result of regular phonological de-velopments, which in connection with the absence of mood-specific subordination particles hasled to a de facto loss of a consistent overt mood opposition, Romanian mood is also syncretizedin large parts of the verbal paradigm, but overt mood distinction is maintained by means of twodistinct conjunctions, ca for the indicative and sa<SI for the subjunctive16.

This brief outline of the basic parameters of Latin conjunctional subordination shows that, byand large, the system has survived into modern Romance surprisingly unscathed17. The ba-sic parameters for the choice of mood are largely similar, and the mechanisms by which theseusages spread to other environments and grammaticalize are also similar to later Romance de-velopments.18.

12Dr. Love: entre dos amores(http://www.buscamigos.com/drlove/consulta/entre dos amores/home.htm)

13Diario La Hora, section Nacional(http://www.lahora.com.gt/26-01-01/paginas/nac 2.htm)

14This further exemplifies the impossibility of making binary distinctions between complements and adjuncts.15QUE stands for the varying modern reflexes of QUOD, que, che, ca, probably derived from QUI(D), which

came to replace QUOD. It has been argued that Romanian ca may be derived from the QU(I)A (Herman, 1963:166), which, like QUOD, was a causal conjunction in Classical Latin. The etymological origin of the conjunctionaldependency marker is, however, not the focus of this discussion.

16Sa is, in modern Romanian, strongly grammaticalized and on the verge of being nothing more than a mor-phological marker of the subjunctive. A comprehensive discussion of the origin and evolution of the Romaniancomplementizer sa can be found in Baric (1961); cf. also Section 6.1, footnote 2, regarding an analysis of theRomanian subjunctive as an infinitive.

17This does not by any means imply that no changes have taken place; mood adjustment, for instance, whichrequires V2 to be subjunctival whenever V1 is infinitival or itself subjunctival, has not survived into Romance.

18One such area currently involved in a process of change is the complement of factive nominals, which in-creasingly take the subjunctive. Woehr (1975: 13-19) argues the choice is syntactically determined; other studiessuggest pragmatically based analogical extension as the cause for the use of subjunctive.


The remarkable stability of the system is emphasized by the fact that, despite the fact that of thelarge number of semantically differentiated conjunctions in Latin only five (QUANDO, QUO-MODO, SI, QUOD, QUIA) survive into Romance19, the majority of those Latin conjunctionsthat have disappeared from use have been replaced by newly evolved conjunctional expressionsthat typically consist of a preposition or prepositional expression followed by QUE, the defaultmarker for finite subordination. Thus, a striking discrepancy can be noted between the ex-tremely stable syntactic structure of finite dependent clauses on the one hand, and the muchmore volatile morphology of the hypotactic conjunctions on the other. The morphological shiftfrom predominantly synthetic to analytic conjunctions is, clearly, very much in line with thegeneral evolution of the Romance languages. The system of exploiting prepositions to specifythe type of relation between a dependent clause and its main clause is paralleled by the emer-gence of a similar use of the corresponding prepositions with the infinitive. The possibility ofusing the same morphological component (i.e. a specific preposition) to express the same logicalrelationship between two clauses, irrespective of varying syntactic environments, in combinationwith the creation of a relatively symmetrical pattern for finite and infinitival dependent clauses,represents a typologically novel system that, being analytic, is not only more transparent, butalso allows for flexible, virtually ad hoc creation of subordinators to suit the individual semanticcontext.

2.1.2 Asyndetic finite dependent clauses

Whilst finite dependent clauses in Classical Latin are predominantly conjunctional, asyndeticstructures also occur occasionally. In formal written register, which most of our Latin documentsare in, this asyndetic pattern is most commonly found in sentences with impersonal main verbsthat have a subject complement (48), and in sentences with imperative main clause (49-50).

48. ANIMUM QUOQUE RELAXES OPORTET20

soulAcc.Sg. also relax2nd.sg.subj. proper be3rd.sg.

It is also proper for you to relax.

49. FAC VENIAS!21

doimp.sg. come2nd.sg.subj.

Come here!

50. CAVE PUTES AUTEM MARE ULLUM AUT FLAMMAM ESSE TANTAM...22

bewareimp.sg. believe2nd.sg.subj. however seaAcc.Sg or flameAcc.Sg beinf so.big...But beware of believing that any sea or flame is so big...

Whilst sentence (48) has its complement in subject position and thus differs structurally fromdirect object complementation, sentences (49) and (50) are the tip of an iceberg of asyndeticfinite complementation that must have been very common in less formal and colloquial registers.The phenomenon of “primitive asyndetic”23 expressions entering more formal registers includescommands, and by extension wishes, which are not formally imperatives (51).

51. ILLUD VOLO FACIAS24

DEM.PRONAcc.Sg want1st.sg.ind. do2nd.sg.subj.

I want you to do that.

19Vaananen (1981: 161)20Cicero, DE RE PUBLICA I, 1421Cicero, Epistulae ad familiares 14,422Cicero, DE RE PUBLICA I, 6523Vaananen (1981: 158)24Augustinus Hipponensis: Verbum Dei mandatum Patris 6: Aequalitas Filii cum Patre.

2.1. FINITE SUBORDINATION 35

Commands and orders, and particularly such expressively reinforced imperative expressions as(51) are, for pragmatic reasons, most commonly found in the spoken language. It thereforecomes as no surprise that asyndetic structures enter more formal registers via this path. It is,furthermore, cross-linguistically common for commands and orders to take the shortest possibleform, as immediate action by the recipient of a command is often required in critical moments;linguistic concision can help cut down the time it takes before the command is executed.

But whilst these examples show that asyndetic subordination is available for commands andwishes even in formal and literary register texts, their incidence is very limited, and it is onlythe semantically neutral complementizer UT that can be omitted in these specific contexts.However, it is probable that even during the classical period, the spoken language made moreextensive use of asyndetic structures, omitting both para- and hypotactic conjunctions, providedthat pragmatic factors made an unambiguous understanding possible. Consider the followinginscription or ‘graffiti’ found among the ruins of Pompeii, in which our pragmatic knowledgeof the world allows for an unambiguous interpretation of the inscription despite a lack of overtmarking of the logical relationship between the two clauses.

52. SARRA, NON BELLE FACIS, SOLUM ME RELINQUIS25

proper.name, negator niceadv. do 2nd.sg., alone ppAcc.1st.sg. leavepres.2nd.sg.

Sarra, you don’t act correctly, you leave me alone.

This type of asyndetic juxtaposition of two clauses in the appropriate pragmatic conditions is anatural, cross-linguistic phenomenon. Finite dependent clauses without an overt subordinatordo not, however, catch on in most Romance varieties26 on a large scale; in Spanish, for instance,the use of such structures in the modern language is largely restricted to very formal, highlystylized register, such as official correspondence, and can be traced back to learned borrowingand subsequent extension of the Latin pattern exemplified in sentence (48) above:

53. Impersonal expressions:

Es necesario tenga a la mano su disco con el sistema operativo el cual tenga instaladoen su maquina.27

is necessary have2nd.sg.pres.subj at the hand...

It is necessary that you have your disk with the OS that you have installed on yourmachine at your disposal.

54. Extension to semantically equivalent contexts that do not involve impersonalexpressions:

..., le rogamos retire de la oficina en cuestion ... el recibo correspondiente al perıodoactual.28

PRONIndir.Obj.3rd.sg request1st.pl.pres.indic collect2nd.sg.pres.subj from the office...

We request that you collect the receipt for the current period from the above-mentionedbranch office.

2.1.3 Hypotaxis with underspecified subordinator

As described in Section 2.1.2, a certain tendency to omit overt specification of the relationshipbetween main and dependent clause can be observed in Latin, particularly in popular usage. An

25Cit. Inscriptions de Pompei et Herculanum, Suppl. III, 4; ed. F.Weber and P.Ciprotti (1951-56)26Asyndetic complementation is, however, a widespread phenomenon in the dialects of southern Italy (cf.

Ledgeway, 1997).27http://www.zamora.podernet.com.mx/soporte.html28From an official letter sent by the Banco de Salamanca, 1995.


alternative to asyndetic juxtaposition of clauses is the use of underspecified conjunctions, whichfunction as clear markers of hypotaxis, but do not specify the exact logical relationship betweenthe two clauses. In Classical Latin, UT can function as underspecified subordinator for a numberof different types of dependent clauses. Apart from its primary function as purely functional,semantically neutral complementizer for direct object complements, it can also convey a numberof circumstantial notions, such as manner, time (as soon as), purpose, and concession.29

Though UT itself has no continuation in Romance, the principle of underspecified subordinatorsis not lost. The predominantly analytic morphology of the Romance conjunctional systemmakes it possible to use the semantically neutral, unmarked QUE as underspecified QUE, tomark hypotaxis without any overt specification of the exact type of its semantic value. Sentence(55) is an example of this from modern colloquial Spanish.

55. ¡Putas al poder, que sus hijos ya lo estan!30

whores to.the power QUE their sons already it are

Whores into power — their sons already are!

Diachronic statistical analysis shows that hypotactic structures with underspecified QUE areparticularly common in medieval times and up to the 16th century, a phenomenon that must beseen as closely related to the relatively small inventory of more specific subordinators. After thedemise of the majority of Classical Latin conjunctions in Vulgar Latin, a continuous increasein the inventory of conjunctions expressing differentiated circumstantial notions has led to arelative decrease of the use of underspecified QUE; however, the Spanish Oral Corpus31 offersclear evidence that it continues to be a typical feature of the spoken language even today.

2.2 Infinitival subordination

In Classical Latin, the syntactic range of infinitive usage is relatively limited; the infinitive com-plement can function only as the subject or the direct object of a main verb. This implies that,in opposition to the Romance system, Latin does not have prepositional infinitives, i.e. depen-dent clauses introduced by a preposition, followed by an infinitive.

2.2.1 Subject infinitives without overt subject S2

The Latin infinitive can function as the subject of impersonal verbs and expressions:

56. ERRARE HUMANUM EST.errinf human be3rd.sg.

To err is human.

For this type of construction, which incidentally survives into virtually all modern Romancevarieties, the fact that infinitives lack person inflection is unproblematic, as no subject referenceto any concrete subject in or outside the sentence is intended. The subject of both V1 andV2(Inf) is indefinite, and the availability of the infinitive, a form with no morphological subjectagreement, offers a convenient iconic way of representing the indefinite nature of the subject. Ina corresponding finite construction, the verb form would have to be rendered explicitly indefinite(57) to avoid unintended subject coreference with an NP in the contextual vicinity of the clause(58).

29Habenstein, Hermes & Zimmermann (1970: 24)30Seen scribbled on an advertisement in a Madrid underground train, 1993.31cf. Appendix A

2.2. INFINITIVAL SUBORDINATION 37

57. HUMANUM EST UT QUIVIS HOMO ERRET.human be-3rd.sg. that any person err-3rd.sg.subj.

It is human that any person should err.

58. HUMANUM EST UT ERRET.human be-3rd.sg. that err-3rd.sg.subj.

It is human that he should err.

If semantically or pragmatically necessary, the subject of V2(Inf) can be specified by raising S2

to DO1 (59) or IO1 (60).

59. TACUISSE NUMQUAM ME PAENITUIT32

be.silentinf.past never PRONAcc.1st.sg. cause.remorse3rd.sg.past

Having been silent has never caused me remorse.

60. IN RE PUBLICA NEMINI NEGLEGENTI ESSE LICET33

in polity nobodyDat negligentDat beinf be.permitted3rd.sg

In a polity nobody may be negligent.

Without going into further detail, it is, for the scope of this study, sufficient to conclude thatthere has been little systematic change regarding the structure of infinitival subjects of imper-sonal verbs or impersonal expressions.

A different type of infinitival subject complement, the Nominative and Infinitive, will be treatedseparately, as a function of the AcI, in Section 2.2.3.

2.2.2 Object infinitives without overt subject S2

As in the case of the subject complement, subject reference is a crucial factor in the use ofinfinitives without an overt subject. Since the infinitive cannot be inflected to agree with itssemantic subject, it is assigned its subject by a strict syntactic rule of coreferentiality, whichmakes it predictable that the complement subject is identical to the main clause subject. Theonly verbs that, by definition, must be coreferential with their V2(Inf) are auxiliary verbs, andin Latin the use of infinitive without overt subject is restricted to exactly this group of verbs. Inmost Romance varieties, this reference pattern has been extended to other coreferential depen-dent clauses, even where coreference is not predetermined by the semantics of the (optionallycoreferential) main verb.

2.2.3 Infinitives with overt subjects: the AcI

Syntactic status of the AcI

In addition to coreferential infinitival complementation with auxiliary main verbs (cf. section2.2.2), a typical construction in Latin is the Accusative and Infinitive, or AcI hereafter, in whichthe verb V2(Inf) is infinitival, and its overt subject takes the accusative case. Whether the AcIis a clausal complement or a simple object34 of V1 is a somewhat complex issue, but one that

32Valerius Maximus: VALERI MAXIMI FACTORVM ET DICTORVM MEMORABILIVM LIBER VII,7.2.ext.6

33Cicero: M. TULLI CICERONIS EPISTULARUM AD ATTICUM LIBER PRIMUS, I.1734Traditional grammars claim that the AcI is not a clausal constituent:“Da der AcI kein Gliedsatz, sondern nur

ein Satzglied ist...”(Bayer & Lindauer, 1974: 179)


requires some discussion in order to assess in how far apparently similar structures found in theRomance languages can be considered to be equivalent or even inherited from Latin.

I propose the following analysis: the complete dependent AcI clause, including its verb V2(Inf)

and its subject S2, occupies the direct object slot of a transitive verb as a single unit. In accor-dance with the syntactic requirement that direct objects must appear in the appropriate case,accusative case is projected onto the entire clausal object. Since infinitive verb forms, thoughnominal in some respects, cannot be morphologically marked for case, the accusative is onlyovertly visible on the subject of the AcI.

The fact that adjuncts and internal arguments of V2(Inf) (within the AcI-clause) do not ap-pear in the accusative can be explained in syntactic terms by assuming that case is assignedwithin the AcI after it has been assigned to the arguments of V1, at a separate, later stage.From a less formally oriented point of view, it can be argued that the pragmatic need to un-ambiguously identify the semantic relationship between various arguments and the verb theyare arguments of makes it necessary for their overt case marking not to be obscured by super-imposed accusativity, whilst the superimposition of accusative case onto the subject of the AcIis fully predictable and thus offers less potential for misunderstanding in terms of semantic roles.

The view that the AcI functions as the direct object of the main verb is supported by theexistence of a corresponding NcI35 structure. An AcI (61) can be converted into an NcI (62) inthe same way as a direct object is turned into a subject when the verb V1 is passivized.

61. PATER COEGIT FILIUM CURRUM LAVAREfatherNom.Sg. forcepast.3rd.sg.act. sonAcc.Sg. carriageAcc.Sg. washinf.

The father forced his son to wash the carriage.

62. FILIUS CURRUM LAVARE A PATRE COACTUS ESTsonNom.Sg. carriageAcc.Sg. washinf. by fatherAbl.Sg. forcepast.pass.

The son was forced by his father to wash the carriage.

A potential counterargument to viewing the AcI as a direct object NP comes from the fact thatverbs such as CREDERE can take an AcI but otherwise assigns dative case. But this argumentdoes not hold, as the dative case is assigned to the [source] of the information, not the content;in a sentence like VERBIS TUIS CREDO ‘I believe your words’, VERBIS TUIS ‘your words’constitute the provider of the information, in the same way as TIBI is the provider of informa-tion in TIBI CREDO ‘I believe you.36 This is confirmed by the ungrammaticality of ∗VERBISTUIS TIBI CREDO, as this would imply two different sources, whereas CREDO TIBI + AcI isgrammatical.

A further indication that the syntactic status of the AcI is, in some respects, closer to that ofan object NP than a clausal complement, is the choice of the reflexive pronoun as subject ofthe infinitive. Traditional grammars state that the reference domain of the reflexive pronoun islimited to the clause it is in, and more specifically that it can only refer to the subject of thisclause, whereas other anaphoric pronouns can refer to elements outside their own clause. Theuse of the reflexive pronoun in a sentence like (63) would thus suggest that the AcI is not aseparate clause, as SE refers to the subject of the main clause, which is outside the AcI:

35NOMINATIVUS CUM INFINITIVO, Nominative and Infinitive36This is in no way unusual cross-linguistically; compare German ‘Ich glaube dirDat/deinen WortenDat’, but

‘Ich glaube dirDat deine WorteAcc.

2.2. INFINITIVAL SUBORDINATION 39

63. LOCUTUS EST ... DIVICIACUS AEDUUS ... OB EAM REM SE EX CIVITATEPROFUGISSE ET ROMAM AD SENATUM VENISSE.37

say3rd.sg.past ... proper.name ... because.of dem.pronAcc.Sg. thingAcc.Sg. refl.pron.Acc.Sg. out.of stateAbl.Sg.

fleeinf.past and RomeAcc. to SenateAcc. comeinf.past

Diviacus Aeduus said ... that for this reason he had fled from the state and had come toRome, to the Senate.

However, a study by Diver38 argues that the use of reflexive SE in Latin is not so strictly syntac-tically determined. He gives examples of SE referring to the subject of the superordinate clause(indirect reflexive), to a referent within the same predicate, and even to a referent outside thesentence. His alternative analysis leads to the conclusion that SE is in competition with otherpronouns that can function as reflexives, in particular with IS, and that the choice of one or theother depends heavily on discourse pragmatic factors. Essentially, he claims that SE is used toindicate reference in a maximally unmarked way, i.e. it refers to the NP that is most salient or infocus at that point. IS, on the other hand, refers to NPs other than the most prominent, whichmeans that it is used for marked reference patterns. This pragmatically based analysis weakensthe claim that the use of SE as semantic subject of the AcI structure proves its non-clausalstatus. It can, indeed, be expected that in the majority of cases the subject of the main clause isthe most prominent NP at the time of the AcI’s utterance, so it is not surprising that SE is theanaphoric pronoun most commonly found in AcIs, for pragmatic rather than syntactic reasons.

Other features of the AcI also appear to indicate that it does, to some extent, have clausalcharacteristics. The infinitive’s resistance to nominal morphology and the fact that it can beinflected for aspect/tense (relative time reference)39 and voice make it appear more verbal thannominal in morphosyntactic terms, as does the fact that its semantic subject does not receivegenitive case. If we accept the definition that a clause is “a structure ... which includes a verband the elements that accompany it”40, the typically verbal features of the infinitive suggest ananalysis of the AcI as a dependent clause.

The most appropriate analysis, therefore, is to view the AcI as a hybrid structure that combinessome clausal features with others that are more typical of nominal arguments. As discussed inthe previous chapter in some detail, the distinction between this kind of prototype is usually notbinary, and the analysis of the above facts must lead to the conclusion that the AcI is locatedsomewhere between the extremes of the continuum.

Extension through reanalysis

An analysis of the AcI as a clausal direct object entails a need for the following two conditionsto be satisfied: the main verb must be transitive, and it must be possible for its object to be aclause, rather than a simple nominal expression or NP.

From a semantic viewpoint, a clause represents an event or state of affairs. The class of verbsthat commonly have an event or state of affairs as their direct object are declaratives (64) andverbs that can be used declaratively, such as verbs of perception and thinking (verba sentendi)(65):

37Caesar: DE BELLO GALLICO, 1 31 938Diver (1986: 321-341)39Use of the ‘perfect infinitive’ of the type LAUDAVISSE implies perfective aspect, but also anteriority to the

main clause. Together with the ‘present indicative’ (simultaneity) and the analytic ‘future indicative’ (posterior-ity), the full set of time relations can be encoded morphologically in the infinitive.

40Matthews (1997: 55)


64. THALES MILESIUS ... AQUAM DIXIT ESSE INITIUM RERUM 41

proper.name waterAcc. saypast.3rd.sg. [beinf. beginningAcc. thingGen.Pl. ]

Thales Milesius said that water is the beginning of all things.

65. PUTO AQUAM ESSE INITIUM RERUMbelievepres.1st.sg. waterAcc. [beinf. beginningAcc. thingGen.Pl.]

I believe that water is the beginning of all things.

As a consequence of a high incidence of the combination [declarative verb + AcI], a reanalysis ofwhat it is that triggers the AcI takes place. The trigger is no longer the fact that the infinitivalclause functions as an object, but the fact that it is the complement of a verb belonging to aspecific semantic class. Once this reanalysis has taken place, it is only a small step for the AcIto spread to a group of verbs that is semantically very close to the verbs of perception such asGAUDERE ‘to be happy’: these verba affectus, used to express emotion, take an AcI-complementdespite the fact that they cannot have a nominal direct object.

66. GAUDEO AQUAM ESSE INITIUM RERUMbe.happypres.1st.sg. waterAcc. [beinf. beginningAcc. thingGen.Pl. ]

I am happy that water is the beginning of all things.

The association of the AcI with these specific, semantically defined classes of main verbs isso strong that its original function as a direct object is pushed into the background. Evenimpersonal expressions, which otherwise take subject complements, trigger the use of AcI ifthey belong to one of the semantic verb classes listed above. In sentence (67), APPARET ‘itappears’ is semantically equivalent to PUTO ‘I believe’, and despite its fundamentally differentargument structure, this similarity gives rise to the use of AcI.

67. APPARET AULUM NIHIL AD ME SCRIBEREappear3rd.sg. proper.nameAcc. nothing to me writeinf.

It appears that Aulus doesn’t write to me.

A subsequent step in the extension of the AcI’s range of usage is its detachment from declaration.Sentences (64) to (66) are linked by the fact that the AcI is essentially a quotation of an utterance,declared in a way specified by the main verb. But once we move away from the 1st person, itbecomes apparent that many of these verbs can but need not imply declaration. There is, at thevery least, a possibility of ambiguity as to whether a verb of emotion involves the declaration ofthis emotion; the ambiguity can be resolved lexically as in sentence (68), in which the declarativeelement is explicitly negated. Here, the function of the AcI is closer to that of a causal adjunctthan to that of a direct object, although the construction is syntactically the same as (66); it isthe changed pragmatic context that triggers a modified analysis.

68. GAUDEBAT PATREM REVERTISSE, SED NIHIL DIXIT.be.happypast.3rd.sg fatherAcc. returnpast.inf., but nothing saypast.3rd.sg.

He was happy father had returned, but he said nothing.

Summing up, the AcI can be characterized as a construction subjected to reanalysis and subse-quent analogical extension of the environments it occurs in, while preserving a strict and rigidinternal morphosyntactic structure that functions as a single syntactic unit with respect to theclause it is dependent on. It is this internal indifference to the syntax of the main clause that setsthe Latin AcI apart from so-called AcI constructions in Romance, which show much strongerinteraction with the argument structure of the main verb.

41Cicero: DE NATURA DEORUM, 25

2.3. NON-INFINITIVAL NOMINAL DEPENDENT CLAUSES IN LATIN 41

2.3 Non-infinitival nominal dependent clauses in Latin

A comparatively rich inventory of (non-infinitival) nominal dependent clause-like constructionsis found in Classical Latin. The traditional labels given to these nominal constructions aregerund, gerundive, supine, and participial constructions. In this section, an overview of thesyntactic and semantic properties of these constructions in Latin will be compared with thesurviving inventory in modern Romance, and the extent to which their properties have evolvedor remained unchanged will be examined.

2.3.1 The gerund

Contrasting sharply with the infinitive, the gerund functions as the verbal element of clauses inoblique object position, filling the gap created by the restrictions on infinitival subordination.Its oblique use is facilitated by the fact that it can be morphologically inflected for case, so thatthe rich Latin case system can be exploited to specify the logical or semantic relationship be-tween main and dependent clause in a way very similar to that in which prepositions specify therelationship between main clause and prepositional infinitive in Romance. Gerund constructionscan be equivalent to genitive, dative, ablative and prepositional NPs.42

Gerunds without preposition

In its genitival form, which is the most frequent and therefore often considered the basic form, thegerund functions as an attributive element of an NP in constructions such as ARS LEGENDI,‘the art of reading’, a notion rendered by de in Romance, as e.g. in Spanish ‘el arte de leer’. Theattributive nature of the genitive excludes this genitival gerund construction from functioningas the dependent of a clause.

The dative gerund gives the dependent clause final meaning (69), a notion that is typicallyrendered by final preposition+infinitive in Romance, as shown in the Spanish example (70).

69. COQUENDO CULINAM INTRAVITcookger.Dat. kitchenAcc.P l. enter3rd.sg.past

He entered the kitchen in order to cook.

70. Entro en la cocina para cocinar.enter3rd.sg.past in(to) the kitchen prep.final cookinf.

He entered the kitchen in order to cook.

The relatively rare use of the dative gerund construction43 can be explained by its syncretismwith the more common ablative form and the resulting potential for ambiguity; in sentences suchas (69), however, in which it is highly improbable that the dependent structure is instrumental,ambiguity is minimized because of the pragmatic real-world-likelihood-filter that language usersautomatically apply to utterances.

In the ablative case, the gerund can have a number of different semantic roles, which are a subsetof the general semantic range of the ablative. As the gerundial phrase is semantically clausal,representing an action, event, or state of affairs, there are some semantic and logical restrictions

42Gerundial prepositional clauses can appear in the accusative and ablative; this is, however, wholly dependenton the case syntactically required by the respective prepositions and thus devoid of deeper structural or semanticsignificance.

43“Der Dativ ist selten und fehlt in Casars Bellum Gallicum ganz.” (http://www.ph-erfurt.de/∼lingua/renzi/latein/ZKONLINE/grammar/nd.htm)


regarding the types of semantic relationships it can have to its main clause. The relationship isusually temporal (71), instrumental (72), or causal (73).44

71. EST CRUOR VOCATUS AB EO QUOD EFFUSUS DECURRIT, VEL AB EO QUODCURRENDO CORRUAT45

..., or because runger.Abl. fall.to.the.ground3rd.sg.pres

It is also called cruor because when it has been spilled, it runs down, or because when itruns, it flows to the ground.

72. AGENDO ET AUDENDO RES ROMANA CREVIT46

actger.Abl. and dareger.Abl. thing Roman growpast.3rd.sg.

By doing and daring, Rome became great.

73. MORBO LABORANDO CAESAR GEMUITillnesAbl.Sg sufferger.Abl. proper.nameNom. groan3rd.sg.past

Being ill, Caesar groaned.

Prepositional gerundial constructions

The prepositional gerund is only a marginal construction, occurring with the accusative and theablative of the verbal noun. The two relatively common constructions [AD+accusative gerund](74) and [IN + ablative gerund](75) express finality and simultaneity of the dependent clause,respectively.

74. APPARET NOS AD INTELLEGENDUM ET AD AGENDUM ESSE NATOS47

appear3rd.sg we AD understandger.Acc. and to actger.Acc. be3rd.sg born.

It appears we are born to understand and to act.

75. PRAECLARA LAUDATIO, CUM DUABUS IN REBUS LEGATORUM UNA OPERACONSUMITUR, IN LAUDANDO ATQUE REPETENDO48

..., in praiseger.Abl and demand.backger.Abl .

A noble panegyric; when the one business of the ambassadors is discharged by two opera-tions, praising the man and demanding back what has been stolen by him.49

Semantically, neither of the Latin prepositional gerund constructions is particularly remark-able, as final and simultaneous temporal relationship can also be expressed by means of non-prepositional gerund clauses, as outlined above. It is, however, precisely this absence of aparticular semantic need for a prepositional gerund that makes this construction interesting. Itappears to be a precursor of developments to come, namely of the use of prepositions to specifythe semantic relation between dependent and main clause, with the preposition functioning bothas syntactic marker of dependency and as an indicator of the semantic relation between mainand dependent clause. This syntactic pattern appears to be incipient in the Latin prepositionalgerund construction. However, it is not so much with the gerund as with the infinitive thatspecification of clausal relations by prepositions catches on.

44“Bloßer Ablativ des Gerundiums wird mit durch, mit, bei, beim ubersetzt.” (http://www.kreienbuehl.ch/lat/latein/uebersetz/sallust.html)

45The Aberdeen Bestiary, Folio 89r, l.13-14, probably 12th century, (http://www.clues.abdn.ac.uk:8080/besttest/alt/translat/trans89r.html)

46Livius, Titus: HISTORIAE ROMANAE DECADES, ed.: Electronic Text Center, University of VirginiaLibrary, Vol.III (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new)

47Cicero, DE FINIBUS, XXI.5848Cicero: ACTIONIS IN C. UERREM SECUNDAE, LIBER SECUNDUS, cit. http://patriot.net/∼lillard/cp/

cic.verres.2.2.html49Translation: http://www.ancientlanguages.org/claslattexts/cicero/inverrems2e.html


2.3.2 Participial dependent constructions

Latin participial inflectional morphology combines tense and voice. The present participle hasactive force and simultaneous time reference, the past participle has passive force and anteriortime reference, and the future participle has posterior time reference and active force. In theparticipial dependent constructions discussed in this section, their respective voice and timereference patterns are projected onto the clause centred around them.

Conjunctional participial constructions

Participles can function as the verb of a temporal, and arguably of a conditional, dependentclause, linked to their main clause by an appropriate conjunction.

76. NEC ANTE IN PRAETORIUM REDIIT QUAM FLAGRANTE TRICLINIO50

neg. before to headquartersAcc. return3rd.sg.past conj. burnpres.part.Abl.Sg. dining.roomAbl.Sg.

And he did not return to his headquarters before the dining room was ablaze.

77. DECEMVIRI ... NON ANTE QUAM PERLATIS LEGIBUS ... DEPOSITUROSIMPERIUM SE AIEBANT51

decemvirsNom.Pl. ... NEG before conj. enactpast.part.Abl.P l. lawAbl.P l. ... lay-downfut.part.Acc.P l. authori-

tyAcc.Sg. refl. claim3rd.pl.past

The decemvirs ... claimed that they would not lay down their authority before the laws... were duly enacted.

Nutting (1930: 213) discusses similar constructions with conditional conjunctions of the typeNISI URBE CAPTA, but offers an alternative analysis in which NISI is understood as an ad-verb ‘except’, and URBE CAPTA is thus a non-conjunctional, absolute participial construction.However, considering that it appears to be unproblematic for ablative participial clauses to belinked to their main clause by a temporal conjunction, it appears unnecessarily restrictive torule out a similar syntactic pattern for conditional conjunctions, particularly in the light of thesemantic proximity of temporality and conditionality.

Absolute participial constructions:PARTICIPIUM CONIUNCTUM and ABLATIVUS ABSOLUTUS

Two structurally different types of absolute participial constructions can be distinguished. ThePARTICIPIUM CONIUNCTUM (PC) or ‘conjoined participle’ is coreferential, sharing its sub-ject with its main clause, whilst the ABLATIVUS ABSOLUTUS (AA) or ‘disjoint ablative’ hasa subject distinct from the main clause subject. These different reference patterns are reflectedformally in that the participle in the PC construction receives its case (as well as gender andnumber) by agreement with its subject in the main clause, whilst the AA assigns ablative caseto the subject of the dependent clause and the participle. In both constructions, the participleagrees with its semantic subject.

78. Participium Coniunctum:

HIS REBUS COMMOTUS, CAESAR PROFECTUS ESTDEM.PRONAbl.P l. thingAbl.P l. persuadepp.Nom.Sg. Caesar Nom.Sg. set-off3rd.sg.past

Persuaded by this, Caesar set off.

50C. Suetonius Tranquillus: Vita Vitellii, 8.251Titus Livius: Liber III, 51.13


79. Ablative Absolute:

TRIBUNIS INTERCEDENTIBUS SENATUS LEGEM PERFERRE NEQUIVIT 52

tribuneAbl.P l. objectpp.Abl.P l. senateNom.Sg. lawAcc.Sg. push-throughinf.pres. couldn’t

Because the tribunes objected, the senate could not push the law through.

The way in which case is assigned in these constructions is significant because it is essentiallysyntactically, not semantically determined. This fact gives some insight into the nature and de-velopment of this structure in Latin, and also facilitates our interpretation of the correspondingRomance structures.

In his study of the ablative absolute, Nutting (1930: 203-217) shows that its use is characterizedby its lack of explicit or overt marking of the logical relationship between the participial clauseand the main clause:

The Ablative Absolute is an ablative phrase, the logical relation of whose content to that ofthe main statement is not explicit in the choice of case.

(Nutting, 1930: 205)

The logical relation between the main clause and its dependent participial clause can be condi-tional, concessive, adversative, causal, temporal, explanatory-appositional, temporal, or it caneven lack any particular connection at all, simply juxtaposing two events. Nutting observes thatwhile some of these relations are covered by the functional range of the ablative case, others,such as temporal relations or mere juxtaposition of events, are not. He explains the use of ab-lative for the absolute construction by the fact that there is no obvious one-to-one relationshipbetween the ablative and any one particular meaning or logical relation53; this “loss of case-consciousness” would pave the way for its use where a specification of the logical relation is notrequired or intended.

The clear lack of any single semantic or logical relation between the main clause and the abso-lute participle raises the question whether it has a single, characteristic semantic feature at all.From a formal point of view, Cauer (1912: 42) characterises it as a condensed expression54, andNutting (1930: 215) coins the term Stenographic Ablative, which can be understood to refer toits formal concision as well as its pragmatic function.

On the one hand, it is exploited stylistically to give an impression of “businesslike promptitude”(Nutting, 1930: 216), which appears to become increasingly fashionable with later Latin authors.Here an interesting parallel with the comparatively frequent use of the equivalent structure inModern Romance journalese style can be observed, which is generally characterized as a typical‘economical’ feature of journalistic register.

On the other hand, Nutting (1930: 217) concludes that an important function of the Ablative Ab-solute is the description of “a sketchy background”. The parameter of fore- and backgrounding,an important component of modern discourse pragmatics, marks events as central or subsidiaryto the main action or sequence of events. In the case of absolute constructions, the absence ofan overt or implied specification of the relationship between participial and main clause is aniconic way of rendering the notion of backgrounding: a structure that is underspecified in thisway reflects the speaker’s attitude to the content of the backgrounded clause. It is not primarily

52Cit. Bayer & Lindauer (1974: 187)53“That the question of the case used is a very subsidiary matter is indicated by the fact that similar [...]

expressions employ the genitive in Greek, the Dative in Gothic, the locative in Sanskrit, etc.” (Nutting, 1930:215)

54“diese bequeme Form einer zusammengedrangten Ausdrucksweise”


a high degree of precision that is crucial, just like a stage setting can be blurred and imprecisebut still be sufficient to provide a context for the action in a scene of a play.

At this point, it should be noted that what has so far been discussed with reference to the AA islargely the same for the PC: it, too, is semantically underspecified, expressing such differentialnotions as temporality, modality, causality, concession, and conditionality. With transitive verbs,the participial construction can occasionally even resemble a direct object complement:

80. EGO LAR SUM FAMILIARIS EX HAC FAMILIA UNDE EXEUNTEM ME ASPEX-ISTIS55

... out.of demonstr.pron.Abl.Sg familyAbl.Sg. whence leavepart.Acc.Sg me observe2nd.pl.past

I am the patron goddess of the family whose house you saw me leave/that I left.

2.3.3 The gerundive

The gerundive is a nominal verb form with a passive, and frequently a modal sense. Apartfrom its adjectival use as attribute of a noun and as a component of impersonal expressions(eg. INDUSTRIA LAUDANDA EST ‘diligence must/should be praised’), it can also bedependent on a another verb or clause, though morphosyntactically it behaves like an adjective,agreeing with its syntactic subject, which due to the gerundive’s passive force is its semanticobject. A logical entailment of this is the fact that only transitive verbs can form a gerundive.

The gerundive without preposition

The semantic role of a non-prepositional gerundive depends on the case assigned to its semanticobject, which by extension is also the case assigned to the (agreeing) gerundive itself.

In the nominative, the gerundive expresses purpose, as exemplified in (81):

81. ALEXANDER A PATRE ARISTOTELI EDUCANDUS TRADITUS EST56

Alexander from fatherAbl.Sg. proper.nameDat.Sg. educategrndv.Nom.Sg.

hand.over3rd.sg.pass.past

Alexander was handed over to Aristotle by his father to be educated.

With other cases, the final meaning is largely lost or superseded by the semantics of the respectivecase. The accusative of the gerundive, for instance, is semantically equivalent to a direct objectcomplement (82), and the ablative can be used to express cause or means (83).

82. CAESAR PONTEM IN FLUMINE FACIENDUM CURAT57

proper.name bridgeAcc.Sg. in riverAbl.Sg. makegrndv.Acc.Sg. see.to3rd.sg.pres.

Caesar orders a bridge to be built across the river.

83. POMPEIUS PIRATIS PERSEQUENDIS MARE TUTUM REDDIDIT58

proper.mameNom.Sg. pirateAbl.P l. chasegrndv.Abl.P l. seaAcc.Sg. safeAcc.Sg. gave.back

Pompey made the sea safe again by chasing the pirates.

55Plautus: Aulularia; Prologus - Lar Familiaris, l.356Cit. Bayer & Lindauer (1974: 183)57ibid.58ibid.


The prepositional gerundive

The meaning of the gerundive can further be modified prepositionally. This is unproblematic,as the gerundive – unlike, for example, the infinitive – is syntactically adjectival, forming partof an NP. Syntactically, the preposition applies to the entire NP, whilst semantically specifyingthe exact relationship between V1 and the gerundival V2.

84. IN AMICIS ELIGENDIS HOMINES SAEPE NEGLIGENTESSUNT59

in friendsAbl.P l chooseGrndv.Abl.P l people often negligent are

In choosing their friends people are often thoughtless.

85. NON TANTUM EGO IMPENDERE VIDEO QUANTUM TU AUT VIDES AUT ADME CONSOLANDUM ADFERS.60

not as.much I impendinf see1st.sg as.much you either 2nd.sg or to me encourageGerndv.Acc.Sg bring2nd.sg

I see as many threatening things as you either see or put forward to incite me.

2.3.4 The supine

Supine is a traditional term referring to two vaguely similar verbal nouns. The term, derivedfrom SUPINUM ‘bent backwards’, does not provide much information about the characteristicsof the forms bearing this name.

The final supine

The supine ending in -UM expresses the purpose of main clauses centred around verbs of motion.

86. SPECTATUM VENIUNT, VENIUNT SPECTENTUR UT IPSAE61

watchSup they.come, they.come watch3rd.pl.pass.subj that themselves

They come to watch, and come to be watched themselves.

The final supine derives from an accusative of direction, and the restricted range of main verbsthat it can occur with shows that it has retained some of this physical directionality.

The supine of assessment

The use of the supine of assessment is relatively limited, as it must be accompanied by certainassessing adjectives such as FACILIS/DIFFICILIS EST ‘it is easy/difficult’, INCREDIBILISEST ‘it is unbelievable’, or MIRABILIS EST ‘it is wonderful’.

87. SED HANC DIFFICILE DICTU EST UTRUM FACILIUS AMISERIT POPULUSROMANUS AN RECUPERAVIT62

but this difficultAcc.Sg. saysup. is whether easier let.go3rd.sg.past people Roman or reconquered

But this is difficult to say, whether the Roman people let go or recaptured more easily.

59Cit. Bayer & Lindauer (1974: 183) from: Cicero LAELIUS SIVE DE AMICITIA DIALOGUS, Ch.XVII, 62.60Cicero: M. TULLI CICERONIS EPISTULARUM AD ATTICUM LIBER

TERTIUS: [VIII] Scr. Thessalonicae iv K. Iun. a. 696 (58),cit. http://patriot.net/∼lillard/cp/cic.att3.html

61Ovid: ARS AMATORIA, 1.9962Livy: Flori epitomae de Tito Livio, Bellorum omnium annorum DCC, Libri duo liber primus, XXXV

2.4. THE FATE OF LATIN NOMINAL DEPENDENT STRUCTURES IN ROMANCE 47

2.4 The fate of Latin nominal dependent structures in Romance

2.4.1 Loss of the gerundive in Romance

The gerundive does not survive into Romance. Vincent (1999: 4) explains this with its relianceon morphological case: “If this disappears, the construction goes with it.” This explanationalone may, however, be an oversimplification. Similar to the novel patterns of prepositionalinfinitive usage, an extension of the – existing – prepositional gerundive construction could havecompensated for the loss of morphological case.

An important factor contributing to its disappearance is its formal and semantic similarity to thegerund. Sentences (88) and (89) show the equivalence of both constructions under specific cir-cumstances, namely if a gerund with a direct object appears in the genitive or non-prepositionalablative.

88. CUPIDUS SUM URBEM VIDENDI63

eager be1st.sg.pres. RomeAcc.Sg. seeger.Gen.Sg.

I am eager to see Rome.

89. CUPIDUS SUM URBIS VIDENDAE64

eager be1st.sg.pres. RomeGen.Sg. seegdv.Gen.Sg.

I am eager for Rome to be seen (by me).

Keeping in mind that the entire system of clausal subordination undergoes a process of restruc-turing, it can be expected that two separate constructions with such a high degree of formal andsemantic similarity or even overlap would not survive. What is more, the emerging prepositionalinfinitive construction is capable of replacing the gerundive in all its clause-like constructions,leaving no structural gap. The characteristic passive force is either pragmatically implied, aswith manipulative verbs such as in Span. mandar construir algo ‘to order something to bebuilt’, or alternatively explicitly by means of the periphrastic be-passive with ser, etre, etc.

2.4.2 The supine in Romance

The supine of purpose

Even within Classical Latin, the use of the supine of purpose is restricted to a small numberof main verbs. The availability of prepositional infinitives for purpose clauses seals its fate,preventing its survival into Romance and simplifying the system: Purpose being only one of nu-merous possible logical relations between main and dependent clause, it is to be expected that,once the mechanism of expressing all logical relations by preposition+infinitive is established, aseparate morphological form for one particular logical relation would have little chance of sur-vival, particularly in view of the transparency and iconicity of the analytic principle underlyingthe prepositional infinitive construction.

More relevant for this study than the moribund form itself is the mechanism by which the notionof physical directionality turns into abstract directionality or purpose, which is reflected by thefact that the supine of purpose is only used with main verbs of motion. The extension of mor-phological markers of direction turning into markers of purpose is cross-linguistically extremelycommon, and in Chapter 7 its central role in the emergence of prepositional complementizers

63Cit. Bayer & Lindauer (1974: 184)64ibid.


and its relevance in the differential development of prepositional infinitives in Ibero- and Daco-Romance will be discussed.

The supine of assessment

The supine of assessment has also disappeared from the majority of Romance varieties, to bereplaced by prepositional infinitive constructions as in the following Spanish example.

90. Esto es importante de hacer.This is important DE doinf.

This is important to do.

In this type of clause, the preposition does not specify the logical relationship between the twoclauses, but functions merely as a formal marker of dependency. Different Romance languageschoose different prepositions as dependency markers:

French: important a faireItalian: importante da fare

The fact that there is no visible semantic motivation for the choice of preposition is evidencethat this construction exploits the availability of prepositional dependency markers by expand-ing their use, in a process involving semantic bleaching, to other contexts that call for a defaultcomplementizer.

In sentences such as (90), the motivation for the insertion of the prepositional complementizeris the fact that the subject of the main clause, esto, is the semantic object or [theme] of theinfinitive hacer. This discrepancy between semantic role and syntactic function, often referred toas object-to-subject raising, entails that there is no single, unambiguous logical relation betweenthe unit [main clause] and its dependent infinitive clause, because the main clause contains theraised object of its dependent infinitive. As the subject position is already occupied by the raisedobject esto, the material remaining in the dependent clause must occupy a different position atsurface level. This is achieved by inserting a complementizer without semantic content of its own,by which the formal requirements can be satisfied without altering the semantic content of thesentence. This analysis is supported by the fact that in Spanish (and Italian), no complementizerappears when no raising has taken place (91).

91. Es importante [hacer esto]Subject.be3rd.sg. important doinf. this

It is important to do this.

Romanian, on the other hand, does not make use of the infinitive in this context. In its place, aconstruction labelled supine, consisting of de followed by a special invariable form of the verb,is used. (‘Aceea e important de facut.’)65 How the use of the Romanian supine relates to thatof the infinitive is discussed further in Chapter 6.

65Whether the form derives directly from the Latin supine or whether it is an acquired use of the past participleis a contentious issue that lies beyond the scope of this survey. Intriguingly, the Romanian supine also coverssome areas that coincide with the Latin gerundive.


2.4.3 Underspecified gerundial and participial clauses

A functional overlap in Latin between participial clauses and the ablative of the gerund is obvi-ous: both, it has been shown, are typically used to add information related to the main clausein some way, but without making explicit reference to the exact type of relation. The respectivesuffixes -NTE and -NDO also being phonetically similar, Romance only retains a single formin place of the two, the gerund. As discussed in section 2.3.2 above, underspecification of thelogical relation to their main clause is characteristic of participial constructions in Latin.

This underspecifying quality of the gerund/participle has survived into modern Romance – a factthat is particularly significant because it shows that the overall shift away from synthetic verbforms, combining lexical and grammatical meaning, towards analytic structures with a separateprepositional element for grammatical meaning, is not a universal process in Romance. Thegerund retains, or even expands, the low degree of semantic precision that the ablative gerundhas in Latin. Traditional grammars often list different possible semantic values of the gerundialclauses, such as temporal, instrumental, final, concessive, and conditional66, but thereby missthe important fact that the choice of a structure that omits the precise marking of any logicalrelation between main and dependent clause is, in itself, significant at the pragmatic level. Thefollowing Portuguese sentences are just a few examples of how varied the semantic roles of thebackgrounded gerundial clause can be:

92. Temporal (simultaneous):

Lavando a roupa, contou-me o que tinha acontecido.Doing the laundry, she told me what had happened.

93. Instrumental:

Tem tambem de zelar pela seguranca da sua equipa de pilotos, ajudando-os sempreque estao em dificuldade.67

They also have to be vigilant for the security of their team of pilots, helping themwhenever they are in trouble.

94. Causal:

Sendo o unico aluno que nao tinha escrito nada, foi repreendido.Being the only pupil who hadn’t written anything, he was scolded.

95. Conditional:

Mas nao conhecendo bem os meios, nao se torna mais difıcil para si resistir a eventuaispressoes ou manipulacoes?68

But not knowing their methods, doesn’t it become harder for you to resist possiblepressure or manipulation?

96. Concessive:

Os fundos comunitarios pagam os projectos, o mesmo nao acontecendo quando elessao feitos pelos GAT.69

The communal funds pay for the projects, which is not the case if/when they areorganized by the GAT.

66cf. Butt & Benjamin (2000: 306-308)67from Cetem 0168ibid.69Cetem 01


97. Final:

Chamou-nos, pedindo dinheiro.He called us to ask for money.

Similar to the gerund, coreferential past participle clauses offer a way of underspecifying thelogical relationship between the two clauses, giving clear information only with regard to thetime relation between the two verbs:

98. Portuguese:

Esgotada, a minha mae se deitou.Exhausted, my mother lay down.

99. Romanian:

Facuta ıntr-un moment ın care ziarul nu mai are de pierdut decat subventiile,aceasta ıntoarcere nu are alta semnificatie decat una care dezvaluie mizeria morala a ziaris-tului...70

Brought about at a time at which the newspaper has nothing more than sub-sidies to lose, this return has no significance except one that devalues the journalist’smoral plight.

But while anteriority is predictable as time reference with the past participle, simultaneity ismerely the default temporal pattern of the gerund, which can be overruled pragmatically incontexts that require different time reference. Consider (100):

100. Esclarecendo que a ideia de rasgar esta rua partiu do administrador-geral dodistrito [...], o dito relatorio passa a enumerar as virtudes do projecto.71

Clarifying that the idea to tear up this street came from the district governor,the said report continues by listing the virtues of the project.

The relationship between esclarecendo and passa a enumerar is, if anything, one of anteriority.The auxiliary passar a is a clear indicator of temporal sequence; this is sufficient to overridethe unmarked interpretation pattern of simultaneity. That lexical items frequently give cluesregarding the semantic role of the gerundial clause can also be seen in sentence (96), whereo mesmo nao triggers a concessive reading, as language users rightly expect that a dependentclause negating a component of its main clause in this way is likely to be concessive. Such overtrelation markers are, however, not required, as exemplified in the remaining examples above.

This absence of overt specification of the semantic relationship between two clauses is not ex-clusive to the gerund/participle, as previous sections in this chapter have shown. Exploitingthe fact that the hearer’s real world knowledge will often allow him to reconstruct the logicalconnection between two clauses, asyndetic and underspecified finite dependent structures oc-cur in Latin and Romance, and underspecified paratactic constructions also frequently exploitpragmatic factors in the same way:

101. O dito relatoriu esclarece que a ideia de rasgar esta rua partiu do administrador-geral dodistrito, e enumera as virtudes do projecto.

Said report clarifies that the idea of tearing up this street came from the district admin-istrator, and it lists the advantages of the project.

70Romania Literara 49, 1996: ‘Revista revistelor – Un viraj murdar’.71Cetem 1


2.4.4 Prepositional gerunds and participles in Romance

The use of prepositional markers to specify the relation between gerundial and prepositionalclauses and their matrices did not spread in the same way as it did with the infinitive. Whilstthe gerund with AD (74), though common in Latin72, has not survived into Romance at all,having been replaced by final prepositional infinitive constructions, this is not the case for theablative gerund with IN (75). In several Romance varieties, a cognate structure is still used independent clauses with simultaneous time relation and punctual aspect. Modern French, as wellas some Spanish varieties73 make use of this structure.

102. En arrivant a l’ecole, il l’a vu bruler.En llegando a la escuela, vio que se quemaba.On arriving at the school, he saw it burning.

The choice of preposition for this construction is of some significance. Whilst the choice of prepo-sition with the infinitive determines the logical relation between the two clauses, en does notgive any specific relational information beyond the relative temporal setting of the two events –semantically redundant information, since the choice of the gerund verb form would be sufficientto clarify this time relation. Instead of more specific prepositions expressing simultaneity suchas Fr. pendant or Sp. durante, en with its literal locative meaning reflects and even reinforcesthe underspecified nature of the gerund, merely indicating an imprecise notion of closeness be-tween the two clauses. This is very much in keeping with the non-prepositional, pragmaticallybackgrounded use of the gerund in Romance, inherited from the Latin gerund and participialconstructions.

The past participle is also occasionally used with a preposition indicating time reference.

103. Despues de vendida la casa, nos arrepentimos.74

After the house had been sold, we regretted it.

104. El legado caduca tambien cuando la cosa determinada perece en su totalidad [...] despuesde muerto el testador, y antes de llegada la condicion, por caso fortuito.75

The bequest also expires if the determined object perishes in its entirety [...] after thetestator has died and before this condition has been brought about coinciden-tally.

Such prepositional structures are, however, very much isolated in a structural framework thatis dominated by underspecified gerund/participle constructions on the one hand, and overtlyspecified prepositional adjunct clauses on the other.

A likely reason for this distribution is the fact that the ablative gerund already has a wide rangeof established functions without overt prepositional marking in Latin, and that this pattern re-mains dominant. The emergence of the prepositional infinitive as an alternative non-finite verbform allows for a clearer distribution, in which the gerund/participle becomes even more closelyassociated with formal and semantic underspecification, thus lending itself to pragmatic back-grounding, often supplying contextual information that is logically related to the main sequenceof events more loosely than the central elements. The infinitive, on the other hand, is more

72“Es findet sich haufig [...] im Akkusativ mit der Praposition AD” (Bayer & Lindauer, 1974: 182)73This construction is “virtually extinct in modern educated usage”(Butt & Benjamin, 2000: 308)74Cit. Seco (1967: 246)75Codigo Civil de la Republica de Nicaragua, Arto. 1159;

cit. http://www.ibw.com.ni/∼gilberto/CODIGOS/CIVIL/civil07.htm


closely associated with the main sequence of events in discourse. This can be traced back toLatin, where one of its central usages is in the AcI complement of verbs of perception. Com-plements of verbs of perception very often describe central events in narrative or discourse, asit is frequently the things seen, heard, or felt by the speaker or the person spoken about thatconstitute a chain of events worth narrating.

Thus, the distribution in Latin of the gerund/participle and the infinitive complement ap-pears to deliver an explanation for why the gerund did not extend its prepositional usage;the two constructions essentially share out the pragmatic ground among themselves, with thegerund/participle covering underspecified, pragmatically backgrounded clauses, whilst the in-finitive, with its greater degree of formal and semantic precision, is used in clauses that formpart of the main course of events.

2.4.5 Overt subjects in gerundial and participial clauses

Similar to the Latin ablative absolute, the Romance languages have participial and gerundialclauses that have their own subject, and are thus independent of the main clause in terms ofsubject reference.

Though the subject of the dependent clause (S2) is not equivalent to the main clause subjectS1 in the following examples (105 - 111), there is generally a semantic or pragmatic link to anelement in the main clause – very rarely is the possibility of having an overt subject in absolutegerund or participial clauses exploited to introduce a completely new referent that is not in someway overtly or implicitly present in the immediate context. This is very much in keeping withthe pragmatics of the gerund/participle as a backgrounding device with the primary function ofproviding a general setting for the main clause. In the Spanish example (105), the referent ofS2 is the same entity as the subject of the relative clause a que el judıo tiende, also dependenton the main clause; in (106) S2 has the same referent as DO1 lo.

105. Porque el fin a que el judıo tiende es el predominio del negro africano en toda Americadel Sur y del Norte, siguiendo el mismo una estricta polıtica racial...76

Because the goal the Jew strives for is supremacy over the African Negro in all of Southand North America, he himself following a strict racial policy...

106. Yo mismo recorde una vez por escrito la unica ocasion en que lo habıa visto en persona,siendo el Prıncipe treintanero y yo un adolescente...77

I myself once put down in writing the only occasion on which I had seen him in person,him being a prince in his thirties and me a youngster...

In the Romanian example in (107), the element in the main clause that S2 is coreferent with isparticularly distant from S1 if considered along the lines of a traditional syntactic tree diagram:femeii ‘of the women’ is the attribute of the noun nefiinta, which in turn is part of an adverbialphrase of V1. However, there is a clear semantic link between the generic term femeii and thedifferent types of women that S2 ea ‘she’ is equated with. The referential closeness of femeii andthe gerundial clause is also represented iconically by the fact that the two elements occur nextto each other in the sentence.

76http://www.actionweb.net/∼orden/chile\ protocolos.htm77Javier Marıas: El papel del Rey in El Paıs Digital, 8.2.2001.


107. O sa ma ıntrebati, cum de s-au decis schivnicii sa ne lase ın pace, dupa ce au predicat ınfiecare zi foarte violent, despre nefiinta femeii, fiind ea mama, sora sau logodnica.78

You will ask me how it came about that the hermits decided to leave us in peace, afterthey had every day preached violently about woman’s non-existence, be she a mother,a sister or a fiancee.

In (108), on the other hand, the overt S2 la mejora de la educacion ‘the improvement of education’is not explicitly present as an argument of the main clause, but nevertheless very much implicitby association with centros de preescolar ‘preschool centres’.

108. Siendo la mejora de la educacion su obsesion [...], Bush propone invertir mas encentros de preescolar.79

The improvement of education being his obsession, Bush proposes to invest inpreschool centres.

Example (109) is, to some extent, a hybrid of sentences such as (106) and (108): it has a multipleS2, of which one element la poesıa refers to the same entity as DO1, but the other two (la pintura,la musica) are only linked by virtue of belonging to the same semantic field.

109. Siendo la pintura, la musica y la poesıa las tres artes mas finas y sutiles, ¿Como esque Vd. no cultiva la poesıa con asiduidad?80

Painting, music and poetry being the three most subtle art forms, why is it that youdo not cultivate poetry assiduously?

Semantic relatedness is also the element linking the overt subjects of the two gerundial clausesal patrulea ‘the fourth’ and altul ‘the other’ to S1 trei volume ‘three volumes’ in (110). Sincethe three subjects do not refer to the same referent, they cannot be considered coreferential ina strict sense. Nevertheless, the subjects of the gerunds are defined through reference to S1 treivolume: though the individual volumes are separate referents, they all form part of a single,more comprehensive referent group, a series of volumes in which ‘the fourth’ and ‘the other’ aredefined in relation to the first three.

110. Neobosit, din 1991 se dedica elaborarii unei lucrari de proportii enciclopedice, Biografiaideii de literatura, din care au aparut, pına ın 1994, trei volume, al patrulea fiindanuntat, urmind altul cu care aceasta capodopera ın cinci volume se va fi ıncheiat.81

Untiring, from 1991 onwards he devotes himself to the production of a work of encyclopedicdimensions, the Biography of Literary Ideas, of which, until 1994, three volumes hadappeared, the fourth being announced, another one following, with which thismasterpiece in five volumes will have been completed.

Having no subject, impersonal verbs rule out coreference a priori. There is no single subjectassignment pattern for such gerund clauses; the subject can appear overtly (111), or PRO (theempty subject of the gerund) can be controlled either by any NP within the main clause (112)or outside it (113). In the absence of an overt subject in the dependent clause, agreement canmake the identity of the controller syntactically unambiguous, as in (112). But where such anindicator is not available, determining the controller is a matter of what is pragmatically themost likely candidate in the given context. In (113), for instance, the entire preceding sentencefunctions as the controller of siendo.

78Romania Literara 3, 24.1.2001, Paul Miron: ‘Ochean – Marele Razboi’79Javier Valenzuela: Filadelfia - La campana dıa a dıa, in El Paıs Digital, 8.2.2001.80Los Foros de El Paıs Digital, Entrevista con Mario Vargas Llosa, 8.2.2001.81Romania Literara 40, 9.10.1996, Cronica Editiilor C Z. Ornea: O noua carte a domnului Adrian


111. Siendo la situacion del paıs buena, parece logico que el electorado se sienta mas atraıdopor la vision de futuro de Clinton.82

being the situation of.the country good, seem3rd.sg. logical that the electorate REFL feels more attracted by

the vision of future of C.

The country’s situation being good, it seems logical that the electorate feels moreattracted by Clinton’s vision of the future.

112. Siendo tan raras, es probable que nunca encuentres una de estas flores sin saber dondebuscarlas.83

being so rarefem.pl, is3rd.sg probable that never find3rd.sg.subj one of these flowerfem.pl without knowinf where

searchinf .them

Being so rare, it is probable that you will never find one of these flowers without knowingwhere to look for them.

113. Parece que no hay mejor indicador del nivel alcanzado que el tiempo que se ha dedicadoal estudio formal. Siendo ası, parece imprescindible analizar como se puede fomentar ymantener muchas horas de practica.84

seems3rd.sg.pres that not exists better indicator of.the achieved level than the time that REFL has dedicated to.the

study formal ‖ being so, seems3rd.sg.pres essential analyse inf how REFL3rd.sg can encourage and maintain many

hours of practice

It seems that there is no better indicator of the level achieved than the time that hasbeen dedicated to formal study. That being so, it seems essential to analyse how one canencourage and keep up many hours of practice.

Whilst these examples illustrate strategies of subject assignment where coreferentiality is syn-tactically impossible, the use of overt subjects in dependent clauses as in (111) is not limitedto non-coreferential contexts. Much more commonly – as is the case with infinitives with overtsubjects and/or person inflection – the syntactic pattern described in section 2.4.3 above, inwhich S1 and S2 have the same referent, is in place even where the gerund/participle has its ownovert subject. There are two reasons for an overt coreferential subject to occur: disambiguationand emphasis. Both are essentially pragmatic notions that depend on the wider textual and ex-tralinguistic context, the knowledge and expectations regarding the specific discourse situationthat the speaker expects the hearer to have, the degree of clarity and expressiveness the speakerwishes to convey, and similar factors.

Where S2 appears overtly to increase emphasis, this is frequently further supplemented lexicallyby addition of an intensifier (cf. Section 3.2.3) – mismo in the Spanish example (114), ınsusi inthe Romanian example (115):

114. Unas veces teclando el mismo, otras dictando las respuestas a una secretaria, Almuniarespondio durante casi una hora a la avalancha de preguntas que iban llegando...85

Sometimes typing himself, at other times dictating his answers to a secretary, Almuniaanswered the flood of questions that continuously arrived for almost an hour.

82‘La campana dıa a dıa’, in El Paıs Digital, 8.2.2001.83Librerıa Agrıcola Jerez: Guıa botanico-ecolologica, http://www.agricolajerez.com/web/guia/84J. Sloboda: ¿Que es lo que hace a un musico? http://metodosuzuki.eresmas.com/sloboda.htm85El Paıs Digital, 29.2.2000.


115. Declarand el ınsusi ca mai degraba se supune limbajului decat ıl domina, Heaney seasaza singur ın descendenta lui Swift, Wilde si Shaw.86

He himself declaring that he submits to language rather than dominating it, Heaneyalone takes his place as a successor to Swift, Wilde and Shaw.

A lexically reinforced overt subject is also found in defective sentences such as (116), where agerundial construction appears independently, without a main clause:

116. O hotarıre dificila mai ales cınd viitoare mama se dovedeste o creatura ciudata, filmulMartei Meszaros alunecınd el ınsusi pe un fagas discutabil.87

A difficult decision, especially when the expectant mother proves to be a strange creature,Marta Meszaros’ film itself takes a dubious turn.

Disambiguation is very much a context-dependent phenomenon, heavily dependent on thespeaker’s intuitive impression of whether increased clarity is particularly relevant for his dis-course objective in a particular pragmatic context. However, three syntactic environments in-crease the likelihood of a need for disambiguation.

a) Long interpolation between coreferential subjects

117. Din acest punct al demonstratiei Mihai Zamfir face un pas mai departe decat au facut ceicare identificasera afinitati sau asemanari de tactici ıntre comunism si fascism, el vorbindferm despre originea lor...88

From this point of the demonstration onwards, Mihai Zamfir goes one step further thanthose who had identified afinities or tactical similarities between communism and fascism,him speaking firmly about their origin...

b) Interpolation of a pronoun with different referent between coreferential subjects

118. Cel mai mult, din tot ce-mi povestise mie umblınd el repede pe strazile laturalnice aleBucurestiului, au fost doua relatari [...] mult mai complexe si mai complicate...89

At the very most, of everything that he told me, (him) walking quickly through the sidestreets of Bucharest at a quick pace, there were two much more complex and complicatedstories...

c) The dependent gerund/participial clause precedes the main clause

If the gerund/participle precedes the main clause, the coreferential subject frequently appearspre-emptively in the dependent clause, to avoid a situation in which the hearer has to wait forthe subject of the main clause to occur before he can unambiguously interpret the precedingdependent clause. S1, which in this case follows S2, can either appear as an anaphoric pronounreferring back to S2, as in (119), or it can be a repetition of S2. The latter is helpful if (c)-typeneed for disambiguation coincides with (a)- or (b)-type syntax. – Sentence (120) is an instanceof a gerundial clause preceding the main clause, and at the same time a long string of lexicalmaterial comes between S2 mitropolitul Nifon and S1 Nifon.

86Romania Literara 41, 18.10.1995, Lidia Vianu: Un Nobel pentru Irlanda87Romania Literara 15, 14.4.1999, Irina Coroiu: CINEMA – Femei despre femei.88Romania Literara 7, 25.2.1998, Gabriel Dimisianu: CRONICA LITERARA – In absenta cenzurii.89Romania Literara 7, 25.2.1998, Constantin Toiu: Prepleac – In amintirea lui Belu Silber


119. Invitat si Mihai Malaimare ın calitate de presedinte al Comisiei de Cultura a CamereiDeputatilor, acesta ısi motiveaza absenta ıntr-o scurta scrisoare.90

Mihai Malaimare also having been invited in his function as president of the CultureCommission of the House of Representatives, he explains his absence in a short letter.

120. ...fiind ınstiintat mitropolitul Nifon despre plecarea ta din viata aceasta si venind ella tine cu smerita dragoste, ai spus ca ‘si pentru Nifon este nadejde de mantuire’ si aiproorocit ca la sapte ani cand tu vei fi dezgropat, Nifon va ıntra ın mormant.91

The metropolitan Nifon being informed about your departure from this life, and himcoming to you with humble love, you said ‘for Nifon there is hope for salvation, too’, andyou prophesied that after seven years, when you will be exhumed, Nifon will enter thetomb.

In Section 3.3.3, it will be seen that very similar parameters are involved in the choice betweenthe bare or the inflected infinitive in Portuguese.

2.5 Conclusion

In this chapter, it has been seen that both Latin and the Romance languages have a variety ofdifferent ways in which dependent clauses can be formed. Their distribution is not explicablein purely semantic terms, as many of the logical or semantic relations between main clause anddependent clause can be rendered by more than one construction. This lack of a one-to-onerelationship between form and meaning clears the path for system-internal shifts along the linesof reanalysis and analogical extension, a mechanism that appears to be responsible not onlyfor various distributional patterns in Classical Latin, but also for subsequent developments intoRomance.

The reorganization of dependent clause patterns in Romance is at least in part structurallymotivated. The reduction of nominal inflectional morphology, paired with the new availabilityof analytic finite and non-finite subordinators, allow for a more symmetrical system in whichthe logical relationship between two clauses is expressed and reflected by the choice of a prepo-sitional element, both in finite and infinitival subordination.

Complementing this system in which semantic relationships are overtly and precisely specified,there is a range of formally and semantically underspecified constructions. This is found inthe area of finite subordination to some extent, but in the non-finite domain the principle ofunderspecification is the central feature setting gerund and participle constructions apart fromprecisely specified infinitival clauses. Syntax alone cannot account for this phenomenon; tounderstand the reasons behind the choice between overtly specified and underspecified construc-tions, discourse pragmatic factors have to be integrated into the grammatical analysis.

After this brief outline of how the overall system of subordination has evolved from Latin toRomance, it is now time to concentrate in more detail on the construction that has undergonethe most dramatic change: the infinitive.

90Romania Literara 4, 31.1.2001, Maneaua la romani.91Icosul 11, Condacele si Icoasele, Acatistul sfantului Ierarc Calinic de la Cernica, http://www.math.psu.edu/

chirica/Acatist/SfCalinic.html

Chapter 3

The infinitive in Spanish andPortuguese today

In this chapter, three separate aspects of the syntax of infinitival clauses are discussed, all ofwhich, it will be seen in the following chapters, play a role in the diachronic development of theprepositional infinitive.

The lack of an overtly marked subject person is probably the most thoroughly analysed aspect ofdependent infinitival structures, perhaps due to the fact that the ‘non-finiteness’ of the infinitiveis often understood as equivalent to a lack of “overt marking of subject person”. (Pountain,1998a: 393) For Spanish and Portuguese, this characterisation of the infinitive is not entirelyaccurate: though the Spanish infinitival forms cannot be inflected for person agreement (nor foranything else), an overt subject can appear in prepositional infinitives. Portuguese permits bothinflectional subject marking, and overt subjects with the infinitive, to a much greater extent.

The first two sections show the importance of pragmatic factors in the way infinitival clausesreceive their non-overt or overt subjects. The third section investigates the question of whetherit can be said that the infinitive has become more nominal or more verbal today than it was inLatin.

3.1 Non-overt subjects of infinitival clauses

3.1.1 Some different approaches to the syntax of infinitival clauses

There have been countless attempts and theories aiming to resolve the difficulties surroundingthe syntax of infinitival clauses. In line with the linguistic zeitgeist that saw syntax as a largelyindependent dimension of language, an extensive tradition of primarily syntactic approachesto the analysis of infinitival clauses has developed since the late 1960s, of which I shall brieflyoutline an exemplary selection here.

An early attempt to account for the absence of overt subjects in infinitival clauses was the prin-ciple of Equi-NP-deletion or obligatory subject deletion (e.g. Rosenbaum, 1967; Lakoff, 1968,1971), a straight-forward rule that requires the subject of the dependent clause to be deleted atat surface level if it is identical with that of the main clause.

In sentence such as (121), with the underlying structure (122), S1 and S2 are identical.

57

58 CHAPTER 3. THE INFINITIVE IN SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE TODAY

121. (Yo) quiero comer arroz.I want to eat rice.

122. [yo querer e] [yo comer arroz].

Therefore, the rule of Equi-NP-deletion requires S2 not to appear at surface level, which in turnrequires V2 to be non-finite, so that no person reference, which would flout the rule, needs toappear. Thus (123) is not an acceptable surface level representation of (122):

123. ∗ (Yo) quiero que (yo) coma arroz.I want that I eat rice.

On the other hand, if the subject is not identical (or ‘Equi’) in both clauses, the sentence musthave a finite complement with overt person marking at surface level, since the absence of overtS2(-marking) is interpreted as the result of equi-NP-deletion, which is unique to coreferentialcomplements with S1=S2:

124. (Yo) quiero que (tu) comas arroz.I want that you eat rice.

Versions of the equi-NP-deletion rule vary to some degree. Whilst Lakoff (1968: 30) states that“the rule deleting the subject of the main clause, equi-NP-deletion, operates, as its name implies,only in the case that the subject of the lower sentence is identical to that of the higher sentence”,implying that it covers only cases of subject coreference, other versions include equi-NP-deletionof a subject S2 that is identical with an object in the main clause, such as (125).

125. PedroS1 teO1 prohibe [tuS2=O1 salir de la casa.]Peter forbids you [you to leave the house].

A purely formal attempt to predict which NP in the main clause the deleted subject of theinfinitival clause (co)refers to was the Minimal Distance Principle introduced by Rosenbaum(1967), stating that the complement subject is identical to that of the NP that it is syntacticallyclosest to it in syntactic structure (i.e. from which it is separated by the least nodes in the treediagram). However, this principle is not universally correct, as Comrie (1984: 450) points out:in complements of verbs such as prometer, the object O1 is closer to V2, but the subject of theinfinitival clause is nevertheless identical to S1. Whilst some more recent generative accounts(cf. e.g. Larson, 1988) eliminate this problem by assigning different structures to sentencessuch as (126) and (127), with the subject in (127) located structurally closer to the embeddedverb than the object, Jackendoff & Culicover (2003: 528-30) provide a detailed argument whysuch sentence pairs “are completely parallel in syntactic structure” and that “there is no overtbasis for the difference in control”, concluding that “no principle based on syntactic structurecan account for controller position, since apart from control [the sentences] are syntacticallyidentical.”

126. JuanS1 teO1 hace [PROS2=O1 salir.]

127. JuanS1 teO1 promete [PROS2=S1 salir.]

In most versions of generative grammar, particularly in Government & Binding (G&B) theory,a simple deletion of the agentive NP in the infinitival clause is not possible, as the ExtendedProjection Principle (EPP) (Chomsky 1982: 10) requires every clause to have a subject. Also,argument structure requires the slot for the agentive semantic role to be filled at all levels of

3.1. NON-OVERT SUBJECTS OF INFINITIVAL CLAUSES 59

representation.

In order to satisfy those requirements for the infinitive clauses without overt subject reference,the presence of the empty category PRO, functioning as the infinitive’s subject, is assumed.PRO has no phonetic realisation, is both pronominal and anaphoric, and is normally co-indexedwith an NP outside the dependent clause, with which it is semantically identical. It is, however,neither governed, nor necessarily c-commanded by its antecedent; instead, it is ‘controlled’ bythe NP outside the infinitival clause with which it is co-indexed (i.e. semantically identical).

Haegeman (1994: 285) states that “with respect to the interpretation of PRO we see that itis either controlled by an argument NP or is arbitrary in interpretation.” This is reflected infour different types of control, of which subject control and object-control co-index PRO with anargument in the matrix clause, pragmatic control co-indexes it with an argument outside thematrix clause or one that is pragmatically understood, and arbitrary control leaves PRO withoutco-indexation, as shown in examples (128-131):

128. Subject control: PRO is co-indexed with S1.

El hombrei quiere [PROi nadar]The man wants to swim.

129. Object control: PRO is co-indexed with O1.

El hombrei mej prohibe [PROj nadar].The man forbids me to swim.

130. Pragmatic control: PRO is co-indexed with an external NP.

Nosotrosi no sabemos nada. Es preciso [PROi estudiar].We don’t know anything. It is necessary (for us) to study.

131. Arbitrary control: no coindexation of PRO

Es difıcil sobrevivir [sin PROØ comer].It is difficult to survive without eating.

Subject and object control are typically found in sentences where control is obligatory (i.e. thecontroller is predictably an NP present in the matrix clause), and this requires the controller toc-command PRO (128 - 129).

The absence of argument NPs in the matrix clause of (130 - 131), on the other hand, rules outobligatory control. Optional or non-obligatory control allows PRO to be co-indexed either witha pragmatically determined external NP, or to remain without specific coindexation.

Subsequently, Control Theory has been subject to continuous discussion and modification, oftenfocusing on purely theory-internal problems. For instance, under the standard G&B analysis,an infinitival complement containing PRO must be a CP (with a null complementizer) in orderto be protected from government by the matrix verb1; this is necessitated by the fact that PROmust remain ungoverned. One of the problems this analysis raises is that “it is based on the

1This contrasts fundamentally with the complements of ECM verbs such as ‘believe’, which are analysed asIPs.


assumption that, in contrast to all other NPs, PRO is not Case-marked” (Boskovic 1997: 10).This specific problem is resolved in Chomsky & Lasnik (1993: 561) by proposing that PRO is,in fact, always Case-marked, receiving ‘null Case’, which is reserved exclusively for PRO2 andchecked by agreement with ‘nonfinite I’ (i.e. the non-overt inflection on the infinitive).

This Case-theoretical analysis is further refined by Martin (1994), who adopts a proposal byStowell (1982) that control infinitives (but not ECM infinitives) are specified for tense, specif-ically denoting a potential future event. Introducing this essentially semantic aspect into thehitherto purely syntactic theory, Martin suggests that it is this feature [+tense] on some infini-tives that Case-checks PRO in some infinitival clauses, but not in others, which consequentlycannot contain PRO. Boskovic (1997) expands this idea, proposing that the presence or absenceof [+tense] on an infinitive depends on s-selection by the matrix verb. Among other things,this allows him to abolish both the mechanism of c-selection and the notion of government,which he considers to be theoretically problematic and dispensable as part of minimalist theory.His analysis also allows him to discard the theory-internally motivated division of complement-izerless infinitival clauses into CPs and IPs: his “Minimal Structure Principle” (MSP) calls formaximum economy in the complexity of syntactic structure, and analysing ‘control infinitivalcomplements’ as IP satisfies this requirement. Whilst Boskovic’s primary aim is to update andsimplify the syntactic description of infinitival complements, it should be noted that he incor-porates semantic criteria into his analysis.

The more recent proposals presented so far are mainly or exclusively concerned with the inter-nal structure and constituency of infinitival clauses, but do not attempt to provide any insightsabout controller selection, i.e. which NP PRO is coindexed with. While Chomsky (1981: 78-9)concedes that control theory goes beyond the purely syntactic domain and “involves a numberof different factors: structural configurations, intrinsic properties of verbs, other semantic andpragmatic considerations”, there have been some attempts to explain control as a purely syn-tactic phenomenon. Manzini (1983, 1986), for instance, claims that the type of control dependsessentially on the syntactic position of the complement, with free control limited to complementsin subject position, whereas complements in object position require PRO to be “bound in thefirst sentence which contains the control sequence” (Manzini 1986: 322). That this does notreflect linguistic reality is easily shown by the difference between examples (132) and (133), inboth of which the complement of proponer is an object clause.

132. Subject control:

Como los estudiantes estaban preocupados, yoi propuse [PROi repasar los ejercicios conellos].As the students were worried, Ii proposed [PROi to go over the exercises with them].

133. Pragmatic/free control:

¿No sabesj donde ir en EEUU? Yoi propondrıa [PROj ir a Nueva York].Youj don’t know where to go in the US? Ii’d suggest [PROj to go to New York].

In a more recent attempt to explain control within the Minimalist Program, Hornstein (1999)proposes that in cases of obligatory control (coreference with an antecedent in the matrix clause),the infinitival subject moves upward from the complement IP to the matrix VP to the matrixIP. For non-obligatory control, on the other hand, he proposes the presence of the phoneti-cally null pronominal, small pro. Hornstein’s proposals are quite revolutionary within genera-tivist/minimalist theory because they imply that PRO is not as radically different from ‘trace’ as

2PRO “is the sole NP that can bear null Case (though it may have other Cases as well [...]).” (Chomsky &Lasnik 1993: 561)


previously thought. They also necessitate the abandonment of the long-established θ-Criterion,instead allowing θ-roles to license movement.

However, this analysis is based on the crucial assumption that “OC [obligatory control] andNOC [non-obligatory control] are effectively in complementary distribution” (Hornstein, 1999:92), which, as can be seen from sentence pairs such as (132) and (133), is incorrect. Theonly way of upholding the theory would be to propose two separate, structurally different [pro-poner+infinitive] constructions, but this would effectively be the same as admitting that withcertain verbs, the two sentence structures are in free variation, which brings us no further inunderstanding how the identity of the infinitive’s non-overt subject is determined.

The fact that syntactically equivalent sentences can have differing patterns of control is, in-deed, the fundamental problem of all purely syntactic attempts to explain control. Jackendoff& Culicover (2003: 520) provide sentence pairs such as ‘Johni persuaded Sarahj to j/∗idance’and ‘Johni promised Sarahj to i/∗jdance’ and conclude that “should one wish to find a relevantsyntactic difference between [these two sentences], it has to be motivated by the dogma thatcontrol is syntactic; there is no independent motivation.” For a detailed account of why purelysyntactic accounts of control are unsatisfactory, I refer the reader to Jackendoff & Culicover(2003: 519-24, 528 ff.).

A simple way of dealing with distinct control patterns such as those triggered by the verbs‘promise’ and ‘persuade’ is to accept that the choice between subject and object control is lex-ically determined. In one such lexically-based theory by Ruzicka (1983a,b), control verbs areapparently arbitrarily divided into those requiring thematic distinctness and others requiringthematic identity. Thematic identity-verbs require the two coreferential NPs to share the samesemantic role, while thematic distinctness-verbs require them to have distinct semantic roles.This approach is, however, not very satisfactory, as assignment to the two groups “remains anidiosyncratic lexical specification” (Comrie 1985: 54), and it ignores control by NPs outside thesubordinating clause.

The issue of apparent arbitrariness can be resolved by incorporating meaning into the analysis;since Jackendoff (1969, 1972), a long tradition of semantically-based proposals has developed.Generally, such proposals share the basic principle that the lexical semantics of the verb orpredicate selecting an infinitival complement are partly or fully responsible for the pattern ofsubject reference in the complement. Jackendoff & Culicover’s (2003) recent semantically-basedaccount of control, for instance, shows that the type of control a complement displays is a con-sequence of the semantic role it is assigned by the head that selects it. Their central claim isthat when a head selects a complement of the semantic type Action, it also imposes uniquecontrol3, the controller being the individual to which the head assigns the role of Actor forthe action described, no matter what its syntactic position is. The thematic role that the con-troller fills in the main clause depends on the semantic class of the head. For example, theAction complement of verbs containing intention as a semantic component will impose subjectcontrol because the actor of the Action argument must necessarily be the same as the inten-der. Verbs containing obligation as a semantic component, on the other hand, are object controlverbs because they impose an obligation on someone other than the obligor to perform an action.

Jackendoff & Culicover’s semantically-based model is clearly a step forward, as it explains manycases of unique subject or object control. However, it leaves certain questions unanswered. Tobegin with, the semantic restrictions imposed by semantic verb types are not, in all cases, as

3Jackendoff & Culicover use the term unique control as opposed to free and nearly free control; it is roughlyequivalent to the more established term obligatory control.


absolute as this theory suggests. With a verb expressing intention, for instance, we will usuallyfind a complement in which the actor is also the intender, but a sentence like ‘Ii intend himj

to jhelp me with this job.’4 shows that the control pattern of intention-verbs is not uniquelypredictable on the basis of the semantic notion intend.

The claim that verbs which permit only Action class complements must always impose uniquecontrol is not true in all cases, either. Examples (132) and (133) above, as well as (134), showthat there is a class of verbs, expressing proposals or suggestions, which allow generic or freecontrol.

134. Yoi propondrıa [genproteger el medio ambiente mas].Ii’d suggest [to genprotect the environment more]. (non-obligatory, free/generic control)

With this class of verbs, the subject of the infinitival clause can be coreferent with an NP outsidethe matrix clause, and its identity can either be determined pragmatically within the immediatediscourse (133), or it can be generic (134).

For control patterns as in (133), Jackendoff & Culicover (2003: 533) uphold their generalizationby claiming that there is an intended addressee implicitly present in the matrix clause. Whilstconceding that discourse pragmatic effects are involved in determining the addressee in the ma-trix clause of (133), they maintain that these pragmatic effects are not themselves involved inhow control is determined. No explanation is offered for generic control patterns as in (134).

Pragmatic approaches to the problem of control, e.g. Comrie (1984, 1985), and Pountain (1998a)with reference to Spanish, tend to focus on the same fact as the semantic approaches, namelythat the meaning of the subordinating verb is involved in determining the control pattern.But rather than claiming that different verb types impose rigid patterns of control, pragmaticapproaches take into account the discourse context as well as “the dictates of common senseknowledge about what is more or less likely” (Pountain, 1998a: 394). Within the frameworkof Searle’s (1969) approach to speech acts, Comrie (1985: 57-60) argues that certain controlpatterns are more likely to make an utterance felicitous than others. For example, with verbsbelonging to Searle’s class of commissives, such as ‘promise’, the normal expectation will be forthe person undertaking a promise also to be the person capable of bringing the promise about;hence the verb ‘promise’ typically imposes subject control.

The advantage of such a pragmatic approach to control is that it allows for deviations from thedefault control pattern if the pragmatic context makes an alternative pattern more likely. Byincorporating the speech act as a variable, it makes correct predictions where other approachesfail to do so without resorting to assigning idiosyncratic control properties. For instance, thevariable control patterns of proponer exemplified in (132 - 134) can be easily accounted for interms of pragmatic likelihood in the respective discourse context.

However, proponents of pragmatic approaches do generally acknowledge that there are limita-tions to the role of discourse pragmatics in determining the identity of the understood subjectin infinitival clauses. For example, even though object control in (135) would be pragmaticallypossible, and indeed likely, such a reading is impossible.

135. Juani lej prometio i/∗jcomer un helado.Johni promised herj to i/∗jhave an ice cream.

4N.b.: In Spanish and Portuguese, verbs of intention such as pensar, tencionar do have obligatory subjectcontrol; not even the presence of an overt subject to modify this pattern is permitted.


Such restrictions on the availability of certain readings are pragmatic only from a diachronicpoint of view, as they are the result of the predominant, typical, pragmatically most likelycontrol pattern becoming entrenched. Due to the fact that, in the vast majority of discoursesituations, it is implausible for someone receiving a promise to be the agent fulfilling that promise,the corresponding control pattern is not only the default reading in ambiguous cases, but hasbecome conventionalized as the only possible reading.

3.1.2 An integrated syntactico-pragmatic approach

Motivation

None of the approaches discussed above is fully satisfactory in explaining the wide range ofexisting control patterns. Generalizations regarding obligatory control by an argument of thematrix verb prove not to be universally valid, and virtually no attempt is made to investigatenonobligatory or free control in any detail. A central reason for their deficiencies is the factthat most theories focus primarily on one level of linguistic description, and though they dogenerally acknowledge the role of the other levels, particularly the pragmatic one, in passing,this is all too often brushed aside because it is perceived as too difficult to formalize. Purelypragmatic approaches, on the other hand, miss the fact that certain formal rules and restrictionsare undeniably involved in control assignment.

In this section I propose an integrated model of control that unites syntactic and pragmaticcriteria, as well as a third component which I refer to as Entrenchment Restrictions. The modelhas several advantages over other approaches, which I will outline here briefly.

The integrated model does not resort to invoking different levels of linguistic description in an adhoc fashion. As seen in the previous section, many theories attempt to explain control in a purelysyntactic, semantic or pragmatic framework, but leave aside phenomena that are inconsistentwith their theory, relegating them to a different level of description. For instance, obligatorycontrol is often treated as an entirely separate issue from non-obligatory/free control, though ithas been shown above that such a discrete division is unrealistic. The model proposed here iscapable of accounting for cases that straddle the boundary between these ‘classes’ of control, byapplying criteria belonging to different levels of linguistic description in an orderly way.

Disposing of unnecessary categories and subdivisions also makes the model more economical;for instance, the classification of main verbs into different classes, depending on the control pat-terns they permit, can largely be abolished in favour of pragmatic plausibility judgement, whichresults from a synthesis of lexical semantics and discourse context. A strongly reduced classi-ficatory system may, however, be a useful tool in organizing those subordinating constructionswhose control patterns are subject to Entrenchment Restrictions.

Finally, a great advantage of the proposed model is the fact that it makes accurate predictionsnot only for what is traditionally termed complement clause (whether containing a prepositionalcomplementizer or not), but also for prepositional infinitive clauses that fall into the traditionalcategory adjunct. Not treating these clause types as radically different from each other is in linewith Jackendoff & Culicover (2003: 523), who merely point out that certain object complementsand certain prepositional adjunct clauses share the same control patterns. In Section 1.3.3, Ihave argued against drawing a strict distinction between these two clause types; the fact thatthe model presented here is valid for both supports this claim.


The decision tree model

The syntactic component of this model is a hierarchically ordered list of default patterns, asshown in Table 3.1.1.

Table 3.1.1.

Level Type of control Identity of S2

1 Subject Control S2=S1

2 Direct/Indirect Object Control S2=DO1/IO1

3 Prepositional Object Control S2=PO1

4 Indefinite/Pragmatic Control S2 6∈ main clause

Each of the patterns represents control by a different NP, and the default is to always choosethe first possible pattern from this list. Three factors determine whether a control pattern ispossible or not:

a) The presence of the respective NP in the main clause.

b) The pragmatic plausibility of the respective NP to function as subject of the dependentclause, which is determined mainly by two factors: our knowledge of the ways in which peopleand things interact in the real world, and the concrete discourse situation.

c) Specific control restrictions (resulting from entrenchment of a common, pragmatically highlylikely control pattern).

Figure 3.1: Decision tree for subject reference assignment


The cyclical mechanism by which the correct type of control is selected is shown in Fig. 3.1.In order to determine which NP the non-overt subject of the infinitival clause is co-indexedwith (i.e. which NP=S2), syntactic availability, pragmatic plausibility and applicability of spe-cific restrictions are verified for each level of the hierarchy, beginning with level one and endingas soon as both conditions are satisfied. If, however, any one of them is not satisfied, a newcycle begins, in which the next default pattern in the control hierarchy undergoes the same pro-cess. If, finally, none of the patterns in the hierarchy satisfy both conditions, the final defaultis control by an element outside the the sentence; depending on the concrete discourse situa-tion, it may refer to a previously mentioned NP, to one of the interlocutors, or it may be generic.

Application of the model

This section illustrates how the decision tree mechanism is applied to different types of sentencesin order to explain the way it functions, and to demonstrate that it provides accurate predic-tions regarding the identity of the non-overt subject in infinitival clauses. All the demonstrationsentences provided here are Spanish, but the model can be applied to Portuguese in exactly thesame way. For the sake of notational clarity and convenience, PRO will be used to representthese non-overt subjects, but this should not be understood as an indication of adherence to agenerative framework.5

Subject and object control

The most basic pattern is found in (136).

136. El hombreS1 quiere [PROS2=S1 salir].The man wants [to leave].

The syntactic requirements of the first hierarchy level, i.e. availability of S1, and the prag-matic plausibility of its coreferentiality with PRO, are both satisfied. No specific EntrenchmentRestrictions rule out this control pattern. Hence, S2 is interpreted as identical to S1.

137. MeIO1 gusta [PROS2=IO1 salir contigo].I like [going out with you.]

138. MeDO1 molesta [PROS2=DO1 ver esta basura].It disturbs me [to see this rubbish].

In (137) and (138), the absence of a subject NP in the main clause makes it necessary to pro-ceed to the second level of the hierarchy, which in both cases satisfies the syntactic as well asthe pragmatic requirement. As no specific restrictions rule out this control pattern, PRO isco-indexed with O1.6

A generalization that can be made on formal grounds is that subject control must be ruled outin any sentence in which the infinitival clause itself fills the subject slot, since the main verbcannot have more than one subject. The subject complement itself functioning as controller canbe ruled out for two reasons: (a) it is not an NP, which is a requirement for a controller; (b) theinfinitival clause being its own subject would lead to a recursive structure.

5According to some generative approaches (e.g. Rigau 1995, Torrego 1998: 211-2), the null subject in infinitivalclauses that also allow overt subjects, which essentially covers all instances of ‘non-obligatory’ control, is pro, notPRO. Here, PRO will simply represent any non-overt subject of an infinitival clause.

6The distinction between direct and indirect object is arguably disappearing from many varieties of modernSpanish, but this does not affect the model, as it locates DO and IO at the same level of the hierarchy.


139. El hombreS1 meIO1 manda [PROS2=IO1 salir].The man orders me [to leave].

In (139), the syntactic requirement of the first cycle (availability of S1) is satisfied. The nextstep, verification of pragmatic plausibility, must however lead to rejection of subject control,as someone giving orders to himself is by no means what our knowledge of the world wouldsuggest as a likely interpretation of the sentence. Thus, we return to the top of the decisiontree, moving on to object-control as the second default choice. The IO1 is available as well asbeing a pragmatically plausible candidate for S2. Hence, the model correctly predicts that PROis controlled by the IO1 me.

The important role of the parameter of pragmatic plausibility is also demonstrated in the prepo-sitional infinitive clauses in sentences (140 - 142).

140. A esa mujer, MarıaS1 leIO1 envidia su suerteDO1 por [PROS2=S1 ser una persona envidiosa].Mary is envious of this woman’s fortune because [she is an envious person].

141. A esa mujer, MarıaS1 leIO1 envidia su suerteDO1 por [PROS2=IO1 ser tan afortunada.]Mary is envious of this woman’s fortune because [she is so lucky].

142. A esa mujer, MarıaS1 leIO1 envidia su suerteDO1 por [PROS2=DO1 ser tan buena].Mary is envious of this woman’s fortune because [it is so good].

In (140), the subject of the main clause, Marıa, is available as controller, and Marıa is also apragmatically plausible subject for the infinitival clause, since someone who is said to be enviousof someone else is likely to be an envious person. In (141) and (142), the presence of the mainclause subject Marıa would make the same control pattern as in (140) possible, but the prag-matic plausibility is not given: in most real-world situations it would be unlikely for someone tobe envious because they themselves are lucky. Thus, the cycle is repeated at the next level of thecontrol hierarchy. Both a direct and an indirect object are available as potential controllers atthis level, but in (141) it is pragmatically highly implausible for DO1, suerte, to be the subject ofthe infinitival clause, whilst our knowledge of the world suggests that it is much more plausiblefor someone to be envied due to his good luck; hence the indirect object is correctly predictedto be the controller. In (142), on the other hand, the reverse applies: the direct object, suerte,is the pragmatically more plausible subject of the two objects, so the model correctly predictsdirect object control.

Prepositional object control

In (143), the absence of a subject as well as a direct or indirect object allows the mechanism toproceed to the next hierarchy level, where the availability of the prepositional object and thesemantic plausibility of its functioning as S2 allow it to function as controller.

143. Es costumbre entre [los usuarios del correo electronico]PO1 [PROS2=PO1 incluir a pie detodos sus mensajes una marca personal.]7

It is customary among users of e-mail [to include a personal signature at the end of theirmessage].

(144) provides evidence that indirect object control has priority over prepositional object con-trol. The mechanism of control assignment is essentially the same as in (139), O1 being both

7web.bemarnet.es/software/eudora6.html


available and a pragmatically plausible choice. However, example (144) proves that direct ob-ject control precedes prepositional object control in the hierarchy of default patterns: there isno reason why PO1, mi hermana, should be ruled out as controller on pragmatic grounds, sothe reason for it not to be the ‘understood’ S2 must be its lower position in the default hierarchy.

144. [Por mi hermana]PO1, meIO1 es importante [PROS2=IO1 saber lo que le va a pasar.]For the sake of my sister it is important to me to know what is going to happen to her.

Control from further afield

145. Los terroristas me habıan capturado. Era importante [PROS2=external escapar].The terrorists had captured me. It was important [to escape].

146. ¡Ya es hora de [PROaddressee dormir]! (e.g. said to a child)It’s time to go to sleep!

147. Es interesante [PROS2=gen estudiar idiomas].It’s interesting [to study languages].

In (145 - 147), PRO is co-indexed with elements outside the main clause. All previous levels ofthe default hierarchy have been run through without any positive results, due to the absenceof any subject or direct, indirect or prepositional object. What remains is the choice betweencontrol by an NP in the discourse vicinity8 (so-called ‘pragmatic control’) (145), by the speakeror listener (which might be termed interlocutor control) (146), or generic/arbitrary control withan impersonal or unspecified controller (147). The type of control, as well as the identity of thecontroller, are determined on the basis of a combination of the same pragmatic principles thatapply at the earlier stages of the control assignment mechanism, namely plausibility in viewof the specific discourse context and our knowledge of the way things are likely to interact inthe world. So in (145), our pragmatic knowledge that the agent of escapar is usually not thecapturer but the captured, is what allows us to determine that me, and not los terroristas, isthe controller. In (146) and (147), the choice between interlocutor control and generic controldepends primarily on the discourse situation. If said to a child or an unwilling language student,respectively, the understood subject is the addressee. But if uttered in a more general context,the understood subject is generic ‘one’, ‘anyone’ or ‘everyone’.

Entrenchment Restrictions

In the final step of the mechanism, the control pattern that has been established on syntacticand pragmatic grounds is checked against specific restrictions that rule out control patternswhich are generally highly implausible in the majority of discourse contexts. These restrictionscould be described as ‘fossilized pragmatics’.

The most important class of verbs affected by these Entrenchment Restrictions are verbs ofperception (ver, oir, etc.) and a number of directive verbs, including such notions as commandingor ordering, forbidding, teaching, requesting, assuring, causing, persuading, etc. Infinitivalcomplements of these verbs follow the pattern of sentence (139) above (repeated here as (148)),ruling out subject control.

8So-called long-distance control by an element within the same sentence, but outside the main clause, can beincluded in this category.


148. El hombreS1 meIO1 manda [PROS2=IO1 salir].The man orders me [to leave].

The crucial property shared by these directive verbs is the fact that one does not usually dothem to oneself. A coreferential (subject control) reading is pragmatically unacceptable, simplybecause it is common knowledge that it is highly unusual to order, forbid or teach oneself todo something. In the first decision tree cycle, this Entrenchment Restriction, automaticallyrules out subject control, even if a pragmatically plausible subject is available. A coreferentialreading is therefore impossible even in sentences such as (149), where the necessary pragmaticplausibility would be given.

149. El robotS1 ensena [a PROS2=Ø/∗S1 bailar.]The robot teaches to dance.

If we apply the decision tree mechanism to this sentence, it becomes clear why the only possiblereading is generic control. In the first cycle, the availability of an NP would make subject controlpossible, and it would also be pragmatically plausible (cf. 150). However, the specific restrictionfor ensenar rules out subject control, so we must repeat the cycle at the second level of the hi-erarchy. As no direct or indirect object is available, the cycle is repeated once again at the thirdlevel of the hierarchy, but again without success, as no prepositional object is available, either.So we finally proceed to the last level of the hierarchy, where, being pragmatically plausible,generic control is assigned.

To express semantic identity of S1 and S2, a reflexive object pronoun (co-indexed with S1) mustbe inserted in the main clause, as in (150).

150. El robotS1 seIO1=S1 ensena [a PROS2=IO1 bailar.]The robot teaches himself to dance.

In (150), the specific restriction for ensenar still rules out subject control in the first cycle, butthe availability of an object NP, which is also a pragmatically plausible controller, permits objectcontrol.

It must be pointed out that it is not predictable, purely on the grounds of lexical semantics,whether a specific verb is associated with such control restrictions. Thus, a directive verb suchas exigir, ‘to demand’, permits subject control (151) as well as the expected object control (152).

151. Los turistasS1 exigen [PROS2=S1 comer muy temprano.]The tourists demand to eat very early.

152. El jefeS1 leIO1 exige [PROS2=IO1 trabajar muchısimo.]The boss demands of him that he works very much.

The fact that the subject control restriction observed in connection with other directive verbsdoes not apply to exigir is an indication that discourse situations in which the demander is alsothe agent of the demanded action are sufficiently common for the restriction on coreferentialcontrol not to have become entrenched.

With verbs of perception, the situation is very similar to that of directive verbs. They, too,generally rule out subject control. There is, however, a slight difference in the pragmatic causa-tion behind this entrenched restriction: whilst it is generally rather implausible or unlikely thatsomeone orders, forbids or advises himself to do something, it is perfectly normal for someone


to hear, see or feel himself doing something. But in the vast majority of situations, it is notrelevant to mention that the person who says something also hears himself speaking, or thatsomeone falling down the stairs feels how he is falling down the stairs. Normally, our knowl-edge of the world is sufficient to know these things, and the Gricean maxims of economy andrelevance forbid us to utter things that are obvious. Therefore, the likelihood of encounteringcoreferential infinitive complements with verbs of perception is very low, and this absence hasbecome entrenched and generalized. For the rare cases in which it is relevant to the discoursesituation that someone perceives himself doing something, this is resolved by means of objectcontrol by an inserted reflexive (153), as with the directive verbs (150).

153. PedroS1 seIO1=S1 oıa [PROS2=IO1 respirar.]Peter heard himself breathe.

In addition to verbs with entrenched restrictions on subject control, there is a group of verbssuch as prometer ‘to promise’, aceptar ‘to agree to’, jurar ‘to swear’, that permit only subjectcontrol. Their common property is the fact that, under normal circumstances, the person towhom a promise or an oath is made is highly unlikely to be the person who will act to bringabout the promised state of affairs. Therefore, the subject control pattern has become so stronglyentrenched that this group of verbs does not permit object control, even when pragmaticallyplausible.

154. (=135.)Juani lej prometio i/∗jcomer un helado.Johni promised herj to i/∗jhave an ice cream.

As levels 2, 3 and 4 in the hierarchy (Table 3.1.1.) are ruled out for this class of verbs, there isno alternative to assigning subject control in the first decision cycle of Fig. 3.1.

Entrenchment Restrictions are, however, not uniquely associated with verbs or certain verbclasses; certain prepositions impose comparable restrictions as well. In (140 - 142), it has beenshown that the preposition por permits various control patterns, depending on what is pragmat-ically plausible. Pountain (1998a: 405) attempts to explain this by arguing that prepositionalinfinitive clauses have a looser relation to the main clause and are thus more susceptible tocontextual pragmatic influences than object complements, which form a much tighter unit withthe main verb. On the other hand, there are several prepositional infinitive constructions that(when used without an overt subject in the infinitival clause), strictly require subject control,such as para+infinitive, sin+infinitive, antes de+infinitive, despues de+infinitive, etc. Through-out the rest of this study, it will be seen that the link between certain prepositional infinitiveconstructions and subject control or subject coreference is of crucial importance for their syn-chronic distribution, as well as their diachronic development. In Section 3.2, it will be seenthat subject coreference remains dominant even when the infinitive has its own overt subject.The pragmatic causes for this close link between prepositional infinitives and coreference arediscussed in Sections 4.4.1 and 4.4.2, after the presentation of the relevant diachronic data. Butfirst, it is time to take a closer look at (subject) coreference and coreferentiality.

3.1.3 The dominant role of coreferentiality

While the discussion of the decision tree model has shown that non-overt S2 (equivalent to PRO)in an infinitival clause can be identical (co-indexed) with a number of different NPs inside andoutside the main clause itself, infinitival structures are, in traditional grammatical accounts, fre-quently equated with coreferentiality: “The infinitive should be used only if the subject of the


subordinate verb is the same as the main verb’s. [...] If the subjects are different, the subjunctiveor indicative must be used” (Butt & Benjamin, 2000: 293). Where the object-control patternfound in connection with the class of manipulative or directive V1-verbs (ordering, permitting,influencing), as well as verbs of perception, is mentioned at all, it tends to be characterised asexceptional9.

Though it has been shown above that these so-called exceptions can, when considered from apragmatic perspective, be fully integrated into a single system of S2 assignment, the fact thatsubject coreference constitutes the default control pattern is no coincidence, as a statistical lookat control patterns reveals.

Coreferentiality is by far the most frequently occurring person reference pattern. The data ex-tracted from the modern sections of the Spanish and Portuguese text corpora reveal that inSpanish, the ratio of coreferential to non-coreferential infinitival clauses is 79%:21%. In Por-tuguese, the discrepancy is even slightly greater, with a ratio of 83%:17%. These figures includeinfinitival object and subject clauses as well as prepositional infinitive clauses.

In Section 3.1.1 above, the link between the meaning of control verbs on the one hand, and thepragmatic plausibility of either their subject or object functioning as subject of the dependentinfinitival clause on the other hand, has been shown to be crucial for specific control patternsto establish themselves. However, not every verb imposes such restrictions on who or whatmight plausibly be the understood subject of the complement. Verbs that are capable of tak-ing a coreferential complement can be subdivided into three classes, based on how predictablecoreferentiality of the complement is.

a) Intrinsic coreferentiality

This group contains the verbs traditionally labelled as auxiliaries and modal verbs such as poder,deber, ir a, soler, and a group of verbs that function as an aspectual modifier of V2, such asacabar de, empezar a. Verbs of these two types must by definition be coreferential becausethey form a semantic unit with V2, merely adding modal or aspectual information about theevent described in the complement. They are joined by a group of verbs such as atreverse a ‘todare’, abstenerse de ‘to abstain from’, for which it can confidently be said that anything butcoreferentiality would be highly implausible. Compare (155) and (156):

155. [El hombre]S1 se atreve a [PROS2=S1 gritar.]The man dares to scream.

156. ∗El hombreS1 se atreve a [que algoS26=S1 pase.]∗The man dares that something happens.

Intrinsically coreferential V1-verbs make up the far greatest part of all coreferential V1-verbs.In Spanish, 77% of coreferential infinitival clauses are intrinsically coreferential; for Portuguese,the corresponding figure is 70%.

b) Optional coreferentiality

Verbs belonging to this class can take either a coreferential or a non-coreferential complement,the latter typically being a finite clause. Which of the two possibilities is chosen is entirely aquestion of what is to be expressed semantically, i.e. whether S1 and S2 are identical.

9E.g. Halm (1971: 101) “Ausnahmsweise ist hier das Objekt des Hauptsatzes Subjekt des Infinitivs.”(myemphasis)


157. [El hombre]S1 quiere [PROS2=S1 gritar.]The man wants [to scream].

158. El hombreS1 quiere [que [su esposa]S26=S1grite.]The man wants [that his wife screams].

The absence of an overt S2 is automatically interpreted as an indication of coreferentiality.

c) Semi-coreferentiality

A small class of verbs frequently take a complement in which S2 is not identical with, butincludes, S1. Such verbs, e.g. contribuir a, participar en, ayudar a semantically imply S1’sparticipation in the action of V2:

159. [El hombre]S1∈S2 contribuye a [PROS2 pagar tus deudas.]The man contributes to paying your debts.

Infinitival complementation is found where S1∈S2; in some special contexts it may, however, itmay be possible for S1 to contribute something to a process without being involved in it as such.Overt mention of S2 is required to explicitly excludes S1 from S2, as in (160):

160. [El hombre]S1 contribuye a [que [la policıa]S2 encuentre su hija.]The man contributes to the police finding his daughter.

All in all, semi-coreferentiality differs very little from optional coreferentiality; semi-coreferentialverbs are, indeed, optionally semi-coreferential. Despite the subtle difference of full vs. partialcoreferentiality that distinguishes these two groups of verbs, they are most conveniently treatedas a single class here.

Semantic exploitation of the coreferentiality pattern

The close link between coreferentiality, particularly intrinsic coreferentiality, and dependentinfinitives leads to some interesting instances of semantic exploitation. Several Spanish declar-ative verbs, among them sentir, saber, and pensar, always take a finite complement when usedas declaratives, even if the complement is coreferential, as in (161):

161. JuanS1 sabe que [(el)S2=S1 tiene dinero.]Juan knows [that he has money].

This can be explained by the fact that these verbs semantically exploit the close association ofdependent infinitives with intrinsic coreferentiality, as they acquire a slightly modified meaningthat makes them intrinsically coreferential, as seen in (162):

162. JuanS1 sabe [PROS2=S1 nadar.]Juan [is able to swim].

Infinitive complementation causes a similar semantic shift10 for sentir and pensar:

10Whether we are, in fact, dealing with a lexical split here is hard to determine.


declarative intrinsically coreferential

pensar que - to think that pensar+inf. - to intendsentir que - to feel that sentir+inf. - to regretsaber que - to know that saber+inf. - to be able to

Another declarative, negar ‘to deny’, behaves in much the same way, but its coreferential coun-terpart, negarse a ‘to refuse to’ is additionally marked by a feature typical of intrinsically coref-erential control-verbs: it is reflexive (thus iconically reflecting the self-reference).

163. JuanS1 niega que [(el)S2=S1 sea un ladron.]Juan denies [that he is a thief].

164. JuanS1 se niega a [PROS2=S1ser un ladron.]Juan refuses [to be a thief].

With decir ‘to say’, a similar semantic shift can also be observed; decir+infinitive is typicallyused in the meaning ‘to claim that’, as in the following example.

165. [El embajador en Kinshasa]S1 dijo [PROS2=S1 desconocer las circunstancias del falle-cimiento de los misioneros.11

The ambassador in Kinshasa claimed not to know the circumstances of the missionaries’death.

Crucially, decir+infinitive implies no commitment by the speaker to the truth value of the com-plement, whereas an indicative form in a finite complement would imply assertion12 on the partof the speaker (or journalist, in this case). Though ‘to claim’ cannot be said to be intrinsicallyor exclusively coreferential, it is understandable that speakers would be particularly keen notcommit themselves to something that someone else has said about himself, and which may bedifficult to confirm objectively.

Spanish tener que and Portuguese ter de ‘to have to’ are the result of a slight variation onthe exploitation pattern illustrated above. The basic meaning of tener/ter ‘to have, to hold’ ispragmatically incompatible with a verbal object complement, as in (166):

166. ∗Juan tiene [estudiar].∗Juan holds [to study].

The absence of a pragmatically meaningful interpretation of such sentences facilitates its se-mantic exploitation, replacing the original possessive meaning by a related13, but intrinsicallycoreferential one (167).

11El Paıs, 9.11.96, cit. Pountain 1998b: 170.12There is an extensive body of work on the semantic implications of mood choice in Spanish; the observation

that the use of the indicative implies “assertion of the occurrence expressed by the verb” is based on Klein (1975);Lunn (1989) provides a similar analysis, and Zlotchew (1977) characterizes the indicative/subjunctive distinctionas one of experience/non-experience. The infinitive, on the other hand, being underspecified for mood, is neutralin terms of assertion.

13Similar structures found in many languages of the world, e.g. English to have/to have to+infinitive suggestthat there is a psychological connection between the notions of possession and obligation.

3.2. INFINITIVES WITH OVERT SUBJECT IN SPANISH 73

167. JuanS1 tiene que [PROS2=S1 estudiar.]Juan has [to study].

The above instances of semantic exploitation provide further evidence for the link between coref-erentiality and the choice of an infinitival structure.

In this section it has been shown that infinitival clauses are, indeed, predominantly coreferential,in the majority of cases because V2 is intrinsically incapable of having a complement subjectother than S1. The fact that intrinsic coreferentiality is by far the most frequent predictablerelation between main and dependent clause, (its predictability making the absence of overtperson marking in the dependent clause possible in the first place), can be seen as the factortriggering the association of infinitive with coreferentiality as a default pattern, which is validnot only for infinitival object clauses, but also for (adverbial) prepositional infinitive clauses.

In the following chapters, it will become evident that it is precisely this link between corefer-ential subject reference and clausal infinitives that plays a crucial part in the order in whichprepositional infinitives enter the language, and in the extent to which different prepositionsform prepositional infinitive clauses.

3.2 Infinitives with overt subject in Spanish

In Section 3.1.2 above, a model explaining the combined syntactic and pragmatic mechanismby which the identity of non-overt subjects of infinitival clauses can be determined was presented.

For object complementation with intrinsically coreferential V1, no need for marking of an alter-native complement arises, as non-coreferentiality would be pragmatically nonsensical. However,for the case of object-complementation with optionally coreferential and intrinsically non-coref-rential V1-verbs, as well as subject and adjunct clauses, the situation is different: S2-assignmentin accordance with the model in Fig. 3.1 is merely one possibility. If an S2 other than the(pragmatically plausible) one assigned by the default mechanism is to function as subject of theinfinitival clause, this must be indicated by its overt presence within the dependent clause, soas to overrule the automatic default assignment.

3.2.1 Overt S2 in finite clauses

The most common way of overtly expressing a subject of a dependent clause, in Spanish as wellas in Portuguese14, is by the use of a finite dependent clause, in which the verb is morphologicallyinflected and a subject NP can freely appear. (168-169) show how the finite construction canallow any NP as S2, while that of the infinitival clause is syntactically predetermined:

168. [El hombre]S1 quiere [PROS2=S1 salir.]The man wants [to leave].

169. El hombreS1 quiere... ...[que la mujerS26=S1 salga.]...[que sus hijosS26=S1 salgan.]...[que tuS26=S1 salgas.]

The man wants the woman/his children/you to leave.

14Especially regarding Portuguese, this may appear surprising in view of the widely discussed inflected infinitiveconstruction that can optionally have its own subject; Section 3.3.2 provides figures confirming the statisticaldominance of finite subordination in Portuguese.


This device of overt S2-marking is universally applicable wherever a need to clarify the identityof S2 arises, in adverbial clauses as well as subject complements (170 - 173).

170. El hombreS1 lo hace [para PROS2=S1 ganar dinero.]The man does it [to earn money].

171. El hombreS1 lo hace [para que mi hijoS26=S1 gane dinero.]The man does it [so that my son earns money].

172. MeIO1 gusta [PROS2=S1 comer.]It pleases me [to eat].

173. MeIO1 gusta [que mi hermanaS26=S1 coma.]It pleases me [that my sister eats.]

Generally, finite and infinitival dependent clauses are mutually exclusive15: the infinitive is theonly possible choice wherever the default pattern allows it to receive the correct S2; a finitedependent clause must be used wherever the S2 assigned to the infinitive would not correspondto the correct sentence meaning. (174), for example, is not a possible alternative to (168):

174. ∗El hombreS1 quiere [que S2=S1 salga.]∗The man wants that he (himself) leaves.

V1-verbs that permit subject-raising are exceptional in that finite and infinitival complementsare not mutually exclusive, but in complementary distribution: an infinitive is required when S2

is raised (or the presence of an infinitival complement causes S2 to be raised), as in (175-176).

175. El alumno parece [estudiar.]The student seems [to study].

176. Parece [que el alumno estudia.]It seems [that the student studies].

The use of a finite clause can also serve as a disambiguating device for those cases in which thedecision tree model (Fig. 3.1) does not lead to an unequivocal assignment of S2. In (177), PROcan be interpreted as either pragmatically controlled by a concrete NP outside the sentence,or as arbitrarily controlled. (178), on the other hand, leaves no doubt whatsoever about theidentity of S2.

177. No se por que Juan no lo hace. Es importante [PROS2=NP ?/Ø? hacerlo.]I don’t know why John doesn’t do it. It is important [to do it].

178. No se por que Juan no lo hace. Es importante [que proS2 lo haga.]I don’t know why John doesn’t do it. It is important [that heS2 does it].

15According to Davies (1996), use of the finite structure is favoured whenever the infinitival alternative wouldforce the speaker to make a syntactic choice between two structures of which he does not know which one to pick,e.g. clitic raising. (Parece saberlo. – Lo parece saber.)


3.2.2 Overt S2 in Spanish infinitival clauses

In addition to finite dependent clauses with an overt subject, Spanish also permits infinitivalclauses with overt subjects. This Overt Subject Infinitive (OSI) construction, often referredto as the personal infinitive16, which “challenges the traditional dichotomy between finite andnon-finite verb forms” (Ledgeway, 2000: 116), is found in various Romance varieties, includingCastilian, Catalan, Romanian, as well as a number of Italian varieties17. Though the OSI inthese languages resembles the inflected infinitive in many respects, there are some importantdifferences that will be discussed in more detail in Section 3.3.

The overt subject in OSI clauses is obligatorily nominative, as exemplified in Al salir yo/*mı/*mede la escuela,... (cf. e.g. Torrego 1998: 207). How the overt subject NP is governed, and howits nominative case can be licensed in a clause that lacks a finite verb form, has attracted muchattention in generative linguistics in recent years, and various explanations have been proposed,of which I shall briefly mention some here.

Making use of insights gained from the fact that the grammatical person of a ‘null subject’ ismorphologically mirrored in the reflexive element of ‘reflexive verbs’, Rigau (1995) argues thatinfinitival clauses which are not subject to obligatory control by a specific antecedent within thematrix clause have pro, not PRO, as their null subject. Because pro requires strong Agr, sheproposes that such a strong Agr is present in INFL of such infinitival clauses that can have overt(lexical) subjects, or pro if the subject is non-overt.

Torrego (1998) follows Rigau’s analysis that lexical subjects alternate with pro in this con-struction, and she points out that we must further distinguish expletive from argumental pro.She proposes that D (the D-feature of Tense, encoded in a separate head) can lack agreementfeatures, in which case it can license only expletive pro (e.g. in Italian), or it can have ‘rich’agreement, in which case it can license argumental pro (e.g. in Spanish and Catalan). Shesupports this analysis by drawing a parallel to clitic doubling, for which she suggests that theclitic has a Case licensing function similar to that of the ‘null D’ node she proposes, which canlicense either nominative pro or lexical subjects.

An analysis along similar lines for OSI clauses in French, where the distribution of this construc-tion is far more restricted than in Spanish, is proposed by Vinet (1984). She suggests separatestructures for infinitival clauses with and without overt subjects. Those with overt subjects have[+Agr] at the INFL-node, whilst there is no [+Agr] in infinitival clauses without an overt subject.

Fernandez Lagunilla (1987), on the other hand, believes that in prepositional infinitive clauses,the (infinitival) verb moves to a position left of the overt subject. This way, the verb can beproperly governed by COMP, a node occupied by the preposition in this type of clause. Theovert subject, in turn, receives its government by COMP via the verb on its left. Because theovert subject is not an object of COMP, it receives nominative case by default. Fernandez La-gunilla supports her analysis with the observation that OSI constructions are ungrammaticalif the infinitive is a subject-raising verb, which she explains by the paradoxical circularity thatwould arise from the conflicting requirements that the subject NP should move to the left of theverb (raising requirement), and that the verb should move to the left of the subject NP (OSIgovernment requirement).

16The term ‘personal infinitive’ is not used consistently in the literature: whilst Ledgeway (2000: 115) sees itas opposed to the inflected infinitive, Posner (1996: 165) equates the two.

17To a more limited extent, French (cf. Vinet, 1984; Maurer Jr., 1968) and standard Italian (cf. Rizzi, 1982)also allow overt subjects in infinitival clauses.


It should be noted that the issue of how the overt subject receives nominative case is largelytheory-internally motivated. From a functional semantic point of view, it can be expected thatthe subject∼agent of a clause receives the typical subject case by virtue of its function withinthe clause; the analysis for languages like English, where this is not the case, is more problematic.

In what follows, four different, aspects of the OSI in Spanish will be looked at in more detail:referential properties of the overt subject, its discourse pragmatic function, distribution of theconstruction, and the relevance of the position of the overt subject within the clause. It will beseen that all these issues are closely linked.

3.2.3 Referential properties and discourse pragmatic function

The function most commonly associated with OSI constructions is that of ‘disjoint reference’, inwhich the overt subject is not coreferential with the subject of the main clause. So for instancein (179), the subject of abrir is not the same as the subject of estaba cerca, whereas both verbsshare a subject in the absence of an overt S2 (180).

179. Al abrir yoS2 los ojos, mi hermanoS1 ya estaba cerca.When I opened my eyes, my brother was already close.

180. Al abrir PROS2=S1 los ojos, mi hermanoS1 ya estaba cerca.When he opened his eyes, my brother was already close.

It might then be said that the OSI is a way of overriding the entrenched default control pattern,coreferentiality. Similarly, the default ‘generic’ or ‘arbitrary’ control pattern found in subjectclauses can be overridden by means of an overt subject (181).

181. [Cantar yoS26=gen ahora la Traviata] serıa interesante.18

[singinf. I now the Traviata] would.be interesting

[For me to sing the Traviata now] would be interesting.

However, the normal method of individuating (non-default) dependent clause subjects is bymeans of a finite clause, e.g. ‘cuando abrı los ojos’, ‘si yo cantara ahora la Traviata’. We mustthus ask ourselves what triggers the choice of OSI over the finite structure.

The answer to this is threefold: on the one hand, OSI constructions are chosen because of theireconomy or perceived concision, especially in journalistic and scientific writing. The more im-portant trigger for the use of the OSI, however, is its contrastive focus19 on S2. This contrastivefocus, evident for instance in (179) and in (181), which sets apart the majority of OSIs from theirfinite counterparts, is caused by a number of factors. Firstly, the typical postverbal position ofthe OSI subject is generally a position of topicalizatian or focus in Spanish; more evidence for alink between post-infinitival position and focus will be provided in Section 3.2.5 below. Secondly,the OSI construction frequently involves the presence of a subject pronoun, which is obligatoryand necessary to determine the identity of S2 in the absence of a full nominal subject NP; overtrealization of subject pronouns in Spanish is, however, also closely associated with emphasis orfocus. Finally, the presence of an overt subject in an infinitival clause is statistically rare20 andtherefore marked; this markedness also translates into increased focus on the subject.

18Example taken from Yoon & Bonet-Farran 1991: 35319This may not be so in the case of the highly frequent, ‘redundant’ occurrence of overt pre-infinitival subjects

in Caribbean Spanish, discussed by Suner (1986), Morales de Walters (1988).20Less than 1% of infinitives have an overt subject.


Having identified contrastive focus as a feature of OSI constructions, it comes as no great surprisethat we can find sentence pairs such as (182) and (183), which do not differ from each other in anyfundamental or categorically way, despite the fact the overt subject yo in (183) is coreferentialwith the main clause subject, whereas el in (182) is not.

182. Le ayudo [por ser elS26=S1 mi mejor amigo].I help him because he (and nobody else) is my best friend.

183. Le ayudo [por ser yoS2=S1 su mejor amigo].I help him because I (and nobody else) am his best friend.

Apart from the issue of identity/non-identity of S1 and S2, both sentences are exactly parallelin structure, both overt subject pronouns have exactly the same focusing function, and bothsentences share exactly the same intonation pattern.

On the other hand, OSIs can serve to individuate the subject not only of non-coreferential,but also of coreferential infinitival clauses. The coreferential OSI in (184), for instance, closelyresembles the non-coreferential one in (179) in that there is a degree of contrastive focus, butprimarily a need to identify the subject of the infinitival clause, which would remain ambiguouswithout the overt subject.

184. La mujerS1 le hace tropezar con una piedra [sin quererlo ellaS2=S1].The woman makes him stumble over a stone [without her wanting to].

It would therefore be inappropriate to claim that coreferential and non-coreferential (‘disjointreference’) OSIs are fundamentally different. An alternative division, grouping together all focus-bearing OSIs on the one side, and non-focus-bearing non-coreferential OSIs on the other, mustalso fail because a binary distinction between these two classes is impossible: even in sentencessuch as (179), a typical ‘disjoint reference’ example, the overt subject bears a certain degree ofcontrastive focus and would therefore have to be grouped with the coreferential OSIs.

A categorical distinction of coreferential vs. non-coreferential OSI as two separate constructionscan thus be said to be an artificial construct that should be abandoned; both focus and subjectindividuation can be found in coreferential as well as non-coreferential OSIs, and in most casesboth these features are present at the same time.

Statistically speaking, coreferentiality is, in fact, by far the most common reference pattern21 inprepositional OSI clauses, as e.g. (185), in which there is clearly some contrastive focus on yo,but its overt presence also has the individuating function of pre-empting the identity of the mainclause subject. Due to the prevalence of subject continuity in narrative discourse situations ofthis type, the initial expectation is for Pepe to be the subject of the following sentence, which iswhy the clause ‘para llegar ahı’ without the yo, a temporary misreading of S2 would be highlylikely.

185. Pepe me convence casi siempre. Pero [para llegar yo ahı], tengo que convencerme de queno quedan obstaculos.22 [for arrive I there]

Pepe almost always convinces me. But for me to get there, I have to convince myself thatthere are no more obstacles.

21This figure varies considerably, depending on register and discourse context. Journalistic register exploits theeconomy and concision offered by non-coreferential OSI constructions; in spoken and colloquial language (e.g.weblogs), coreferential OSIs account for more than 90% of all prepositional OSIs.

22http://lists.albura.net/efe.es/apuntes-kpn/1999-10/0617.html


Nevertheless, despite sentences such as (184), the existence of coreferential OSIs is flatly de-nied by Fernandez Lagunilla (1987: 135), who claims that “la presencia del sujeto lexico nodepende solo de que el infinitivo no este regido, sino tambien de que no haya correferencia.”(The presence of the lexical subject depends not only on the infinitive not being governed, butalso on there being no coreference.) In a similar vein, Ledgeway (2000: 123) states that “thepersonal infinitive [is] restricted to marking non-coreferentiality and never surfacing in contextsof coreferentiality, where subject reference is already independently recoverable”. This can onlybe maintained if we define as ‘personal infinitive’ only those cases with ‘disjoint reference’, inwhich case the statement would be tautological.

It has been seen above that the marking of subject reference is only one function of the OSIconstruction, and possibly a peripheral one. Whilst finite subordination is a readily availablealternative to unambiguously individuate subjects, the pragmatic function of topicalization withcontrastive focus has been identified as a characteristic feature of the OSI. This is further sup-ported by the fact that overt subjects are very frequently accompanied by intensifiers. Konigidentifies intensifiers as follows:

Intensifiers evoke alternatives to the referent of their focus and structure the set of referentsunder consideration (referent of the focus + set of alternatives) in terms of center andperiphery.

(Konig 2001: 57)

Intensifiers typically accompanying overt pronominal subjects are mismo ‘himself’, solo ‘alone’,and tambien ‘also, too’, as in (186-188). Whilst solo includes the focused referent and excludesany alternative referent, mismo includes the focused referent but is less exclusive of alternativereferents; tambien includes the focused referent as well as other non-focused referents.

186. Los polıticos tocan las partes mas sensibles de la ciudadanıa, [sin ellos mismos ofrecersoluciones].23

The politicians pull the people’s most sensitive strings [without offering solutions them-selves].

187. Pero todo empezo mucho antes de que tuviera edad [para ir yo solo al campo] con misamigos. 24

But everything began long before I was old enough [to go to the pitch on my own] withmy friends.

188. Me inscribı en la lista [para poder yo tambien participar en la competicion].I put my name in the list [so I, too, could take part in the competition].

It can thus be said that an important function of the OSI construction is a pragmatic one: con-trastive focus25. The subject of the infinitival clause can either be contrasted with a concrete NPin the discourse vicinity (185), or with any possible alternative referent evoked by the presenceof an intensifier (186).

It is sometimes claimed that the use of OSIs is, in Spanish, largely restricted in terms of reg-ister. Butt & Benjamin (2000: 293) characterise it as typical of “spontaneous” and “colloquiallanguage”, though in the latest edition they no longer claim that “native speakers often on

23Alejandra Fosado: Pena de muerte – enfoque. 18.2.2003, http://mexicoposible.org.mx24Javier Martın: ¡Hay Copiiiiiitas de Conac! (http://www.edicionpersonal.com25This pragmatic function is occasionally acknowledged, e.g. by Morales de Walters (1988: 85), who mentions

“algunos usos contrastivos”.


reflection reject such utterances as badly formed” (Butt & Benjamin, 1988: 253). Comparisonof data from the Oral Corpus26 and journalistic texts does not confirm these claims. What can,rather unsurprisingly, be observed is that the pragmatic function is the dominant one in thespoken language, whereas the disambiguating/individuating function is found somewhat morefrequently in texts belonging to more formal registers, with longer and more complex sentences.

3.2.4 Distribution of the OSI in Spanish

OSIs are most commonly prepositional infinitive clauses, functioning as typical adverbial clausesor adjuncts (189), as well as clauses filling the subject slot of the main clause (190).

189. Mientras yo iba en camino, [sin yo saberlo], mi esposa estaba preparando las maletas.while I went on way [without I knowinf. .it] my wife was preparing the suitcases

While I was on my way, [without me knowing], my wife was packing the bags.

190. (=181.)[Cantar yoS26=gen ahora la Traviata] serıa interesante.27

[singinf. I now the Traviata] would.be interesting

[For me to sing the Traviata now] would be interesting.

It is generally acknowledged that the OSI is subject to certain syntactic restrictions. Skydsgaard(1977: 17), for instance, notes that “el espanol [...] permite que el infinitivo, en ciertas situa-ciones muy precisas, tenga su propio sujeto sintactico.” (Spanish allows the infinitive to haveits own syntactic subject in certain specific situations.) Fernandez Lagunilla (1987: 128) claimsthat “la clausula de infinitivo con un SN lexico como sujeto [...] no debe ser un argumento delverbo principal”. (The infinitival clause with a lexical NP as subject cannot be an argumentof the main verb.) Referring to Hernanz Carbo (1982: 351-3), Morales de Walters (1988: 90),Yoon and Bonet-Farran (1991: 357), Torrego (1998: 209) and others, Ledgeway (2000: 120)similarly states that “in line with the dialects of southern Italy, the Spanish personal infinitive isrestricted to non-subcategorized positions, occurring in subject and adverbial clauses, but neverin complement position.”

Section 3.2.3 has provided strong arguments that it would be inappropriate to make a categoricaldistinction between coreferential and non-coreferential OSIs. However, if we do not ignorecoreferential OSIs, the claim that OSIs cannot occur in complement position can no longer beupheld. Whilst it is less common for object clauses to have an overt subject, it is by no meansimpossible, as the following examples illustrate.

191. Espero [no ser yo uno de los elegidos para recibir tu llamada].28

I.hope [not beinf. I one of the chosen for receiveinf. your call]

I hope [I’m not one of those that have been picked to receive a call from you].

192. Como nunca me sentı Robin Hood ni el Chapulın Colorado, creo [no ser yo el que asigneresponsabilidades a ese respecto.]29

..., I.believe [not beinf. I he that assigns responsibilities to this respect]

Since I never felt like Robin Hood or Superman, I don’t think [it’s me who should handout responsibilities in this matter].

26cf. Appendix A27Example taken from Yoon & Bonet-Farran 1991: 35328http://www.zonalibre.org/blog/lobo/archives/048163.html (Spain)29Osvaldo Daniel Medina (Argentina): Yo redimensiono...tu redimensionas...: educacion fısica y docu-

mentacion. http://www.efdeportes.com/efd3/tato2.htm


193. Lamento [no poder yo responder a su presente con otro de igual valıa].30

I.regret [not be.ableinf. I respond to your present with another of equal value]

I regret [I can’t return the favour of your present with one of equal value].

194. El adorador siempre lamenta [no ser el el adorado].31

The admirer always laments [not beinf. he the admired]

The admirer always bemoans [that it’s not him who is the admired one.]

The verbs that permit OSI clauses as their complement tend to be declarative verbs with emo-tive force (hope, regret, etc.); the verb in the infinitival complement is typically existential ser(191, 192, 194), but not necessarily (193).

Ledgeway (2000: 125) dismisses two Sicilian examples in which OSI clauses appear to functionas object complements, suggesting that the respective matrix verbs fail to subcategorize for oneof the arguments in their subcategorization frame, and that the OSI clause is, in fact, an adjunctrather than a complement. For the examples presented here, such a solution is not possible; notonly do they lack the obligatory preposition of an adjunct clause, but they also fill exactly thesame semantic role as object complements without overt subject.32

An analysis of yo in examples (191-193) as the dislocated subject of the main clause can alsobe dismissed, due to the overt presence of a separate overt subject el adorador in the mainclause of (194). It might also be tempting to analyse the subject pronoun in these sentencesas an apposition to PRO, but this must be ruled out due to the absence of the characteristicintonational cues33 that mark such appositions, as well as by the fact that subject pronouns canonly occur as the first element in an appositional sequence.

The “strong emphasis or contrast” (Pountain, 1995: 21) supplied by the presence of overtintensifiers further licenses the presence of overt subjects in object complements of a widerrange of main verbs expressing notions such as intention (decidir, intentar, querer), obligation,and ability.

195. Entonces decidio [ir ella misma en busca de agua].34

Then she decided [to go and look for water herself].

196. MarıaS1 quiere [ir ella solaS2=S1 al cine.]35

Marıa wants to [go to the cinema alone].

What can be clearly observed in all cases is that OSI object complements do not lead to adivergence from the standard control pattern found in infinitival complements of optionallycoreferential verbs, namely coreferentiality (cf. Section 3.1.3). Nor is it possible for OSIs tooverride entrenched direct or indirect object control patterns (197), (198).

197. ∗ TeDO1 mandaba [hacer ellaS2 este trabajo].He ordered you that she do this work.

30Lucas Vasur (Spain): Carta abierta a Javier Arenas, 17.12.2003.31Sergio Docal (transl.): Individualidad (Robert G. Ingersoll)32This can be proven by removing the overt subject from the complements, which causes no (truth-conditional)

semantic difference whatsoever.33In such sentences, the pause that typically precedes appositional elements is not present.34Juan E. Bosch Gavino: Dos pesos de Agua, ‘Cuentos Escritos Antes del Exilio’ Santo Domingo: Editora Alfa

y Omega (1989).35Example taken from Hernanz Carbo (1986: 344).


198. ∗ MeIO1 gustarıa [hacer tuS2 este trabajo].It would please me for you to do this work.

In Section 3.2.3 it has been shown that in prepositional adjuncts and subject clauses, the pre-sence of an overt subject can individuate or disambiguate the infinitive’s subject, optionallyoverriding the default control pattern; this is not possible in object complements. However,the close association of the infinitive with coreferentiality, coupled with the availability of finitesubordination as an unmarked alternative, relegates the subject-individuating function of theOSI construction to a secondary role. In Section 5.2 it will be argued that ‘S2-individuatingOSIs’ and ‘pragmatic focus OSIs’ were originally distinct structures, but that the former havegradually been structurally assimilated by the latter.

3.2.5 Position of the overt subject in Spanish

Whether the overt subject surfaces pre- or postverbally is an issue that has attracted a gooddeal of attention in the literature. Mensching (2000: 26) notes that Modern Spanish allows pre-infinitival subjects only in prepositional adverbial clauses (199), though they were more frequentduring earlier stages of Spanish. He observes that “this type of construction also regularly admitsother constituents on the left of the infinitive, for example, adverbs” (200), which leads him tothe conclusion that, like clause-initial adverbs, preposed overt infinitive subjects are adjunctionsto AgrP (Mensching, 2000: 152-3).

199. Lo hizo sin yo saberlo.it he.did without I knowinf. .it

He did it without my knowledge.

200. Lo hizo sin antes avisarme.it he.did without before warninf..me

He did it without warning me beforehand.

“Though most studies highlight the obligatory postverbal position of the subject”36 (Ledgeway,2000: 129), a more differentiated analysis shows that this is an overstatement. Fernandez Lagu-nilla (1987: 127) speaks of ‘some apparent exceptions’ to this rule with the preposition sin (andperhaps also con), which permits a pronominal overt subject left of the infinitive; nominal sub-jects in this position, she observes, are less acceptable. She suggests that sin+pronoun+saberlomay, to some degree, be lexicalized.

Mensching (2000: 26) adds that “documentary evidence and the inquiry of speakers showsthat [preposed subjects] can frequently be found with por ‘because of’, para ‘for’ and antes de‘before’.” Examples of pre-infinitival subjects with temporal al, e.g. ‘al yo hacerlo’, and occa-sionally with despues de ‘after’ can also be found.

An important distinction must be made between nominal and pronominal OSI subjects. It isgenerally said that nominal subjects cannot normally occur pre-infinitivally in Spanish. Torrego(1998: 207) notes that preposing a nominal subject of the type [al EL JUEZ leer el verdicto]implies special focus, which is supported by intonational focus stress (represented here by use ofcapitals). As positioning a constituent in a marked, non-standard position is a common strategyto add focus, her observation supports the claim that the default position for OSI subjects ispost-infinitival. Whether pre-infinitival nominal subjects necessarily carry special focus in allcases is, however, doubtful; an (admittedly rare) counterexample is (201), where focus lies onsaberlo, not the pre-infinitival mi corazon.

36e.g. “When the subject is lexical, it must appear after the infinitive.” (Suner, 1986: 190)


201. Yo vivo [...] por amar [sin mi corazon saberlo].37

I live [...] for.the.sake.of loveinf. [without my heart knowinf..it]

I live [...] for love, without my heart knowing it.

Another class of nominal subjects that regularly precede the infinitive are generic la gente (li-terally ‘the people’) and kinship terms, as in ‘Al mi abuelo estar enfermo...’. Ledgeway (2000:150-1) suggests that these nominal subjects have pronominal status, which would license theirpre-infinitival position.

Regarding pronominal OSI subjects, it has already been shown above that they can occur pre-infinitivally, at least in connection with certain prepositions. It has been observed that suchpre-infinitival overt pronominal subjects are typical of Caribbean Spanish38. Drawing parallelswith Sicilian, Ledgeway (2000: 147-54) suggests that (in)admissibility of pre-infinitival pronom-inal subjects is linked to obligatory/optional selection of ‘expletive clitic pro’. Analysing allpre-infinitival subjects as clitics39, this position can either be obligatorily occupied by expletivepro, in which case the overt subject must appear post-infinitivally, or the pre-infinitival exple-tive clitic pro can be optional, which means that an overt subject clitic can occupy the positioninstead.

If this analysis is accurate, then the fact that pre-infinitival overt subjects are also found innon-Caribbean Spanish with a number of prepositions, though somewhat less frequently, wouldimply that expletive clitic pro is optional in those cases as well, but in some way ‘less optional’.

202. He tenido el virus Redlof, pero [antes de yo saber que lo tenıa] borro todos los archivosdel disco duro.40

I’ve had the Redlof virus, but before I knew I had it, it deleted all the files on the harddisk.

203. ¡Si quieres ser uno de mis afiliados, primero afıliame a tu web y luego llena el siguienteformulario [para yo hacer lo mismo]!41

If you want to be linked by me, first link me to your website and then fill in the followingform [for me to do the same].

Table 3.2.1. shows the statistical distribution of pre- and post-infinitival overt subject pronounsyo and ellos with the verbs hacer and saber.

Table 3.2.1.

Position of 1st sg. and 3rd pl. subject pronouns with the verbs hacer and saber

Preposition Preverbal Postverbal

sin 68% (601) 32% (277)

para 46% (322) 54% (372)

al 28% (23) 72% (58)

antes de 21% (10) 79% (37)

despues de 17% (3) 83% (15)

37Gabriel Segura Ugalde: Dedico. http://www.rincondepoesia.com38cf. Suner (1986); Morales de Walters (1988: 85): “Dichas construcciones [...] se dan con mas frecuencia que

en otras areas del mundo hispanico. My own research suggests that it is also common in other parts of LatinAmerica, with numerous attested instances from Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Chile and Argentina.

39He further suggests that infinitival forms with preverbal pronominal subjects could feasibly be analysed asinflected infinitives. (Ledgeway, 2000: 151-2)

40http://www.zonavirus.com (Spain)41http://usuarios.lycos.es/reinodoubt/afiliate.html (Chile)


The table shows that there is, indeed, a statistical preponderance of post-infinitival pronominalsubjects, with the exception of sin clauses. However, the pre-infinitival position is by no meansas rare or exceptional as suggested in much of the literature. In particular, there is a clearcorrelation between the overall frequency of a particular prepositional OSI and its tendencyto allow pre-infinitival pronominal subjects. Thus, sin and para participate in OSIs far morefrequently than the temporal prepositions, and they also permit pre-infinitival subjects in a fargreater proportion of cases. Fernandez Lagunilla’s (1987: 127) judgement that we are dealingwith an exceptional ‘fixed construction’ in the case of sin+pronoun+infinitive only has relativevalidity. A more appropriate analysis would be to position sin at the upper end of a continuumof prepositional OSIs, as in the following diagram.

despues de antes de al para sin<—————————————————————>low OSI frequency high

low tendency to allow pre-infinitival subjects high

I shall argue in Section 5.2 that from a diachronic point of view, the different positions alongthis continuum are due to a different degree of entrenchment of the respective constructions.However, identifying which prepositions are more or less likely to take pre-infinitival pronominalsubjects does not, on its own, answer the question what factors are involved in the synchronicchoice of the subject position.

One such factor appears to be whether or not the overt subject is employed for the purposeof pragmatic focus. As summed up by Ledgeway (2000: 137-40), both Suner (1986: 193) andMorales de Walters (1998: 95) deny any focusing effect of the pre-infinitival position in theCaribbean varieties, and Rizzi (1998) argues that a topicalized or focused element should haveto appear left of the preposition. My statistical analysis confirms this: the position typicallyassociated with contrastive focus is, in fact, the post-infinitival one. This is reflected in the dis-tribution of overt subjects accompanied by an intensifier, of which 96% occur post-infinitivally,and only 4% pre-infinitivally with para42 .

Somewhat unexpectedly, there also appears to be a link between the presence of an encliticobject pronoun on the infinitive and the position of the subject pronoun, as seen in Table 3.2.2.

Table 3.2.2.: Correlation between clitic object pronouns and subject pronouns


sin hacer/saber 53% (211) 47% (187)

sin hacerlo/saberlo 81% (390) 19% (90)

para hacer/saber 61% (282) 39% (179)

para hacerlo/saberlo 17% (40) 83% (193)

al hacer/saber 27% (16) 73% (44)

al hacerlo/saberlo 33% (7) 67% (14)

antes de hacer/saber 41% (9) 59 (13)%antes de hacerlo/saberlo 4% (1) 96% (1)

despues de hacer/saber 27% (3) 73% (8)

despues de hacerlo/saberlo 0% (0) 100% (7)

42The situation is less clear-cut with sin, with which around 20% of intensifiers occur pre-infinitivally. This canbe explained by the special status of this entrenched construction


The presence of an object pronoun appears to favour post-infinitival subject pronouns. Thereason for this pattern is once again the fact that contrastive focus is associated with thepost-infinitival position: since clitic pronouns cannot be topicalized, but nevertheless occupyan argument position, the statistical likelihood of one of the remaining arguments being the(focalized) topic is greater in clauses containing a clitic. In clauses with a nominal object NPrather than a clitic, on the other hand, the possibility of this object NP being the topicalizedelement of the clause lowers the chances for one of the remaining arguments to be topicalized.Consequently, the relative proportion of topicalized overt subjects in clauses containing a cliticis greater. The greater proportion of postverbal pronominal subjects in the presence of an objectclitic can therefore be understood as further evidence for the link between topicalization/focusand post-infinitival subject position.

Stylistic factors are also involved in the choice of position; for example, ‘sin saberlo ella’ isgenerally considered less colloquial than the inverse. Mensching (2000: 26) remarks that pre-infinitival subjects are “characteristic for the spoken language”, with most literary examplesoccurring in direct speech.

Overall, the OSI construction in Spanish is a marginal phenomenon; less than 1% of infinitiveshave an overt subject. With prepositional infinitives, it can serve to individuate a subject otherthan the default coreferential one, but at the same time, it functions as a pragmatic marker ofcontrastive focus.

3.3 Overt subject marking in Portuguese infinitival clauses

Portuguese, too, allows OSI constructions. They differ from the Spanish ones in that the infini-tive not only has its own subject, but can also itself be inflected for person agreement. When theOSI clause contains a subject NP, either a full noun or subject pronoun, morphological agree-ment of the infinitive is obligatory43 (cf. Cintra & Cunha, 1984: 485; Camara, 1977: 130-31;Quicoli, 1982: 30 ff.), except in the 1st and 3rd person singular, where the inflectional morphemeis null, i.e. there is no morphological difference between the inflected and the non-inflected form.This also makes it impossible to clearly distinguish the two paradigms in the absence of an overtsubject, as the syntactic and pragmatic context does not necessarily make it predictable whethersuch infinitives are part of the inflected or the non-inflected paradigm.

There is probably no other aspect of Portuguese grammar that has received as much attention,since the earliest days of Romance philology, as the ‘inflected infinitive’ (‘infinitivo flexionado’),often also referred to as ‘personal infinitive’ (‘infinitivo pessoal’), though these two terms arestrictly distinguished by proponents of theories that have different syntactic structures for OSIclauses with and without morphological inflection of the infinitive. Maurer’s (1968: 8) term‘infinitivo subjetivo’, originally attributed to Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcelos, is rarely usedbut perhaps the most fitting designation, as the characteristic feature of these infinitives, overtsubject reference, can be achieved by means of inflection as well as the optional presence of asubject NP.

Though often considered a typical feature of Portuguese, inflected infinitives are found in severalother Romance varieties, too: Galician, the Logudorese-Nuorese dialects of Sardinian, as well as

43However, Molho (1959: 37) observes that a lack of such agreement can be observed, in clauses such as ‘apoisde meus irmaos chegar’, in Brazilian Portuguese (Rio de Janeiro), where the use of the inflected form would beconsidered ‘slightly pedantic’.

3.3. OVERT SUBJECT MARKING IN PORTUGUESE INFINITIVAL CLAUSES 85

Old Leonese and Old Neapolitan.44.

3.3.1 The syntax of the inflected infinitive

There are many attempts to define syntactically based constraints on the use of the OSI-structure, but it is usually not difficult to find counterexamples to such rules. Camara (1977), forinstance, lists three syntactic contexts in which, he claims, the inflected infinitive cannot be used.

It cannot be used:

a) in real compound tense structures, to which he counts expressions involving auxiliaries, suchas ter de+infinitive: temos de fazer, not ∗temos de fazermos.

b) when a clitic object pronoun that is coreferential with S2 is part of the main clause: vi-osavancar, not ∗vi-os avancarem.

c) when the infinitive is the adjunct of an adjective carrying emphasis: capazes de exigir, not∗capazes de exigirem.

Martin (1976)

Martin (1976), working in a transformational framework, discusses a number of similar syntacticconstraints. His basic assumption is that a ‘concordance affix’ (-C) is generated in a subject NPand then attaches to an affix-receiving VP that it is structurally adjacent to. For a sentence like(204), he postulates a Deep Structure (DS) in which as flores occurs twice, once as the subjectof the VP acabar, and once as the subject of the VP ser frageis, each of which provides a ‘-C’affix for the adjacent VP. Subsequently, an NP-reduction rule reduces the right-most subjectNP to a subject pronoun (which need not surface).

204. As flores acabam por as flores →(eles) serem frageis.The flowers die because they are delicate.

Martin contrasts this type of sentence with the one in (205), which does not permit the infinitiveto be inflected, due to its different syntactic structure.

205. Eles comecavam a resmungar/∗resmungarem.They began to growl.

In (205), he claims, there is only a single subject NP at DS, and the VP resmungar moves out ofthe Proposition (P) that contains the subject (NP-C). Resmungar is thus separated from NP-Cbefore the rule that attaches -C to an adjoining VP applies. It can be assumed that Martinwould use the same explanation for all the cases covered by Camara’s rule (a) above, in whichthe inflected infinitive is claimed to be unacceptable.

Within the same framework, Martin (1976: 26) also provides an explanation why the inflectedinfinitive is not permissible whenever the subject of the infinitival verb is raised to the objectposition of the matrix verb, as in (206), corresponding to Camara’s rule (b) above.

44More comprehensive accounts of OSI structures in Romance can be found in Korner (1983), Ledgeway (1998,2000), Mensching (2000), Pountain (1995). Bourciez (1956: 505) also provides examples of inflected infinitivesused as negative imperative, e.g. nu mentireti, in pre-16th century Romanian.


206. Jair mandou-os voltar/∗voltarem.Jair ordered them to return.

The explanation is that NP-C moves from the lower P which contains voltar into the objectposition within the higher P, thus removing -C from the lower P. This rules out the possibilityof affixation of -C onto the VP voltar, as the two are no longer structurally adjacent.

Martin (1976: 27-9) further formulates a rule that deletes the dependent clause subject NP-Cif a coreferential NP occurs in a (structurally) adjacent P, on the condition that both NPs aresubjects. Deletion of the subject NP-C entails that the -C cannot attach to the infinitive, sothat the inflected infinitive is ruled out in such cases. Thus, (207) cannot, according to Martin,have an inflected infinitive.

207. [Os homens] [para poder os homens-C justificar-se/∗justificarem-se] [falam ao juiz].[The men] [to be able to explain themselves] [talk to the judge].

Because the two Ps containing the coreferential NPs are not adjacent in (208), the NP-C isnot deleted, but merely ‘partially reduced’ to an (optionally surfacing) subject pronoun. Asa consequence of this, -C is available and therefore must attach to the infinitive, making theinflected infinitive obligatory in this construction.

208. [Os homens] [para que seja possıvel] [os homens→(eles) justificarem-se/∗justificar-se] [falamao juiz].[The men] [for it to be possible] [to explain themselves] [talk to the judge].

It is perhaps worth noting that, according to Martin’s approach, the inflected infinitive is littlemore than an optional alternant of (subjunctival) finite clauses. This is not a new idea, discussede.g. by Hampejs (1959: 55), but it is interesting in the light of recent Generativist analyses ofthe subjunctive forms in Greek and southern Italian dialects as inflected infinitives (Miller, 2001:94 ff.; Ledgeway, 1998).

More recent approaches

The similarity of the inflected infinitive and finite clauses, in particular with respect to nullsubjects, is also highlighted in more recent analyses, e.g. Quicoli (1996b: 91). Based on theassumption that every Inflection Phrase (IP) contains an element INFL, which in turn containsbinary features such as tense [+/-TENSE] and agreement [+/-AGR] (Chomsky, 1981: 209),most Generative approaches consider the presence of [+AGR] to be a crucial precondition forthe presence of inflected infinitive forms. Quicoli (1996a), for instance, postulates [-TENSE,-AGR] for non-inflected infinitives, but [-TENSE,+AGR] for inflected infinitives. The [+AGR]assigns nominative case to its subject, which means that it can license a lexical subject, avoidingthe Case filter that would prohibit the presence of lexical NPs lacking case.

By proposing, contrary to orthodox theory, that Case filter applies not only to lexical NPs butalso to pro, Quicoli (1996a: 52) explains why inflected infinitives with and without overt subjectshave exactly the same distribution, which he contrasts with the distribution of non-inflected in-finitives, which lack [+AGR] and can therefore license neither a lexical subject, nor pro. This,he claims, accounts for the fact that the Portuguese inflected infinitive, but not its non-inflectedcounterpart, can be used in a number of constructions that require finite complements in closelyrelated languages such as Spanish, for instance factive complements of the type ‘Lamento [(ofato de) eles terem/∗ter abandonado a equipe].’ (‘I regret that they’ve left the team.’)


According to Quicoli’s analysis, the structure of synonymous sentences in which either the in-flected or the non-inflected infinitive can be used must have fundamentally different underlyingstructures. In a sentence such as ‘Jose via os problemas crescer/crescerem entre os assessores.’(‘Jose saw the disagreement among the committee members grow.’), the embedded subject osproblemas receives nominative case from the inflected infinitive crescerem, but object case fromthe matrix verb via in sentences with the non-inflected infinitive, which cannot itself assign casebecause it lacks [+AGR].

His analysis also accounts for certain restrictions on subject raising that can be observed inconnection with the inflected infinitive. Just like finite complementation, inflected infinitivecomplements do not allow subject-to-subject raising, the reason being that, according to Bind-ing Theoretical principles, the raised NP would have to leave an unbound anaphoric trace in thelocal domain.

A very similar explanation accounts for Camara’s rule (b) above. Following Zubizarreta (1982),Quicoli (1986: 68-9) explains the inadmissibility of inflected infinitives in sentences such as ‘Vi-os avancar/avancarem.’, where the embedded subject is raised to the object position of thematrix clause, by the fact that the clitic would have to leave a trace in the subject position ofthe embedded clause, which would, however, be ungoverned in the local domain.

Though certain aspects of Quicoli’s proposal, particularly the claim that pro must receive Case,are not shared by all Generativists (cf. e.g. Safir, 1996: 82), the fundamental assumptionthat inflected infinitives license their own pro is the standard analysis and has survived intoMinimalist theory:

“[...] inflected infinitives allow either an embedded or a null subject with non-obligatorycontrol interpretation [because] T of the inflected infinitive [...] carries a full set of θ-features(as indicated by the overt person/number morphology), which can check the Case feature ofa null subject or overt DP occurring in the subject position of the infinitival clause, blockingany further movement.

(Pires, 2002: 151)

However, neither Camara’s rules, nor Martin’s or Quicoli’s predictions about the grammaticalityor ungrammaticality of inflected infinitive constructions, have absolute validity, as shown incounterexamples (209-211).

209. Temos de aprontar sempre um sorriso e mostrarmo-nos afaveis.45

We must always have a smile ready and be courteous.

210. Suponho que me chamaste a fim de me expores o plano.46

I suppose you called me in order to explain the plan to me.

211. ...ate eu adormecer de sonhos lavrados pelo ancinho dos seus dedos apaziguadores, capazesde me expulsarem do corpo os fantasmas desesperados ou aflitos que o habitam.47

...his pacifying fingers, capable of driving out the desperate ghosts...

212. ...e quem sabe se tal novidade despertara neles humores ha muito tempo adormecidos, eos leve a engancharem-se, a maneira das pecas desses puzzles japoneses...48

...and who knows if it [...] might cause them to get hooked together...

45Example from Molho (1959: 31).46Taken from Maurer (1972: 170)47Taken from Antunes, ibid.48A.L. Antunes, Os cus de Judas Lisbon: Dom Quixote, 5th ed. (1988).


213. ...tomar dois temas e opo-los, faze-los lutarem, embolarem, ferirem-se e estracalharem-see dar a vitoria a um...49

...to take two themes and contrast them, make them fight, get at each other, wound eachother and tear each other to pieces...

(212) is a counterexample to Camara’s rule (a) and to Martin’s claim that intrinsically corefer-ential verbs like comecar cannot have an inflected infinitive complement. (210) does not matchMartin’s prediction that it should be ungrammatical because subject NPs in adjacent proposi-tions require the rightmost one to be deleted. (211) shows a case where Camara’s rule (c) doesnot apply. (212-213), finally, exemplify how ‘raised’ clitic pronouns that are coreferential withthe dependent clause’s non-overt subject do not necessarily require the infinitive to be unin-flected, thus casting some doubt on the reliability of all the syntactic analyses outlined above.

With such counterexamples in mind, Cintra & Cunha (1984: 482) prefer to speak of “tendenciesin its usage rather than rules.”50 Martin (1976: 57), acknowledging that the rules he sets upare frequently flouted in actual language usage, has the honesty to admit that his position “is atodds with [that of] other grammarians [who] base themselves on the evidence of their ‘corpus’”,whilst his, by contrast, is based on “a coherent theory of grammar”. However, such an attitude,ignoring the way in which language is really used and prioritising the coherence of the systemover the observable facts, must of course be rejected. In the following, I shall attempt to providea more comprehensive model reflecting linguistic reality, incorporating not only the syntactic‘tendencies’, but also highlighting the important role of pragmatic factors.

3.3.2 The OSI-construction as alternative to finite dependent clauses?

As demonstrated in some detail in Section 3.1.2 above, non-OSI infinitive clauses are assignedtheir subject according to a syntactic and pragmatic default pattern. If S2 is to be identicalwith an NP other than the one assigned by the default mechanism, this must be overtly marked,for which purpose both finite subordination and the OSI-construction are possible candidates.Indeed, the general tendency in the Romance languages towards an increasing use of the in-finitive51 would suggest that the latter of the two might be favoured, where available as analternative.

A statistical analysis of contemporary Portuguese52 suggests that the opposite is the case. Table3.3.1. shows the proportion of finite and infinitival dependent clauses. It also shows the numberof cases in which the OSI construction could feasibly have a disambiguating function, i.e. whereS2 is not the subject that would be assigned by the default mechanism described in Section3.1.2.

49M. Bandeira: Poesia completa e prosa, Rio de Janeiro: Nova Aguilar 4th ed. (1990).50“...parece-nos mais acertado falar nao de regras, mas de tendencias que se observam no emprego de uma e de

outra forma do Infinitivo.”51One instance of this is the diachronic increase of prepositional infinitives, to be discussed in the following

chapters.52A mixed corpus of journalistic and literary texts written after 1950 was used for this count. (Publico online,

incl. Oporto and Lisbon local sections, May 12th and 15th, 1997; 181942 words; Appendix B)


Table 3.3.1.: Finite and infinitival subordination in Portuguese

Construction Token percentage

total overt S2 100%

finite S2 87%

total OSI 12%

OSI with non-default S2 5%

Though these percentages are subject to a degree of variation depending on text type, style andauthor53, it is clear that the OSI-structure is much less frequent than finite dependent clauses.In particular, the low proportion of OSI-clauses with an S2 that would not have been assignedto a bare, uninflected infinitive clause as default anyway, is worth noting; the phenomenon of‘redundant’ S2-marking will be examined in more detail in Section 3.3.3 below.

The figures in Table 3.3.1. show that the OSI-construction is not the unmarked way of iden-tifying a dependent clause subject in breach of the default pattern; finite clauses are generallyused for that purpose. This is corroborated by the fact that declarative V1-verbs such as pensar,achar, jurar and crer as well as desiderative∼causative V1-verbs such as precisar and querer,which are the classes of verbs that most often require overt S2 because the identity of S2 is leastpredictable, nevertheless show a clear preference for the finite structure. Table 3.3.2. shows thedistribution of ‘disjoint reference’ complements of these verbs.

Table 3.3.2.: Finite and OSI ‘disjoint reference’ complements

Main verb Finite complement OSI complement

querer >99% (580) <1% (2)

achar 98% (5479) 2% (114)

precisar 87% (929) 13% (140)

jurar 72% (46) 28% (13)

crer 67% (1180) 33% (388)

pensar 60% (1752) 40% (709)

All the verbs in Table 3.3.2. are more likely to take a finite complement than an inflectedinfinitive, but a considerable amount of variation in the degree of this preference for finite com-plements can be observed. It appears that in addition to the general preference for the finitestructure, there are also lexically specific preference patterns.

In prepositional adjunct clauses, the inflected infinitive is the preferred strategy, whether thedependent clause subject is identical to the one that would have been independently recoverableby the decision tree mechanism in a non-inflected infinitival clause (214), or whether the defaultpattern is overridden (215).

214. ... as femeas do cla forneciam a missa dos domingos um contrapeso pagao a dois centavoso ponto, quantia nominal que lhes servia de pretexto para expelirem odios [...] antigospacientemente segregados.54

...a nominal quantity that served them as an excuse to drive out the old hatred...

53Frequent use of the inflected infinitive is sometimes considered ‘educated’ and thus typical of certain types ofliterary register.

54Taken from A.L. Antunes, Os cus de Judas


215. ...o caralho de puta que os pariu combinados para nos foderem os cornos em nome deinteresses que me escapam,...55

...the damned mother who gave birth to all of them to screw us in the name of intereststhat escape me...

In contrast to the complements of declarative verbs charted in Table 3.3.2., adjunct clauses showa clear preference for the inflected infinitive over the corresponding finite clause. However, in away similar to what was observed regarding complements, it appears that on top of this generaltrend, individual preposition/conjunction pairs show a stronger or weaker preference for theinflected infinitive, a seen in Table 3.3.3.

Table 3.3.3.: Finite and OSI ‘disjoint reference’ adjuncts

Conjunction/preposition Finite clause OSI clause

antes (de) que/antes de 5% (1,321) 95% (23,401)

para que/para 25% (57,002) 75% (174,021)

apesar de q., ainda q./apesar de 25% (5,707) 75% (16,898)

depois (de) que/depois 27% (1,749) 73% (4,720)

sem que/sem 32% (6,184) 68% (12.975)

porque/por 47% (71,228) 53% (81,550)

S2 can also be overtly marked in the complement of intrinsically non-coreferential V1-verbs (216-217); verbs of indirect command have a tendency to take para as prepositional complementizerin this specific type of subordination.56

216. Julio disse para os meninos nao sairem de casa.57

Julio told the children not to leave the house.

217. Ele viu-as entrarem, prostrarem-se de bracos estendidos, chorando, e nao se comoveu...58

He saw them enter, prostrate themselves, crying, and it didn’t touch him...

Similarly, complements of impersonal expressions, which do not have a subject of their own,frequently take the inflected infinitive, thus marking their subject overtly. Here, the overtperson marking often has a disambiguating function, as it rules out the possibility of S2 beingarbitrary or universal. Compare (218) and (219):

218. E tempo de [PROS2=gen. comecar a governar.]It’s time to start governing.

219. E tempo de [[o senhor primeiro-ministro e o Governo]S2 comecarem a governar.]59

It is time the Prime Minister and the government [started governing].

Pountain (1995: 16) understands cases such as (218) as being coreferential in a special way:“Because the main verb does not have a personal subject (the infinitive itself being the subject),the bare infinitive is understood as itself impersonal, while the inflected infinitive is personal.”

55Taken from Antunes, ibid.56This may be related to the emphatic nature of most commands, which is iconically represented by the choice of

a more prominent subordinating particle. The diachronic move of para towards functioning in complementizer-likeway is investigated in Section 7.4.

57Example from Quicoli (1982: 30).58From Coelho Netto (1958: 1328).59Publico, May 12, 1997.


A special case of this phenomenon is 3rd person plural inflection which, in the absence of anovert nominal S2, can also “indicate the subject’s indeterminate nature” (Cintra & Cunha, 1984:486)60, as seen in (220):

220. Ouvi dizerem que Maria Jeroma, de todas a mais impressionante, [...] ganhara o sertao.61

I heard sayinf.3rd.P l that Maria Jeroma, the most impressive of all, [...] had won theback-woods.

The Portuguese OSI is far more versatile than its Spanish counterpart, especially with regardsto its capability of marking ‘disjoint reference’ in object complements, which the Spanish OSIcannot do. But the statistical analysis reveals that it is nevertheless not a serious competitor tofinite subordination, as it only overrides the default reference pattern of infinitival clauses in 5–6% of all dependent clauses. Only in prepositional adjuncts is the OSI the first choice, which canperhaps be explained by the “looser pragmatic relation between a prepositional complement62

and the main verb” (Pountain, 1998a: 16), which causes patterns of S2-assignment to be lessentrenched, allowing the frequent use of overt subjects even in Spanish.

3.3.3 The ambiguity parameter

Having established that the OSI-construction is primarily in competition with the bare, unin-flected infinitive, not with finite dependent clauses, it must next be examined which factors areresponsible for the choice of one or the other.

Ali (1957: 112-3), summarizing the different cases in which the inflected infinitive occurs, iden-tifies two pragmatic functions that it can have. According to him, the ‘infinitivo emfatico’pragmatically highlights the subject and gives it contrastive emphasis (‘realce intencional’).This will be discussed in more detail in Section (3.3.4). The ‘infinitivo de clareza’, on the otherhand, serves to ‘facilitate comprehension’ by unambiguously clarifying the identity of the de-pendent clause subject, wherever the speaker feels this may be helpful.

A similar approach is taken by Simoes Froes (1995), who argues that one of the parameters isthe pragmatic clarity of S2’s identity: the more obvious S2’s identity is, the less likely it is to beovertly marked. Potential ambiguity, or ‘opacity’, of S2, on the other hand, favours use of theOSI. Two factors are likely to cause such opacity:

a) Absence of a controller for PRO S2 in the main clause (219).

b) Distance between the main clause (which contains the controller) and the infinitive,V2 (221).

221. Os dirigentes zairensesS1 deviam agora encontrar por si os meios de se verem frente afrente.63

The Zairean leaders should now find the means to meet face to face among themselves.

The opacity is even greater in (222), where the first (uninflected) infinitive is located right nextto the main verb (and consequently does not require inflection), whereas the second infinitiveis separated from it not only by a considerable amount of lexical material, but also by anintonational break noticeable enough to merit a full stop.

60“Na 3a pessoa do plural, indica a indeterminacao do sujeito.”61From G. Amado: Historia da minha infancia, Rio de Janeiro (1966: 143).62Pountain does not distinguish complements and adjuncts.63Publico, May 15, 1997.


222. Devem fazer, todas as noites, uma friccao tonica e fortificante a todo o corpo com agua eespuma de sabao. E alimentaremse bem.64

They must, every night, give their whole body a tonic and fortifying rub-down with waterand soapsuds. And eat well.

‘Opacity’ between main clause and V2 is, according to Simoes Froes, also increased by in-terpolation of prepositions65 other than (the prepositional complementizer) de, i.e. in typicalprepositional adjunct clauses. As greater ‘opacity’ is equivalent to a greater potential for ambi-guity, this observation suggests that the identity of the subject of adjunct clauses is less clearlypredictable than in complement clauses.

A statistical analysis confirms the claim that the inflected infinitive is more likely to occur inadjunct clauses than in complements: three quarters (76%)66 of inflected infinitives occur in ad-juncts. What is interesting is that only slightly more than half (58%) of these inflected infinitiveshave a non-coreferential subject, which leaves 42% that are coreferential and would not requirean overt subject if coreferentiality in itself provided a sufficient degree of clarity. This meansthat the mere possibility of ambiguity is sufficient to trigger the use of the inflected infinitive.

Potentially redundant clarity of S2’s identity, on the other hand, can make the OSI-constructionunacceptable. Simoes Froes speaks of “cases in which the use of the personal infinitive is un-acceptable because the infinitive’s proximity to its subject would make the grammatical redun-dancy problematic.”67 Following her line of argumentation, this comprises Camara’s rules (b)and (c) above: the proximity of adjective (with clear morphological marking identifying whichNP it refers to) and infinitive in capazes de exigir/∗exigirem makes the use of the inflected formredundant and therefore unacceptable (but see (211)).

Similarly, the proximity of the clitic pronoun in vi-os avancar/∗avancarem would make an ad-ditional marking of S2 by inflection of the infinitive pleonastic.

Coreferentiality, being the most frequent relation between S1 and S2, is the generally expectedpattern and therefore rarely requires disambiguating OSI.68 Intrinsic coreferentiality generallymakes overt marking of S2 superfluous and thus unacceptable, as no disambiguation can usuallybe required. Camara’s first rule, forbidding OSI-complements with auxiliary V1, can be sub-sumed in this category, since modal auxiliaries must always be intrinsically coreferential. Exam-ple in (223) shows that, within the clarity/ambiguity-parameter, different factors can counteracteach other:

223. (=209)Temos de aprontar sempre um sorriso e mostrarmo-nos afaveis.69

we.must have-readyuninfl.inf. always a smile and showinfl.inf.1st.pl.+refl. courteous.

We must always have a smile ready and be courteous.

Here the interpolation of a ‘heavy’ complement clause “leads to the pragmatic need for re-establishing the subject of the infinitive” (Pountain, 1995: 19), thus overriding the tendency for

64Example from Korner (1983: 88)65“As preposicoes tendem a gerar opacidade entre o infinitivo e o predicado.” (Simoes Froes, 1995)66These figures are based on the same text sample as Table 3.3.1. and take into account only prototypical

adjunct clauses, not complement clauses introduced by the prepositional complementizers a and de.67“Casos em que o emprego do infinitivo nao e aceitavel [porque] a proximidade do infinitivo ao sujeito tornaria

a redundancia gramatical enfadonha.”68Simoes Froes (1995):“...se os sujeitos dos verbos conjugados e no infinitivo sao coincidentes, a tendencia e o

infinitivo nao ser flexionado.”69Example from Molho (1959: 32).


modal auxiliaries such as ter de generally to reject OSI-complementation. Furthermore, personmarking of mostrar-se is already secured by virtue of its reflexivity, as the clitic -nos unambigu-ously assigns subject reference to this infinitive. The avoidance of redundant person markingthus appears to have lower priority than the entrenched routine by which infinitives normallyreceive person inflection if they are far away from the finite main verb.

What this section has shown is that overt subject marking in infinitival clauses does not, primar-ily, stand in competition with finite complementation, but is usually restricted to those areas inwhich non-inflected infinitives would be the alternative. It is primarily used as a disambiguatingvariant of the bare infinitive, the likelihood of overt marking increasing with the increase ofopacity of the relation between main clause and V2. The more obvious the identity of S2 is, theless likely it is for an OSI to be used.

Comparing the ways in which Spanish and Portuguese overt S2-marking works, it appears thatthe differences are not as great as initially expected: Portuguese exploits its wider availabilitymainly for the disambiguation of those types of clauses that can be infinitival in Spanish, too.In prepositional adjunct clauses, OSIs are used to clarify the identity of S2 in both languages,though they are used to a far greater extent in Portuguese. Other usages in Portuguese merelyadd to the clarification of S2-assignment, with the effect that the subject of infinitival clausescan remain unambiguous in longer and more complex sentences.

3.3.4 Position of the overt subject in Portuguese

In Section 3.2.5, some complexities of the position of OSI subjects relative to the OSI verb werediscussed for Spanish. Nominal overt subjects were shown to occur (almost) exclusively post-infinitivally. Pronominal overt subjects, with the exception of abessive adjuncts with sin, alsooccur more frequently post-infinitivally, though preverbal pronominal subjects are also possible,their frequency depending on the individual preposition introducing the clause.

With the exception of epistemic and declarative verbs, which permit only post-infinitival subjects(cf. Raposo, 1987: 98; Ambar, 1994; Mensching, 2000: 28), it is a well-known fact that pre-infinitival OSI subjects in Portuguese are far more common than in Spanish.

[The Portuguese] construction with a nominative subject admits postverbal subjects. Anextremely striking syntactic difference, especially in comparison to Spanish, is the high fre-quency of preverbal subjects [...]. In most constructions, both positions are possible, thepostverbal one being rather marked and used for focalizing and emphasizing purposes.

(Mensching, 2000: 25)

The results of a statistical analysis of the position of pronominal subjects (Table 3.3.4.) confirmsthis.


Table 3.3.4.: Position of pronominal subjects in prepositional OSIs in Portuguese70

Preposition Subject Pronoun Incidence Percentage Overt Intensifiers

ao postverbal 7 100% 5 (71%)preverbal 0 0%

por preverbal 71 11% 37 (52%)postverbal 646 89%

para preverbal 85 6.5% 56 (66%)postverbal 1310 93.5%

apesar de preverbal 9 4.2% 4 (44%)postverbal 213 95.8%

sem preverbal 3 2.5% 3 (100%)postverbal 120 97.5%

ate preverbal 4 2.4% 3 (75%)postverbal 168 97.6%

antes de preverbal 8 2.3% 7 (88%)postverbal 343 97.7%

depois de preverbal 3 <1% 3 (100%)postverbal 351 >99%

In Section 3.2.3 it was argued that contrastive focus is an important feature of Spanish OSIs,and that it is associated particularly with subjects in post-infinitival position. For Portuguese,the case is even clearer: the rightmost column in Table 3.3.4. shows that the majority of post-infinitival subjects are accompanied by an overt intensifier. Around 60% of these are lexicalintensifiers of the type ‘ele mesmo’, ‘elas proprias. In addition to these standard intensifiers,intensifying phrases such as ‘ele e so ele’ are also found. In approximately 30% of cases, theintensifying construction ser+subject pronoun+a+infinitive can be found, as in (224).

224. Ao fim e ao cabo, veio um administrador do Brasil, especialista com certeza na materia,para ser ele a assinar esse acordo.Finally, there came an administrator from Brazil, certainly a specialist on the matter, sothat it would be him (and nobody else) who signed the agreement.

The association of the post-infinitival position with contrastive focus is undeniable: intensifyingmesmo and proprio virtually never accompany pre-infinitival subjects, but even in the absence ofan overt intensifier, contrastive focus/intensification is implicit in the Portuguese post-infinitivalsubject.

The exceptional pattern of ao, which shows a striking resistance to pre-infinitival subjects, de-serves special attention; it is probably due to the unacceptability of the potential sequence of twodefinite articles. Etymologically, ao is a contraction of the preposition a and the definite articleo; this remains transparent to speakers because the same contraction applies synchronically,too. Sequences such as ?∗‘Ao o polıtico fazer uma visita ao estado, disse...’ are thus simplyavoided by postposing the subject. This pattern is analogically extended to all ao-clauses, thusalso ruling out ?∗‘Ao eu/eles fazer uma visita ao estado, disse...’; Table 3.3.4. provides evidencefor this. It should be noted that such analogical extension cannot be predicted, as shown bythe corresponding situation in Spanish, where a similar avoidance of al+definite article can beobserved (∗‘Al el polıtico hacer una visita al estado, dijo/dije...’), but preverbal pronominalsubjects are not necessarily avoided:

√‘Al yo hacer una visita al estado, dijo/dije...’ (cf. Table

3.2.1.).

70Data extracted from the 1.6 million word Cetem Publico journalistic corpus, cf. Appendix B.

3.4. THE INFINITIVE: NOMINAL OR VERBAL? 95

The clear contrast between the preferred subject positions in Spanish and Portuguese OSIswill be further discussed, from a diachronic perspective, in Section 5.2, where the reasons andmechanisms leading to these differences between the present-day distribution patterns will alsobe investigated.

3.4 The infinitive: nominal or verbal?

The previous sections of this chapter have illustrated and discussed the mechanisms by whichinfinitival clauses receive their subject, whether it appears overtly or not. The assumption thatinfinitives have, and indeed require, a subject of some sort would suggest that we are dealingwith a verbal element. On the other hand, it was argued in Section 2.2.3 that the Latin AcIconstruction is, in some respects, more like a nominal phrase than a clause. The primary focusof this study, prepositional infinitives, would also appear to indicate nominality, as prepositionstypically take NPs as their complements.

In addition to resolving this apparent contradiction, the multilayered analysis of the infinitive’snominality status proposed here allows for a gradual shift of individual parameters, which inturn enable it to spread gradually to an increasing number of contexts.

3.4.1 The one-dimensional continuum model

It is a widely accepted fact that the nominal/verbal or nominal/clausal distinction is not abinary one, but that they are merely the end points of a continuum (Lehmann, 1988; Vincent,1999; Givon, 1984: 515-61). Vincent (1999: 1) understands the finite/non-finite continuum ascovering part of the clausal–nominal continuum, as follows:

CLAUSAL <————————–> NOMINALFINITE <—> NON-FINITE

Verb forms or their clauses appear in the finite/non-finite sub-scale in the following order:

INDICATIVE > SUBJUNCTIVE > INFLECTED INFINITIVE > BARE INFINITIVE

Givon’s (1984: 519) observations about semantic and syntactic integration of main and de-pendent clause, in which the scale [-integrated] <—> [+integrated] roughly corresponds to theFINITE <—> NON-FINITE scale regarding the complement verb, provides additional supportto this scalar model by intertwining morphology, syntax and semantics.

Regarding the infinitive, Vincent (1999: 1-2) points out, this scalar model allows for an ap-proach that integrates both the traditional view that the infinitive is essentially nominal71, andthe generative view that it is essentially verbal or sentential, as infinitival clauses are understoodto belong to the category IP, despite the fact that they are headed by an I that is [-T, -AGR].

Vincent proposes a hybrid solution and argues that “the thing we label the infinitive can havedifferent properties in different languages and at different historical moments. What we can callthe r-form of the verb in Latin and Romance originates as a nominal element, develops verbalproperties in Latin and as it passes into Romance comes increasingly to show clausal properties.”

71“L’infinitif sert a exprimer la notion verbale sans plus, sans consideration de personne, de nombre ni de mode,le plus souvent aussi sans consideration de temps et de voix. Si on qualifie souvent l’infinitif de ‘forme substantivedu verbe’, on veut dire par la a peu pres la meme chose...”, Sandfeld (1965: 1).


Shortcomings of the one-dimensional continuum model

While this scalar model is, if understood as an idealization, a clear step forward because it re-places the unnecessarily restrictive and unrealistically idealized binary model, it can be arguedthat the one-dimensional scalar model is fundamentally flawed because it attempts to artificiallysubsume a variety of features under a single label. Labels such as nominal and verbal, finite andnon-finite stand for combinations of several features. [+nominal], for instance, can be charac-terised by genitival subject, nominal inflectional morphology, by the absence of typical verbalmorphology and morphosyntax (e.g. tense, voice, person agreement), by its use in typicallynominal syntactic environments, e.g. with prepositions, etc. Similarly, finite is often equatedwith tensed, but languages such as Latin do have tensed infinitives.72 An alternative definition,distinguishing infinitives from finite verb forms on the grounds that the latter are inflected forperson and number (Matthews, 1997: 129), showing subject agreement (Koptjevskaja-Tamm,1993: 256) is similarly flawed, as shown by the ‘inflected infinitive’ examined in Section 3.3.

In the one-dimensional scalar model, any non-prototypical verb form is located somewhere be-tween the two ends of the scale. However, due to the differential nature of the various criteriaand features involved, the exact position must, in the absence of a uniform method of quantifi-cation, necessarily be subjectively or arbitrarily determined. Not only is it doubtful whethermorphological, syntactic, and semantic features can ever be merged into a single ‘value’ thatwould allow exact positioning along the scale, but such an approach would, in fact, distort thereal facts by disregarding the disjunction between the individual features of a particular verbform.

An alternative approach, in which no attempt is made to determine an artificial degree of over-all nominality, finiteness, etc., but which instead concentrates on each feature individually, canprovide valuable insights into the shifts in the area of dependent clauses from Latin to Romance.

3.4.2 Classification of the Latin infinitive

There appears to be a general consensus that the infinitive has developed from being relativelynominal in Latin to something much less nominal in modern Romance.

Brugmann (1888-95) shows that Latin infinitives have their origin in Indo-European nomina ac-tionis, full nouns that describe an action or state. Though he sees the infinitive as the final resultof an evolutionary process, he does recognize that, during the transition, “they passed througha number of intermediate stages, and hence it is often hard to say whether any particular formshould be called an infinitive in the strict sense of the word.” This view is strikingly similarto that expressed by Vincent (1999: 5), except that it refers to a different period, and the endpoints of the scale are not exactly the same; for Brugmann, it appears, there is a continuumbetween the extremes noun and infinitive.

Beardsley (1920: 1) states that “in Latin the infinitive showed close similarity to the noun]”,but he qualifies the statement by adding that it “was capable of use only in the nominative andaccusative cases.”73

72“...the terms [tensed and finite] are not equivalent, since e.g. a language may have infinitives which are alsoinflected for tense.”, Matthews (1997: 375).

73He presumably refers to the fact that it could only function as the subject or direct object of the main clause.


Vincent (1999: 5) also implies that the Latin infinitive is more nominal than its modern Ro-mance counterpart, claiming that “..the [Romance] infinitive, [is] a by now purely verbal form.”(my italics)

An objective analysis of the infinitive in Latin and Romance casts some doubt on the view thatit has undergone a straight-forward shift along a nominal/verbal continuum.

Non-verbal features of the Latin infinitive

On the one hand, there are, indeed, certain features that give the Latin infinitive a strongernominal quality in comparison with its later reflexes in Romance. One of these is the syntacticrestriction on its use, which allows it only to appear as the subject or object of a sentence.Though this is not a typical feature of Latin nominal elements in general, it does, nevertheless,show a distributional dependency on case structure, which is something typically associated withNPs.

Secondly, the fact that the semantic subject of the Latin infinitive does not take nominativecase is an indication that the infinitive is not a prototypical verb form. Though the subject inAcI-clauses appears in the accusative (not the genitive, as it does with prototypical nominals),the fact that the infinitive does not assign nominative case to its subject can be interpreted asan indication of reduced verbal character.

Verb-like or clausal features of the Latin infinitive

Whilst not as verbal as finite verb forms, the Latin infinitive does have clearly verb-like prop-erties. It can appear, on its own as well as within an AcI, as the complement of main verbsthat semantically require a sentential object, such as RECUSARE ‘to refuse’ and COGERE‘to coerce’. The fact that Latin does not have prepositional infinitives is a further mark of theinfinitive’s verbal nature, as prepositions typically occur with nouns or NPs.

Though lacking morphological person and number agreement, the Latin infinitive does have mor-phologically inflected forms for tense and voice, both of which are typical verbal inflection classes.

A further typically verbal characteristic is the fact that the infinitive cannot be pluralized – afeature it shares with finite verb forms74 as well as the gerund, as neither Latin nor Romanceverbs are marked for the number of actions or states they represent. (This does not mean that averb cannot express more than one action; aspectual marking by means of the ‘imperfect tense’or by auxiliaries such as SOLERE can be used to express repetition, and in clauses with a pluralsubject it is frequently the case that the verbal action is executed individually by each member ofthe subject NP. But there is no structure reserved exclusively for marking the number of actions.)

So far, these observations are in line with locating the Latin infinitive somewhere along thecontinuum between prototypical noun and verb, though perhaps rather closer to the verbal endthan traditional grammars would suggest.

74The so-called plural forms of finite verbs do not pluralize the verb itself, but merely constitute numberagreement with the subject.


3.4.3 Is the Romance infinitive verbal or nominal?

As mentioned in Section 3.4.2, there appears to be a general consensus that the infinitive hasbecome more verbal, and implicitly less nominal, in the course of the development of the Ro-mance languages. This section will take a closer look at the degree to which such a claim canbe upheld. This analysis will separately consider the evolution of the infinitive clause’s relationto outside elements, in particular the main clause it is dependent on, on the one hand, and itsinternal structure on the other hand. It will become apparent that we are dealing with twodiverging trends, and that it is therefore inappropriate to speak of a single development towardsor away from nominality.

Increased nominality in relation to the main clause

The overall number of contexts in which the infinitive can occur has steadily increased to thepresent day. Much emphasis is placed on its increased coreferential usage. Harris (1978: 226)states that “the infinitive has extended its role in Romance compared to Latin [...], particularlywhen the subject of the two underlying sentences is identical.” This is doubtlessly an importantobservation, but nevertheless merely a quantitative shift, as coreferential infinitive complementsdid exist in Latin, too.

More innovative is the use with prepositions. The details of this development will be discussedin the following chapters. At this point it is sufficient to point out that the creation of a novelsyntactic pattern, the prepositional infinitive, is a clear shift towards nominality, as the pro-totypical prepositional structure is undoubtedly [preposition+noun]. Pre-empting some resultsfrom subsequent sections, it can be observed that the overall number of prepositional infinitives,as well as the number of different prepositions the infinitive can combine with, has seen a con-tinuing rise to the present day, which can be interpreted as an indication that, in relation to itsmain clause, the infinitive is still in the process of becoming more nominal.75

The noun-like qualities of the infinitive are also pointed out by Raposo (1987: 239), who arguesinfinitival clauses are nominal projections, and that the infinitival morpheme “-r nominalizes thegrammatical category to which it attaches”. This is shown by the fact that infinitival clausescannot appear in a position subcategorized by non-Case assigning categories, such as nouns(225).

225. ∗O receio [chumbar o exame]] VP.76

The fear (of) [failing the exam] VP.

Instead, a dummy Case-assigning preposition, de, is required for infinitival clauses (226), as itis for NPs (227).

226. ∗O receio de [chumbar o exame]] VP.77

The fear of [failing the exam] VP.

227. ∗O receio de [os exames]...78

The fear of the exams...75An interesting issue is whether those prepositional infinitives that have evolved from prototypical adjuncts

to complements (cf. Chapter 7) have reversed the trend, becoming less nominal in the process. According tothe theoretical parameters presented in Section 1.3, the construction remains the same, the shift being a purelysemantic one.

76Raposo, 1987: 23777ibid.: 23878ibid.


A further area in which the infinitive’s verbal character has decreased is in the area of overtmarking of the time relation between the main clause and the infinitive. Whilst Latin infinitivesare obligatorily tensed – a typically verbal feature – modern Romance infinitives are, by default,not overtly tensed. Anteriority and posteriority of the infinitive can be rendered periphrasticallyby the standard auxiliary constructions79 of the respective languages, but in modern Romancethis only occurs as a disambiguating strategy in marked contexts. A reduction of the need formorphological temporal marking can even be observed in Spanish since the Middle Ages: whilstprepositional infinitives marked as anterior by despues de were usually marked analytically aspast by means of haber, a steady decline of this redundant marking for relative time referencecan be observed, and in the modern language only a fraction of prepositional infinitives withdespues de use the past tense auxiliary construction.

The same also applies to marking of voice, which the Latin infinitive is obligatorily inflected for,but which is only exceptionally expressed overtly in modern Romance, whilst usually determinedpragmatically through contextual cues.

Increased verbal character within the dependent clause

Within the dependent clause, the situation is rather different, both morphologically and syntacti-cally. In the majority of Romance languages, infinitival clauses have developed an internal struc-ture that, under certain circumstances, allows the subject of the infinitive to appear overtly, andin subject case. This Overt Subject Infinitive or OSI is found throughout the Romance-speakingworld (cf. Section ComplementswithovertSubject), in several varieties with the possibility ofmorphological agreement between the infinitive and its overt or non-overt subject – a fact thatcasts some doubt on whether the absence of person agreement is a necessary characteristic ofthe infinitive.80 Both these features – morphological person/number agreement and assigningnominative case to its subject – are typically verbal.

A further verbal characteristic is the case assigned to direct objects of the infinitive. If we weredealing with a noun, we would again expect a genitival construction with de, but in the infinitivecomplement, the DO is assigned accusative case. Compare the de-construction for the object ofthe noun busqueda in (228) with the direct object construction for the object of buscar in (229):

228. La busqueda de un cohete sucesor [...] se complica.81

The search for a successor rocket is becoming more complicated.

229. El gobierno se esfuerza por buscar un cohete sucesor/buscarlo.The government is making an effort to find a successor rocket/find it.

The degree of nominality in the medieval language

Beardsley (1920: 3-12) devotes an entire chapter of his survey of the infinitive in Old Spanish tothe “infinitive as substantive”, i.e. functioning as a noun, which is more widely used in MedievalSpanish than in the modern language, but also admits that “there is no distinct line betweenthe verb and noun uses of the infinitive, since even in the types called verbal the substantival

79When used in infinitival clauses, the inflectable verbal element within the auxiliary construction appears inits infinitive form, e.g. the infinitive of ‘to have’ followed by the past participle for anteriority.

80To claim, on such formal grounds, that the ‘personal infinitive’ is not really an infinitive at all would bemisleading, as such a claim would miss the fact that its syntactic behaviour and its distribution is very similarto that of OSI constructions with non-inflected infinitives in those varieties that do not allow morphologicalagreement of the infinitive.

81El Paıs, 10.1.2001


sense can be felt, and vice versa” (Beardsley, 1920: 13).

The most obvious distinction between the two uses is presence or absence of an article or adjec-tival pronoun. Expressions like el morir era malo 82 and en su versificar83 convey an implicitdynamism of the respective event by semantically exploiting the verbal nature of the infini-tive, whilst sticking to a nominal syntactic structure. Similar examples abound in medievalPortuguese texts, too:

230. pois aquestes olhos meus por el perderan o dormir84

Thus these eyes of mine lost the capacity to sleep because of him.

A number of these nomina actionis extend their semantic range beyond the action itself to itsobject. El/o cantar ‘the singing’> ’the song’, el/o comer ‘the eating’>’the meal’, el/o aver ‘theowning’>’the possessions’, el parescer ‘the appearing’>’the opinion’ exemplify this semanticextension, with some of the secondary meanings so far removed from the original meaning ofthe verb that they are reanalysed as fully independent lexical items, as can be seen with el/oparecer ‘the opinion’, el/o andar ‘the walk’ and el/o poder ‘the power’ from medieval times tothe present day:

231. Levadeiro dos moinhos com poder de acoimar os que tomasem a agoa.85

A miller with the power to name and shame those who take the water.

However, even the highly noun-like use of infinitive form in Medieval Spanish and Portuguesehas a varying degree of nominality with regards to its arguments. As would be expected witha noun, both its subject and direct object are usually rendered genitivally by means of thepreposition de, which indicates that this use of the infinitive is more noun-like than in Latin:

Genitival Subject:

232. El cuydar de los omnes todo es vanidat.86

The worrying of man is all vain.

Genitival Object:

233. el usar de sus leyes...87

the use of their laws...

There are, on the other hand, also instances of direct objects without de, giving the infinitive amore verbal touch despite the fact that it has an article:

234. mando [...] el refazer los muros de las uillas88

He gave orders to rebuild the walls of the towns.

This construction, which is halfway between nominal and verbal use, survives into the modernlanguage:

82Cit. Beardsley (1920): Libro de Alixandre 105283ibid.: 232, 207784Nuno Perez Sandeu, Cantiga de Amigo 6, end of 13th century.85Vereacoes no. 1309, fl. 4886Cit. Beardsley (1920: 11): Libro de Alixandre 96887Cit. Beardsley (1920: 12): Primera Cronica General 103b1988Cit. Beardsley (1920: 12): Primera Cronica General 293b32


235. Tendra la consideracion de estudiante el extranjero cuya venida a Espana tenga como finunico o principal el cursar o ampliar estudios o realizar trabajos de investigacion oformacion.89

A foreigner whose coming to Spain has as its only or principle objective to pursue ordeepen his studies or to carry out research or educational work will be considereda student.

The infinitive preceded by a contraction of definite article and the preposition a deserves spe-cial attention in view of its later development. Beardsley rightly includes this construction inthe ‘infinitive as substantive’ class, implicitly equating constructions such as (236) with otherprepositional constructions such as (237).

236. Al posar...todos se esperaban.90

at.the restinf....all refl. wait3rd.pl.past

When they rested...everyone was waiting.

237. Del minguar dize...91

of.the diminishinf. say3rd.sg.pres...

About discrediting he says...

At the time, this al-construction is no more verbal than any other infinitive with a definite arti-cle, as its genitival subject (al so mandar92, ‘at his ordering’) and object (Al cargar de las archasveriedes gozo tanto.93 ‘at the loading of the chests’) underlines. The subsequent development,in both Spanish and Portuguese, to the present-day situation, in which al/ao+infinitive is aclearly verbal construction (with a particularly high incidence of overt subjects), is exceptionalin that it has formally retained the definite article. Nevertheless, it has to be included in the listof prepositional infinitives examined in their development between the Middle Ages and todayin the next chapters.

Though the ‘nominal infinitive’ is not the primary object of this study, it helps illustrate thatwe are not dealing with a single, uniform shift of the infinitive along the [nominal]<—>[verbal]continuum. Overall, it may be most appropriate to classify the infinitive used in this way asa noun, but closer examination has shown that its range, from lexicalized full noun that haslost all its verbal force, to the incipiently verbal use with a non-genitival direct object, spans aconsiderable spectrum.

‘Verbal’ usage of the infinitive in medieval texts is, in principle (though not in all details, as thefollowing chapters show), similar to that in the modern language. With regards to its ‘external’relationship to its main verb, it can function as subject, object, or as various types of adjunct.Nor has the internal structure of infinitival complements changed dramatically since medievaltimes; in a very verb-like way, the infinitive can have direct objects and overt subjects.94 InPortuguese, the inflected infinitive, agreeing morphologically with an overt or implicit subject, isalso already well established in the Middle Ages. It is only in terms of distribution and quantitythat the usage of infinitival clauses has changed since the Middle Ages; these changes, whichwill be examined in some detail in the following chapters, offer crucial insights into an ongoingprocess, which is already well underway in the 12th century.

89El Paıs, 10.1.2001.90Beardsley (1920: 5), cit. Milagros de Nuestra Senora 891ibid., p. 5, from Primera Cronica General 66a1092Cit. Beardsley (1920): Primera Cronica General 66b4193Cit. Beardsley (1920: 12): Cid 17094Some changes have occurred regarding the possible position of overt subjects, cf. Section (3.2.2) and Men-

sching (2000: 15-38, 101-28)


Impact of the demise of the Latin case system

The previous section shows that it is impossible to say that the Romance infinitive, as a whole,has become more nominal or more verbal. In relation to the main clause, nominal featureshave become more pronounced, but clause-internally, a clear increase in verbal characteristics isevident.

One factor that favours the increase in nominality is the overall structural shift that Romancehas undergone.

(Classical) Latin syntax depends heavily on overt inflectional marking of the relations betweenconstituents, rather than relying on word order or the consistent use of lexical relation mark-ers95. Prepositional constructions are no exception to this requirement. IN ‘in’ and SUB ‘below,under’, for instance, have locative meaning with the ablative, but typically96 directional meaningwith the accusative.

The Latin infinitive, however, does not participate in standard nominal morphology, whichmakes it impossible to overtly specify its semantic relation to other constituents. As a conse-quence, it can only be used in place of an NP where its semantic role within the sentence cannevertheless be unambiguously identified, as the subject or direct object of certain verbs thatmake the semantic role of the infinitive highly predictable (cf. Section 2.2). Such a degree ofpredictability is not provided for other semantic roles, which therefore require unambiguous in-flectional marking97. This general requirement for oblique nominals to be inflected for case canbe seen as crucial for the fact that infinitives cannot appear in prepositional phrases in Latin.With the Romance shift away from morphological case marking (Penny, 1991: 101 ff.), nominalmorphology conveniently adapted to that of the infinitive: whether direct, indirect, or preposi-tional object, neither nouns nor infinitives are morphologically inflected for case in most modernRomance varieties, and it appears that this structural shift has, more or less per chance, led toa morphosyntactic convergence of nouns and infinitives, thereby facilitating a greater syntacticoverlap between the two in certain areas.

The deviant pattern in Romanian, which does have a two-term morphological case distinction98,supports this structurally based theory. Languages without case inflection, such as Spanish,tend to have a single infinitive form that can function both as the verb of a dependent clauseand as a full noun or “infinitive as substantive” (Beardsley, 1920: 1-12). These two usages ofthe infinitive can be distinguished by the different syntactic contexts they require.

Sentence (238) is an example of the infinitive obrar ‘to work, to function, to act’ used as a fullnoun. Both the article el and the fact that its semantic subject is expressed genitivally by meansof the preposition de99 are clear indicators of nominality:

238. Espana es hoy un paıs libre. Libre [...] como nunca lo fue antes en su historia, libre [...]en el obrar de sus partidos polıticos.100

Spain is today a country free. free [...] like never it was before in its history, free [...] in the working of its parties

political

95Classical Latin does make use of lexical relation markers, but the inventory is defective, with many inter-constituent relations requiring morphological inflection.

96IN with the accusative very frequently has the figurative meaning ‘against’.97A number of prepositions do, however, also assign semantic roles in an unambiguous way.98Romanian distinguishes one form for the nominative and accusative, and a second oblique form. This overt

distinction applies to all articulated forms as well as non-articulated feminine singular forms.99With regard to direct objects, even the more noun-like infinitive does not usually require ‘genitival’ de.

Compare el negar la existencia but la negacion de la existencia.100El Paıs, 8.2.2001.


Today, Spain is a free country. Free [...] as it has never been before in its history, free [...]in the working of its political parties.

Sentence (239) shows the same infinitive form in a prototypically verbal syntactic structure,with the auxiliary verb poder:

239. Nunca pense que Israel pudiera obrar ası.101

never I.thought that Israel could actinf so

I never thought that Israel could act like that.

In Romanian, this syncretism between verbal and nominal infinitive is resolved morphologically.Verbs have a ‘short infinitive’, corresponding to the verbal character of obrar in sentence (239),and a ‘long infinitive’102, which is in all syntactic and morphosyntactic respects a fully nominalnomen actionis that participates in normal (feminine) case morphology.

240. Verbal or ‘short’ infinitive:

Niciodata nu m-am gandit ca cineva poate vopsi oua asa.never not REFL1st.sg-I.have thought that somebody can dyeinf.verbal eggsAcc so

I never thought anybody could dye eggs like that.

241. Nominal or ‘long’ infinitive (non-oblique):

Am adus vopseaua pentru vopsirea oualelor.I.have fetched dye.the for dyeing.the eggs.theGen.Pl

I have brought the dye for the dyeing of the eggs.

242. Nominal or ‘long’ infinitive (oblique):

Am adus vopseaua din cauza vopsirii oualelor care are loc aici.I.have fetched dye.the out.of reason dyeing.theGen.Sg eggs.theGen.Pl ...

I have brought the dye because of the dyeing of the eggs that takes place here.

The verbal character of a vopsi in sentence (240) is particularly obvious in the presence of anovert subject in the dependent clause (243), which appears in the nominative:

243. Verbal or ‘short’ infinitive with overt subject:

Am adus vopseaua pentru a vopsi si noi ouale.we.have fetched dye.the for A dyeinf also weNom. eggs.theAcc.P l

I have brought the dye for us to dye the eggs, too.

Like Latin, Romanian has prepositions that require a specific case.103 And, as in Latin, theseprepositions cannot be used to form prepositional infinitives, whilst in Romanian prepositionsrequiring non-oblique case frequently take an infinitival clause. For example, Romanian doesnot have causal infinitival clauses, as both causal prepositions, din cauza and din pricina, as-sign oblique case.104 Other Romance languages with a less developed case structure permitprepositional infinitives, even with cognate prepositional expressions. Compare the grammati-cal Spanish construction (244) and the corresponding ungrammatical Romanian sentence (245):

101El Paıs, ibid.102‘Infinitivul scurt’ and ‘infinitivul lung’, respectively.103Traditionally, these prepositions are subdivided into those requiring the genitive and those requiring the

dative (Pop & Moldovan, 1997: 207), but this distinction is an artificial one, as there can be no morphosyntacticdistinction between the two cases in a prepositional environment.

104A similar resistance to concessive infinitival clauses can be found with ın ciuda, but as discussed in Section6.3.2, a comparable resistance in other Romance languages suggests a different cause.


244. Facilmente podrıamos pensar que el Dios cruel [...] mato a 24,000 personas solamente porcausa de haber fornicado.105

easily we.can think that the God cruel [...] killed DIR.OBJ.MARKER 24,000 persons only for reason of

PAST.AUXinf fornicated

We can easily think that the cruel God killed 24,000 people only because they hadfornicated.

245. ∗ Cu usurinta putem gandi ca Dumnezeu crud a omorat pe 24,000 de persoane, numai dincauza (de) a fi pacatuit.106

with ease we.can thinkinf that God cruel has killed DIR.OBJ.MARKER 24,000 of persons, only out.of reason.the

A PAST.AUXinf fornicated

We can easily think that the cruel God killed 24,000 people only because they hadsinned.

The evidence thus suggests that the disappearance of case inflection after prepositions is aprerequisite for the emergence of prepositional infinitives, and that once the requirement formorphological case marking no longer exists, the hybrid nominal/verbal nature of the infinitiveallows it to function syntagmatically like an NP. The disjunction between this external nomi-nality and its internal verbal character is crucial in allowing infinitival clauses to function as anominal constituent, but simultaneously to impinge upon the domain of finite dependent clauses.

However, even with the structural conditions in place, it remains to be explained what actu-ally triggers this impingement, and along which path the construction spreads. The statisticaldata presented in the following chapters provide answers to the latter, on the basis of which areconstruction of the earlier, undocumented stages of development will be attempted.

105http://www.goodnews.or.kr/buenasnuevas/sermon/ley.htm106It would appear tempting to copy the Spanish prepositional expression by adding de here. In fact din cauza

does, very rarely, combine with de+unoblique case (19 web pages found by altavista), but never with de+infinitive.

Chapter 4

Diachronic development of theinfinitive in Spanish

4.1 Prepositional and non-prepositional infinitives

Fig. 4.1 shows the overall development of infinitive usage in Spanish since the Middle Ages.Each point represents one text or author (as listed in appendix A), sorted diachronically alongthe x-axis, with the position along the y-axis reflecting the number of infinitives per 100,000words of text. The approximation curve, generated by the algorithm described in section 1.5.2,shows the overall development trend.

1100 1150 1200 1250 1300 1350 1400 1450 1500 1550 1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

overall number of infinitives

year

per

1000

00 w

ords

Figure 4.1: Overall frequency of infinitives through time

Up to the beginning of the 16th century, a remarkable stability at around 2250 infinitives per100,000 words can be observed. At this point, a relatively steady rise sets in, reaching an av-erage of around 2800/100,000 words in the 20th century. This represents a significant rise ofapproximately 25%. In this chapter, the development of the various infinitival constructions thisgraph incorporates will be analysed and compared in some detail.

A fundamental distinction can be made between prepositional and non-prepositional infinitives.Figs. 4.2 - 4.4 show the differential overall development of these two construction types.

105

106 CHAPTER 4. DIACHRONIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE INFINITIVE IN SPANISH

1100 1150 1200 1250 1300 1350 1400 1450 1500 1550 1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000

0

250

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750

1000

1250

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year

prep

. inf

initi

ves

per 1

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Figure 4.2: Prepositional infinitives through time

1100 1150 1200 1250 1300 1350 1400 1450 1500 1550 1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000

500

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2250

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Figure 4.3: Non-prepositional infinitives through time

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Figure 4.4: Prepositional vs. non-prepositional infinitives through time

A strong increase in the use of prepositional infinitives sets in around 1500, peaking just overa century later. This increase from ca. 600/100,000 words to ca. 1550/100,000 words rep-resents a rise of nearly 160%. This is to some extent counterbalanced by reduced usage ofnon-prepositional infinitives, dropping well below the level of prepositional infinitives during thesame period, from ca. 1700/100,000 words to ca. 1000/100,000 words. Though this fall doesnot fully cancel out the increase in prepositional infinitives, it does show a fundamental shift infavour of prep.+inf.

However, the extreme divergence during this period is only temporary. After acquiring almostequal shares towards the end of the 17th century, prepositional infinitive usage subsequentlyincreases relatively steadily up to the beginning of the 20th century, whilst non-prepositionalinfinitives experience a slight decline up to this point, followed by a sudden rise after 1900,again bringing about an almost equal share of prepositional and non-prepositional infinitives in

4.2. PREPOSITIONAL INFINITIVES 107

present-day Spanish.

The most important observation, however, is the overall development, as illustrated by the linearregression lines in Figure 4.5.

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Figure 4.5: Prepositional vs. non-prepositional infinitive: linear regressions

Essentially, in medieval times, the use of the plain infinitive exceeds that of prepositional infini-tive by a factor of nearly three, whereas there is no longer a significant numeric difference today.If at all, prep+inf. can be said to have been slightly dominant since the mid-16th century. Inorder to identify the causes for this shift, it is necessary to analyse the changing internal distri-bution within these two construction types.

4.2 Prepositional infinitives

Two different classificatory approaches to prepositional infinitives will be taken. The first is lex-ically based, tracing the use of individual prepositions through time. The second is semanticallybased, which means that prepositions are grouped together depending on their meaning, or moreprecisely on the semantic value that the dependent clause they introduce, has within its sentence.

Both approaches have drawbacks. The formal, morphological approach ignores the fact thatindividual prepositions can, themselves, be polysemous, as discussed in Section 1.5.2. Is con-ditional de really the same preposition as de meaning ‘about’ or de meaning ‘beginning with’?Most obviously, the de as a complementizer clearly differs from the other uses. Diachronic shiftsmust also be taken into account. Thus por and para1 are diachronically unstable; por graduallycedes its final meaning to para.2 It must, therefore, be critically considered whether por in theMiddle Ages can be seen as the same preposition as por used today. However, it is exactlythis kind of semantic overlap and lack of discreteness that causes changes in usage patterns (cf.Sections 1.3, 7) , and it is thus necessary to obtain an overview of their development as a whole.

The semantic approach, on the other hand, is limited by the same factors, as it is often notpossible to sort prepositional infinitives into discrete semantic categories. Whether en hacerlo‘in doinf.-it’ is temporal or causal3 varies from context to context, but in the majority of casesthe meaning is a combination of both, in varying proportions. Thus, any categorization involvesarbitrary or subjective decisions as to which is the primary or central meaning in a specific con-text. But a semantic classification is, nevertheless, of interest for the purpose of evaluating thestatus of the prepositional infinitive construction through time. In particular, the correlation

1Pora and pera initially also participate in this complex shift.2For a study about the origins of their current distribution, see Riiho (1979).3The causal meaning component can acquire a distinctly conditional flavour in a context of future reference.


between semantic bleaching and increased frequency provides valuable information about theway in which an originally pragmatic mechanism ultimately leads to syntactic change. How thistype of shift occurs is discussed in depth in Section 1.5.2.

4.2.1 Semantically underspecified constructions

The general trend for all prepositional infinitives is to increase in frequency. One constructionsuffering a (slight) overall decline is en+infinitive (Fig. 4.6), which initially follows the generaltrend, rising from ca. 62/100,000 words to a peak of nearly 100/100,000 words, but subsequentlyfalls to below 50/100,000 words in present-day Spanish.

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Figure 4.6: en+infinitive through time

This can be explained by the rise in alternative, semantically more precise constructions whichhave come to replace en+infinitive. As described above, en+infinitive conveys a somewhat im-precise notion of temporal simultaneity and causality/conditionality. In section 2.4.5 it has beenargued that such underspecification of semantic relationships is typically found when events arepragmatically backgrounded, and that a way of achieving such pragmatic backgrounding is byusing gerundial constructions rather than prepositional infinitives. It might thus be expectedthat the decline of en+infinitive is counterbalanced by an increase in clausal gerunds. As Fig.4.7 shows, this is not the case. Their development greatly resembles that of en+infinitive, peak-ing slightly later, but then also declining to a level below that of medieval times.

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Figure 4.7: Clausal gerunds through time

This leads to the conclusion that underspecified pragmatic backgrounding has, to some extent,declined in favour of more semantically precise, more foregrounded clause types, i.e. conjunc-tional and/or infinitival clauses. In the following, it will be examined in how far, and in whatway, prepositional infinitives have gained dominance, both in comparison to the underspecified,


backgrounded gerund and en+infinitive, and to finite dependent clauses introduced by the con-junctions that semantically correspond to the respective prepositions.

4.2.2 Decreasing frequency of por + infinitive

Por+infinitive is also subject to falling usage frequency through time, as shown in Fig. 4.8:

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Figure 4.8: por + infinitive through time

As explained in the introductory section of this chapter, por has been subjected to a reductionof its semantic range, as the separate preposition para, a compound of por and a, both of whichcould carry final meaning at the time, came into existence in the Middle Ages. A comparaisonof por and para (pera, pora)+infinitive (Fig. 4.9) suggests that the fall in por+infinitive is linkedto the rise in para+inf.

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Figure 4.9: por+infinitive vs. para+infinitive

Almost until the 15th century, the ratio remains relatively stable at approximately 2.5:1 in favourof por. But from around 1400 onwards, an increasingly steep rise in the frequency of para causesit to draw even with por by the second half of the 16th century, despite a simultaneous rise ofpor by around 35%. At this point, it can clearly be seen, para has got the upper hand: a suddendrop in the use of por is paralleled by a similarly steep increase in para, both of which slack off,again arriving at a largely stable ratio of ca. 3.5:1 in favour of para, from around 1800 onwards.

The detailed study of por and para by Riiho (1979: 235-257) reveals that during the “classicalperiod”, i.e. the 16th and 17th century, para gradually takes over the final domain, particularly inthe semantic area he calls “finalidad propiamente dicha”, i.e ‘finality in the strict sense’. Whilstpor is used for dependent clauses with a combination of final+causal and final+substitutionalmeaning to the present day, the purely final use becomes increasingly rare during this period,


and only survives sporadically afterwards.4 This semantic shift is responsible for the suddenchange in frequency during the 17th century.

It is important to note that the decline of por+infinitive is, thus, not motivated by wider struc-tural factors, but caused by a local morphological and lexico-semantic phenomenon. The overalltrend of the fluid por/para/pora-domain is illustrated by Fig. 4.10, which shows their combinedfrequency:

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Figure 4.10: por/para/pora + infinitive

The picture provided by this graph is fairly straightforward. Relative stability before the 15th andafter the 18th century contrasts with an increase from ca. 170/100,000 words to ca. 350/100,000words, i.e. a rise by more than 100% between the 15th and the 18th century. A drop by approx-imately 15% in the course of the 20th century can also be observed. This development pattern,it will be seen, is a typical one found with a number of other prepositions.

4.2.3 Increasing frequency of existing prepositional infinitives

The majority of prepositional infinitives occur with increasing frequency through time. Twogroups can be distinguished: a number of prepositional infinitives first appear during the timeperiod under investigation; these can be traced from their very beginning. The other group isalready present in the earliest documents, and the information gleaned from the first group maybe of assistance in reconstructing their origin.

The subset of prepositional infinitives already present in early medieval Spanish consists ofpor/para, con, de, en, and a. Their development is illustrated in Fig. 4.10 above and in Figs.4.11 - 4.13 below.

4One author who uses final por regularly as late as the end of the 19th century is Emilia Pardo Bazan in Lospazos de Ulloa (1886, 2a ed. Madrid: Catedra, 1999).


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Figure 4.11: con + infinitive

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Figure 4.12: de + infinitive

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Figure 4.13: a + infinitive

When comparing the evolutionary patterns of these prepositional infinitives, the most strikingobservation is the similarity of all the curves, irrespective of whether the prepositional infini-tive is a prototypical adjunct (por/para), mostly used as a prototypical complementizer (de),or moving between the two extremes of the continuum (a): after a more or less unchangingperiod in the earlier part of the Middle Ages, an increase gradually sets in, which intensifiesaround the year 1500 and peaks round about a hundred years later. Though similar in principle,the development is not simultaneous. por/para+infinitive reaches its zenith between 1550 and1600, but de only between 1600 and 1650. On the other hand, the gradual rise in frequencybegins around 1300 for de, more than a hundred years earlier than for por/para. This is a clearindication that we are not dealing with a wholesale development, but that every prepositionfollows its own course of development – but that these individual courses of development havea surprising resemblance to each other.


Their subsequent development confirms this interpretation. After a drop around 1650, a rel-atively stable period follows, in which por/para experiences a rise of ca. 25% by the end ofthe 19th century, but then falls back to the level of the 17th century. De also rises (ca. 10%)and falls back to a level below that of 1650 during the 20th century. This trend is far strongerwith con+infinitive, with a very marked rise (50%) that takes it above the peak of the ‘classicalperiod’ in the 19th century, but then falls to a pre-classical level during the 20th century. Whilstpor/para, de, and con behave similarly in principle, a experiences a slight rise instead of a fallin the 20th century. All of this shows that each prepositional infinitive has its own individual,not precisely predictable evolution, but nevertheless conforms to a broad pattern.

It should be noted that the common trend is independent of absolute frequency. Fig. 4.14 givesan impression of the differences in frequency between the respective prepositional infinitives.

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Figure 4.14: a, de, por/para,con + infinitive

4.2.4 A special case: al + infinitive

A difficult issue is the temporal construction al+infinitive. It occurs from the earliest medievaltexts, as in (246).

246. al exir de Salon mucho ovo buenas aves5

when leaving Salon, there were many good augurs

However, the status of this infinitive with article is not clear. Medieval Spanish regularly usesinfinitives in a very noun-like way6, as illustrated by (247), in which the nominal nature of theinfinitive is demonstrated by the fact that the patient or object is linked by ‘genitival’ de, astructure typically used for objects of nouns.

247. Al tirar de la lanca...7

At the throwing of the lance...

Both the definite article contained in al and the fact that the [patient] is linked by de wouldappear to indicate nominality, and initially this is surely the case. But the construction’s in-creasingly verbal nature, reflected by an incipient rise in frequency from about 1500 onwards,becomes unmistakable in sentences such as (248) from Don Quijote, where the overt subject ofthe infinitive is not linked by genitival de, but takes the form of a clausal subject.

5Cid, 8596Beardsley (1921: 3-12)7Cid, 3686


248. Al subir el duque y la duquesa en el teatro...8

al ascendinf. the duke and the duchess in the theatre...

When the duke and the duchess entered the theatre...

The question of such infinitives’ nominality is discussed in more depth in Section 3.4.3 above.But whilst the infinitive in other prepositional clauses tends to behave largely like a verb inrelation to the other constituents of the dependent clause, the overt morphological presenceof the article in al appears to block this split between internal verbal character and externalnominality for a long time, as can be seen in Figure 4.15, which shows a marked difference tothe development of the other prepositional infinitives discussed above.

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Figure 4.15: al + infinitive

The typical rise between 1400 and 1600 is much less significant than with other prepositionalinfinitives; this can be explained by the continued presence of nominal usage during the classicalperiod, as in (249).

249. ...y al passar de un arroyo levanto la falda...9

...and al passnominal/inf. of a brook lifted the skirt...

...and as she passed a brook, she lifted her skirt...

This continuing strongly nominal use during the classical period appears to retard the typicalrise of the curve, because only a limited number of verbs regularly appear as ‘verbal nouns’ inthis construction. These are mostly verbs of motion (salir, pasar, andar, llegar, cabalgar etc.),verbs of eating and drinking (comer, cenar, beber etc.), impersonal verbs denoting times of theday (amanecer, anochecer) and some other notions such as pesar ‘to grieve’, parecer ‘to seem’.Some of these eventually become fossilized in their nominal form and are fully nominal in themodern language. The crucial point, however, is that as long as the al-construction retained itsspecial, more nominal status, it was not freely available to be used with any verb in the way thatother prepositional infinitives allowed. Only after al+infinitive becomes fully integrated into thesystem of prepositional infinitives does the expected increase in frequency set in, acceleratingduring the 19th century and easing off in the 20th .

4.2.5 The rise of new prepositional infinitives

Throughout the documented history of Spanish, new prepositions are created. They are oftenanalytic, consisting of more than one word; a productive pattern is the combination of an –

8Don Quijote, 355359Fructus Sanctorum, Ejemplos de las sagradas escrituras, Ejemplos Cristanos, 20


often nominal – element followed by de as a marker of prepositionality.

The first preposition to begin forming prepositional infinitives during the documented history ofSpanish is, however, morphologically inherited from Latin. Sin+infinitive first appears sporad-ically at the beginning of the 13th century, and its frequency rises sharply from 1450 onwards.After a peak and a subsequent drop between 1550 and 1700, a renewed, more gradual increaseup to the end of the 19th century and a slightly steeper decline during the 20th century follow.

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Figure 4.16: sin + infinitive

Despues de (Fig. 4.18) and antes de+infinitive (Fig. 4.17) follow a similar development. Theyfirst appear considerably later than sin+inf, in the late 15th century. The structural symme-try between these two temporal prepositional infinitives is reflected by the fact that they firstappear around the same time, and their subsequent development is also largely parallel untilthe beginning of the 20th century. However, up to around 1900 the absolute frequency of antesde+inf. is only around 50% of that of despues de+inf.; during the 20th century, a rise of theformer and a similarly strong drop of the latter leads to approximate numeric parity betweenthe two.

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Figure 4.17: antes de + infinitive


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Figure 4.18: despues de + infinitive

Desde and hasta might be expected to develop in a similar way to despues/antes de. Forhasta+infinitive this is, broadly speaking, the case, as shown in Fig. 4.19, except for a markeddecline in the early 20th century.

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Figure 4.19: hasta + infinitive

However, there is clear resistance to desde+infinitive. One isolated instance can be found inLarra (1832), and beyond this it is only to be found in the journalistic and oral corpora of thelate 20th century, with a very low frequency of 0.21/100,000 words. What is more, not a singleinfinitival clause with desde has temporal sense.10 It is used exclusively to express conceptual,not temporal, distance, usually in combination with a to indicate the opposite end. A typicalexample is sentence (250).

250. ...desde poner aborto gratuito y practicamente obligatorio a convertirlo en delito...11

...from putinf. abortion free and practically obligatory to convertinf.+it into an offence...

...from offering free and practically obligatory abortion to turning it into a criminal of-fence...

When compared to those of de, a, por/para, and con above, Figs. 4.18 - 4.19 appear to suggestthat there is no intrinsic, fixed time scale for the statistical development of prepositional infini-tives. Once established, their development becomes synchronized with that of the other, mucholder prepositional infinitives. This comes as no great surprise, as language users generally donot have diachronic information at their disposal; they are not aware that one construction ismany centuries older than another.

10A partir de, synonymous with desde in its temporal usage, is also extremely rare; it appears to be morepopular in Latin America than in Spain.

11Oral Corpus, TV programme Hablando Claro


Absolute frequency does vary considerably among different prepositional infinitives, but as Fig.4.14 above shows, this is not a crucial factor in their relative statistical development – the curveshave a similar shape whether we are dealing with a range of 100-400, or of 0-10 instances per100,000 words.

Other prepositional expressions follow in the footsteps of despues de and antes de. Many of theprepositional expressions we take for granted as typical prepositional infinitives in the modernlanguage have, in fact, only very recently acquired this function, and even many of those whichhave been in use for longer are found only sporadically before the 20th century.

En lugar de and en vez de are virtually synonymous and interchangeable in the modern lan-guage, with a similar frequency of around 5 per 100,000 words. But their evolution has not beenas similar. In the texts this analysis is based on, en lugar de+infinitive first appears in the early15th centuryin the Libro de Gatos in five instances, and subsequently with some regularity until1650. A gap of 150 years follows, before it reappears just before 1800, gradually increasing itsfrequency to the current level of ca. 5/100,000 words. En vez de, on the other hand, is muchless popular during the classical period12, but rises to almost twice the frequency of en lugarde during the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Fig. 4.20 sketches the differentialdevelopment after 1500.

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Figure 4.20: en lugar de + infinitive / en vez de + infinitive

It should be noted that the two prepositional expressions appear to coexist with no apparentdanger of one ousting the other, despite their semantic and syntactic similarity. However, theOral Corpus suggests that particularly in the spoken language, en vez de is twice as popular asen lugar de; in journalistic style, this discrepancy is much less extreme, with around 10% moreen vez de than en lugar de.

A fin de is another prepositional expression found sporadically in texts from the mid-15th cen-tury onwards, as shown in Fig. 4.21.

12Merely one instance in El Buscon, 4 in Calderon de la Barca.


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Figure 4.21: a fin de + infinitive

As a fin de+infinitive is semantically all but synonymous with para+infinitive, its use is primar-ily stylistically and pragmatically motivated: two characteristics that contrast sharply with paraare the vivid way in which a fin de ‘with (the) end of’ literally explains the concept of finality,and the fact that it has more morphological weight than para. Not only does it consist of threeseparate morphemes, but one of these morphemes is derived from a noun, i.e. a ‘heavy’ (andoriginally stressed) element. These two features make a fin de a more expressive, emphatic, butat the same time a somewhat formal, stilted way of introducing a final clause. The latter isthe reason why a fin de is virtually absent from the Oral Corpus (0.11/100,000 words), whilstjournalese embraces it (1.74/100,000 words).

Other prepositional expressions with the same morphosyntactic structure join the inventory ofprepositional infinitives at later points in time. Aspectual a punto de+infinitive ‘about to’ (4.22)is first found at the end of the 16th century, but regular usage only sets in during the 20th century.

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Figure 4.22: a punto de + infinitive

Concessive a pesar de and cognate pese a are very recent additions to the inventory; before the19th century there are no instances of concessive infinitival clauses.

A single instance of a pesar de+infinitive is found in each of Larra (1832), Giner de los Rıos(1875), and Unamuno (1909); only in the journalistic and spoken corpus of the 1990s does thefrequency pick up, reaching 1.83/100,000 words and 0.74/100,000 words respectively.

Pese a+infinitive is even later in coming, with no instances at all before the 1990s, but witha surprisingly high frequency13 of 9.16/100,000 words in Marıas. In the journalistic corpus itsfrequency is the same as that of a pesar de+infinitive (1.83/100,000 words), which indicates thatthe two stand in direct competition in this register. However, the fact that there is only a single

13This is exactly the same frequency as that of en vez de and a punto de.


occurrence in the Oral Corpus indicates that pese a+infinitive has not (yet) entered the spokenlanguage.

Another recent addition is luego de+infinitive, which appears to be restricted to journalisticregister. Whilst not present in any of the other texts, it occurs sporadically, with a frequencyof 0.38/100,000 words in the 2001 journalistic corpus. The origin of this construction appearsto be the journalists’ tendency to avoid repetition and vary their expressions; luego de is astraight-forward calque on despues de, based on the synonymity of the adverbs despues andluego meaning ‘afterwards’.

Journalists appear to favour the economy of the prepositional infinitive to replace slightly lessconcise finite clauses. Another prepositional infinitive benefiting from this ‘economical style’ inthe 20th century is tras+infinitive (‘after’). Whilst tras+noun is a popular preposition duringthe classical period, the texts in Appendix A from this period contain only a single instance oftras+infinitive, in Calderon de la Barca (1651). But in the 20th century tras begins to be used ininfinitival clauses, with one instance in Unamuno, a frequency of 18.33/100,000 words in Marıas(1992) and 16.75/100,000 words in the 2001 journalistic corpus – these frequencies are similar tothose of the synonymous despues de+infinitive. However, like pese a+infinitive, tras+infinitivehas only entered the spoken language sporadically (0.42/100,000 words).

4.2.6 Semantic grouping

The impossibility of clearly classifying certain prepositional clause types along semantic lineshas been discussed above. The overlap between final, causal and substitutional sense of por andpara has been mentioned, as has the continuum between the full, clearly delimitable senses ofa and de and their bleached, weaker, less clearly defined usages. Other prepositional infinitivesdo, however, have a clearer, more stable semantic value. Fig. 4.23 compares three such semanticareas.

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temporal prep+inf.

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Figure 4.23: Temporal/concessive/exclusive preposition + infinitive

This comparison shows how temporal and exclusive14 prepositional infinitives have undergonea very similar, parallel development, even in absolute frequency. In stark contrast to this, con-cessive prepositional infinitives are all but negligible.

The concept of temporality is, in Spanish as in most Indo-European languages, tripartite. Itcan be subdivided into anterior, simultaneous, and posterior. Fig. 4.24 illustrates how these ar-eas of temporality are represented within the larger category of temporal prepositional infinitives.

14The preposition used to form exclusive prepositional infinitives is sin.


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anterior matrix prep+inf. (hasta, antes de)

posterior matrix prep+inf. (después de etc.)

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Figure 4.24: Anterior, simultaneous, posterior prepositional infinitives

Whilst prepositions expressing anteriority and posteriority of the dependent clause in relationto its main clause develop in a relatively similar way, emerging in the 15th century, and remain-ing at a relatively stable level from the 17th century onwards, temporal prepositional infinitivesexpressing simultaneity of main and dependent clause show a very different development afterthe classical period, increasing almost fivefold within 200 years, and then remaining stable atthis level throughout the 20th century. Infinitival clauses expressing simultaneity are generallyformed with al (94%), the above explanation for the rapid increase in the use of al+infinitiveafter 1700 also applies to the class of simultaneous prepositional infinitives as a whole. It may,at first sight, seem surprising that the ratio between anterior/posterior prepositional infinitiveson the one hand, and their simultaneous counterparts on the other, can be subject to suchdrastic change, as the pragmatic context, the real world, does not change. Though it is possiblefor speakers’ interest in expressing anterior, posterior, or simultaneous time reference to changeslightly through time if their attitudes and ways of viewing the world change, the necessitiesimposed by the pragmatics of the real world should be expected to make any drastic shiftsimpossible.

So how can the increase in frequency, not just of al+infinitive, but of every single prepositionalinfinitive examined here, be explained? There are two possibilities: the prepositional infini-tive might either have increased at the expense of paratactic structures, or at the expense offinite subordination. To a certain extent, both explanations hold: in medieval Spanish, clausalsubordination is less frequent than during later periods; the inventory of subordinating con-junctions and prepositions is not yet developed to the same degree as today. Therefore, OldSpanish resorts more to the juxtaposition of main clauses, and to lexically underspecified depen-dent clauses where the pragmatic context makes the overt marking of logical relations redundant.

Fig. 4.25 illustrates the overall rise in the use of dependent clauses, and the proportion of in-finitival and finite ones.


Figure 4.25: Infinitival and finite dependent clauses in Spanish

The frequency of finite and infinitival dependent clauses combined rises by 14% from 1150 to2000, with a sudden increase at the beginning of the 15th century. During the classical period,it is up to 7% more frequent than today. The sudden increase around the year 1500 is causedby increases of both finite and infinitival dependent clauses, though the increase of infinitivalclauses is the more marked of the two. Even in this very general graph it is visible that, after1650, a gradually decreasing frequency of finite dependent clauses is offset by a comparableincrease in infinitival ones. The following section will examine the interplay between these twoclause types in more depth.

4.3 Infinitival clauses and their finite counterparts

Fig. 4.26 contrasts the development of the prepositional infinitives discussed in the previous sec-tion with that of the semantically (and in most cases morphologically) corresponding hypotacticconjunctions.

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Figure 4.26: Prepositional infinitives vs. corresponding conjunctions

In the early Middle Ages, finite dependent clauses are around twice as frequent as prepositionalinfinitives. Until the 16th century, both types experience an overall increase. This is, as dis-cussed above, mainly at the expense of paratactic structures. Rising at a stronger rate than itsfinite counterpart, the infinitive draws equal between 1550 and 1650, but only around 1800 doesthe frequency of prepositional infinitives finally exceed that of the corresponding finite clauses.It should be noted that, after 1600, the two clause types behave very much as a counterpoint toeach other, which indicates that they are in direct competition, with any gain by one competi-tor offset by a corresponding loss for the other. This competition, it appears, is still open: inthe 20th century, the continued increase of the prepositional infinitive has lost its momentum,

4.3. INFINITIVAL CLAUSES AND THEIR FINITE COUNTERPARTS 121

and finite dependent clauses have begun to regain some ground. A simple continuation of thecurrent trend would allow the prediction that, within the next century, the number of infinitivaland semantically corresponding finite clauses will reach approximately the same level, around1300/100,000 words.

4.3.1 Prepositional infinitives postdating their finite counterparts

An examination of individual pairs of finite and infinitival clauses reveals that there is no singledevelopment pattern. Two fundamental classes of conjunction/preposition pairs can be distin-guished: those with the conjunction predating the prepositional infinitive, and those with theprepositional infinitive predating the corresponding conjunction.

Antes de/antes (de) que, despues de/despues (de) que, and hasta/hasta que (Figs. 4.27 - 4.29)are good examples of the former class. In all three cases, the conjunction is already present inthe very earliest texts, but the prepositional infinitive first occurs around or after 1400. A con-siderable increase in the frequency of the conjunction prior to the rise of the infinitive is reversedas the infinitive gains ground; indeed, the drop in conjunctional usage is around twice as greatas the rise in infinitival usage during the classical period, until around 1650. Following this con-vergence of the two frequencies, they remain relatively stable in comparison to the pre-GoldenAge period. This does not mean that no further changes occur: antes de+inf. and antes de queexperience a simultaneous gradual increase during the 20th century, whilst despues de+inf ap-pears to be more successful than hasta+inf. and antes de+inf. in replacing its finite counterpart.

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Figure 4.27: antes (de) que vs. antes de + infinitive

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Figure 4.28: despues (de) que vs. despues de + infinitive


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Figure 4.29: fasta/hasta que vs. fasta/hasta + infinitive

Luego de/luego (de) que (Fig. 4.30) and desde/desde que (Fig. 4.31) might arguably also beincluded in this class. Like hasta que, antes (de) que and despues (de) que, luego que is presentfrom the earliest texts onwards, whilst desde que is first found in the 15th and 16th century.

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Figure 4.30: luego que vs. luego de + infinitive

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Figure 4.31: desde que vs. desde + infinitive

Both graphs show the typical overall rise in frequency, followed by downturn. In the case ofluego (de) que, this downturn during the 17th century is particularly sudden and abrupt, butnevertheless generally in line with the trend illustrated in Figs. 4.27 - 4.29 above. The crucialdifference, however, is that this drop does not coincide with a continued rise in the usage of thecorresponding prepositional infinitive. Indeed, the corresponding prepositional infinitive luegode+inf. is patently absent, and – as discussed in the previous section – only comes into usein the late 20th century. However, the fact that despues de+infinitive (Fig. 4.28) occurs morefrequently then the corresponding conjunction despues de que can account for the absence ofluego de+infinitive: Figure 4.32 shows how the synonymous conjunctions luego que and despues


(de) que combined compare to despues de+infinitive and tras+infinitive combined. These twoprepositional infinitives appear to step in for the absent luego de+infinitive, leaving us with aninterestingly asymmetrical pattern.

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posterior matrix prep+inf. (después de, luego de, tras)

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Figure 4.32: luego/despues (de) que vs. tras / despues de / luego de + infinitive

Not only does this overview of conjunctional and prepositional use in temporal dependent clauseswith posterior main clause explain the fact that despues de+infinitive is atypically more frequentthan finite despues de que, as well as accounting for the virtual absence of luego de+infinitive,but it also shows that it is not sufficient to look at isolated pairs of prepositional infinitives andcorresponding conjunctions – to obtain a fuller picture, it is important to take into account notjust morphological correspondence, but also semantic correspondences between infinitival andconjunctional dependent clauses.

As for desde que, it has already been pointed out in Section 4.2.5 that the correspondingdesde+infinitive is extremely rare even today, and never used temporally. Whether it willeventually establish itself, bringing down the frequency of the corresponding finite constructionin the same way as has occurred with antes, despues and hasta is difficult to predict.

4.3.2 Prepositional infinitives predating their finite counterparts

The clearest example of a prepositional infinitive becoming established prior to the correspond-ing finite structure is sin + infinitive. Fig. 4.33 shows how this infinitival structure powerfullyestablishes itself between 1400 and 1600, subsequently continuing its growth more graduallyuntil the late 19th century. Sin que follows, but always remains well below the frequency of theinfinitival construction, at approximately 20-25% of its level.

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Figure 4.33: sin + infinitive Vs. sin que


A less clear, but in principle similar development is found with a fin de+infinitive: though theoverall frequency of this preposition/conjunction pair is so low that the text corpus this studyis based on is not sufficiently large to give reliable average frequencies, it can nevertheless beobserved that a fin de+infinitive is found as early as 146015, whereas the first instance of a finde que is slightly later, in 149416, and that, during the last two centuries, a fin de+infinitive isfound three times as frequently as a fin de que17.

Some other prepositional infinitives predate and outnumber the corresponding conjunctional con-struction more significantly. Ever since their emergence several centuries ago, en lugar de+inf.,en vez de+inf. (Fig. 4.20) and a punto de+inf. (Fig. 4.22) are only very sporadically joinedby their finite counterparts. A punto que is found in the late 16th and early 17th century18,but does not catch on, and only occurs rarely afterwards (below 0.05/100,000 words). Only onesingle example of en lugar de que19 and none of en vez de que appear in the entirety of the textsanalysed here.

A somewhat exceptional case is concessive a pesar de+infinitive, which starts off in the 18th

century in a way similar to a punto de or en lugar/vez de, without a corresponding finite con-struction. But very recently and suddenly, after 1980, a pesar de que appears with a surprisinglyhigh frequency of approximately 4/100,000 words, almost twice the frequency of a pesar de+infi-nitive. This is a highly idiosyncratic development: not only is it the only prepositional infinitiveoutperformed by a corresponding finite structure that it predates, but the availability of syn-onymous aunque as a finite alternative makes this sudden increase in the use of a pesar de queall the more surprising. What we should expect is a situation similar to that of the third con-cessive construction, pese a, where the frequency of finite pese a que lies far below that of pesea+infinitive; the ratio is, in fact, about 1:20.

4.3.3 Conjunctional and prepositional clauses present from the earliest texts

Both por(que) and para/pora (que) occur in infinitival and finite dependent clauses from theearliest Spanish texts. Despite the semantic overlap discussed above, a very clear contrast inthe distribution of finite and non-finite clauses can be identified.

From the early Middle Ages, para+infinitive is twice as frequent as para que. From the early15th century onwards, the numeric dominance of the infinitival construction increases, and bythe 19th century it is more than four times as frequent as the finite construction.

15Siete Edades 121: ‘a fin de ganar aquel vellocino’16Mujeres Ilustres, Opis: ‘el hermano havıa fijos que los hoviesse de matar, a fin que a sus fijos el reyno bolviesse.’17A fin de que is the modern cognate of older a fin que; this tendency to incorporate the overtly prepositional

element de can be observed in a number of analytic prepositional expressions, e.g. antes (de) que and despues(de) que. It is a comparatively recent innovation, first found in the 19th century.

1811 instances in Fructus Sanctorum, 5 in Don Quijote19Oral Corpus: ‘yo puedo llegar a un convenio contigo y en lugar de que sea tuya la mitad sea para el Ayun-

tamiento’


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Figure 4.34: para + infinitive vs. para que

Por, on the other hand, shows an inverse development to that of para. Throughout the his-tory of Spanish, the instances of porque outnumber those of por+infinitive, and the differencebegins to increase even before the end of the Middle Ages. From the 17th century onwards,the frequency of por+infinitive drops below its medieval level, and by the year 2000 it is ata mere 40% of its usage in the Middle Ages. Porque also peaks during the Golden Age, inthe early 16th century, and the subsequent decrease in frequency temporarily brings it down tothe same level as in the Middle Ages, before the 20th century sees a renewed, if gradual, increase.

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Figure 4.35: por + infinitive vs. porque

Whilst it is argued above that for the semantic field of posterior main clause time referenceit is necessary to look at all the prepositions/conjunctions involved, choosing an essentiallysemantically-based approach, por and para suggest that there is also a lexical factor involved,as even during the period in which porque and por are used for final clauses and thus to someextent interchangeable with para que and para, their finite-infinitival ratio is inverted.

4.3.4 Finite and infinitival clauses by semantic class

In certain semantic areas, finite dependent clauses are vastly dominant. It has already beenobserved that concessive prepositions have only very recently begun to be used with the infinitive,and Fig. 4.36 shows that, in comparison to finite concessive clauses, their share is negligible.Concessive clauses overwhelmingly make use of the conjunction aunque.


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Figure 4.36: Concessive finite and infinitival clauses

A similar situation is found with conditional clauses, due to the predominance of the archetyp-ical conditional conjunction si as seen in Fig. 4.37.

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Figure 4.37: Conditional finite and infinitival clauses

In the temporal domain, it is necessary to differentiate. Overall, temporal clauses are finite moreoften than infinitival, as seen in Figure 4.38.

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Figure 4.38: Temporal finite and infinitival clauses

This predominance of finite dependent clauses is, however, not uniform throughout the temporaldomain. Fig. 4.32 above and Fig. 4.39 show that since its emergence in the 15th century, infini-tive usage in non-simultaneous temporal clauses have caught up with their finite counterpartsin this area.


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Figure 4.39: Temporal finite and infinitival clauses with anterior main clause

The area in which finite subordination continues to dominate is simultaneous time reference,largely due to the high frequency of cuando. Though the incidence of temporal prepositionalinfinitives with al and al punto de increases steadily, and finite cuando does experience a com-parable decrease in frequency, the finite construction is still 75% more frequent.

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Figure 4.40: Temporal finite and infinitival clauses with simultaneous main clause

It must, however, be remembered that a third type of temporal clause has not been taken intoconsideration: the gerund/participle. It has been discussed in previous chapters that this typeof dependent clause is a semantically underspecified construction, used in all kinds of logical re-lations between main and dependent clause. However, a temporal component is always present.Every gerundial clause, whether the pragmatic context gives it a causal, concessive, or exclusivecolouring, refers to two simultaneous notions, just as every participial clause is anterior to itsmain clause.

Fig. 4.41 reveals that if gerundial clauses are added to the equation, dependent clauses withsimultaneous time reference are, on the whole, far more frequently non-finite than finite. Thestrong increase of non-finite clauses between 1350 und 1600 is largely due to the increasing ten-dency to replace the medieval paratactic style. For simultaneous time reference of two clauses,parataxis is very common in medieval texts, as simple juxtaposition will, under normal prag-matic circumstances, be interpreted as implying simultaneous time reference by default. Thesubsequent steady decline of gerundial usage is due to an increasing trend towards semanticprecision, as discussed in section 4.2.1 above.


Figure 4.41: Finite and non-finite dependent clauses with simultaneous time reference

4.4 Discussion of the Spanish diachronic data

The most fundamental observation to be made is the overall increase in prepositional infinitives.This increase is not limited to the frequency of existing structures, but also involves a steadyincrease in the range of prepositions participating in this construction.

On the other hand, Figs. 4.4 and 4.5 above showed an almost symmetrical mirror image fornon-prepositional infinitives. Though the non-prepositional decline is not quite as great as theprepositional increase (which is explicable by the overall increase in the usage of dependentclauses as shown in Fig. 4.25), it does suggest a direct link between the two, with prepositionalinfinitives replacing non-prepositional ones.

To some extent, there is a straight-forward replacement. In particular a+infinitive, which ac-counts for between 20% and 30% of prepositional infinitives (see Fig. 4.13 and Fig. 4.14),increasingly replaces certain plain infinitives. One of the significant constructions in this respectis ir (a)+infinitive: both in the literal motional meaning and the emerging figurative auxiliary(future) usage of ir, the dependent clause is not necessarily linked by a in Old Spanish, as exem-plified in (251) and (252); this prepositionless construction subsequently becomes increasinglyless common, particularly in written texts.

251. Literal use:

...que el martes quisiese ir ver el su mercado.20

that def.art. want3rd.sg.past.subjnct. goinf. seeinf def.art. his market. ...that on Tuesday hewanted to go to see his market.

252. Use for future reference:

...vayamoslos ferir en aquel dıa de cras.21

go1st.pl.pres.subjnct.+them woundinf. in that day of tomorrow...we are going to wound them tomorrow.

The original final meaning of ir a+infinitive, ‘to go in order to’, undergoes a process of gram-maticalization through time. This involves several of the typical symptoms, including an en-

20Libro de Buen Amor, 137221Cid, 676

4.4. DISCUSSION OF THE SPANISH DIACHRONIC DATA 129

trenchment of the original structure into an increasingly fixed morphological unit22, incipientphonetic reduction 23, and the replacement of the original semantic content of both elementsby a joint functional content (future tense marking, in this case), and an increase in usage fre-quency. However, it must not be forgotten that, depending on the context, the prepositionalinfinitive with a also retains its full final meaning, as in the short Spanish dialogue in (253).

253. - ¡Hasta luego, me voy!- ¿Te vas – afinal hacer que?- Voy ableached encontrarme con mi novia.

-“Bye, I’m going!”-“You’re going (in order) tofinal do what?’-“I’m going tobleached meet my girlfriend”

Though it is not logically or syntactically necessary for the purpose of going somewhere to liein the future24, our pragmatic knowledge of the real world tells us that there is an overwhelm-ing likelihood of this being the case. Consequently, a+infinitive lends itself to a semanticallybleached reanalysis as purely temporal structure.

The shift from semantic to functional also explains the absolute numeric increase of this par-ticular structure, which accounts for around 50% of a+infinitive in modern spoken Spanish25,though considerably less in the written language. (20% in modern literary texts, 12% in jour-nalistic register.) Fig. 4.42 shows how a+infinitive relates to the total of a+infinitive: up tothe 20th century, the share of ir a does not account for a significant share of the total; this is inpart due to the tendency in modern texts to use a less formal register – the significantly higherfrequency in the Oral Corpus shows that ir a can primarily be seen as a feature of the spokenlanguage.

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Figure 4.42: a+infinitive / ir a+infinitve

Beardsley (1921: 21-86) gives detailed information on other verbs that can take non-prepositionalinfinitival clauses in the Middle Ages; several of these verbs link their infinitival complementby means of an obligatory preposition in later periods. To name just a few examples aiudar,enbiar, guiar, mouer, ir can take complementizerless infinitival complements describing goalor purpose. Verbs of starting and finishing, such as cessar, comencar, empecar, compecar, as

22The analysis of [ir a+infinitive] as a single morphological (verbal) unit is supported by the fact that elementssuch as temporal adverbs are not normally inserted: ∗?‘Voy manana a hacerlo.’ is more likely to have the literalreading ‘I’m going tomorrow, to do it.’ than a grammaticalized temporal one.

23Especially in rapid colloquial speech, the ‘a’ is becoming increasingly weakened.24A sentence such as the following shows that there is no logical need for future reference:“I am going so that

I was right when I said that I wouldn’t be here at 4 o’clock.”25Oral Corpus


well as psychological verbs such as atreuerse, ensayar, which commonly take a prepositional in-finitive with a or de in the modern language, can also occur with a plain infinitive in Old Spanish.

The increase in the number of verbs taking prepositional rather than plain infinitival clauses isongoing. In modern spoken Spanish, verbs such as dejar can take prepositional infinitives, as in(254).

254. Dejamelo a ver.26

letimp.+meDat.+it a seeinf.

Let me see it.

This continuing process, in which direct object infinitives become prepositional infinitives, isa fundamentally pragmatically based phenomenon, resulting from a semantic overlap betweensemantic roles such as [theme] and [purpose]. The details of this process will be discussed furtherin Chapter 7.

However, this straight-forward replacement of plain infinitives by prepositional ones can onlypartially account for the increase in prepositional infinitive usage. Despite the fact that ir ais, numerically speaking, the most significant instance of this, its overall contribution to theincrease in prepositional infinitives is small, as seen in Fig. 4.42. Some main verbs take otherprepositions to link an infinitive to which they stand in a direct-object-like semantic relation:

apostar por alcanzar algo ‘to bet on achieving something’empenarse en hacer ‘to insist on doing’sonar con hacer ‘to dream of doing’

But whilst a and de frequently tend to form grammaticalized units with various main verbs, thistendency is far weaker with other prepositions. This includes por and para, which neverthelesshave a similar frequency as a+infinitive (Fig. 4.14), as well as the whole range of prepositionalinfinitives that emerge in the course of the subsequent history of Spanish. In order to find anexplanation for their development, we have to look further afield. Some of the factors havealready been mentioned in passing above.

In the context of the increasing frequency of prepositional infinitives with simultaneous timereference (Fig. 4.41 above), and in Section 4.2.6, it has been observed that the use of dependentclauses, both finite and infinitival, increases at the expense of parataxis. Which type of hypotac-tic structure is chosen in its place is determined by a combination of syntactic and pragmaticfactors.

4.4.1 The central role of subject reference

As discussed in some detail in the previous chapter, subject reference is a crucial factor in thechoice of dependent clause type. But whilst non-prepositional infinitival clauses are highly re-stricted by this constraint, it has been shown that pragmatically assigned control by externalNPs is more common in prepositional infinitival clauses. Not only does pragmatic context play acrucial role in assigning subject reference in prepositional infinitive clauses, but there is also thepossibility of including an overt subject in the prepositional clause. However, the predominantpattern for prepositional infinitives is subject coreference with the main clause, found in around80% of all cases, and it is therefore also the typical, unmarked environment for infinitival clauses.

26Oral Corpus


Finite dependent clauses, on the other hand, are generally avoided in the case of coreferentialityin the modern language.

Before the emergence of the respective prepositional infinitive, however, the conjunction carriesthe combined functional load of both coreferential and non-coreferential clauses. Sentences(255 - 257) present a few medieval examples of coreferential finite clauses, as used before thecorresponding prepositional infinitives had come into use.

255. To padre comendo ante que muriesse e dixo:...27

Your father gave advice before he died, and he said:...

256. Et comence a leer sus libros fasta que los entendı.28

And I started to read his books until I understood them.

257. Dize Sant Agostın que con la fortuna deue ombre luchar sin que no se dexe vencer porella.29

Saint Augustine says that one has to fight with fate without letting oneself be defeated byit.

In Modern Spanish, coreferential clauses of this type generally make use of the available prepo-sitional infinitive constructions.

On the other hand, there does appear to be an occasional incipient tendency to avoid corefer-ential finite clauses, even when no infinitival alternative is yet available. This is achieved byconstructing the dependent clause in such a way that the two syntactic subjects do not coincide,usually by means of a passive construction.

258. ...et non me demandes la razon de lo que te yo mandare fazer fasta que sea acabado.30

..and don’t ask me for the reason of what I will order you to do until it is finished.

In sentence (259), the somewhat over-complex syntax of the dependent clause also appears tobe deliberately chosen to avoid coreference.

259. Porque sepas que non estorceras sin que sea tomada de ti venganca. 31

That you may know that you will not escape without revenge being taken on you.

Sentence (260) shows a different avoidance strategy, by means of an idiomatic expression equiv-alent to morir ‘to die’.

260. Fue [...] enfermo el fijo de la bibda [...] de enfermedat grant fasta que non remaso en elalma.32

The son of the widow [...] was sick with a great illness until no soul remained within him.

These examples show that it is, at this stage, only a matter of time before the respective prepo-sitional infinitives emerge, as the strategies to avoid coreferentiality in finite dependent clauses

27Fazienda de Utramar, p.61(faz)28Calila e Dina, p.104.29Dichos de Sabios, 269; Though dated 1402, approximately 100 years after sin+infinitive is first found in other

texts, the construction does not appear to have entered the language of the person who translated it from Catalan,or perhaps its absence might be a syntactic calque on Catalan.

30Calila e Dina, p.346.31Calila e Dina, p.187.32Fazienda de Utramar, p.121.


already pre-empt its presence.

The fact that conjunctional dependent clauses cede the coreferential domain to the infinitiveas soon as, or even slightly before, the respective prepositional infinitive emerges is visible inalmost all the graphs comparing finite and infinitival dependent clauses in section 4.3, where anew prepositional infinitive tends to coincide with a fall in the frequency of the correspondingconjunction. It should, then, be expected that – after a transitional phase – an equilibrium setsin. But it would be a false premiss to expect that this equilibrium should see an equal numberof finite and infinitival clauses. Indeed, it is surprising that such an equinumeric balance isachieved in some cases.

4.4.2 Coreferentiality and pragmatic relevance

The ratio between finite and non-finite clauses of a certain type is fundamentally determinedby the pragmatics of the contexts they are used in. This is due to the fact that the purposeof using language is, on the whole, to speak about referents in the real world, and about howthese referents interact. As the patterns of interaction are, to a certain degree, statisticallypredictable, so are their linguistic representations. As a result of this, certain relational patternsbetween the constituents of a sentence can be expected to occur more frequently than others.

Two contrasting examples of which relational patterns are more or less likely are final and con-cessive clauses.

In final clauses, linked to their main clause by the final preposition para (Fig. 4.34), chances arethat the subject of the main clause (S1) will do V1 in order for himself, (S1) to do, have or getsomething. In some pragmatic contexts, S1 will do V1 in order for the subject of the dependentclause (S2) to do, have or get something, but this situation is statistically less frequent.

In the concessive domain, on the other hand, the opposite applies. In the vast majority of cases,S1 does V1 despite the fact that someone else (S2) does something. Again, this is merely statis-tically more common; in some pragmatic contexts, S1 will do V1 despite also doing V2, but thisoccurs less frequently.

The degree to which the subject reference patterns of final and concessive clauses differ can beseen in Fig. 4.43: the ratio of coreferential to non-coreferential clauses, final as well as conces-sive, remains remarkably stable over time in both languages, with around 40% of all concessiveclauses and around 80% of all finite clauses being coreferential.

Figure 4.43: Percentage of coreferential final and concessive dependent clauses in Spanish


The stability of this likelihood ratio can be explained by the fact that it is primarily determinedby the way in which people and objects interact in the real world, and by whether languageusers generally deem these interaction patterns relevant enough to mention.

This principle of pragmatic relevance can be explained as follows: almost every action under-taken by a human agent has a purpose. However, this purpose is often very predictable fromthe verb describing the action. For instance, if we talk about somebody eating, we will auto-matically assume that the reason is to satisfy his hunger, if no indications to the contrary aregiven. Therefore, it is, in most pragmatic situations, not necessary to make explicit referenceto the purpose of eating. If, on the other hand, the purpose of eating is not mere satisfactionof hunger, but something less usual, the likelihood of this purpose being put into words is fargreater. Even so, however, relevance is determined by the particular situation. Imagine someoneeating, not because he is hungry, but in order to get fat. Normally, this non-default purposecannot be automatically assumed, and thus merits mention. But if the non-default purpose is(a) probably known by the hearer, or (b) not relevant to what the speaker wants to say, thenit may still not be expressed. Thus, (a) if the eater is a sumo wrestler, or (b) if the reasonfor talking about his eating is the fact that the speaker would prefer to have some of the foodhimself, no matter what the eater’s reasons for eating might be, the non-default purpose is notpragmatically relevant. Anything that is pragmatically irrelevant will usually be omitted in theinterest of economy.

The use of clauses with sin (‘without’) exemplifies the importance of this principle. Every ac-tion, event or state of affairs that can be described takes place while certain other things arenot happening. For instance, someone may be driving a car without wearing a pink shirt, or hemay be driving without the Prime Minister having given a speech that day. But in the majorityof contexts, this information is likely to be irrelevant for the speaker’s communicative purposes,and will thus not be mentioned. The present-day ratio of sin que to sin+infinitive, as seen inFig. 4.33 above, which roughly corresponds to the ratio of non-coreferential to coreferentialsin-clauses, shows that in this semantic domain, ‘non-action’ by the main clause subject is con-sidered relevant enough to mention far more often than ‘non-action’ by an entity other than thesubject of the main clause (S1).

Whilst the overall distribution between finite clauses and the corresponding prepositional infini-tives is, to some extent, a reflection of the number of non-coreferential and coreferential clauses,there are several factors working against this idealized correspondence pattern.

One powerful factor is analogical levelling, a common process in language change. Once a seman-tic or relational concept, such as finality, becomes strongly associated with a particular syntacticstructure, there is a tendency towards an increased use of the respective structure, even in con-texts that would normally call for the use of the numerically weaker structure. This can, forinstance, be observed with para+infinitive, which occasionally appears even in non-coreferentialcontexts. Such spreading of prepositional infinitives is made possible by two things: pragmaticcontrol and the Overt Subject Infinitive construction. Wherever the subject of the dependentclause is not the NP predicted by means of the syntactic default pattern, either the contextallows an unambiguous assigning of S2-reference, or alternatively the subject can be specifiedovertly within the infinitival clause. These two mechanisms of clarifying the identity of S2 arefound most commonly with those prepositional infinitives that already have a dominant positionin relation to their finite counterparts, in particular para+infinitive and sin+infinitive, whichtogether account for 75% to 85% of all prepositional OSI constructions in present-day Spanish.

A similar analogical tendency is visible for semantic relations which favour finite dependent


clauses. One such case is the conditional domain, in which the conjunction si is clearly dominant(Fig. 4.37), even in coreferential finite clauses. Despite the gradual emergence of al+infinitiveas a non-finite alternative, si remains firmly established as the standard way of rendering con-ditionality; the special status of si as the marker for conditional clauses par excellence is furtherreinforced by the special temporal syntax of conditional clauses, and by the fact that si is mor-phologically unrelated to its potential competitors.

Similarly, aunque has, at least until recently, been so dominant as the typical marker of concessionthat it is frequently found in coreferential concessive clauses, as in sentence (261).

261. ...la mujer hablaba y se detenıa mirando al suelo [...] aunque ella no estuviera desocu-pada.33

...the woman talked and remained staring at the floor [...] though she was not idle.

A further, and somewhat unusual example of the finite structure retaining its dominant positionis desde que. Unlike the semantically similar despues de+infinitive, desde+infinitive is virtuallyabsent from Spanish before the end of the 20th century, whereas desde que is found frequentlyfrom the 16th century onwards. There does not appear to be any particular pragmatic motiva-tion for this, as coreferentiality is common in this type of temporal construction. What is more,hasta+infinitive, the corresponding prepositional infinitive for future time reference, has beenaround since the 15th century (cf. Fig. 4.19). The reasons for this dominance of finite desdeque, even for coreferential clauses, remain to be determined.

4.4.3 Statistical peculiarities during the Golden Age

During the Golden Age or classical period of Spanish, roughly the 16th and 17th centuries, themajority of graphs presented above show some irregularity and almost erratic variation in com-parison with the periods before and afterwards. This is the result of the combination of twoseparate features of Golden Age Spanish.

It is generally accepted that the classical period is a period of linguistic transition and changein Spanish34, and as the result of this, texts written within years of one another will often varyconsiderably in the degree to which they preserve old structures or introduce the newly evolvingones. Though it cannot be claimed that prepositional infinitives are a novel structure during thisperiod (with the exception of al+infinitive, which starts becoming more frequent round about1500), texts looking back to the older language tend to avoid the more recently introducedprepositional infinitives.

More significant for the purpose of this study is the fact that the usage of most prepositionalinfinitives experiences a temporary peak during the Golden Age, and subsequently drops back toa lower level around the mid 17th century, from where the overall, more gradual rise continues.35

An explanation for this can be found in the fact that Golden Age authors generally favour a styleof comparatively complex syntax. Fig. 4.25 above shows that not only infinitival clauses havea peak during this time; final subordination also suddenly increases by around 10% around theyear 1500. Gerund clauses (Fig. 4.7) are even more affected by this, increasing by 50% before

33Marıas, p.76.34E.g. Riiho (1979: 235):‘En muchos aspectos [...] la lengua clasica puede considerarse como une especie de

lınea divisoria que separa la fase antigua de la moderna.’35Local factors can counteract this pattern, as in the case of para+infinitive, which completes its takeover of

the final domain from por during this time. Once established as the prototypical final construction, its usagecontinues to rise at the expense of alternative finite constructions such as a+infinitive, which in turn becomesincreasingly associated with its grammaticalized, semantically bleached use as a complementizer.


dropping back to their previous level, all during the 150 years between 1500 and 1650. Thereasons behind this stylistic preference are primarily socio-cultural and thus beyond the scopeof this study, but there also appears to be a more general, linguistic tendency for newly emergedstructures to enjoy such popularity among language users that they temporarily ‘overshoot theaim’36 before dropping back to a more sustainable level. A similar phenomenon is visible withen vez de+infinitive (Fig. 4.20) during a much later period.

An afterthought to these observations about the statistical peculiarities of Golden Age syntax isthe possibility that we might, from a syntactic point of view, currently be in the midst of a ‘Sec-ond Golden Age’. A number of diagrams presented in this chapter certainly show unexpectedchanges in curve shape at the beginning of, or during, the 20th century. In view of the recentemergence of several new prepositional infinitives, it does appear that the system may be goingthrough a renewed period of accelerated change, the outcome of which is yet unknown. Judgingby the fact that many of the new prepositional infinitive constructions are found first, and mostfrequently, in journalistic register texts, it appears likely that an important factor in this processis the increased importance of the mass media in modern society, which by their presence in allwalks of life allow their stylistic features to permeate the whole language more easily.

36This is a cross-linguistic phenomenon. A recent example from English is the ubiquitous ‘looking to’+infinitive.

Chapter 5

Portuguese and Spanishdevelopments compared

As discussed in Section 3.1, Spanish and Portuguese infinitival subordination follows roughlythe same combination of syntactically and pragmatically based rules, despite the fact that thePortuguese infinitive is more versatile than its Spanish counterpart because it can be morpho-logically inflected for person (cf. Section 3.3). In this chapter, a closer look will be taken atthe differences between the development of prepositional infinitive constructions in the two lan-guages from a diachronic perspective. In the figures of this section, the dashed lines representthe Portuguese structure, the continuous line stands for its Spanish counterpart.

5.1 Similarities and differences in diachronic development

5.1.1 A comparison of the overall frequency of prepositional infinitives

Fig. 5.1 shows the differential development of the prepositional infinitive in Spanish and Por-tuguese.

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Figure 5.1: Spanish and Portuguese prepositional infinitives through time

Whilst Spanish sees a steady increase from a comparatively low level up to around 1600, prepo-sitional infinitives are already well established in Portuguese in the early middle ages, and theirfrequency remains relatively stable until the 19th century. During this period of stability inPortuguese, Spanish does not merely catch up; the number of prepositional infinitives rises fromaround 55% of that in Portuguese during the Middle Ages to around 140% in the Spanish GoldenAge; only in the 19th century does Portuguese infinitive usage close this gap, to reach a level

137

138 CHAPTER 5. PORTUGUESE AND SPANISH DEVELOPMENTS COMPARED

similar to that found in Spanish.

How this overall development pattern translates to that of the individual prepositional infinitiveswill be discussed in the following sections.

5.1.2 Similar developments in Spanish and Portuguese

Considering the common history and the degree of synchronic similarity between Spanish andPortuguese, one might initially expect syntactic structures shared by both languages to havedeveloped parallely. This is, indeed, the case for a number of prepositional infinitive construc-tions, applying to structures that have emerged or increased in terms of frequency, but also tostructures that have suffered a decline.

A good example of this is the temporal domain of main clause anteriority, represented largelyby antes de+infinitive and Sp.fasta/hasta, Ptg.ate. Fig. 5.2 illustrates this. The temporarypeak in Spanish during the Golden Age has been discussed in the previous section; a renewedsplit can be observed during the 20th century, with an increase in Portuguese since the mid 19th

century. But of course we cannot expect developments in separate languages to run parallelindefinitely, as we have already seen in the previous chapter that each prepositional infinitiveconstruction has its own dynamics and follows an individual trajectory, though usually within aroughly predictable general pattern. In this particular case, the Portuguese increase is due to anincrease in antes de+OSI since the mid 19th century by around 35%, which must be understoodas a clear instance of this construction becoming increasingly entrenched at the expense of thecorresponding finite clauses.

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Figure 5.2: Spanish and Portuguese temporal prepositional infinitive, anterior main clause

The recent decline in Spanish, on the other hand, is entirely due to a strong drop in hasta+infi-nitive, as seen in Fig. 5.3. A reduction in frequency of a prepositional infinitive construction issomewhat unexpected in view of the overall development pattern and is thus likely to have beentriggered by a local factor. A possible explanation is that, in view of the morphosyntactic andsemantic correspondence between desde+infinitive and hasta+infinitive, the virtual absence ofdesde+infinitive might have started causing some analogical resistance to hasta+infinitive.

5.1. SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN DIACHRONIC DEVELOPMENT 139

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Figure 5.3: Spanish hasta+infinitive vs. antes de+infinitive

Fig. 5.4 shows that this does not occur in the same way in Portuguese, where ate continues toenjoy increasing popularity.

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Figure 5.4: Spanish fasta/hasta+infinitive vs. Portuguese ate+infinitive

A further examples of very similar development in both languages from its emergence onwardsis Span.al+infinitive/Ptg.ao+infinitive (Fig. 5.5), the frequency and increase of which is almostequal in the two languages from the earliest texts onwards until approximately the end of the19th century. During the 20th century, the frequency of the construction remains relatively stablein Spanish, whilst in Portuguese it falls to a level clearly below that of Spanish.

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Figure 5.5: Spanish al+infinitive vs. Portuguese ao+infinitive

The infinitival concessive construction with Span.a pesar de, pese a/Ptg.apesar de also developalong very similar lines. Comparatively infrequent in both languages (not exceeding 10 per100,000 words in any text, which with the amount of data processed here is too low to producea statistically reliable graph), they first appear in the latter half of the 19th century and subse-quently experience an increase in usage frequency in the second half of the 20th century.


More surprisingly, perhaps, por undergoes a remarkably similar development in both languages(5.6), despite the semantic shift it undergoes (cf. Section 4.2), and despite the fact that, from apurely semantic perspective, it has a powerful competitor in the gerund.

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Figure 5.6: por+infinitive in Spanish and Portuguese

5.1.3 Portuguese prepositional infinitives predating their Spanish counter-parts

A considerable number of prepositional infinitives that are only present to a limited extentor not at all in medieval Spanish texts are already well-established in Portuguese during thesame period. This is particularly significant because it includes several of the prepositionalinfinitives found most frequently in later Spanish texts, such as sin/sem+infinitive (Fig. 5.7),despues/depois de+infinitive (Fig. 5.8), as well as para+infinitive (Fig. 5.10).

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Figure 5.7: Spanish sin+infinitive vs. Portuguese sem+infinitive

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Figure 5.8: Span. despues de+infinitive vs. Ptg. depois de+infinitive


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Figure 5.9: Spanish and Portuguese temporal prepositions + infinitive

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Figure 5.10: para+infinitive in Spanish and Portuguese

Spanish despues de+infinitive attains the same frequency as Portuguese depois de+infinitivewithin a hundred years of its emergence (Fig. 5.8), and sin draws equal with sem by the 16th

century (Fig. 5.7). Similarly, temporal ante(s de) only appears in Spanish around 1500, butexperiences a dramatic increase within a hundred years (Fig. 5.9), but after a parallel drop by1700 and two hundred years of relative stability, by the beginning of the 20th century, antes deis once again more frequent in Portuguese than in Spanish, with Spanish catching up towardsthe end of the same century. Interestingly, the pattern of the Portuguese development predatingthat in Spanish repeats itself a second time here, which might be seen as an indication that thePortuguese remains the more innovative of the two languages regarding prepositional infinitives.

The relative frequency in Spanish and Portuguese of para with its early variants pora and pera,on the other hand, develops in a somewhat different way (Fig. 5.10): after an initial period offar lower frequency than in Portuguese, the Spanish construction with para then increases at asteady rate between the 15th and the 18th century, far exceeding its Portuguese counterpart, andremains at this high level to the present day. The stronger performance in medieval Portuguesecan be explained in part by the fact that para, pera started to take over the final domain frompor earlier in Portuguese than in Spanish.1

The examples in this section show that the semantic shift between por and para is not the onlyarea in which linguistic developments come earlier in Portuguese than in Spanish. As illustratedin Fig. 5.1 above, Portuguese already has a strong prepositional infinitive at the time of theearliest documents, whereas Spanish is still in the midst of developing it. This instance of syn-tactic conservatism of Old Castilian in comparison to Old Portuguese is somewhat contrary tothe traditional view that Portuguese is the more conservative of the two languages2, but it is in

1Riiho (1979: 211-213).2“Portuguese is another so-called conservative language, allegedly owing to its geographical distance from the


keeping with the – also innovative – inflected infinitive, both of which fit into the picture of astructural framework in which the infinitive plays an important part in the syntax of subordi-nation.

A similar development pattern can be identified for prepositional infinitives that are currentlyexperiencing increasing popularity in the modern language. A good example is the final Sp.a finde/Ptg.a fim de+infinitive, which has been latently present in both languages since the MiddleAges, but only extremely sporadically.

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Figure 5.11: a fin/fim de+infinitive in Spanish and Portuguese

Fig. 5.11 illustrates how Portuguese experiences a much more vigorous rise in this structure,whilst in Spanish a similar increase has not (yet) set in. Judging by the past development ofother prepositional infinitives, it appears likely that a similar rise in Spanish will follow eventu-ally.

5.1.4 Underspecified prepositional infinitives

Whilst there is no widely used prepositional infinitive that first appears in Portuguese much laterthan its cognate in Spanish, Portuguese com+infinitive and em+infinitive are far less commonlyused than their Spanish counterparts con+inf. and en+inf., as seen in Figs.(5.12) and (5.13).

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Figure 5.12: Span.con+inf. vs. Ptg. com+inf.

innovatory centres.”, Posner (1996: 327).


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Figure 5.13: Span.en+inf. vs. Ptg. em+inf.

Even though com+inf. is already present in Portuguese at the time when con+inf. is onlyjust emerging in Spanish, it soon becomes considerably more frequent in Spanish. En/em+inf.is already present in both languages from the very earliest texts, but it remains, on average,around twice as frequent in Spanish as it is in Portuguese throughout the examined period.

As this pattern differs considerably from the one found for most other prepositional infinitiveswhen comparing their development in Spanish and Portuguese, an explanation must be soughtby establishing what sets these two prepositional infinitives apart from the rest. The featurethey share is their comparative imprecision, or semantic underspecification. In Section 4.2.1 itwas observed that in Spanish, such semantically underspecified prepositional infinitives do notexperience an increase in frequency in the same way as the rest, because the central functionof the prepositional infinitive is the specification of the logical relation between the main anddependent clause, with the gerund being chosen for non-finite clauses where no such precisionis intended (cf. Section 2.4.3).

The even lower incidence of underspecified prepositional infinitives in Portuguese suggests thatthe association of the prepositional infinitive with an overt and clear marking of interclausalrelations is even stronger. This analysis is confirmed by the fact that the lower incidence ofunderspecified prepositional infinitive constructions in Portuguese, such as those with em andcom, is counterbalanced by a stronger use of gerundial clauses, as shown in Fig. 5.14.

Figure 5.14: Gerundial clauses in Spanish and Portuguese

5.1.5 Discussion of the data

What the comparison between the diachronic development of different prepositional infinitivesin this section has shown is, first and foremost, that their evolution has, by and large, proceededin a similar way, irrespectively of whether the respective preposition already participated in thisconstruction type at the time of the first available documents, or whether it emerged at a later


stage. This observation applies to both Spanish and Portuguese.

As the degree of cultural exchange or bilingualism during most of the examined period was notsufficiently significant to make large-scale syntactic borrowing or convergence a feasible expla-nation, it must be assumed that these parallel developments occurred independently. This issupported by the fact that several, but not all prepositional infinitives emerged in Portugueseat an earlier date than their Spanish counterparts.

Despite the overall similarities in their development, characterized by a development that roughlyresembles the S-curve predicted for processes of diffusional change by Kroch (2001), each prepo-sitional infinitive follows its own trajectory. There is no wholesale syntactic shift, as new prepo-sitions continue to join the group that takes infinitives, and it appears that the structure of bothlanguages remains open to the addition of new prepositional infinitives.

At the same time, it has been observed that there is a clear resistance to certain types of prepo-sitional infinitives. Whilst semantically underspecified prepositional infinitives have to competewith the gerund, and therefore show a different, more subdued development than the more se-mantically specific constructions, certain semantic types of dependent clauses support the useof the infinitive frequently and at an early stage, whilst others remain largely or completelyresistant to this syntactic type.

The clear correspondence between Spanish and Portuguese in this respect suggests that the samepragmatic principles described for Spanish in Section 4.4.1 are a crucial factor in encouragingor inhibiting the use of the infinitive in dependent clauses, depending on their type of semanticrelation to the main clause: in actual language usage, some clause types, such as purpose,are typically used coreferentially, whilst others, like concessivity, appear more frequently withdisjoint subject reference. Evidence that this is true for Portuguese, too, is provided in Fig.5.15 which largely mirrors the corresponding Spanish distribution seen in Fig. 4.43: on average,around 75% of final clauses are coreferential, compared to around 30% of concessive clauses.

Figure 5.15: Overall percentage of coreferential final and concessive clauses in Portuguesewhite = final, black = concessive

5.2 OSIs and the inflected infinitive

5.2.1 History of the Portuguese personal infinitive

The morphological origin of the Portuguese inflected infinitive has been widely discussed in theliterature. The oldest and probably most popular theory, proposed by early Romance philologistssuch as Diez (1881) and Meyer-Lubke (1894), is that the inflectional endings are formed on the

OSIs AND THE INFLECTED INFINITIVE 145

basis of those found in the future subjunctive paradigm.3. According to Vasconcelos (1900) andBourciez (1956), this would have been facilitated by the homonymy, in regular verbs, of theinfinitive and the future subjunctive in the 1st and 3rd person singular. In a similar vein, Zauner(1921) suggests that both the future subjunctive and the inflected infinitive forms are based onthe Latin perfect subjunctive paradigm. An alternative source, the Latin imperfect subjunctiveparadigm, was first suggested by Wernecke (1885) and has found support in Gamillscheg (1913),Rodrigues (1914), Michaelis (1918), Meier (1950) and Sten (1952). On the other hand, Otto(1888), Michaelis (1891) and Maurer (1951, 1968) have suggested that the inflectional endingsare the result of paradigmatic extension of a suffixed 1st person plural subject pronoun -nos >-mos. To the present day, this question has not been conclusively resolved. The most plausiblesource, from a usage-based point of view, would appear to be the future subjunctive, as there isa considerable amount of semantic overlap between it and the infinitive, as exemplified in (262),which would facilitate an extension of future subjunctive forms to infinitival contexts.

262. Quando chegarem os meus pais, falar-lhes-ei.when arrive3rd.pl.fut.subjctv. the my parents, talk.to.them1st.sg.fut.indic.

Ao chegarem os meus pais, falar-lhes-ei.at.the arrive3rd.pl.pers.inf. the my parents, talk.to.them1st.sg.fut.indic.

When my parents (will) arrive, I’ll talk to them.

Though the emergence of the inflected infinitive predates the earliest documents, there is someevidence that it may have been a recent innovation in Old Galaico-Portuguese, as inflectionappears not yet to be obligatory4 in the presence of an overt subject, as seen in (263).

263. Era costume [...] de os cavaleiros andantes seer recebidos em lugares estranhos.5

it.was custom [...] of the knights errant benoninfl.inf. received in places strangepl.

It was customary for the errant knights to be received in strange places.

The existence of the personal/inflected infinitive in Portuguese could, theoretically, pose a threatto finite subordination, especially since tense and mood of dependent clauses are frequently pre-dictable from the semantic context as well as the discourse situation. It has been shown inSection 3.3.2 that this is not the case synchronically, and that the personal infinitive more fre-quently impinges upon the domain of the ‘plain’ uninflected infinitive. It is therefore interestingto determine whether a diachronic tendency for the personal infinitive to gain ground at theexpense of the impersonal infinitive. Fig. 5.16 shows that this is not the case, thus disprovingan unsubstantiated claim to the contrary by Dias (1959: §313).

3“Es [...] wird nach dem Muster des Fut. Konj. zu -ar als Inf. bei der 3. Sing. als Subj. gebildet 1. -ar, 2.-ares, Plur. -armos -ardes -arem.” (Meyer-Lubke, 1894: 158)

4Cf. also Molho’s modern example from Brazilian Portuguese (Section 3.3, Footnote 43), which is, however,probably a modern regional development.

5A demanda do Santo Graal, §423, quoted by Maurer (1968: 152).


Figure 5.16: Personal and impersonal infinitives in Portuguese

Whilst a slight, gradual rise in the frequency of impersonal infinitives can be observed sincemedieval times, the number of personal infinitives is far lower, and declines further over thesame period. The larger scale of Fig. 5.17 makes it possible to identify a steady drop from themiddle ages until around 1800; whether the subsequent slight increase constitutes a permanentreversal of the trend remains to be seen. As illustrated by Fig. 5.20, the recent rise can beattributed entirely to a rise in prepositional infinitives with a, which will be discussed furtherbelow.

Figure 5.17: Overall frequency of personal infinitives in Portuguese

The decline in the overall usage of personal infinitives is also visible if we look specifically atprototypical adjunct clauses. Representative for these, Fig. 5.18 charts the development of twotypical, well-established infinitival adjunct types with the personal infinitive, with sem and para.

Figure 5.18: Personal infinitives with para/pora and sem in Portuguese


Whilst it has been seen that the impersonal prepositional infinitive adjuncts with para and semhave been increasing in frequency over the centuries, in Portuguese as well as Spanish (Fig. 5.7and Fig. 5.10), the corresponding adjuncts with the personal infinitive appear to be going theopposite way, experiencing a gentle long-term decrease (Fig. 5.18). This is probably due tothe trend towards using finite clauses for genuinely non-coreferential cases, whilst the personalinfinitive is used mainly in cases where the subject could potentially be non-coreferential, butis in fact coreferential (cf. Section 3.3.2).

Fig. 5.19 shows how, in contrast to sem and para, the concessive adjunct with apesar de is gainingground. But viewed in perspective, apesar de with the personal infinitive does, nevertheless, nothave a major role in the language as a whole: despite the increase illustrated in Fig. 5.19, itoccurs approximately a hundred times less frequently than para+personal infinitive, and onlyapproximately one in twenty non-coreferential concessive clauses use the infinitival construction.Similar to what was observed regarding para and sem, there appears to be a tendency to use finiteclauses with ainda que or embora for cases of genuine disjoint subject reference, whilst apesarde with the personal infinitive is often chosen to clarify the identity of a coreferent subject, forexample if the concessive adjunct is at a distance from the main verb.

Figure 5.19: The personal infinitive with apesar de

Fig. 5.20, on the other hand, presents an interesting contrast. On the one hand, there isa slight decline of de with the personal infinitive. Since de has prototypical complementizerstatus in most cases, the decrease of its use with the personal infinitive is not unexpected,as it is primarily adjuncts, not complements, that make use of the possibility of marking anon-coreferential subject (S2).

Figure 5.20: Personal infinitives with a and de in Portuguese


The sudden rapid increase in the use of a with the personal infinitive in the 19th century ismore surprising, as a is also a typical complementizer. However, what a closer analysis of thedata reveals is that the sudden increase in popularity of [a+personal infinitive] is not due to anincreased tendency to use personal infinitives in complement clauses. On the contrary, the con-struction triggering this frequent use of a with the personal infinitive is the typically peripheraluse of a+infinitive that has come to replace the gerund in European Portuguese, and which isemployed to provide additional circumstantial, pragmatically backgrounded information, as in(264).

264. Chegaram as meninas de fazer compras na cidade, a falarem alegremente.arrived the girls from making purchases in.the town, a talkinfl.inf.3rd.pl happily

The girls came back from shopping in town, talking happily.

In Section 3.3.2 it was shown that the OSI is more typically used in adjuncts than in comple-ments because its main purpose is to disambiguate the identity of the dependent clause subject.The pragmatically backgrounded ‘gerund-like’ use of a+infinitive is particularly susceptible topotential ambiguity regarding its subject, as it is often located far away from the main verbwithin the sentence, and is frequently even separated from the main clause by a short pause.

The increase of [a+personal infinitive] is fully in line with the personal infinitive’s primaryfunction of increasing pragmatic clarity (cf. Section 3.3.3); it should be noted that in the vastmajority of cases, the a-clause is coreferential and would therefore not, strictly speaking, requireovert subject marking, as seen in (264). What makes this construction atypical in comparisonwith other infinitival adjuncts is the fact that it is pragmatically backgrounded, which has beenshown to be a domain in which prepositional infinitives have otherwise been losing ground overthe centuries (cf. Section 5.1.4).

Position of the overt subject

It has been seen in Section 3.3.4 that in modern Portuguese, the pre-infinitival position is gener-ally preferred, whilst the post-infinitival position is reserved for pragmatically marked purposessuch as topicalization or contrastive focus. Mensching (2000: 28) notes that “the high frequencyof preverbal subjects [is] a fact that already seems to have been the case in the oldest medievaltexts.”

An analysis of the diachronic corpus in Appendix B confirms this for pronominal subjects: up tothe 17th century, very few instances of post-infinitival pronominal subjects can be found, whilethe pre-infinitival subject position is the norm (265).

265. Primeiramente, disse Alvaro Pais, por vos serdes irmao del-rei,...6

firstly said A.P. for you beinfl.inf.2nd.pers brother of.the.king

In the first place, said Alvaro Pais, because you are the king’s brother...

During the 16th century, a striking discrepancy between the position of pronominal and nominalOSI subjects can be seen. From the complete works of Luis de Camoes (1524-1580), Otto (1888:92-4) lists a total of 37 instances of personal infinitives with overt subjects. A closer analysis ofhis data reveals that of these, 34 are prepositional adjuncts with de, por, para and sem, while theremaining three are subject clauses of the type ‘Me atormenta ver eu que...’7; the latter all have

6Fernao Lopes: Cronica de El-rei D. Joo I de Boa Memoria., Pt. 1, Chapter 14: O Mestre de Avis compromete-se a matar o Andeiro, (ca. 1430), cf. Appendix B.

7Cf. Otto (1888: 93)


a post-infinitival pronominal subject. In the prepositional OSI clauses, all seven instances ofovert pronominal subjects are pre-infinitival, whilst only two of the 27 non-pronominal subjectsoccupy that position. In other words, there is a very clear tendency for pronominal subjectsto occur preverbally and nominal subjects postverbally in OSI clauses. Though not makingspecific reference to this distribution pattern, Otto believes that Camoes, a renaissance author,is likely to have been strongly influenced by the syntax of Italian, the language serving as theliterary model of the time. An interesting parallel may thus be drawn to the fact that of theItalo-Romance varieties that have an OSI construction, none allows preverbal nominal subjects,but some do allow preverbal pronominal ones (cf. Ledgeway, 2000: 126-30).8

From the 17th century onwards, however, the proportion of pronominal subjects that occurpost-infinitivally also gradually increases. A possible explanation for how this position becameavailable is by structural reanalysis of copular clauses such as (266), where the predicativepronoun vos is coreferent with the subject (‘...por [vos]serdes vos’). In the semantically similarsentence (267), vos occupies the post-infinitival position even though it is only the subject, thepredicative element being ‘quem sois’.

266. ...unica e puramente por serdes vos.only and purely for beinfl.inf.2nd.pers you.

...solely because it’s you (and nobody else).

267. ...unica e puramente por serdes vos quem sois.9

only and purely for beinfl.inf.2nd.pers you who you.are.

...solely because you are who you are.

Such reanalysis, followed by subsequent extension to non-copular contexts, might also have con-tributed to the fact that a post-infinitival subject generally carries contrastive focus, since thecopular construction is in itself a focalizing construction10. But irrespective of the possible in-fluence of the copular construction, it must be kept in mind that quite generally, not just in OSIclauses, postverbal position causes topicalization and pragmatic focus. (‘Eu vou para a escola’vs. ‘Vou eu para a escola’)

5.2.2 The history of Spanish OSI construction

In the very earliest Spanish documents, such as the Cid, the OSI construction is not attested(cf. Korner, 1983: 78). Considering the relatively small number and size of these documents,as well as the low overall proportion of OSI constructions in Spanish throughout its history(<1% of infinitives) we should, however, not jump to the conclusion that its absence in thesetexts necessarily implies that the construction was not yet present in the language as a whole.It should also be noted that even in the Cid, structurally ambiguous sentences that may ormay not be OSIs are found (cf. e.g. (274)); the relevance of such ambiguous structures will bediscussed further in Section 5.2.3.

In Old Spanish, the OSI construction was subject to less restrictions than in the modern lan-guage. Similar to the situation that still pertains in Portuguese today, it could individuate anon-coreferential subject in typical complement clauses, as in (268).

8N.b. in Old Italian, however, nouns as well as pronouns could occur pre-infinitivally (Mensching, 2000: 18,102).

9Antonio Vieira: Sermoes Escolhidos, §10: Exortacao e Oracao Final (1655). Sao Paulo: Edameris, 1965.10The related construction of the type ‘para ser ele a fazer’ (so that it is him who does) is a very common

intensifying/focalizing construction (cf. Section 3.3.4.)


268. los quales creerıan [yo no haber leido las reglas].11

the which would.believe [I not haveinf. read the rules]

(Those) who would believe I hadn’t read the rules.

The diachronic trend, it can be seen in Fig. 5.21, is for its usage to become increasingly restrictedto prepositional adjunct clauses, as discussed in Section 3.2.5, where it was further pointed outthat subject clauses and coreferential object clauses also continue to allow its use.

Figure 5.21: Prepositional and non-prepositional OSIs in Spanish

According to Mensching (200: 25), the position of the subject in relation to the infinitive hasalso become increasingly restricted.

[...] earlier stages of Spanish allowed preverbal subjects in addition to postverbal position,although the latter already prevailed in Old Spanish and its frequency is even higher inClassical Spanish. Unlike Italian, there were no restrictions to the environments where eitherposition occurs. [...] From the 18th century onwards, preverbal subjects no longer occur inalmost any infinitival environments. The only construction where preverbal subjects are stillgrammatical today are adverbial clauses.

(Mensching, 2000: 25)

The claim that overt subjects have always been predominantly post-infinitival in Spanish issomewhat weakened by Keniston (1937: 550), who observes “a fairly strong tendency to placethe subject before the infinitive” in 16th century Spanish; Ledgeway (2000: 292) points out thatKeniston provides only examples of pronominal pre-infinitival subjects, which would suggestthat nominal subjects were restricted to the postverbal position in 16th century Spanish12. Thepresent-day data provided in Table 3.2.1., reproduced here for convenience (Table 5.2.1.), castfurther doubt on whether the restriction is as absolute as often claimed, even in the modernlanguage.

Table 5.2.1.:



sin 68% (601) 32% (277)

para 46% (322) 54% (372)

al 28% (23) 72% (58)

antes de 21% (10) 79% (37)

despues de 17% (3) 83% (15)

11Santillana Prov. 23, cf. Diez (1882: 946)12An interesting parallel to the use of the Portuguese personal infinitive by Camoes during the same period

should also be noted, cf. Section 5.2.1.


A more differentiated analysis must take into account the fact that the proportion of pre- andpost-infinitival pronominal subjects depends on the individual preposition involved. In Section3.2.5 it was proposed to locate the different prepositions along a continuum. In this continuum,those prepositions that participate in OSI constructions most frequently, which are also the onesthat most commonly have a pre-infinitival subject, were located at one end. Chapter 4 hasprovided details on the time of emergence and the rise in frequency of individual prepositionalinfinitive constructions: final (pora>)para+inf. is documented since the earliest texts (Fig.4.10), as is al+inf. (Fig. 4.15); sin+inf. (Fig. 4.16) also joins these two relatively early on, itsfrequency rapidly rising to a level comparable with al+inf. Antes de+inf. (Fig. 4.17), Despuesde+inf. (Fig. 4.18) and hasta+inf. (Fig. 4.19) emerge and gain popularity slightly later, duringthe 16th century, and have, though gradually rising in frequency since then, remained far lesscommon than the former group.

A clear correlation between the age and the rate of dissemination of the individual preposi-tional infinitives on the one hand, and their present-day OSI properties on the other hand, isevident: the older and historically more widespread a particular prepositional infinitive is, themore commonly it participates in the OSI construction, and the more likely it is also to have apreverbal pronominal subject in this construction. This trend is further confirmed if we look atprepositional infinitives that never gained a high degree of popularity, such as hasta+inf. (Fig.4.19) or en lugar de+inf. (Fig. 4.20), and at prepositional infinitives that have only emergedrecently, such as a punto de+inf. (Fig. 4.22) or a pesar de+inf. Table 5.2.2., an extensionto Table 5.2.1. and based on the same extensive corpus of modern Spanish, shows that OSIconstructions with these prepositions are negligible; the small number of occurrences allows nofurther valid statistical conclusions.

Table 5.2.2.:



hasta 2 2

en lugar de 1 4

a punto de 0 3

a pesar de 1 3

The above facts find a coherent explanation if we recall that the position of overt subjects inrelation to the infinitive, at least pronominal ones, was relatively free up to the 16th and perhapsthe 17th century. It can be assumed that until this time, the post-infinitival position was thepragmatically marked one, being used for topicalization/contrastive focus, as it still is in Por-tuguese (cf. Section 3.3.4), and in modern Spanish (cf. Section 3.2.3) to the extent that thereremains a positional choice. What the subsequent development suggests is that the most fre-quent prepositional infinitives at the time became entrenched and conventionalized as separateconstructions that allow either a pre-infinitival or a post-infinitival pronominal subject; togetherwith the individual construction itself, language users learn whether it is more or less permissiveof preverbal subjects.

The OSI-construction with sin is a particularly revealing instance of this entrenchment process:by the 16th century, sin+inf. had become relatively frequent since its emergence 300 yearsearlier, but its frequency nevertheless remained far below that of para+inf. (cf. Fig. 4.16,Fig. 4.10). However, the construction with pre-infinitival pronominal subject was particularlyfrequent, especially in expressions such as the following:


sin yo saberlo ‘without my knowing it, unwittingly’sin yo merecerlo ‘without my deserving it, undeservedly’sin yo pensarlo ‘without my thinking about it, unexpectedly’

A typical feature of these expressions is the fact their subject is typically the experiencer of anevent that has a different agent, necessitating the presence of a disambiguating subject pronoun,which is more likely to appear preverbally, as exemplified in (269) and (270).

269. ...me comenzaron [...] a inclinarme a lo que fue, sin yo pensarlo, mi perdicion.13

..they began to incline me towards what was, even though I didn’t think so, my downfall.

270. el cielo [...], sin yo merecerlo, me envia [...]algunas personas [...].14

The sky sends me some people without my deserving it.

The comparatively high frequency of these expressions leads to an entrenchment of the sequence[sin+subj.pron.+inf.(+clitic)], explaining why the sin-construction uniquely prefers preverbalsubject pronouns today, especially in the presence of a clitic pronoun.

On the other hand, prepositional infinitives that were used less frequently did not become en-trenched to the same extent, and show a far stronger tendency to conform to the general moderntrend of postposing overt subjects.

It can further be observed, with reference to Table 5.2.1. and Section 3.2.5, that the entrench-ment is not binary, but scalar: the more frequently a particular prepositional infinitive occurred(with preposed subject), the stronger its tendency to preserve the optional pre-infinitival sub-ject position. As a consequence of the individual degree of entrenchment each prepositional OSIunderwent, it is impossible to formulate a general syntactic or pragmatic rule that would equallydo justice to the whole range of prepositional infinitives; a more realistic approach would be toview each one, with its own idiosyncratic syntactic patterning, as a separate sub-constructionof the generic construction ‘overt subject infinitive’ (OSI).

Following Croft’s (2000: 117-44) classification of types of form–function reanalysis, the facts de-scribed here suggest that we are dealing with an instance of hyperanalysis, in which the meaningor function of one constructional component becomes reanalysed as being contained in a differentcomponent of the same construction, due to frequent overlap of both meanings or functions. Thefrequent overlap of the two separate functions of the OSI, individuation of a non-coreferentialsubject on the one hand and contrastive focus on the other (cf. Section 3.2.3), has given riseto a remapping of these functions within the construction, in which the post-infinitival positiongradually came to be associated with both of these functions. To what degree this shift hasapplied to individual OSI sub-construction is dependent on the degree of entrenchment of thepre-infinitival subject position in that particular construction.

5.2.3 OSI in Spanish and Portuguese: the larger diachronic picture

The synchronic analysis of the infinitive in present-day Spanish and Portuguese in Chapter 3, aswell as the two diachronic sections above, have shown that in most respects, the two languages donot differ fundamentally in their use of the infinitive. In both languages, prepositional infinitiveshave been present since the earliest texts, but there has been an increase both in the number oftypes and tokens. The main difference is the fact that the Portuguese developments frequently

13Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, cf. Appendix A.14ibid.


predate similar ones in Spanish, and that infinitives with overtly present and/or marked subjectsare more widely used in Portuguese.

It was observed in Chapter 2 that no construction corresponding to the OSI existed in Latin,the ‘Nominative and Infinitive’ (NCI) having an entirely different structure and function. Nev-ertheless, Korner (1983) argues that the Romance OSI construction is nothing typologicallynew, as Latin did have infinitival clauses containing their own subject, both the ‘Accusative andInfinitive’ and the ‘Dative and Infinitive’, the latter frequently used with causative verbs. Hesuggests that the continuations of these Latin constructions (‘Yo laAcc. veo comer.’, ‘Yo leDat.mando comer.’) could easily have been reanalysed as OSIs, given the absence of morphologicalcase marking on Romance nouns. Evidence for a certain degree of uncertainty regarding caseis provided by the fact that in Portuguese, a verb such as mandar ‘to order’ can take either adirect or an indirect object pronoun in this construction, as in (271).

271. Mandei-o/lhe escrever uma carta.15

I ordered himDO/IO to write a letter.

However, there is no reason why the source of the OSI should be restricted to those specific con-structions. There are, and have always been, vast numbers of structurally ambiguous sentencesin which the subject of the main clause is, perhaps with a minimal misreading of the intonationpattern, equally analysable as the subject of a coreferential dependent clause, as in the modernSpanish (272) and Portuguese (273) examples, and the Old Spanish and Golden Age Spanishexamples (274) and (275).

272. Para conseguirlo yo [tengo que trabajar mas].Para conseguirlo [yo tengo que trabajar mas].

To manage it, I have to work more.

273. Nao me interessa o que prometeste tu. [Prometi eu] assisti-lo.Nao me interessa o que prometeste tu. Prometi [eu assisti-lo].

I don’t care what you’ve promised. I’ve promised to help him.

274. cansados son de [ferir] ellos amoscansados son de [ferir ellos amos]16

Both of them are tired of beating.

275. confesando yo [no ser mas santo que mis vecinos]confesando [yo no ser mas santo que mis vecinos]17

confessing that I was no more saintly than my neighbours

That such structurally ambiguous cases have been common throughout the history of Spanishis illustrated in Fig. 5.22, which shows that the number of cases where the reading as OSI ispossible but not necessary tends to be approximately similar to the number of clear-cut OSIs.

15Example from Dunn (1928), quoted by Roegiest (1979: 41).16Cid, 2745.17Lazarillo 1554, 2r, quoted by Mensching (2000: 102), who analyses it as an OSI.


Figure 5.22: Ambiguous/unambiguous OSIs in Spanish

As the absence of an overt subject in the main clause is syntactically unproblematic in pro-droplanguages such as Spanish and Portuguese, such reanalysis is the most likely source of the OSI.It is perhaps noteworthy that the reanalysis can occur in prepositional adjunct clauses (272) aswell as in prototypical complement clauses (275).

An important point to make is also that in Sentences (272-275), the subject is necessarily inthe pragmatically marked topicalizing or focalizing position in one of the two possible readings,which facilitates reanalysis in discourse contexts in which topical or contrastive focus is plau-sible. This, in turn, contributes to the fact that the OSI construction itself is often associatedwith topical or contrastive focus (cf. 3.2.3).

Once the OSI construction has become conventionalized and infinitives with overt subjects arean available structure, it is no great step to extend the pattern to non-coreferential situations,allowing the OSI to mark disjoint subject reference. At this stage, a split between Spanish andPortuguese must have taken place.

In Portuguese, the pragmatic markedness of the construction gradually decreases; such ‘bleach-ing’ processes generally go hand in hand with an increase in frequency as well as an increasingintegration into the grammatical system of the language. A visible sign of this grammaticalintegration is the fact that the infinitive receives a morphological person marker, bringing it inline with all other verb forms that have their own subject; as a consequence of this, an overtsubject is no longer required. This allows for a further reduction of pragmatic markedness ofthe construction, as the previously required overt presence of a subject pronoun is generally amarker of topicalization in pro-drop languages. The rules governing the position of the subjectalso become increasingly similar to those of other inflected verb forms, with the preverbal posi-tion being unmarked, whilst the postverbal position implies contrastive topical focus.

Most of these shifts must have taken place before the time of the earliest preserved documents,at the time of which the inflected infinitive was already a fully integrated, common part of thelanguage, with the subject already appearing predominantly in pre-infinitival position. Onlythe fact that it was, in old Galaico-Portuguese, possible for an overt subject to occur withoutthe corresponding inflection on the infinitive might be understood as an indication that thegrammaticalization process was not yet fully completed.

The synchronic statistical analysis presented in Section 3.3.2, as well as certain diachronic de-velopments discussed in Section 5.2.1, indicate an incipient shift in the usage of the personalinfinitive, suggesting a growing trend to use finite structures for genuinely non-coreferential


cases, whilst the inflected infinitive is used increasingly to provide additional clarity regardingthe identity of coreferential subjects, standing in direct competition with the uninflected infini-tive in these contexts.

In Spanish, the relative freedom with which OSIs were used during earlier stages of the lan-guage suggests that a development along the lines of the Portuguese construction was incipient,but this trend appears to have been reversed. Today, the construction generally retains itsoriginal pragmatic markedness (cf. Section 3.2.3). The postverbal position being the default po-sition for subject topicalization and focus, this is where the subject of the OSI tends to appear.This high frequency of post-infinitival subjects gradually became conventionalized, whilst thepre-infinitival position (of pronouns) remains more acceptable with certain prepositions and incertain expressions (e.g. ‘sin yo saberlo’) that frequently occurred with a pre-infinitival subjectfor the purpose of subject individuation rather than contrastive focus (cf. Section 5.2.2). Al-ways having been little more than a marginal phenomenon in terms of usage frequency, the OSIappears to be losing ground as a fully integrated part of Spanish syntax. Yet whilst the rangeof syntactic contexts it occurs in is diminishing, it survives primarily as a pragmatic focus marker.

All in all, it must be observed that the availability of OSI constructions has not been able tobreak the general and deeply engrained link between the infinitive and coreferentiality. Thisis reflected in the fact that both languages generally avoid concessive prepositional infinitives,which are typically non-coreferential, but also by the fact that in both languages, the OSI con-struction is frequently used, as a marker of focus or as a disambiguator, where a subjectlessinfinitive would otherwise be found.

Chapter 6

The infinitive in RomanianVestea mortii mele este ın mare masura exagerata. (Mark Twain)

6.1 The present-day situation

A widespread view of the infinitive’s role in modern Romanian is that its use is marginal. Es-pecially in typologically oriented work, it is often stated that “one of the well-known features[of Romanian] is the loss of the infinitive” (Trudgill, 201: 710), while Romance linguists havegenerally characterized the use of infinitival structures as extremely limited.1 Generally, thisrestriction in usage is understood as directly linked to an increased use of the subjunctive.Camproux (1974: 106), for instance, bluntly states that “[le roumain] remplace l’infinitif parle subjonctif”, and Posner (1996: 164) claims that “...on the whole, Rumanian [...] has notfavoured the more ‘Romance’ use of the infinitive in ‘control’ constructions, preferring a sub-junctive clause...”. With more attention to detail, Joseph (1983: 149) states that Romanian “hascome to restrict the use of this form, replacing it with finite subjunctive clauses headed withthe conjunction sa, or, in some cases, with finite indicative clauses headed by the conjunction ca.”

This ‘replacement’ of infinitival clauses by subjunctival finite clauses is most frequently at-tributed to areal convergence within the Balkan Sprachbund, possibly originating from the factthat regular sound change in Greek caused a great degree of syncretism between infinitive andsubjunctive forms, leading to a large-scale reanalysis of infinitives as subjunctive forms2, whichsubsequently spread throughout the linguistic area. In this vein, McMahon (1994: 219) claimsthat “Balkan languages have characteristically lost the infinitive, replacing it with a finite sub-ordinate clause...”, and Guillermou (1953: 172) writes: “L’emploi du subjonctif au detriment del’infinitif est un trait de syntaxe qui n’est pas propre au roumain et dont on peut rendre comptepar la linguistique balkanique.”

I shall not, here, discuss in any depth the extent to which the Romanian infinitive can con-vincingly be argued to be a Balkanism. Though it would be hard to deny some influence fromthe other languages from the area, which in their majority make only very limited or no useof the infinitive, it will become evident below that its use in Romanian is far less restrictedthan often suggested. My analysis here will be limited to Daco-Romanian3, but it should be

1I clearly do not wish to deny that some Romance linguists are aware of the fact that Romanian has the optionof employing the infinitive in a wide range of contexts.

2A somewhat unusual proposal by Miller (2001: 94 ff.), analyses the Greek subjunctive (which structurallyresembles the Romanian subjunctive) as an inflected infinitive, based on the fact that, according to his analysis,it can have PRO as its subject and the embedded clause can be selected by a determiner. This analysis appearsinappropriate for Romanian, as there is a separate infinitive form that can itself have an overt subject.

3Daco-Romanian is the branch of the Daco-Romance subgroup spoken in Romania and the Republic ofMoldova.

157

158 CHAPTER 6. THE INFINITIVE IN ROMANIAN

noted that there is some controversy regarding the question whether or not in Arumanian, aDaco-Romance variety spoken in the southern Balkans in areas surrounded by Slavic, Greek,or Albanian speakers, finite clauses have supplanted the infinitive completely. Mallinson (1988:411) claims “this phenomenon is complete in Arumanian, but Daco-Rumaian, situated muchfurther from the centre of the Sprachbund, has resisted it to a greater extent”, Sandfeld (1930:174) and Papahagi (1963: 39) both cite instances of verbal usage of the infinitive in Arumanian,and Joseph (1983: 174-176) discusses the “various claims and counterclaims” in this matter.

That the infinitive has not been completely lost in Daco-Romanian is undisputed by most lin-guists. Interestingly, however, the constructions they produce as evidence for its ‘limited’ survivaltend to differ from account to account. To give just one example, Mallinson (1988: 411) rightlymentions the common appearance of infinitives in extraposed subject clauses, which most otheraccounts omit, and which Joseph (1983: 153) mentions only as a construction typical of OldRomanian.

In this section, a detailed comparison of the Romanian and the ‘typical Romance’ uses of theinfinitive will be attempted, in order to establish in how far Romanian really differs systemati-cally from the mainstream Romance patterns.

6.1.1 Exclusions

This chapter will not be concerned with the so-called long infinitive, which must more correctlybe considered a deverbal noun. Synchronically, it behaves like a noun in every way, taking thedefinite article, undergoing regular morphological case inflection, and assigning genitive case toits subject and direct object. Though it can, indeed, be productively derived from the infinitiveof most verbs by suffixing the derivational morpheme //-re//, its label stems from the fact thatit originates from, and resembles, the Latin infinitive, which was itself in many respects morenominal than modern Romance infinitives are (cf. Section (3.4.2)). A further reason for theuse of this inaccurate label may be the lack of a comparable clear morphological, or indeedcategorial, distinction between infinitives and deverbal nouns in the other Romance languages,which has led Romanists to use infinitive as a cover term for verbal and nominal uses, as wellas the ambiguous cases in between.

Nor shall I discuss the singular negative imperative or ‘prohibitive’ of the type Nu fuma! ‘Don’tsmoke!’, which, as in Latin and Italian, is morphologically equivalent to the infinitive. Synchron-ically this is best analysed as a case of syncretism, as it is fully integrated in the imperativeparadigm in which the infinitive does not, otherwise, play a role. Additionally, the fact that ithas fixed person, number, and time reference (2nd pers. singular, future time reference) castsserious doubts on its analysis as an infinitive. For a discussion of the use of infinitives andinfinitive-like forms in the imperative paradigm, I refer the reader to Joseph (1983: 159-160;164) and Pop (1948: 263).

6.1.2 Temporal and modal auxiliary verbs

The most commonly acknowledged use of the infinitive is in temporal and modal auxiliaryconstructions. As in other Romance languages, it is possible to form an analytic future bymeans of the combination of an inflected auxiliary verb followed by an infinitive. The auxiliaryverb participating in this construction is most likely a combination of phonologically reduced

6.1. THE PRESENT-DAY SITUATION 159

versions of the present tense paradigms of volitional a vrea and a voi (276).4 The choice ofthe volitional verb as future auxiliary is rare the modern standard Romance languages, andthe presence of equivalent periphrastic future constructions in the surrounding linguistic areais understood by many to be the cause for this. However, a similar future construction is alsofound in northern Piedmontese dialects, Rhaeto-Romance and some southern Italian dialects(cf. e.g. Rohlfs, 1949: 337). Further, Iliescu (1965: 97-98; 1966: 399-400) shows that it maysimply be a retention, as the synthetic future construction with reflexes of UOLO+infinitive alsoappears in Dalmatian, Franco-Provencal, and Old Surselvan.

276. Voi/vei/va/vom/veti/vor castiga.future.aux1st.sg/2nd.sg/3rd.sg/1st.pl/2nd.pl/3rd.pl wininf. I/you/he/she/we/you/they will win.

Romanian also forms the conditional/optative paradigm by means of auxiliary+infinitive. Thecommon Late Latin development of forming a synthetic conditional by suffixing a reduced formof HABERE onto the infinitive survives in the synthetic conditional paradigm of Arumanianand Istroromanian (cf. Caragiu-Marioteanu, 1969: 270; Puscariu, 1997 [1940]: 267, 278), as inRomance in general. But in modern Daco-Romanian this paradigm has been fully supplanted byan auxiliary construction consisting of the infinitive preceded by an inflected verb of somewhatobscure etymology, perhaps deriving from “the clitic imperfect form of a vrea/a voi” (Joseph1983: 163).

277. As/ai/ar/am/ati/ar castiga.condit.aux1st.sg/2nd.sg/3rd.sg/1st.pl/2nd.pl/3rd.pl wininf. I/you/he/she/we/you/they would win.

In addition to these two basic auxiliary constructions, there are auxiliary constructions for thefuture perfect, past conditional, as well as the present and past (epistemic) ‘presumptive’, allbased on the analytic future and conditional of a fi ‘to be’:

278. Future perfect

Voi fi citit.future.aux1st.sg beinf. readpast.part.

I will have read.

279. Past conditional

As fi citit.condit.aux1st.sg beinf. readpast.part.

I would have read.

280. Present presumptive

Raspunsul va fi fiind simplu.answer+def.art. fut.aux3rd.sg beinf. begerund simple.

The answer is probably simple.

281. Past presumptive

Veti fi facut prajituri.fut.aux2nd.pl beinf. makepast.part cakes

You have probably baked cakes.

4It should be noted that these two verbs have distinct sources, a voi deriving from Slavic voliti, whilst a vreais from Latin VOLERE < VELLE (cf. Pop, 1948: 257).


Overall, the auxiliary constructions with the infinitive are in no way atypical of Romance ingeneral. Not only is the modern synthetic future and conditional the result of suffixation ofan auxiliary to the infinitive5, but the widespread analytic future formation with ‘go’(+a)+in-finitive is extremely similar. The fact that in Romanian the aux+inf. construction is used foran even wider variety of modal notions indicates that the infinitive is clearly a central part ofRomanian linguistic structure. However, it can be disputed whether these constructions shouldbe considered genuine instances of the infinitive in modern Romanian, as they differ from otherinfinitival constructions in Romanian, most visibly due to the absence of the particle a6. Theymay perhaps be better analysed as a single morphological unit7, resulting from the grammati-calization of a former8 prepositional construction.

The verbs a putea ‘to be able to’ and a sti ‘to know how to’ can be analysed as members ofthe same class. Semantically, a putea can be used to express epistemic modality, and verbs ofability arguably always contain a modal component. Formally, these two verbs group with thefuture and conditional auxiliaries because they are the only other verbs that take an infinitivewithout the preposed particle a. What does, however distinguish both the periphrastic futureand a putea/a sti is that they have corresponding9 finite counterparts with the subjunctive.

282. Voi veni maine.fut.aux1st.sg comeinf. tomorrow

Am/o sa vin maine.have1st.sg/fut.auxinvar. subjnctve.marker come1sr.sg tomorrow

I will come tomorrow.

283. Pot veni maine.can1st.sg comeinf. tomorrow

Pot sa vin maine.can1st.sg subjnctve.marker come1sr.sg tomorrow

I can come tomorrow.

Guillermou (1953: 111) believes there is an aspectual difference between the infinitival and thefinite future constructions. The former “indique simplement un evenement qui doit arriver dansl’avenir”, whilst the latter implies “une intervention du sujet parlant”. Whether this aspectualnuance is necessarily always present is disputable; with a putea, in any case, the infinitiveand subjunctive appear to occur in free variation, and the choice appears to have no semanticimplications. Meyer-Lubke (1895: 89) notes that in Old Romanian, conjoined complements ofa single main verb a putea can alternate between sa-clause and infinitive in the same sentence,citing sentence (284) from Gaster (1891: 114).

284. poate vedea si sa cunoascacan3rd.sg seeinf and subjnctve.marker recognize3rd.sg.subj

He can see and recognize.

5In Portuguese, this process of syntheticization is arguably not completed, as clitic pronouns are placed betweenthe infinitival and the auxiliary component.

6Some theoretical implications of the absence of a are discussed in Section 6.1.8.7One reason for such an analysis is the fact that no element, not even clitics, can be inserted.8This would also explain the absence of a, which only became an obligatory element of the infinitive relatively

recently, cf. Section 6.3.1.9The finite periphrastic future construction uses either a avea ‘to have’, or far more frequently invariant o,

which “appears to be a special treatment of the third person singular form va of voi”(Joseph, 1983: 163).


This is, in fact, still found in modern Romanian, as shown in example (285):

285. Poti fi foarte bine ınalt functionar ıntr-un stat republica si sa crezi ca statului tau i s-arpotrivi mai curınd sistemul monarhic.10

can2nd.sg beinf very well high official in.a state republic and subjnctve.marker believe2nd.sg.subj that the.stateDat.Sg

Pers.PronDat.Sg Refl.Pron+Pres.Condit.Aux.3rd.sg be.appropriate more soon the.system monarchist.

You can very well be a top official in a republican state and believe that for your state themonarchic system would be rather more appropriate.

This said, it must be pointed out that both the periphrastic future and a putea-clauses areconstructed with the infinitive far more frequently than with the subjunctive: in written, butnot excessively formal, present-day Romanian, ca. 96% of future tokens take the infinitive, andonly 4% a subjunctive complement. For a putea11 the ratio is less extreme, with around 89%infinitival clausal complements. Which factors are involved in this choice, and whether thisratio is substantially different in colloquial spoken language, are interesting questions worthy offurther research, which would, however, require the availability of a spoken corpus.

A sti, on the other hand, takes infinitival complements in only 4 to 5% of cases; there may how-ever be some regional variation that is not taken into account in this figure, as this constructionis typically associated with Transylvanian speakers.

6.1.3 Infinitival indirect Wh-questions

Similar to the way in which Spanish and Portuguese allow saber ‘to know’ and tener/ter ‘tohave’ to take a coreferential indirect wh-question as complement, Romanian makes extensiveuse of the corresponding construction with a avea ‘to have’. Compare the Romanian sentencesin (286) to (287).

286. Nu are cu cine lucra.12

not has with who workinf

He hasn’t got anyone to work with.

...no tengo con quien bailar descalzos por Madrid.13

...not I.have with who danceinf barefootPl through Madrid

...I haven’t got anyone to dance barefoot through Madrid with.

287. Am cumparat bere [...] si n-am unde duce ambalajele.14

I.have bought beer [...] and not-I.have where takeinf packaging.the

I’ve bought beer, but I haven’t got anywhere to take the packaging.

Tengo miedo y no tengo donde ir.15

I.have fear and not I.have where goinf

I’m scared and I don’t have anywhere to go.

10Romania Literara 51, 1997; Revista Revistelor – La Microscop. Cristian Teodorescu: Refuzul regal.11This count excludes the construction poate (ca) + indicative, as this has been semantically bleached to mean

‘perhaps’.12http://www.curier.ro/curier/02-01/01-08/sport.htm13tr.terra.com.co/cultura/musica/cancionero/home artista.php?id artista=161&id cancion=50114http://romania.thebans.com/readers/scrisori2.asp15http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Club/5121/otros\ temas.html


This construction is possible with a variety of wh-interrogatives, including ce ‘what’, cine ‘who’,cu cine ‘who with’, cum ‘how’, unde ‘where’. It is particularly common with cand ‘when’,meaning ‘not to have sufficient time’ (288).

288. Uite, femeie, eu nu am cand veni maine la tine sa o iau,...16

lookimpertv. woman I not have1st.sg.pres when comeinf tomorrow that itAcc.Fem take1st.sg.pres

Look here, woman, I don’t have the time to come to you tomorrow to take it...

This specific usage has been claimed to be a calque on the corresponding Albanian expressionnuk kam kur ‘I haven’t got time’(du Nay, 1996: II.F). However, considering that Spanish andPortuguese also share this construction type17 with Romanian, it might equally well be an in-herited Romance feature, or of polygenetic origin.

In terms of frequency, the relative proportion of finite and infinitival clauses varies considerably.Table 6.1. shows that, depending on the type of interrogative, the percentage of tokens usingthe infinitive varies between approximately 4% and 50%.

Table 6.1. – a (nu) avea + indirect Wh-Interrogative

Main verb % inf. % finitea (nu) avea ce ‘to have nothing to’ 56.36 43.64a (nu) avea unde ‘to have no place to’ 28.13 71.87a (nu) avea cand ‘to have no time to’ 20.25 79.75a (nu) avea cu cine ‘to have no-one with whom to’ 20.00 80.00a (nu) avea cum ‘to have nothing way of [doing]’ 3.60 96.40

6.1.4 Intrinsically coreferential verbs

In addition to the abovementioned auxiliaries, there are a number of further intrinsically coref-erential verbs that can take infinitival complements. This class of verbs serves to add a semanticcomponent to the complement verb; to what extent this class of verbs can or should be con-sidered auxiliaries is open to discussion, but not of immediate relevance here. The subject ofthe dependent verb must therefore by definition also be the subject of the main clause, as bothverbs describe the same action or event. As can be seen from the list in Table 6.4. below, theadditional information can have an aspectual character, but it can also add more specific infor-mation, such as the subject’s attitude towards the action (s)he is undertaking. Good examplesof the latter are a ındrazni a ‘to dare to’ and a binevoi a ‘to be happy to’.

This class of verbs is of particular interest in the Romance perspective because in the traditionallystudied Romance varieties, the strong link between coreferentiality and infinitival complemen-tation means that these verbs cannot take a finite complement. Understandably, therefore, theemphasis in much of the literature is on the fact that Romanian has no such rule, allowingfinite complementation with all intrinsically coreferential verbs. It is often also pointed out thatRomanian makes use of the supine to form non-finite complements with these verbs, a formthat is not part of the inventory of other Romance languages (Manoliu-Manea, 1985: 279-291;Sandfeld & Olsen, 1936: 254-254).

16http://destine.etopia.ro/cgi-bin/povestiri.pl?name=030\&page=417Note that Spanish no tengo cuando+inf. has a slightly different meaning from the Romanian expression, as

it refers to the absence of a specific point in the future, rather than to a lack of time in general.


Given these two alternatives, little attention is paid to the fact that infinitival complementationis, nevertheless, a perfectly grammatical alternative with a considerable number of intrinsicallycoreferential verbs. A notable exception to this attitude is Niculescu’s (1978: 267/268) accountof Romanian complementation.

Table 6.2. lists a number of intrinsically coreferential verbs that can take infinitival as well asfinite complements; the percentages, reflecting relative token frequency in a modern Romaniancorpus of 17 million words, show that the infinitive is not the most common choice, but that itnevertheless constitutes an integral component of the syntactic system.

Table 6.2. – Intrinsically coreferential main verbs

Verb % inf. % finite % supinea binevoi a ‘to be happy to’ 42.86 57.14a cuteza a ‘to dare to’ 40.00 60.00a cerca a ‘to attempt to’ 35.71 64.29a prinde a ‘to begin to’ 33.33 66.67a se deprinde a ‘to get accustomed to’ 25.51 74.49a conteni a ‘to cease to’ 22.22 77.77a primi a ‘to consent to’ 21.05 78.95a ıncerca (de) a ‘to try to’ 20.05 79.95a ınceta (de) a ‘to cease to’ 17.09 82.91a aspira a ‘to aspire to’ 15.79 84.21a ındrazni a ‘to dare to’ 10.13 89.87a urma a ‘to go on to’ 9.79 90.21a ıncepe (de/prin) a ‘to begin to’ 8.57 91.43a ajunge a ‘to succeed in [doing]’ 8.20 91.80a cauta a ‘to try to’ 7.69 92.31a continua a ‘to continue [doing]’ 5.31 94.69a uita a18 ‘to forget to’ 4.59 93.58 1.83a apuca (de) a ‘to begin to’ 0.54 92.43 7.03a termina de a ‘to finish [doing]’ 0.23 3.17 96.61

Interestingly, the verbs that are more likely to take infinitival complements are not predomi-nantly those with the most typically aspectual meaning, as for instance Givon’s hierarchy ofintegration would appear to predict.

It should be noted that subject-raising verbs such as a parea a ‘to appear to’, which according toG&B Theory require an entirely different sentence structure, do not behave differently in termsof distribution, with all three complement options available. (Table 6.3.)

Table 6.3. – Subject-raising verbs

Verb % inf. % finite % supinea merita a ‘to deserve to/be worth’ 14.29 81.31 4.4019

a parea a ‘to appear to’ 7.14 90.54 1.19a ramane a ‘to remain to be [done]’ 3.62 50.00 46.38

18I consider intrinsically coreferential a uita a/sa/de ‘to forget to’ (with implicitly irrealis complement), a lexicalentry distinct from a uita ca ‘to forget that’, the complement of which is necessarily realis.


6.1.5 Optionally coreferential main verbs

Table 6.4. shows the relative frequency of infinitival and finite complements of a number of mainverbs that can, but need not, have a subject shared by main and dependent verb.

Table 6.4. – Optionally coreferential main verbs

Verb % inf. % finite % supinea dori ‘to wish’ 7.69 92.31a ınvata ‘to learn’ 4.76 95.24a cere ‘to ask’ 2.80 96.26 0.93a decide ‘to decide’ 1.90 98.10a crede ‘to believe’ 1.12 98.85 0.03

The lower frequency of infinitival complementation with these verbs is due to the fact that, as arule, the infinitive is used only in coreferential complements, which means that the proportion ofpotential contexts for infinitives is reduced considerably. There are, however, sporadic cases ofnon-coreferential infinitival complements when the reference is pragmatically sufficiently clear,as in sentence (289).

289. M-a fascinat dintotdeauna ceea ce cred a fi lectia fundamentala pe care i-o da calul eroului(sau eroinei) din unele basme romanesti. 20

me-has fascinated from.always that which believe1st.sg to beinf lesson.the fundamental...

I’ve always been fascinated by what I believe to be the fundamental lesson which the horseteaches the hero (or heroine) of some Romanian fairytales.

When main clause and complement are coreferential, use of the infinitive is optional from asyntactic point of view, though marked as somewhat formal or even stilted register (290).

290. Autorul crede a putea ataca [...] controversata teza maioresciana...21

author.the believes to be.able.toinf attackinf [...] controversial.the thesis Maiorescan

The author believes to be able to attack the controversial Maiorescan thesis...

Autorul crede ca poate ataca teza.author.the believes that can3rd.sg.pres.indic attack inf thesis.the

The author believes he can attack the thesis.

In principle, this distribution resembles that in other Romance languages like Spanish to aconsiderable extent. Optionally coreferential verbs like creer ‘to believe’ can, but need not, takeinfinitival complements when the subjects of the main clause and the complement are the same,as shown in sentences (291) and (292).

291. Yo creo haber hecho lo mejor en cada una de mis tareas.22

I believe1st.sg haveinf the best in each one of my duties.

I believe to have done the best I could in each one of my duties.

19A merita takes supine complements without the default supine complementizer de.20Romania Literara 14, 12.4.2000, Eseu; Mariana Net: Chipul, moartea si oglinda21Corina Popescu: Verisimul italian si literatura romana (Teatrul italian in Romania 1871-1911).22http://www.informador.com.mx/lastest/2001/Febrero/03feb2001/03ar06c.htm


292. Creo que he hecho lo mejor que podıa hacer.23

I believe1st.sg that have1st.sg done the best that can1st.sg.imperf

I believe I’ve done the best I could.

Sentence (289) is particularly reminiscent of Portuguese, where the identity of the infinitive’ssubject frequently appears overtly, thus eliminating the potential ambiguity regarding the com-plement subject (293). However, even in Portuguese, infinitival clauses are, in their majority,coreferential (cf. Section 3.1).

293. Acredito no ser humano e creio ser ele a unica ‘imortalidade’ viavel.24

believe1st.sg.pres in.the being human and believe1st.sg.pres beinf PERS.PRON3rd.sg.masc the only immortality

viable.

I believe in the human being, and I think it is the only viable immortality.

Finally, it must be mentioned that, in contrast to its Spanish and Portuguese counterpart querer‘to want/wish’, Romanian a vrea never has an infinitival complement, even when coreferential.As this is a relatively frequently occurring verb, the ungrammaticality of a vrea+infinitive su-perficially lends support to those who claim that infinitival complementation is marginal inRomanian. However, a vrea is better analysed as an exception25, as even the semanticallylargely equivalent a dori can take infinitival complements, as seen in (294).26

294. Nu doreste a se auzi pe sine.27

not wish2nd.sg to CLIT.REFL. hearinf PERS.DIR.OBJ.MARKER REFL.PRON

He does not wish to hear himself.

6.1.6 Non-coreferential main verbs

Certain verbs, such as causative verbs, are unlikely to have coreferential subjects for pragmaticreasons, as a person will not normally ask, order, or force himself to do something. In Section3.1.2, it has been argued that it is for this reason that this class of verbs has developed its ownreference pattern for complement subject assignment, in which PRO is not controlled by themain verb’s subject, but instead by its direct object. A similar pattern is also found in Roma-nian for this verb type; sentences (295)-(297) illustrate such usage with three different types ofcausative verbs.

295. Legile nu ma opresc a calatori ın Ungaria, dar nu garanteaza siguranta mea acolo.28

laws.the not meAcc.Sg stop to travelinf in Hungary [...]

The laws don’t stop me from travelling to Hungary, but they don’t guarantee mysecurity there.

296. Nu exista asa dar nici un spirit al timpului care sa-i oblige a fi compatibili pe fizicienisi pe filosofi, pe biologi si pe criticii literari!

23http://www.elsenordelosanillos.aurum.es/film/news/ne\ entcannes\ eq1.html24http://www.freipedro.pt/tb/231299/opin5.htm25The restriction on the complement selection properties of a vrea may be linked to the fact that the analytic

future is formed with an auxiliary verb derived from a voi/a vrea (cf. Section 6.1.2), the ungrammaticality of avrea+inf. in the literal meaning ‘to want’ being a remnant of this functional split.

26The preferred Romanian construction with a finite complement (‘Nu doreste sa se auda pe sine.’) is notpossible in Spanish or Portuguese, as coreferentiality requires infinitival complementation with querer, whilst theinfinitive is always optional in Romanian (cf. Section 6.2.3).

27Romania Literara 31, 5.8.1998, Cronica literara; Gheorghe Grigurcu: Amorul sacru si amorul profan28CONVIETUIREA 2-3/1997, http://www.jgytf.u-szeged.hu/tanszek/roman/cv239723.htm


NEG exists therefore NEG a spirit POSESS.ART timeGen.Sg which COMP+him oblige3rd.sg.subjctv to be compat-

ible DIR.OBJ.MARKER physicists and philosophers...

There is, thus, not a spirit of the times that obliges physicists and philosophers, biologistsand literary critics, to be compatible.

297. Va rugam a nu fuma ın sala.29

PERS.PRONAcc.2nd.P l request1st.pl to not smokeinf in hall

We ask you not to smoke in the hall.

Table 6.5. shows the proportion of infinitival to finite complements for a number of non-corefe-rential verbs.

Table 6.5. – Non-coreferential main verbs

Verb % inf. % finite % supinea deprinde a ‘to accustom to’ 25.51 74.49a opri (de/din) a ‘to stop from [doing]’ 19.05 65.10 15.8730

a ımpiedica (de) a ‘to prevent from [doing]’ 15.38 84.62a ruga a ‘to ask to’ 8.88 91.12a constrange a ‘to force to’ 5.36 94.64a forta a ‘to force to’ 3.70 96.30a obliga a ‘to oblige to’ 2.16 97.64

6.1.7 Subject complements and impersonal expressions

Coreferentiality between the subjects of the main clause and its complement is logically impos-sible when the main verb is subjectless, and when the complement clause itself serves as themain clause’s syntactic subject. As discussed in Section 3.1, the normal pattern of referenceassignment in Spanish and Portuguese in these constructions is for PRO to be controlled by adirect or indirect object of the main verb if available, and otherwise PRO is subject to ‘arbi-trary control’. Romanian, too, allows infinitive complementation in both these constructions, asshown in sentences (298)-(300).

298. Direct object control:

A pierde ma demoralizeaza.to loseinf meAcc demoralizes

Losing demoralizes me.

299. Indirect object control:

Imi place a crede ca nu ıntımplator ultima mea ıntılnire cu Florin Mugur s-a produs lagradina de vara de la Muzeul literaturii.31

meDat pleases to believeinf that...

I am pleased to think that coincidentally my last meeting with Florin Mugur took placein the summer garden of the Museum of Literature.

29Request commonly found on notices in libraries etc.30Supine complements of a opri are not linked by the default supine complementizer de, but instead by the

compounded preposition din < de ın.31Romania Literara 8, 26.2.1997, Cronica literara; Gheorghe Grigurcu: Nedrepatitul Florin Mugur


While sentence (299) is somewhat literary in register, the equivalent construction with negatedmain verb, as in ‘Nu-mi place a calatori’ ‘I don’t enjoy travelling’ is frequently found in popular,spoken language. This applies in the same way to a number of idiomatic expressions in whichthe [Experiencer] appears as indirect object, such as the following:

Nu-mi vine a crede. ‘I just can’t believe it.’Nu-mi arde a citi. ‘I’m not terribly keen on reading.’A ma plange nu-mi trece prin cap. ‘To complain wouldn’t enter my mind.’

300. Arbitrary control with impersonal expressions:

A vorbi e usor, (a canta mai ınvata.)32

to talkinf is simple, to sing more learnimpertv.sg

It’s easy to talk, but you still have to learn to sing.

As previously seen in sentence (289), control assignment patterns do not have obligatory status,as demonstrated by (301):

301. Impulsionarea mediului investitional intern [...], care ne ıntereseaza a se dezvolta ın ritmsuperior celorlalte ramuri nationale...33

..., which usAcc interests to REFL developinf in rhythm superior otherGen.Pl branches national...

Kickstarting internal investment [...], [regarding] which we have an interest that it shoulddevelop at a quicker rate than the other sectors of the national economy.

6.1.8 Prepositional complementizer or morphological marker?

From a diachronic point of view, the particle a, used by the verbs examined in the previoussection to connect infinitival clauses, is a grammaticalized preposition (cf. Section 7.2.1). Syn-chronically, it can be seen either as the default complementizer, or as a morphological markerof the infinitive, similar to to in English.

Many accounts of complementation, e.g. Givon’s hierarchy of integration between main andcomplement clause (Givon, 1984: 519), distinguish infinitive complements with the morpholog-ical marker on the one hand from bare stem complements without it on the other. Absence ofthe marker tends to coincide with a higher degree of semantic integration. This accurately pre-dicts the situation in Romanian: temporal and modal notions are semantically highly integratedwith the complement verb, and this semantic integration is iconically reflected by the absence ofthe subordinating morpheme and the increased proximity between the two verbs involved. ThusMallinson (1988: 411) argues that ‘pot veni’ (‘I can come’) can be treated as an auxiliary+stemconstruction.’

However, some doubt is cast upon the applicability of Givon’s hierarchy, based on a correlationbetween semantic integration of main and complement verb on the one hand, and the comple-ment clause’s syntax on the other, by the fact that both the periphrastic future and a putea/asti have corresponding finite counterparts with the subjunctive (cf. Section 6.1.2). According toGivon, subjunctive complements should be far less integrated with their main verb than “bare-stem” complements, but this does not hold for Romanian.

32Title of a 1997 rap song by Parazitii.33Activitatea ın tara a AOAR, http://www.aoar.ro/pozitii/in2\ ro.htm


The analysis of a as a general morphological marker of the infinitive is further called into doubtby its absence in the construction with a avea + infinitival indirect question, as discussed inSection (6.1.3) above.

Though a cannot, therefore, be understood to be an integral morpheme of the infinitive, perhapsthe most compelling argument to analyse it as a largely obligatory component of the infinitive,rather than an independent complementizer, is the fact that a number of main verbs, such as aopri din a+inf. and a impiedica de a+inf. have their own, lexically determined prepositionalcomplementizers (cf. Table 6.5). This analysis is further corroborated by the fact that all prepo-sitional infinitives are preceded by the respective preposition and the particle a, as will becomeevident in the following section.

6.2 Synchronic use of prepositional infinitives

6.2.1 Finite and non-finite adjuncts

Apart from the auxiliary/modal constructions in Section (6.1.2), by far the most common en-vironment for the use of the infinitive in Romanian is in prepositional clauses. As Table 6.6.shows, this construction stands in serious competition with its finite counterpart.

Table 6.6. – Prepositional Infinitives

Preposition/Conjunction % inf. % finite % supinespre a/sa ‘in order to’ 98.75 1.25pentru a/ca sa ‘in order to’ 90.17 9.15 0.67ınainte de a/sa ‘before’ 81.33 18.44 0.22prin a/faptul ca ‘by means of’ 62.71 36.46 8.83fara a/sa ‘without’ 39.45 60.55pana (la) a/ce,sa,cand ‘until’ 18.85 81.15ın loc de a/sa ‘instead of’ 6.51 93.49dupa a/ce ‘after’ 0.05 99.5

Table 6.6. shows that the proportion of infinitival to finite clauses introduced by morphologi-cally cognate preposition/conjunction pairs varies considerably. For instance, a strong tendencyfor adjuncts introduced by the typical [purpose] markers such as pentru and spre to be infini-tival can be observed. To determine whether this is, in fact, due to the semantic propertiesof these prepositions, a separate, semantically-based analysis is required, as there is a certainasymmetry between the inventory of prepositions and corresponding conjunctions in Romanian.For example, the finite counterpart of spre a, i.e. the final conjunction spre sa, is extremelyrare; on the other hand, the common final conjunction ca sa has no prepositional equivalent,and the underspecified conjunction sa is also often used to introduce final adjuncts. A furtherconstruction not to be overlooked in this context is la+supine, which frequently carries finalmeaning34. The overall distribution of final clauses in the 17 million word corpus of modernRomanian examined here, as seen in Table 6.7., shows that the infinitive is used in more thanhalf of all final dependent clauses.

Table 6.7. – Final Constructions

34Though often best translated by a final clause, de+supine expresses possibility, not purpose.

6.2. SYNCHRONIC USE OF PREPOSITIONAL INFINITIVES 169

Final construction Percentagepentru a+infinitive 45.77 %ca sa+subjunctive 25.18 %sa+subjunctive 15.73 %spre a+infinitive 7.62 %pentru ca sa+subjunctive 4.65 %la+supine 0.62 %pentru+supine 0.34 %spre sa+subjunctive 0.09 %——————————————————total infinitive construction 53.39 %total finite construction 45.56 %total supine construction 1.05 %

6.2.2 Noun complements

A further area in which infinitive complements are clearly preferred over their finite counterpartsis in prepositional complements of nouns, as seen in Table 6.8.

Table 6.8. – Noun + complement:

Complement Type Percentagenoun + de a + infinitive 56.78 %noun + ca + finite verb 25.79 %noun + de + supine 11.01 %noun + sa+finite verb 6.42 %

Nouns do not necessarily have a specific agent or subject, and this would appear to be conduciveto the use of infinitival complements sharing the non-specific or ‘arbitrary’ subject of the headnoun, similar to (300) above. But while subjectless or ‘passive’ noun complementation is oneof the functions of the infinitive in other Romance languages such as Spanish, this domain iscovered by the supine in Romanian35. This is true for lexicalized constructions such as Span.goma de mascar, Ital. gomma da masticare, Rom. guma de mestecat ‘chewing gum’, as well asnew concepts (302).

302. Span.: En efecto: para el, la casa es ‘una maquina de vivir’ y reconcibe la manera deconstruir.36

in effect, for him, the house is a machine DE liveinf and reconceives the way of constructing

In effect, for him the house is a ‘dwelling machine’ and he conceives a new way of build-ing.

Rom.: Locuinta nu este un obiect, o masina de locuit,... 37

dwelling.place.the not is an object, a machine DE dwellsupine...

The dwelling place isn’t an object, a dwelling machine,...

The Romanian infinitive, in contrast, is typically used coreferentially, as the complement ofnouns with a specific agent, either explicit as genitival agent (303), or pragmatically implied

35For an in-depth survey of the exact usage and limitations of the supine, see Manoliu-Manea (1985: 279-291).36http://www.tam.itesm.mx/art/arquit/earqui05.htm37Mircea Eliade: Sacrul si profanul, Cap.1, Cosmogonie si sacrificiu de constructie Bucuresti: Humanitas, 1995.


(304).

303. capacitatea sa de a cınta la toate instrumentele38

ability.the his DE to playinf on all instruments.the

his ability to play any instrument

304. Gasise o metoda ingenioasa de a evita acest cuvant.39

find3rd.sg.P luperf a method ingenious DE to avoidinf this word

He had found an ingenious way of avoiding this word.

With nouns that cannot have an agent, thus making coreferentiality impossible, finite clauses(305) are the more common alternative, but infinitival complementation is also found (306),particularly when there is a link such as ownership of the head noun by the complement subject.

305. Cred ca a venit timpul sa semneze cu adevaratu-i nume. 40

I.believe that has come time.the SA sign3rd.sg.pres.subjctv with true.the-DAT.PRON3rd.sg name

I think the time has come for him to sign with his real name.

306. Am cel putin timpul de a-mi bea cafeaua. 41

I.have the little time.the DE to-DAT.PRON1st.sg drinkinf coffee.the

At least I have the time to drink my coffee.

However, with this type of head noun, infinitival complementation is comparatively rare; forexample, ocazia de a ‘the occasion to’ takes the infinitive in a quarter of cases, and timpul de a‘the time to’ in only 6% of all tokens. This suggests that there is a link between coreferentialityand the choice of an infinitival clause, even when the agent of the noun does not appear as asyntactic subject. This will be examined in more detail in Section 6.4.1 below.

6.2.3 Summary and analysis of the synchronic data

The synchronic data presented in this section provides clear evidence that infinitival clauses arean integral part of modern Romanian syntax; whilst infinitival complements, apart from thedoubtful case with a putea, are a relatively marginal phenomenon, mostly restricted to veryformal register, this cannot be said of prepositional infinitival adjuncts. In the following section(6.3), it will indeed be seen that at least one type of infinitival construction, the prepositionalinfinitive, is on the increase.

Romanian does not differ fundamentally from the majority of Romance varieties regarding thetype of constructions that the infinitive can occur in. Examples have been provided to illustratethe various types of shared infinitival constructions.

There are two things that do set Romanian apart from most other Romance languages.42 Thefirst is the fact that a number of verbs and prepositions rule out the use of an infinitival clause,

38Romania Literara 3, 24.1.1996; Lecturi. Monica Spiridon: Introducere in metoda lui Paul Cornea.39Romania Literara 41, 18.10.1995; Centenar Alexandru Rosetti. Toma Pavel: Un incoruptibil al culturii

romaane.40Romania Literara 34, 26.9.1998; Dorin Tudoran: Pupat toti piata unive’sitati – Riscul de tara si riscul de

tata.41Romania Literara 7, 19.2.1997; Iordan Chimet: Scrisori printre gratii Odysseas Elytis.42However, the southern Italian dialects that were traditionally believed to have lost the infinitive almost

completely (cf. Rohlfs, 1922: 219) appear to use the infinitive in much the same way as Romanian (cf. Ledgeway,1998).

6.3. DIACHRONIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE PREPOSITIONAL INFINITIVE 171

most notably a vrea ‘to want’, or concessive prepositions. However, similar local restrictionsare found in other Romance languages, too. For instance, the Spanish prepositions a pesar de‘despite’ and temporal desde ‘since’ also show a strong resistance to infinitival use, and it can beargued decir ‘to say’ cannot take infinitival complements, since the construction decir+infinitiveis a seperate, aspectually different verb meaning ‘to claim’43.

The second difference is the optionality of the infinitive construction. In Section 3.1, it has beenshown that in the majority of Spanish and Portuguese constructions, specific reference patternstrigger obligatory replacement of a finite clause with its infinitival counterpart. In Romanian,in contrast, there is (except in certain auxiliary constructions) no syntactically binding contextnecessitating use of the infinitive.

This means that the principle difference between Romanian and its western sister languages ismerely one of obligatoriness, and as a result also one of quantity. This is particularly notablewith regard to subjects and direct object complements, whilst prepositional adjunct construc-tions appear to be a more favourable environment for the infinitive. It is these prepositionalinfinitives that will be examined in more detail in the following sections of this chapter.

6.3 Diachronic development of the prepositional infinitive

It is sometimes suggested (eg. Close, 1974: 227) that the present-day usage of infinitives islargely the result of foreign influence, in particular the imitation of similar French structures, bycertain influential 19th century authors44. Close (1974: 220) argues that “by the beginning of the19th century, [the infinitive] was practically confined to certain constructions”, but that it wasrevived (not calqued) in other constructions due to the influence of Western European languages.

Whether a fashionable stylistic feature, used by one particular group of authors, is likely topermeate a language that, at the time, was largely that of an illiterate population, is debatable.Furthermore, even authors from the same period who are known not to have been influencedby Western European style use the corresponding infinitive structures. Whilst the literary andsociological aspects of the issue are beyond the scope of this study, this section will provide sta-tistical information on the development of one type of infinitive construction, the prepositionalinfinitive, which will, in turn, shed some new light onto the possible motivation for its emergenceand evolution.

6.3.1 The situation in Old Romanian

From the earliest preserved Old Romanian (i.e. 16th century) texts, the infinitive is normallypreceded by a, except with modal/auxiliary verbs and the construction a avea+indirect wh-question. A certain variation is found even with the future auxiliary a vrea45 and the deonticmodal a putea46, which occasionally link their infinitive complements with a; with the epis-temic/future a avea a, the subordinator is obligatory47.

43Cf. Section 3.1.344Among these famous authors are Ion Eliade Radulescu, Barbu Paris Mumuleanu, Iana Vacarescu, Grigore

Alexandrescu, according to Close (1974).45E.g. ca veti cu adevar a afla ‘that you will surely A find’, preface of the Palia de la Orastie (1581-1582), as

edited by M. Avram in Iordan (1962: 166).46E.g. cum sa poata si ei propovedui si a spune... ‘how they, too, can preach and A say’, epilogue of the Tılcul

Evanghelilor (1564), as edited by M. Avram in Iordan (1962: 162).47E.g. sa aiba a dare ‘that he should A give’, Sentinta din 1588, as edited by M. Avram in Iordan (1962: 151).


A also functions as a semantically bleached infinitival complementizer, both for object comple-ments (307) and subject complements (308).

307. ...ca uitaiu a manca panre mea48

that I.forgot to eatinf bread.the POS.PRON1st.sg

...that I forgot to eat my bread

308. In sfanta besereca mai bine e a grai cinci cuvinte cu ınteles decat 10 mie de cuvinteneıntelese ın limba striina.49

in holy.the church more good is to speakinf five words with sense...

In the holy church it is better to say five words with sense than ten thousand incom-prehensible words in a foreign language.

But at the same time, a still retains its final meaning in other contexts, introducing purposeadjuncts (309).

309. ... ce-mi era daruit de Dumnezeu a da la acest lucru.50

... REL.PRON.-to.me was given from God A giveinf to this work

... which was given to me by God to dedicate to this work.

Such infinitival purpose adjuncts are found relatively frequently; in fact, they occur in OldRomanian with almost exactly the same frequency as pentru/spre a+infinitive in the modernlanguage, with approximately 9 instances per 10,000 words. In addition to these clear-cut cases,there are also numerous instances where a clear classification of a as either a final prepositionintroducing an adjunct, or as the complementizer of a complement with a final nuance, can bemade, as in a fi ınvatat a51 (‘to be taught (in order) to’) or example (310).

310. ...ca sa fie tare si putarnece a tine parte de ocena de acole52

as that be3rd.sg.subjnctv strong and powerful to holdinf part.the of property.the of there

...so that he may have the strength and power to keep that part of the property

What is crucial for the further development is that Old Romanian did not have prepositionalinfinitives apart from the final construction with a. This is a result of the hybrid function of aas a grammaticalized, semantically bleached marker of the infinitive on the one hand, but as anintroducing element for final adjuncts on the other. The (in most contexts) obligatory nature ofthe sequence a+infinitive rules out replacing a by a different preposition; at the same time, thefact that a also still functions as a fully semantic preposition appears to make the sequence pre-position+a+infinitive unacceptable.53 Therefore, the modern Romanian prepositional infinitiveconstruction can only start evolving freely after a has all but lost its prepositional function.

48Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, Psalm of David No.101, as edited by F. Dimitrescu in Iordan (1962: 170).49Epilogue of the Tetraevanghelul by Hans Benker (1561), as edited by M. Avram in Iordan (1962: 151).50From the introduction to an edition of Coresi’s Evanghelia cu ınvatatura printed in 1580/81, as edited by M.

Avram in Iordan (1962: 164-165).51ibid.52Sentinta din 1588, as edited by M. Avram in Iordan (1962: 151).53Note that this is not a necessary consequence; German um zu or older English for to is acceptable in these

languages, even though zu/to retains a separate prepositional function.


6.3.2 The evolution of the prepositional infinitive

In accordance with a retaining its prepositional status in some usages, one of the first prepositionsto take infinitives is de, as it is semantically imprecise or “transparent” (Simoes Froes, 1995).As Fig. 6.1 shows how de gradually begins to gain significance in the 18th century, increasing infrequency rapidly from the 19th century onwards.

1560 1580 1600 1620 1640 1660 1680 1700 1720 1740 1760 1780 1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000

0

25

50

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225

250

de a + infinitive

de a + infinitive

Linear regression, de a + infinitive

year

per 1

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00 w

ords

Figure 6.1: de a + infinitive

Even earlier, at the beginning of the 18th century, the first appearance of abessive fara a +infinitive can be found. Significantly, it is from the very beginning not restricted to formal orliterary register, but can, for instance, be found in the cook book O lume ıntr-o carte de bucate,in a recipe for cooked bottle gourds (311).

311. Apoi lasa sa stea un ceas - doao, pana ce-si va lasa bine zeama, fara a-l pune pe foc.54

then leaveimprtv.sg that remains one hour - two, until that-REFLDat will leave well juice.the, without to-it putinf

on fire

Then, leave it to stand for one to two hours, until it is well juiced, without putting itonto the fire.

Like de a +inf., fara a also becomes significantly more frequent towards the end of the 19th

century, as seen in Fig. 6.2.

1560 1580 1600 1620 1640 1660 1680 1700 1720 1740 1760 1780 1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000

0

2,5

5

7,5

10

12,5

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17,5

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22,5

25

27,5

fara a + infinitive

fãrã a+infinitive

Linear regression, fãrã a+infinitive

year

per 1

00,0

00 w

ords

Figure 6.2: fara a+ infinitive

Temporal pana (la) a+infinitive is also found as early as the 18th century (312), used in a slightlydifferent sense than its modern meaning ‘until’. To the present day, it appears to be a matter ofpersonal preference whether or not authors use pana (la) a+inf., but it has, in any case, beenavailable since the 18th century.

54O lume ıntr-o carte de bucate – Tigve, Brancovenesc manuscript.


312. Am socotit, pına ımi sınt mintile ıntregi si pına a nu ma cuprinde de tot slabiciunea, demi-am facut diiata...55

I.have thought, until meDat are minds.the complete and until to not meDat gripinf of all weakness.the, PREP

meDat-I.have made will.the

I have decided, as long as my mind is sane and as long as weakness hasn’t completelytaken hold of me, to make my will...

In the early 19th century, final spre a+infinitive also catches on (Fig. 6.3). This is of some signif-icance in the sequence of emerging prepositional infinitives, as the use of a new final prepositionin combination with a means that the latter is likely to have lost all or most of its final force atthis stage.

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2,5

5

7,5

10

12,5

15

17,5

20

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25

27,5

spre a + infinitive

spre a+infinitive

Linear regression, spre a+infinitive

year

per 1

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ords

Figure 6.3: spre a+ infinitive

Following on the heels of spre a+inf., final pentru a+inf. appears (Fig. 6.4). Once available, itrapidly becomes the most frequent prepositional infinitive, and together with the largely syn-onymous spre a it effectively takes on the role of Old Romanian final a+infinitive; the jointdevelopment of these two final prepositional infinitives can be seen in Fig. 6.5.

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100pentru a + infinitive

pentru a+infinitiveLinear regression, pentru a+infinitive

year

per

100,

000

wor

ds

Figure 6.4: pentru a+ infinitive

55Diata Stancai (1784).


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final preposition + infinitive

final prep + infinitive

Linear regression, final prep + infinitive

year

per 1

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Figure 6.5: final prepositions + infinitive

Instrumental prin a and temporal ınainte de a follow suit, gradually gaining popularity fromthe end of the 19th century onwards. (Figs. 6.6 and 6.7, respectively.)

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prin a + infinitive

prin a+infinitive

Linear regression, prin a+infinitive

year

per

100,

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wor

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Figure 6.6: prin a+ infinitive

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0

2,5

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10

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20

inainte de a + infinitive

înainte de a+infinitive

Linear regression, înainte de a+infinitive

year

per

100,

000

wor

ds

Figure 6.7: ınainte de a+ infinitive

Interestingly, no counterpart to ınainte de a with anterior main clause has, to the present day,gained comparable popularity. Neither of the temporal prepositions dupa or ın urma (de) com-monly introduces an infinitival clause.

On a smaller scale, a similar development can be observed for the prepositional expression ın locde a+infinitive ‘in place of, instead of’. This is significant because it shows that the prepositionstaking infinitves are not necessarily monomorphic; however, the development visible in Fig. 6.8does show a delayed onset of the rise in frequency, which only becomes evident in the mid-20th

century.


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0

0,5

1

1,5

2

2,5

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in loc de a + infinitive

în loc de a + infinitive

Linear regression, în loc de a + infinitive

year

per

100,

000

wor

ds

Figure 6.8: ın loc de a + infinitive

To complete this survey, it must be mentioned that no concessive infinitival structure hasemerged to the present day, the conjunction desi covering the entire concessive domain. Theconcessive preposition ın ciuda does not take infinitival clauses. This may be due to the factthat it requires its argument to take genitive case, for which the infinitive has no morphologicalprovisions, as discussed in Section 3.4.3. On the other hand, a similar resistance to concessiveinfinitival clauses in Spanish and Portuguese, as illustrated in the respective chapters, wouldsuggest a common reason in all three languages; this will be discussed further in Section 6.4.

The causal domain has similarly remained exclusively finite and gerundial; the preposition dincauza does not take infinitival clauses, and the clausal conjunctions pentru ca, fiindca, deoareceand ıntrucat do not have prepositional counterparts.

6.3.3 The proportion of infinitival and finite clauses through time

An important question raised by the increase in prepositional infinitives over the last two cen-turies is how this has affected the frequency of the alternative finite constructions. Due tolimitations of space, the relative proportion of finite and infinitival clauses cannot be examinedfor each prepositional infinitive separately. However, their interdependence can be exempli-fied with reference to the most common prepositional infinitive, pentru a+inf. and its finitecounterpart pentru ca (sa) (Fig. 6.9).

1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

0

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70

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final "pentru ca" + finite clause VS. pentru a + infinitive

pentru a+infinitive

pentru ca

Linear regression, pentru a+infinitive

Linear regression, pentru ca

year

per 1

00,0

00 w

ords

Figure 6.9: pentru ca (sa) + finite clause vs. pentru a + infinitive

Both the finite and the infinitival construction increase in frequency, but the infinitival one risesfrom zero to a number far exceeding that of its finite counterpart. The comparison of the overallusage of finite and infinitival final clauses (cf. Table 6.7. above) in Fig. 6.10 shows how theirrespective frequencies converge, leading to approximate parity between the finite and infinitivalconstruction in the modern language.

6.4. PRAGMATIC CAUSATION 177

1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

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final conjunction + finite clause VS. final preposition + infinitive

final prep + infinitive

final conjunctions

year

per

100,

000

wor

ds

Figure 6.10: final conjunction + finite clause vs. final preposition + infinitive

6.4 Pragmatic causation

6.4.1 The subject of Romanian infinitival clauses

In the previous chapters, a link between the pragmatic likelihood of subject coreference on theone hand, and the increase in prepositional infinitives on the other, was observed for Spanishand Portuguese. In order to establish whether similar mechanisms are responsible for the devel-opments in Romanian, the first step must be to take a closer look at typical subject referencepatterns in infinitival clauses.

In Section 6.2.3, it was observed that unlike the majority of Romance languages, Romanian neverrequires the use of the infinitive in coreferential dependent clauses except in auxiliary construc-tions. On the other hand, these auxiliary constructions and the verbs in Table 6.2. suggest thatthere is, nevertheless, a connection between coreferentiality and the infinitive, whilst with thecausative verbs in Table 6.5. the dependent clause subject is coreferent with the direct object ofthe main verb. These patterns resemble the pragmatically-based default patterns established forSpanish and Portuguese in Section 3.1, but as in Spanish and Portuguese, they are not exclusive.

On the one hand, these default patterns are not binding. As seen in sentences (289) and (301), ifthere is sufficient pragmatic clarity regarding the identity of the subject of the dependent clause,there is no need for PRO to receive the coindexation that would be assigned by default.

On the other hand, Romanian allows infinitives to have overt subjects. Mensching (2000: 37)goes so far as to claim that “[g]enerally, it seems that whenever speakers accept an infinitiveconstruction, they also accept the fact that it may have a specified subject.” Though this istechnically the case, overt subjects in infinitival direct object complements of verbs such as thosein Tables 6.2., 6.4. and 6.5. are virtually always those predicted by the standard assignmentpattern. Their function is merely to repeat and emphasize the subject, and they are typicallyaccompanied by an emphatic pronoun ınsusi ‘himself’, or by si ‘too, also’. Sentence (313)illustrates the use with an intrinsically coreferential verb; it remains ambiguous whether si euis, in fact, an overt infinitival subject or the postposed subject of the main verb ındraznesc, asthese must always be identical.

313. Cand a venit momentul [...] sa ındraznesc a semna si eu o astfel de rubrica,...56

when has come moment.the [...] that I.dare to signinf also I a such rubric

When the time has come [...] that I, too, dare to sign such a rubric,...

Sentences (314-315) illustrate how causative verbs can also have emphatic overt subjects, butthat this subject must obligatorily be coreferent with the direct object of the main verb.

56Romania Literara 19, 17.5.2000, Aniversare Geo Dumitrescu; Constanta Buzea: Scrisoarea ratacita


314. M-a obligat a-l ajuta si eu/∗tu pe fratele meu.meacc.sg-has obliged to-himacc.sg helpinf also I/∗you ACC.PARTCL. brother.the my

He put it upon me that I/∗you, too, should help my brother.

315. M-a sfatuit a-l cauta eu ınsumi/∗tu ınsuti pe preotul satului ca sa ıl ıntreb de infinitive.meacc.sg-has advised to-himacc.sg searchinf I myself/∗you yourself ACC.PARTCL priest.the...

He advised me that I myself should find the village priest to ask him about infinitives.

Whilst in the above two examples it is logically, or at least pragmatically, impossible for thecomplement to have a subject other than the one predictable from the main verb, optionallycoreferential verbs such as those in Table 6.4. do not take infinitival complements with overtnon-coreferential subjects, either; the association of the infinitive with subject coreference ap-pears to prevail with these verbs.

Overt infinitive subjects have a more meaningful role in constructions that lack these relativelystrict patterns of subject assignment. Impersonal expressions, for one, do not themselves containany information as to the identity of the subject of their complement, so there is a greaterpragmatic need to express it overtly, as seen in sentence (316).

316. E barbatie si curagiu a ınfrunta cineva valurile lumii minciunoase.57

is manliness and courage to faceinf someone waves.the world.theGen.Sg. full.of.lies

It is manliness and courage (for one) to face the waves of a world full of lies.

Even more commonly, overt subjects specify the subject in complements of nouns, as the nounitself does not normally assign a subject to its complement in a predictable way (317).

317. Obtine de la rege agrementul de a forma el un guvern...58

obtains from PREP king commission.the PREP to forminf he a government

He receives the king’s commission that he should form a government.

Prepositional infinitives can also be accompanied by overt subjects, either for emphasis, orbecause it is not coreferent with the main clause subject (318),(319).

318. Va rugam nu mai parcati decat la domiciliul dv. pentru a putea si noi sa parcam ladomiciliul nostru.59

youAcc.polite ask1st.pl not more park2nd.polite except at home your for to be.ableinf also we that park1st.pl at

home our

Would you please not park anywhere except outside your house, so that we, too, can parkoutside our house.

319. Cu putin timp ınainte de a ajunge eu ın Tara Sfanta, Sebastian Costin facuse un infarct.60

with little time before DE to arriveinf I in land.the holy, S.C. made a heart.attack

Shortly before I arrived in the Holy Land, Sebastian Costin had a heart attack.

However, the possibility of having overt subjects does not mean that they occur very frequently.On the contrary, only about one in 400 infinitives has an overt subject. Of these, about halfare merely emphatic, while the rest actually specifies a subject other than the one that wouldotherwise have been assigned. Even though the majority of those instances occur with prepo-sitional infinitives, it remains a minute proportion of the total number of prepositional infinitives.

57Romania Literara 34, 25.8.2000, Lecturi la zi; Ioana Pavulescu: Riscurile meseriei58Romania Literara 50, 20.12.2000, Cronica editiilor; Z. Ornea: Patronul ‘Universului’59Note left behind my windscreen wiper in Bucharest, 1998.60Romania Literara 10, 18.3.1998; Gheorghe Schwartz: Amurgul unei literaturi


Consequently, by far the most common pattern of subject assignment in prepositional infinitiveclauses is coreferentiality, and as in Spanish and Portuguese, this link plays an important partin the readiness of certain prepositions to take infinitival clauses.

As discussed in Section 3.2, a similar tendency for the availability of overt subjects not to beexploited for the purpose of introducing subjects other than those predicted by the normal as-signment patterns is also apparent in Spanish and Portuguese.

6.4.2 Romanian in comparison with Spanish and Portuguese

The most obvious and striking observation when comparing the Romanian data with those ofSpanish and Portuguese is that, on the whole, the prepositional infinitives corresponding tothose that evolved earliest and strongest in Spanish and Portuguese are also the ones foundmost frequently in Romanian.

As the timing of their first appearance rules out cultural borrowing or calquing from otherRomance languages, it must be assumed that we are dealing with an independent develop-ment. A further argument in support of independent development is the fact that Romanianprepositional infinitives obligatorily involve the particle a interpolated between preposition andinfinitive, which gives the construction an appearance rather unlike its French or Italian coun-terparts. Indeed, in the 19th century, when Romanian was subjected to strong cultural influencefrom France, authors did, occasionally, use calqued infinitive constructions without the a, asseen in Sentence (320) taken from Ion Ghica’s Scrisori catre V. Alecsandri, written in 1887.

320. Porunceste de-i aduce ındata un caftan si-l ımbraca.order3rd.sg DE-himDat. immediately a caftan...

He gives order to bring him a caftan immediately and puts it on.

Romanian prepositional infinitives having emerged independently and at a later stage than inthe other Romance languages, a detailed comparison can be expected to reveal similarities intheir distribution, which in turn will allow conclusions about cross-linguistic factors facilitatingthis parallel development.

Synchronic comparison

Table 6.9. shows the present-day proportion of prepositional infinitives to their finite counter-parts in Romanian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Table 6.9. – Percentage of prepositional clauses

Preposition/Conjunction % inf. % finite

final Romanian 53.39 % 45.56 %Spanish 84.44 % 15.56 %Portuguese 89.95 % 10.05 %

‘before’ Rom. ınainte de a / ınainte sa 81.33 % 18.44 %Span. antes de / antes (de) que 59.50 % 40.5 %Port. antes de / antes (de) que 90.77 % 9.23 %


‘without’ Rom. fara a / fara sa 39.45 % 60.55 %Span. sin / sin que 84.79 % 15.21 %Port. sem / sem que 79.74 % 20.26 %

‘until’ Rom. pana (la) a / pana ce/sa/cand 18.85 % 81.15 %Span. hasta / hasta que 28.99 % 71.01 %Port. ate / ate que 48.62 % 51.38 %

‘instead of’ Rom. ın loc de a / ın loc (ca) sa 6.51 % 93.49 %Span. en vez,lugar de / en vez,lugar (de) que 99.39 % 0.61 %Port. em vez,lugar de / e vez,lugar (de) que 99.89 % 0.11 %

‘after’ Rom. (dupa a), ın urma de a / dupa ce 0.05 % 99.5 %Span. despues/luego de, tras / despues de que 57.42 % 42.58 %Port. depois(de)/segundo/apos / depois (de) que 97.74 % 2.26 %

‘concessive’ Rom. (ın/cu ciuda de a)/desi, cu toate ca 0.00 %61 100.00 %Span. a pesar de, pese a / aunque, a pesar de que 4.61 % 95.39 %Port. apesar de / apesar (de), ainda, embora que 16.92 % 83.08 %

On the whole, Table 6.9. shows that the proportion of prepositional infinitives is generally lowerin Romanian than it is in Spanish and Portuguese. This is, however, not surprising, as the infini-tive is never obligatory in the Romanian constructions. It is, therefore, perhaps more surprisingthat in the final domain, as well as the temporal domain with anterior main clause (‘before’),the prepositional construction dominates in all three languages. Similarly, abessive ‘without’often takes the infinitive, though not in the majority of cases in Romanian. The infinitivalconstruction with ‘until’ is less dominant in all three languages, but nevertheless it accounts fora significant proportion of this type of temporal clause.

At the other end of the scale, similarities can also be observed: in the concessive domain, theinfinitive is of far less importance in all three languages. Significant differences are found in theusage of ‘instead of’ and ‘after’, which commonly take the infinitive in Spanish and Portuguese,but not in Romanian. A comparative look at the historical development of these prepositionalinfinitives provides some clues why this may be the case.

Diachronic comparison

Parallels between Romanian, Spanish and Portuguese are evident in the development of themore frequently occurring prepositional infinitives: de a+inf. appears early on in Romanian(Fig. 6.1), and de+inf. is also present from the earliest Spanish and Portuguese texts (Fig.4.12). Similarly, fara a+inf. and ınainte de a+inf. appear early on in Romanian (cf. Figs.6.2and 6.7), and so do the corresponding constructions in Spanish and Portuguese (cf. Figs.5.7 and5.2).

In the final domain, the situation is more complex, as the final preposition itself changes in bothIbero-Romance and Romanian. In Fig. 4.9 it has been shown how para takes over the finaldomain from por in Spanish in the 16th and 17th century; this is subsequently joined by Span.a fin de+inf. (cf. Fig. 4.21, and Port. a fim de+inf. (cf. Fig. 5.11) the latter having expe-rienced a strong increase since the late 19th century. From a semantic point of view, however,


it is important to note that final prepositional infinitives have been present, and comparativelycommon, from the very earliest texts. This is also true for Romanian, which has also experi-enced a replacement of the final preposition involved in the construction. In Section (6.3.1), ithas been illustrated how a still frequently functions as a preposition introducing final infinitivalclauses in the 16th century, and it is argued that its continuing grammaticalization and semanticbleaching leads to the rise of spre a+inf. and pentru a+inf. (cf. Figs. 6.3 and 6.4). The finaldomain can therefore be said to be particularly closely linked to the prepositional infinitive,as this construction is not only the first, or among the first, to emerge, but also remains theconstruction in which infinitival clauses are most dominant compared to finite ones.

At first sight, there appears to be less similarity regarding the substitutional domain (‘insteadof’). In Spanish and Portuguese, the infinitive is used in these clauses in almost every case(Table 6.9)., while in Romanian there is a clear dominance of the finite structure in this domain.But the diachronic development in Spanish, as charted in Fig. 4.20 to compare the differentialdevelopment of en lugar de+inf. and en vez de+inf. and conflated into a single graph in Fig.6.11, shows how the synchronic discrepancy between Romanian and Spanish might be explainedfrom a diachronic perspective.

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Fig. 6.11 shows that it took ‘two attempts’ for the Spanish construction to gain today’s degreeof acceptance and usage, having occurred in the 16th and the first half of the 17th century tosome extent, but only re-entered the language to reach its current usage frequency relativelyrecently, around the beginning of the 19th century.

The ‘two attempts’ show that in this domain there is little predictability regarding the evolu-tionary trajectory, and that no clear or natural tendency towards the dominance of either thefinite or the infinitival construction in the ‘substitutional’ domain. Since prepositional infini-tives have emerged much more recently in Romanian, it is possible that ın loc de a+inf. is yetto gain the popularity that Span. en vez/lugar de+inf. has acquired over the last 200 years or so.

Concessive prepositional infinitives have also only appeared comparatively recently in Spanish(cf. Section 4.2.5), and their overall share of concessive clauses (Fig. 4.36) remains very small, sohere, too, a parallel between Romanian and Spanish can be observed, and it may be speculatedthat, in time, concessive prepositional infinitives will begin to enter Romanian, too.

For ‘after’, on the other hand, no such explanation seems likely. In Figs. 4.27 and 4.28, itwas shown that Span. antes de+inf. and despues de+inf. emerged at roughly the same time,and subsequently continued to develop along similar lines. The asymmetry between commonlyused ınainte de a+inf. (‘before’) and virtually non-existent dupa a+inf. or ın urma de a+inf.(‘after’) in Romanian is more reminiscent of the asymmetry between frequently used hasta+inf.


and virtually non-existent desde+inf. in Spanish, and also the corresponding Portuguese andRomanian pairs of prepositions (ate – desde ‖ pana (la) a – de a62).

Coreferentiality and pragmatic likelihood

The degree of similarity between Romanian, Spanish, and Portuguese in terms of the order inwhich the different prepositional infinitives enter the languages, and in terms of their present-daydistribution, suggests that the parallels are unlikely to be coincidental. If contact between therespective languages cannot be held responsible, then the data presented for Romanian in thischapter provides strong support for the pragmatically-based hypothesis proposed for Spanish inSection 4.4.

Throughout this chapter, it has been shown that the patterns by which the subject of infinitivesare assigned in Romanian resemble those found in Spanish and Portuguese: whilst some partic-ular main verbs trigger object control, the default pattern with most verbs and prepositions issubject coreferentiality between main and dependent clause.

In all three languages, infinitives are capable of taking their own, overt subject, by which thedefault pattern of subject assignment may be broken. However, the number of cases in whichthis happens is comparatively small, and even those infinitives with overt subjects regularly con-form to the default pattern, the overt subject merely having an emphatic or contrastive function.

This close association of prepositional infinitives with coreferentiality plays a central role in theirrise and frequency, as the main verb and the prepositional clause are more likely to share thesame subject with some prepositions than with others in actual language use. Perhaps the twomost extreme examples are the final construction on the one end of the scale, and the concessiveone on the other: in all three languages examined here, final prepositional clauses are in theirmajority coreferential, whilst concessive ones share the main clause subject much less frequently.This was illustrated for Spanish in Fig. 4.43 (reproduced in Fig. 6.12 for convenience) and forPortuguese in Fig. 5.15 (6.13); Fig. 6.1463 shows that in Romanian, too, final clauses are usu-ally coreferential, whilst concessive clauses do not, in their majority, share the subject of theirmain clause. It should, in particular, be noted that the ratio of coreferential to non-coreferentialclauses, final as well as concessive, remains remarkably stable over time in all three languages,with around 40% of all concessive clauses and around 80% of all finite clauses being coreferential.

Figure 6.12: Percentage of coreferential final and concessive dependent clauses in Spanish

62De a+inf. is, of course, a very common construction in its other meanings, but it is never used to mean‘since’.

63Fig. 6.14 does not include verbless NPs or PPs, which might, arguably, be understood to be dependent clauseswith copula ellipsis.

6.5. CONCLUSION 183

Figure 6.13: Overall percentage of coreferential final and concessive clauses in Portuguesewhite = final, black = concessive

Figure 6.14: Percentage of coreferential final and concessive dependent clauses in Romanian

Similarly consistent rates of coreferential usage appear to apply for several of the clause typeslisted in Table 6.9. above, and more detailed classification according to this parameter mayprovide further insights into the relation between usage frequency and a preference or resistanceto infinitival structures.

6.5 Conclusion

To conclude this chapter, it is at this point sufficient to observe that in Romanian, as in Spanishand Portuguese, there is a clear connection between the types of dependent clause favouringuse of the infinitive on the one hand, and the likelihood of the respective construction beingcoreferential on the other. That is not to say that coreferentiality automatically triggers theuse of the infinitive, as seen in the case of concessive constructions in all three languages, andall prepositional infinitives in Romanian. Nor does it rule out the use of the infinitive in non-coreferential clauses, if the identity of the subject can be determined by other strategies, suchas overt person marking within the dependent clause or unambiguous contextual cues. The linkbetween coreferentiality and prepositional infinitives manifests itself most clearly at a differentlevel: the greater the number of coreferential tokens of a semantic type in actual language usage,the more likely it is for a prepositional construction to emerge at an early stage and becomewidely used.

Chapter 7

Relevance and reanalysis:prepositional complementizers

7.1 The emergence of prepositional complementizers

As discussed in Section 1.3.3, no clear dividing line can be drawn between what is traditionallyreferred to as peripheral clause or adjunct on the one hand, and clausal object or complementon the other, but it is nevertheless possible to identify prototypical instances of both. Whilstthe previous chapters have largely concentrated on tracing the history of constructions that arerelatively clearly classifiable as one or the other, this section will take a closer look at the greyarea between the two prototypes.

In particular, the usage of two prepositions, a and de, which in the modern language frequentlyfunction as complementizers of prototypical infinitival complements, will be examined diachro-nically in order to explain how they acquired this purely syntactic function in certain construc-tions, shedding their semantic content. The account presented in this chapter is based on theassumption that individual ‘prepositional infinitives’ with a specific preposition can be subjectto reanalysis processes of the kind described in Section 1.3.2, taking on the status of an inde-pendent construction (cf. Section 1.3.4) in which semantic and functional status is reassignedamong its constituent elements.

7.1.1 The origin of prepositional infinitives

In Chapter 2 it was shown that the overall typology of Latin was different from that of Romance:Latin used inflectional morphology as its primary strategy to express the logical and semanticrelationships between the constituents of a sentence, but large-scale reduction or loss of thismorphology rendered this system non-functional. The Romance languages developed alternativestrategies to clarify sentence-internal constituent relations, among which the use of prepositionsfigures prominently. Where Latin used a wide range of specific ‘nominal’ verb forms1 whosemorphological shape gave an indication of the dependent structure’s logical relation to the mainverb, Romance expresses such relations by exploiting the originally purely physical sense ofprepositions, widening their range of usage to cover semantically similar, but more abstractnotions. This is already well established in the earliest surviving texts, as shown in the following

1This includes prolative infinitives such as FACERE VOLO/POSSUM, where the infinitive is the direct objectcomplement. The prepositionless prolative infinitive survives into Romance virtually unchanged, but it must beseen as entirely separate from prepositional infinitives constructions; it is obvious that prepositional infinitivalcomplements are not based on the prolative construction, which had and has no need for a preposition to introducea direct object clause.

185

186 CH. 7. RELEVANCE AND REANALYSIS: PREPOSITIONAL COMPLEMENTIZERS

examples from the Primera Cronica General.

321. Abstract use of de<DE “down from, away from”

se auie levantado de dormir2

REFL had got.up from sleepinf

He had got up from sleeping.

322. Abstract use of a<AD ‘towards, to’

el rey caualgo con el a escorrirle fuera de la uilla3

the king rode with him to escortinf+him out of the town

The king rode together with him to escort him out of town.

323. Abstract use of pora<PRO AD “for to”:

el caualgo luego et sus fijos pora yrse pora alla4

he rode afterwards and his sons for.to goinf+REFL for.to there

Then he and his sons rode on horseback to go there.

7.1.2 From adjunct to complement

Initially, such prepositional infinitives function only as typical adjuncts, providing additionalinformation to the sentence that may be required pragmatically in the context of the utterance,but not syntactically by the argument structure of the main verb. But it is precisely these prag-matic (contextual) requirements that eventually lead to the gradual change in syntactic statusof the prepositional infinitive, and thereby implicitly to a change of the preposition’s function.

The semantic content of certain verbs makes it likely that the average language user will beinterested in a certain type of additional, ‘circumstantial’ information particularly frequently.Use of the Spanish verb aprender ‘to learn’, will often not just raise the question what is beinglearnt, but also what the [purpose] of this learning is. – Learning something does, after all,require an effort, and is thus unlikely to be done without a good reason or purpose; such a goodreason is frequently worth mentioning. In other words, for the verb aprender, [purpose] veryfrequently has a high degree of pragmatic relevance5.

At the same time, a great deal of semantic overlap between the [content]6 (i.e. the materialbeing learnt) and the [purpose] of learning can be expected: someone who acquires the skill ofreading will do this for the primary purpose of being able to read. So in sentence (324), ‘a leer’could be said to represent both the semantic [content] and the [purpose] of aprender.

324. Mi hermanito esta aprendiendo a leer.my brotherdim learn3rd.sg.pres.cont to read

My little brother is learning to read.

Originally, prepositional ‘a leer’ in such a sentence would have been used purely to express [pur-pose] (cf. 323). The frequent relevance of both [purpose] and [content], combined with their

2Primera Cronica General: 632a493Primera Cronica General: 624a244Primera Cronica General: 516b125Pragmatic relevance is used here in a way that is largely compatible with the basic conditions for relevance

proposed by Sperber & Wilson (1986; 1987: 702-704), but this study is not primarily concerned with its cognitiveaspects.

6[content] will be used here to refer to a semantic role not exactly corresponding to the more commonly usedlabel [patient], as the [patient] is generally understood to be affected by the action in some way; material beinglearnt is, however, not itself affected by the learning process.

THE EMERGENCE OF PREPOSITIONAL COMPLEMENTIZERS 187

frequent semantic overlap, gives rise to a conflation of the two: where [purpose] and [content]are identical, ‘a leer’ is initially reanalysed as containing both those notions at the same time.This is an instance of hypoanalysis (cf. Croft 2000: 126-30), in which the frequent contextualoverlap of the two meanings is reanalysed as an inherent property of the syntactic unit.

Once ‘a leer’ is understood to contain information about the [purpose] as well as the [content]of aprender, in varying proportions depending on the individual discourse context, a gradual shifttowards the most frequently relevant notion sets in: though [purpose] is often relevant in thecontext of ‘learning’, the most typically relevant information is, nevertheless, the [content]of the learning activity. This leads to gradually increasing interpretation of [content] as thecentral notion of ‘a leer’, eventually ousting the [purpose]-notion completely.

The (construction-specific) semantic bleaching of a that this process of double reanalysis entailsis facilitated by the availability of a phonetically stronger, and thus more expressive, final prepo-sition para, which can be used to unambiguously and explicitly convey the notion of purpose(325).

325. Mi hermanito esta aprendiendo a leer para entender la Biblia.My brotherdim learn3rd.sg.pres.cont to read in.order.to understandinf the Bible

My little brother is learning to read in order to understand the Bible.

Other verbs can stand in a different logical relationship to the information that is, or was at anearlier stage, most frequently of pragmatic relevance, as illustrated in (326) and (327).

326. Pedro insiste en escribir la carta.Peter insist3rd.sg.pres in writeinf the letter

Peter takes a rigid position on writing the letter.=⇒Peter insists on writing the letter.

The verb insistir ‘to insist’ might synchronically be viewed as a typical transitive verb requiring a[Theme] argument or complement. However, from a diachronic perspective it is obvious that thepresent-day complement originated as a prototypical place adjunct. In Latin, INSISTERE hadthe very concrete meaning ‘to stand, to position oneself, to take up a fixed position’, which wouldtypically be accompanied by a pragmatically relevant place adjunct. The verb subsequentlyacquired an increasingly figurative, more abstract sense, implying a fixed mental rather thanphysical position, whilst retaining the locative preposition IN>en for its adjunct∼complement,somewhat similar to English ‘to take a stance on’. So here, too, a gradual shift from prototypicaladjunct to prototypical complement has taken place.

327. Mi tıa goza de comer queso azul.my aunt takes.pleasure of eatinf. cheese blue

My aunt takes pleasure from eating blue cheese.=⇒ My aunt enjoys eating blue cheese.

With the verb gozar ‘to take pleasure, enjoy’, the [source] of pleasure is relevant, and thereforeovertly mentioned, in such a high proportion of cases that its presence becomes entrenched andeventually conventionalized, allowing it to shift in status from prototypical adjunct to prototyp-ical complement.

In many cases, a parallel development can be observed between the construction [[V][P][Vinf ]]and [[V][P][NP]], for instance ‘gozar de buena salud’ ‘to enjoy good health’, which can similarly

188 CH. 7. RELEVANCE AND REANALYSIS: PREPOSITONAL COMPLEMENTIZERS

be attributed to the reanalysis of an original adjunct NP7. While there is undoubtedly a greatdegree of parallel development, they must nevertheless be considered separate, independentconstructions, as the correspondence pattern is not regular or predictable. In all Romancelanguages, there are numerous mismatches, as seen in the following examples.

French promettre (∗de) quelque chose promettre de faire ‘to promise’Italian sperare (∗di) qualcosa sperare di fare ‘to hope’Romanian a ıncerca (∗de) ceva a ıncerca de a face ‘to try’Spanish acabar (∗de) algo acabar de hacer ‘to finish’

empezar (∗a) algo empezar a hacer ‘to begin’

It cannot, therefore, be legitimately argued that we are dealing with a single construction whichcan optionally take either an NP or an infinitive as its complement, nor can it be claimed thatthe argument of such verbs requires the preposition as a case marker. Further evidence for thisis provided by examples such as Spanish tener miedo ‘to fear’, which links an infinitival com-plement with de (tener miedo de hacer), but typically assigns dative case to nominal arguments(le tiene miedo a su padre). Since the infinitival and the nominal argument have the same se-mantic/thematic role in the above construction pairs, the conclusion must be that the choice ofpreposition is, from a synchronic point of view, an arbitrary one. Neither does the prepositionretain its original semantic content, nor does it have a unique case-marking function; it is thusbest analysed as a purely formal complementizing particle.

7.2 Subsequent development of prepositional complementizers

While the mechanism of reanalysis by which prepositional complementizers develop from lexicalprepositions is likely to have been similar in all languages that have such prepositional com-plementizers, the way in which the usage patterns of these complementizers have subsequentlyevolved differs considerably among the Romance languages.

7.2.1 Romanian: analogical levelling

It is often claimed (e.g. Haspelmath, 1989: 287-310) that the Indo-European infinitive is notsemantically neutral, but intrinsically linked to the notion of purpose. In the Germanic Lan-guages, for instance, there is a clear tendency for the directional or final preposition (Engl. to,Dutch te, German zu) to become a grammaticalized marker of the infinitive (cf. e.g. Porter,1913: 1513).

In Romanian, the function of a evolves along similar lines, but its grammaticalization has pro-gressed even further, as it has all but lost its prepositional value in the modern language, exceptin a few entrenched, lexically fossilized expressions such as a mirosi a ‘to smell of’.

According to the mechanism described in Section 7.1.2 above, it can be assumed that in theevolution of Romanian the most frequently relevant type of information conveyed by means ofinfinitival adjuncts was [purpose], leading to the predominant use of a with the infinitive. Dueto its high frequency, this pattern was then analogically extended to other structurally equivalent

7In many formalist frameworks, a preposition such as de in this case, found with all arguments that occupya specific thematic role, is often understood to be an overt marker of abstract case. The reason why certaincomplements require a specific prepositional case-marker is found in the diachronic explanation offered here.

SUBSEQUENT DEVELOPMENT OF PREPOSITIONAL COMPLEMENTIZERS 189

contexts.8 Once this has taken place and a is no longer uniquely associated with the semanticnotion of [purpose], this paves the way for its reanalysis as a syntactically required element –first as a complementizing particle, and eventually as little more than a morphological markerof the infinitive (cf. Section 6.1.8). As in English, the typical citation form of a verb in modernRomanian is with its infinitival marker, e.g. a zice ‘to say’.

The philological evidence from the earliest available Romanian texts, from the 16th century,appears to confirm this sequence of events. At this stage, the transition is not yet completed,and several examples of a+infinitive used as a purpose adjunct can be found, as in example(328).

328. (=309)... ce-mi era daruit de Dumnezeu a da la acest lucru.9

... REL.PRON.-to.me was given from God A giveinf to this work

... which was given to me by God to dedicate to this work.

Crucially, purpose clauses with a are the only type of infinitival adverbial found regularly at thistime, as discussed in Chapter 6.

Whilst this construction is no longer available in modern Romanian, usages in which there isa degree of semantic overlap or ambiguity as to whether the infinitive is a purpose adjunct ora complement, as discussed for Spanish aprender in Section 7.1.2, survive. In the 16th centurywe find carei sant [...] ınvatati a+infinitive10 ‘those who are taught to’, used much in the sameway as a ınvata a+infinitive ‘to learn/teach to’ today.

But already in the 16th century, a+infinitive has extended its domain to contexts in which it isdevoid of any final meaning, as for instance following the impersonal expression mai bine e ‘itis better’ as a subject clause, as in (329).

329. (=308)In sfanta besereca mai bine e a grai cinci cuvinte cu ınteles decat 10 mie de cuvinteneıntelese ın limba striina.11

in holy.the church more good is to speakinf five words with sense...

In the holy church it is better to say five words with sense than ten thousand incom-prehensible words in a foreign language.

At the same time, there are cases where a+infinitive is used to express something in betweenpurpose adjunct and complement, as in (330).

330. (=310 ...ca sa fie tare si putarnece a tine parte de ocena de acole12

as that be3rd.sg.subjnctv strong and powerful to holdinf part.the of property.the of there

...so that he may have the strength and power to keep that part of the property

This synchronic snapshot of the different usages of the infinitive in 16th century Romanian sup-ports the assumption that the predominant association of infinitival adjuncts with final meaningwould have been the basis for a to be the only preposition regularly found with the infinitive,

8For a discussion of syntactic contexts in which a does not precede the infinitive, see Section 6.1.2.9From the introduction to an edition of Coresi’s Evanghelia cu ınvatatura printed in 1580/81, as edited by M.

Avram in Iordan (1962: 164-165).10From a 16th century translation of Coresi’s Evanghelia cu ınvatatura (1561), as edited by S.Puscariu &

A.Procopovici (1914), reproduced in Iordan (1962: 184-186).11Epilogue of the Tetraevanghelul by Hans Benker (1561), as edited by M. Avram in Iordan (1962: 151).12Cf. Chapter 6, footnote 52.


allowing it to become the sole complementizer/marker of the infinitive.

In modern Romanian, the link between a and the notion of purpose is entirely severed. Niculescu(1978: 267/268) lists a number of verbs that attach an infinitival complement with a, for whichreinterpretation of a purpose clause is not a likely origin, as for instance in the case of a ıncetaa+inf., a sfarsi a+inf. (both ‘to finish’)13. Even more strikingly, a obligatorily precedes theinfinitive even in the presence of a different, semantically unrelated preposition, a fact providingfurther evidence that it has become fully grammaticalized (331).

331. Am ınceput-o ınainte de a castiga.have1st.sg begun.it before of A wininf

I began it before winning.

Whilst a has become uniquely associated with the infinitive, it should be noted that other prepo-sitions, typically de (but also la and ın), function as complementizers for the supine (cf. Section6.2.1).

7.2.2 Maintaining a balance between several complementizers

While we have seen that Romanian goes down the path of analogical levelling and completegrammaticalization, in most other Romance varieties the development of prepositional comple-mentizers is somewhat different.

As illustrated in Section 7.1.2 above, the initial shift from prototypical adjunct to prototypicalcomplement, including the corresponding semantic bleaching of the prepositional element, de-pends primarily on the lexical semantics of the main verb. Whilst a verb such as aprender willexperience semantic overlap between its [purpose] and its [content], a verb such as gozar ‘totake pleasure, to enjoy’ experiences semantic overlap between the [source] and the [content]of the pleasure.

As a result, individual verbs have become associated with a particular prepositional comple-mentizer on a lexical basis. Analogical levelling, as seen in Romanian in the previous section,has not taken place across the board, and we are left with a number of different prepositionalcomplementizers. There also remain numerous verbs that take a complement without a comple-mentizer. (Port. crer+inf. “to believe”, Cat. deixar+inf. “to leave, let”).14

That is not to say that each verb has one unique or unchangeable pattern for forming its infini-tival complement. A great deal of change and fluidity can be observed, both diachronically andsynchronically, among different Romance varieties, and even in the speech of a single speaker.Such variation between prepositional complementizers is especially visible in medieval texts;this would suggest that the process of grammaticalization was not yet entirely completed at thetime, and speakers still chose different complementizing prepositions to make subtle meaningdifferences. A verb such as acordar ‘to decide’, e.g., can take any of the prepositions a, de, por,or en as a complementizer for the infinitive in Old Spanish.15

13These infinitive usages are not commonly found in the spoken language, as they are generally perceived to beliterary or archaic.

14To claim that there is, in fact, a null-complementizer present is not a helpful approach in a study attemptingto trace the origin of each individual complementizer.

15(Beardsley, 1921: 106, 168, 208, 247).

DIACHRONIC STATISTICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ‘DE’ AND ‘A’ 191

The majority of Romance languages have, up to now, maintained a balance between several com-peting prepositional complementizers, which to some extent still reflect their origin in adjunctclauses. There is, however, evidence for incipient analogical levelling similar to that observed inRomanian in a number of Romance varieties; for instance, Yates (1984: 194) observes that Cata-lan appears to favour the prepositional complementizer de in an increasing number of contexts,and similar tendencies are observable in French.

7.3 Diachronic statistical development of de and a

The balance between the most important complementizers in Spanish and Portuguese, a and de,as well as a statistical increase in their usage as a direct result of increasing grammaticalization,are illustrated in Figs. 7.1 and 7.2, and the overall development in the two languages of bothcomplementizers combined is contrasted in 7.3, with Portuguese represented by the dotted line.

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Figure 7.1: de+infinitive and a+infinitive in Spanish

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Figure 7.2: de+infinitive and a+infinitive in Portuguese

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ords

Figure 7.3: de+inf.&a+inf in Spanish and Portuguese


The most important observation regarding Figs. 7.1 and 7.2 is the fact that the increase ofthe two prepositional complementizers progresses in a remarkably parallel way in each languageduring most of their history, which can be seen as evidence of the fine balance in their structureand patterns of complementation. However within the last 50 years in Spanish, and the last 150years in Portuguese, a significant shift of this balance in favour of a+infinitive has occurred. Thisis a further instance of a development setting in earlier in Portuguese than in Spanish, in a waysimilar to the initial emergence and increase of numerous prepositions discussed in the previouschapter. In addition to confirming the vanguard role of Portuguese in the area of infinitivalcomplementation, this recent shift in the balance between de+inf. and a+inf. is potentially thebeginning of a more fundamental change that might ultimately lead to a distribution in which ais clearly dominant. In Romanian, it has been seen that the result is a full grammaticalizationof a to such an extent that it has been reanalysed as morphological component of the infinitive(cf. 7.2.1); it is too early to speculate whether a similar evolution will ultimately take place inIbero-Romance.

One indication that a is on its way to becoming increasingly associated with the infinitive is therising frequency of analytic tense/aspect-structures of which a+infinitive forms an integral part,leading to an ever greater association of a with the infinitive, combined with a relative statisticaldecrease in the number of cases in which a followed by an infinitive has a semantic function ofits own. Fig. 7.4 illustrates the development of the Spanish ‘periphrastic future construction’ir a+infinitive, experiencing an unprecedented increase in usage during the 20th century, and ofthe Portuguese ‘present progressive’ estar a+infinitive, which has been on the rise for the lastthree centuries.

1150 1200 1250 1300 1350 1400 1450 1500 1550 1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000

0

25

50

75

100

125

150

175

200

Spanish ir a+infinitive / Portuguese estar a+infinitive

ir a + infinitiveestar a + inf

year

per

1000

00 w

ords

Figure 7.4: Spanish ir a+inf. / Portugueseestar a+inf

The fact that the aspectual notions expressed by means of these two structures are virtuallyunrelated is a further indication that the semantic bleaching process of a is well underway.

The pragmatic motivation for the emergence of grammaticalized ir a+infinitive as temporalauxiliary construction has been discussed in section 4.4 above, but this explanation, which isbased on reanalysis of finality as futurity because the two notions overlap in the majority ofpragmatic contexts, is not valid for estar a+infinitive. Estar a+infinitive extends a differentusage of a, the notion of juxtaposition. Similar to the way in which Ptg.ao+infinitive is usedto express temporal juxtaposition of two events, estar a+infinitive is originally a juxtapositionof an agent’s physical presence (estar) and the activity undertaken by him during this physicalpresence. Ambiguous cases of this kind are found in the very earliest Portuguese texts, eg.sentence (332), where physical presence and continuous aspect coincide.

ONGOING GRAMMATICALIZATION OF ‘PARA/PRA’ IN PORTUGUESE 193

332. Item Pero Goncalluez nom veio escuso esta vereacam por estar a prover sua fazenda elhe deram lugar.16

...for beinf. at attendinf. his estate...

Also Pedro Goncalves did not come, excused from this town-council to attend his estate,and he has been granted permission.

It should be noted that in a similar study by Schøsler (2000: 197) on French, a somewhat dif-ferent development of a+inf. and de+inf. is observed, the number of construction types andtokens with a rising in Old French, but then dropping to a comparatively low level since the 14th

century, whilst de only begins to spread from the 14th century onwards, becoming the dominantprepositional complementizer in the modern language. Unfortunately, an analysis of the prag-matic factors involved in this evolutionary pattern is beyond the scope of this paper.

7.4 Ongoing grammaticalization of para/pra in Portuguese

Up to this point it has mainly been attempted to reconstruct a sequence of events that could haveled to the present-day distribution of prepositional complementizers, but our lack of documentsfrom the time during which the greater part of this change took place makes definite conclusionsvirtually impossible. However, if it is possible to identify and analyse similar processes that arecurrently observable, this will lend credibility to the reconstruction put forward above.

In standard Portuguese, verbs expressing orders or commands generally do not require a prepo-sitional complementizer (333).

333. Deus a todos manda ser bons.God to all orders beinf goodPl

God orders everyone to be good.

But the preposition para (or rather its phonologically bleached form pra) is increasingly cominginto use as complementizer for infinitival complements of verbs expressing a command (334).

334. A palavra de Deus nos ordena para crescer e multiplicar. 17

The word of God us commands for growinf and multiplyinf

The Word of God orders us to grow and multiply.

The two sentences in (335) are semantically equivalent:

335. Ordena fazer oracoes.Ordena pra fazer oracoes.orders (for) doinf prayers

He gave orders to pray.

This development can be explained as follows: in sentence (336), the pronoun -o is the directobject of ordenar, whilst the phrase in square brackets is a purpose adjunct. (n.b.: The purposeof a command is of frequent pragmatic relevance.)

336. Ordenou-o [para o Joao faze-lo.]ordered+it [for art. John doinf+it]

He gave the order, so that John would do it.

16Anais, xxb. julho 1520.17European Portuguese speakers prefer the use of ordenar without the complementizer; the usage in sentence

(334) is more typical of Brazilian Portuguese.


Sentence (337) is semantically equivalent to (336); phonologically it differs only very slightly,but the structure is rather different, as para o Joao is now the indirect object of ordenar, andfaze-lo is its direct object.

337. Ordenou [para o Joao] [faze-lo].ordered [for art. John] [doinf+it]

He gave the order for John to do it.

The next step is a reanalysis of o Joao as the subject of the infinitive faze-lo; infinitives regularlyhave overt subjects in Portuguese. This would effectively leave para without a function, but theproblem is resolved by reanalysing it as a complementizer (338).

338. Ordenou [pra [o Joao faze-lo]].ordered [C [art. John doinf+it]]

He gave the order that John do it.

Once para is reanalysed as a complementizer, it can occur in this function with less complexinfinitival complements, too (339).

339. Ordenou-lhe [pra [faze-lo]].ordered+IO.pron. [C [doinf+it]]

He gave him the order to do it.

We can thus observe how a process very similar to that described in section 7.1.2 is takingplace in modern Portuguese. In both cases, significant semantic overlap between [purpose] and[content], both of them providing information that is frequently of great pragmatic relevance,causes the final adjunct to be analysed as increasingly complement-like. In this process, theoriginal semantic content of the final preposition is eroded, and it develops into a purely func-tional element.

7.5 Conclusion

The examples provided in this chapter have shown that various prepositional infinitive construc-tions have experienced, or are at present experiencing, grammaticalization.

In previous chapters, it was shown how pragmatic relevance is a central factor in the differen-tial evolution of individual prepositional infinitives (cf. Section 4.4), because in some semanticcontexts it is more likely for a coreferential adjunct to be relevant for the purpose of efficientcommunication, whilst in other semantic contexts non-coreferential adjuncts are typically themore relevant. This chapter has identified a different way in which the same pragmatic principleof relevance affects the system of prepositional infinitives as a whole, based on reanalysis andprogressive grammaticalization of the most frequently relevant, and thus also the statisticallymost common, usage patterns.

This means that usage is not only in important factor in favouring or impeding the extensionof existing structures, but that it can also be a trigger for the emergence of novel syntacticstructures, as shift of certain prepositions along the adjunct–complement continuum has ledto increasing functional divergence of the ‘prepositional infinitive’ construction. The varyingdegree to which the prepositional complementizer has become grammaticalized has further ledto a typological divergence between Romanian and most other Romance languages.

Chapter 8

Conclusion and scope for future work

Throughout this dissertation, it has become apparent that the evolution of the Romance prepo-sitional infinitive is intimately linked to the way in which speakers use language in real-worldsituations. It has been argued that the pragmatic principles of likelihood and relevance are animportant factor in the changes that have taken place: speakers generally include in their ut-terances only information they consider relevant for their communicative purposes, and hearersgenerally analyse them according to what, in view of their knowledge of the way the worldaround them works, appears to be the most likely interpretation in a given context.

This pragmatic phenomenon, it has been seen, is involved in syntactic change by virtue of thefact that the pragmatically most likely patterns occur most frequently in actual language use.Patterns that are statistically particularly frequent are reanalysed as the norm or default, whichin turn leads to their analogical extension to further contexts.

The data presented in this thesis shows that one of the central parameters in the choice betweenthe prepositional infinitive and the corresponding finite construction is subject reference and thepredictability of the identity of the dependent clause subject. Infinitival clauses are associatedwith certain reference patterns, most importantly with coreferentiality, to such an extent thatthese patterns generally apply even in the presence of an overt subject in the infinitival clause.

For all three languages examined here, the order in which prepositions begin to participate inthe prepositional infinitive construction has been seen to be roughly similar: generally, the morelikely it is for a complement type to be coreferential, the earlier it appears as an infinitival clause.On the other hand, complement types that are statistically less likely to be coreferential beginparticipating in the prepositional infinitive construction at a later stage or not at all, even incases in which coreferentiality is given.

What this implies is that the order in which prepositional infinitives have emerged is a functionof the pragmatic likelihood of the respective clause type being coreferential. The fact that thisparameter is determined mainly extralinguistically, i.e. by the way in which real-world entitiesinteract, offers an explanation why the order in which individual prepositional infinitives appearin Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian is so remarkably similar.

A further fundamentally pragmatic process described in this thesis is that of certain preposi-tions being used as increasingly functional, semantically ‘bleached’ complementizers in a rangeof infinitival constructions. This grammaticalization process is triggered by a relatively highfrequency of pragmatic contexts in which constructions with these prepositions are semanticallyambiguous, blurring the distinction between prototypical syntactic categories and thus pavingthe way for further extension beyond the ambiguous constructions.

195

196 CHAPTER 8. CONCLUSION AND SCOPE FOR FUTURE WORK

The central role of pragmatic usage patterns in this area of syntax has far-reaching implicationsfor the historical study of the Romance languages: whilst it is usually assumed that featuresshared by several closely related languages are inherited from a time prior to their split, thisstudy has clearly shown that the similarities in terms of distribution in the three languages ex-amined here evolve independently. The fact that their basic linguistic structure is comparativelysimilar can be understood as a precondition for such similar developments to be structurallypossible, but the fact that these constructions evolved at very different times in the differentlanguages, and that each prepositional infinitive has its own, individual evolutionary trajectoryclearly show that we cannot be dealing with a single process. It therefore comes as a surprisethat the overall patterns of development in the three languages resemble each other to an extentthat cannot feasibly be attributed to chance.

The pragmatic explanation offered here, which brings actual language usage into the equation,can account for these similarities: what people generally consider relevant and worth mentioningin a certain context, and how the referents they talk about relate to each other, is not language-specific. If certain relational patterns are more likely to be uttered than others and we acceptthat the frequency with which a construction is used plays a central part in linguistic change,then we can expect these pragmatically-based factors to have a similar impact on different lan-guages.

It would be of great interest to verify to what extent the causation patterns identified in thisthesis as relevant in the emergence of prepositional infinitives are cross-linguistically commonor even universal. If it turns out that infinitival complementation has developed along a similarevolutionary path in languages outside the Romance subfamily, or indeed outside the Indo-European family, this would confirm that the – essentially extra-linguistically determined –pragmatic usage patterns play a central part in this syntactic development.

A further direction in which this research could be expanded is to investigate whether othersyntactic innovations that are known to have taken place independently in several languagesmight, similarly, be attributable to universal patterns of pragmatic likelihood. Ultimately, sucha study could lead to the creation of a unitary framework of cross-linguistically valid principlesof causation in syntactic change.

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Searle, John R. 1969. Speech acts: an essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press.

Seco, Rafael. 1967. Manual de gramatica espanola, 9th edn. revised and expanded by M. Seco.Madrid: Aguilar.

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Appendix A: Spanish texts

Cantar de mıo Cid (ca.1140),in Antologıa de autores espanoles, ed. A.Sanchez-Romeralo & Fernando Ibarra. Prentice Hall,1972.

Almerich, Arcidiano de AntiochıaLa Fazienda de Ultra Mar (mid 12th century), in Biblia romanceada et itineraire biblique enprose castillan du XII-eme siecle, ed. Moshe Lazar. Salamanca, 1965.

Auto de los Reyes Magos (ca.1150),ed. Ramon Menendez Pidal. in Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, Madrid, 1900.

Berceo, Gonzalo de (ca.1195-1264)Los Milagros de Nuestra Senora (early 13th century), in Coleccion de poesıas castellanas anteri-ores al siglo XV, vol. 2, ed. Tomas Antonio Sanchez. Madrid: Sancha, 1780.

Calila e Dimna (1251),ed. Jose Manuel Cacho Blecua. Madrid: Castalia, 1985.

Alfonso X, el SabioPrimera Cronica General de Espana (1289), ed. Ramon Menendez Pidal, 2 vols, 2nd edn.Madrid: Gredos, 1955.

Manuel, Juan (1282-1348)

Libro del cauallero et del escudero (1326), in Juan Manuel: Obras completas I, ed. Jose ManuelBlecua. Madrid: Gredos, 1981.

El Libro de Estados (1330), Libro del cauallero et del escudero (1326), in Juan Manuel: Obrascompletas I, ed. Jose Manuel Blecua. Madrid: Gredos, 1981.

Ruiz, Juan (Arcipreste de Hita) (ca.1283-ca.1350)El Libro de buen amor (1343), 2 vols, ed. Julio Cejador. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1913.

Cadique de Ucles, Jacob (trans.)Libro de dichos de sabios y philosofos e de otros enxenplos e dotrinas muy buenas (1402, trans-lation from Catalan), ed. Maximilian P.A.M. Kerkhof, 1999. Valencia: Universidad de Valencia,Proyecto LEMIR “Literatura Espanola Medieval y del Renacimiento”.

El libro de los gatos (El libro de los enxemplos) (early 15th century),ed. Delia Cocera Martınez, 1999. Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, Proyecto LEMIR “Liter-atura Espanola Medieval y del Renacimiento”.

Flores de Filosofıa (15th century),

207

208 APPENDIX A: SPANISH TEXTS

vol. 1: ed. Jose Manuel Lucıa Megıas, 1997; vol. 2: ed. Hugo Oscar Bizzarri, 1997. Valencia:Universidad de Valencia, Proyecto LEMIR “Literatura Espanola Medieval y del Renacimiento”.

Santa Marıa, Pablo deLas siete edades del mundo (1460), ed. Juan Carlos Conde, 1997. Valencia: Universidad deValencia, Proyecto LEMIR “Literatura Espanola Medieval y del Renacimiento”.

Hurus, Paul (Pablo) & Johannes (Juan) Planck (printers)Arte de bien morir y breve confessionario (1480-84), ed. Francisco Gago Jover. Barcelona:Medio Maravedı, 1999.

Hurus, Paul (Pablo) (printer)De las mujeres ilustres en romance1 (1494), ed. Jose Luis Canet, 1997. Valencia: Universidadde Valencia, Proyecto LEMIR “Literatura Espanola Medieval y del Renacimiento”.

Valdes, Juan deDialogo de la lengua (early 16th Century), ed. Juan M. Lope Blanch. Madrid: Castalia, 1976.

Rojas, Fernando de (?-1541)Tragicomedia de Calisto y Meliben (La Celestina) (1500), Edicion Piloto. Alicante: Bibliotecavirtual Miguel de Cervantes de la Universidad de Alicante.

Becadelli, AntonioDichos y hechos del rey don Alonso (1527), ed.: Olga Munoz, 2000. Valencia: Universidad deValencia, Proyecto LEMIR “Literatura Espanola Medieval y del Renacimiento”.

Rueda, Lope de (1510-65)Eufemia2, ed. Jesus Moreno Villa. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1983.

Castro, Pedro de (printer)Cantigos y enxemplos de Caton (Medina del Campo, 1543), ed. James W. Nelson Novoa, 1999.Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, Proyecto LEMIR “Literatura Espanola Medieval y del Re-nacimiento”.

Burgos, Andres de (printer)Laberinto de amor3, ed. Diego Romero Lucas. Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, ProyectoLEMIR “Literatura Espanola Medieval y del Renacimiento”.

Factor, Nicolas (1520-1583)Las tres vıas (ca.1546), in Cartas morales, militares, civiles y literarias, ed. Gregorio MayansSiscar, vol. 2. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1948.

Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades,Burgos edition (1554) with interpolations from the Alcala edition (1554). Champaign, IL:Project Gutenberg.

Timoneda, Joan & Joan Navarro (printers)

1Translation of the Tuscan original De claribus mulieribus by Boccaccio, printed in Zaragoza by the GermanPaul Hurus.

2Lope de Rueda lived in Seville, but Eufemia was printed in Valencia in 1567 by Ioan Timoneda.3A translation of the Tuscan original by Boccaccio, printed in Seville in 1564

209

Memoria Hispanea (1569), ed. Marıa Jose Garcıa Folgado, 1999. Valencia: Universidad deValencia, Proyecto LEMIR “Literatura Espanola Medieval y del Renacimiento”.

El sobremesa y alivio de caminantes (1569), ed. Alberto Vidal Crespo, 1999. Valencia: Uni-versidad de Valencia, Proyecto LEMIR “Literatura Espanola Medieval y del Renacimiento”.

Guerrero, FranciscoEl viage de Hierusalem (Valencia, 1590), ed. Antonio Solano Cazorla, 2000. Valencia: Univer-sidad de Valencia, Proyecto LEMIR “Literatura Espanola Medieval y del Renacimiento”.

Villegas, Alonso deFructus Sanctorum y Quinta parte del Flos Sanctorum (1594), ed. Jose Aragues Aldaz, 1997.Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, Proyecto LEMIR “Literatura Espanola Medieval y del Re-nacimiento”.

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel deEl ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (1615), version 2donq10. Champaign, IL: ProjectGutenberg.

Lope de Vega Carpio, FelixEl perro del hortelano (1618), ed. Vern G. Williamsen, 1995. University of Arizona, Departmentof Spanish and Portuguese.

Quevedo Villagas, Francisco de (1580-1645)Historia de la vida del buscon (1626), ed. Celsa Carmen Garcıa Valdes. Madrid: Catedra, 1993.

Tellez, Gabriel (Tirso de Molina)El burlador de Sevilla (Barcelona, 1630), ed. Vern G. Williamsen, 1982. University of Arizona,Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

Cascales, Francisco (1567-1642)Cartas filologicas (1634), ed. Justo Garcıa Soriano. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1961 [1929].

Saavedra Fajardo, Diego de (1584-1648)Empresas (1640), empresas 2, 5, 18, 43, 44, 97. Antologıa del Ensayo Ibero e Iberoamericano,ed. Jose Luis Gomez-Martınez.

Calderon de la Barca, Pedro (1600-1681)

El alcalde de Zalamea (1651), ed. Vern G. Williamsen, 1995. University of Arizona, Departmentof Spanish and Portuguese.

Andromeda y Perseo, ed. J.M.Ruano de la Haza. Pamplona/Kassel: Universidad de Nava-rra/Reichenberger, 1995.

El ano santo de Roma, ed. I.Arellano & A.L.Cilveti. Pamplona/Kassel: Universidad de Nava-rra/Reichenberger, 1995.

El cordero de Isaias, ed. M.C.Pinillus. Pamplona/Kassel: Universidad de Navarra/Reichenber-ger, 1996.

El divino Jason, ed. I.Arellano & A.L.Cilveti. Pamplona/Kassel: Universidad de Navarra/Rei-chenberger, 1992.

El indulto general, ed. I.Arellano & J.M.Escudero. Pamplona/Kassel: Universidad de Nava-rra/Reichenberger, 1996.

El nuevo hospicio de pobres, ed. I.Arellano. Pamplona/Kassel: Universidad de Navarra/Rei-chenberger, 1995.


La nave del mercader, ed. I.Arellano, B.Oteiza, M.C.Pinillos, J.M.Escudero, A.Armendariz.Pamplona/Kassel: Universidad de Navarra/Reichenberger, 1996.

La vina del senor, ed. I.Arellano, A.L.Cilveti, B.Oteiza, M.C.Pinillos. Pamplona/Kassel: Uni-versidad de Navarra/Reichenberger, 1996.

Mananas de abril y mayo, ed. I.Arellano, F.Serralta. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail,1995.

No hay instante sin milagro, ed. I.Arellano, I.Adeva, R.Zafra. Pamplona/Kassel: Universidadde Navarra/Reichenberger, 1995.

Triunfar muriendo, ed. I.Arellano, B.Oteiza, M.C.Pinillos. Pamplona/Kassel: Universidad deNavarra/Reichenberger, 1996.

Zabaleta, Juan de (1610-1670?)Errores celebrados (1653), errores 4,5,8. Antologıa del Ensayo Ibero e Iberoamericano, ed. JoseLuis Gomez-Martınez.

Martınez, Jusepe (1600-1682)De la filosofıa de la pintura (tratado X, 1673), in Discursos practicables del nobilısimo arte dela pintura, ed. Julian Gallego. Madrid: Akal, 1988.

Cruz, Sor Juana Ines de la (1641-1695)‘Carta atenagorica’ (1690), ‘Carta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz’ (1690), ‘Respuesta a Sor Filoteade la Cruz’ (1691). Antologıa del Ensayo Ibero e Iberoamericano, ed. Jose Luis Gomez-Martınez.

Feijoo y Montenegro, Benito Jeronimo de (1676-1764)Cartas eruditas y ensayos (1726-1734). Antologıa del Ensayo Ibero e Iberoamericano, ed. JoseLuis Gomez-Martınez.

Amar y Borbon, Josefa (1753-1803?)Discurso en defensa del talento de las mugeres (1786), ed. Carmen Chaves Tesser, in Dieciocho3(2), 1980: 144-59.

Cadalso y Vazquez, Jose de (1741-82)Cartas Marruecas (1793), cartas 1, 2, 4, 7, 10, 11. Antologıa del Ensayo Ibero e Iberoamericano,ed. Jose Luis Gomez-Martınez.

Azara, Felix de (1742-1821)‘Los habitantes del Paraguay’, in Descripcion e historia del Paraguay y del Rıo de la Plata(ca.1809), ed. Basilio Sebastian Castellanos de Losada & Agustın de Azara. Madrid: Sanchiz,1847.

Larra, Mariano Jose de (1809-37)

El doncel de Don Enrique el doliente (1834), ed. Pedro Soto. Proyecto Mariano Jose de Larraen Internet.

‘Empenos y desempenos (artıculo parecido a otros)’, in El pobrecito hablador, Sept. 1832.

‘Vuelva usted manana (artıculo del bachiller)’, in El pobrecito hablador, Jan. 1833.

‘La sociedad’, in Revista Espanola, 16 Jan. 1835.

‘La noche buena’, in El Redactor General, 26 Dec. 1836.

Giner de los Rıos, Francisco (1839-1915)

‘El arte y las artes’ (1871), Antologıa del Ensayo Ibero e Iberoamericano, ed. Jose Luis Gomez-Martınez.

211

‘Instruccion y educacion’ (1879), in Estudios de Literatura y Arte. Madrid: Victoriano Suarez,1876.

Revilla y Moreno, Manuel de la (1846-1881)

‘La tendencia docente en la literatura contemporanea’ (1877), in Obras de D.Manuel de laRevilla. Madrid: Imprenta Central, 1883, pp. 137-146.

‘El naturalismo en el arte’ (1879), in Obras de D.Manuel de la Revilla. Madrid: ImprentaCentral, 1883, pp. 147-168.

‘Principios a que debe obedecer la crıtica literaria para influir provechosamente en la educaciondel gusto y del desarrollo del arte’, in Obras de D.Manuel de la Revilla. Madrid: ImprentaCentral, 1883.

Galdos, Benito PerezLa sociedad presente como materia novelable [Discurso leıdo ante la Real Academia Espanola,con motivo de su recepcion] (1897). Madrid: Tello, 1897.

Unamuno, Miguel de (1864-1936)

‘Mi religion’ (1907), in Mi religion y otros ensayos. Madrid, 1910.

‘Epılogo’ (1907), in Vida y escritos del Dr.Jose Rizal, ed. W.E.Retana. Madrid: VictorianoSuarez, 1907.

‘Verdad y vida’ (1908), in Mi religion y otros ensayos. Madrid, 1910.

El porvenir de Espana (extracts). Unamuno, Miguel de & Angel Ganivet. Madrid: Re-nacimiento, 1912.

Del sentimiento tragico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos (1913) Madrid: Alianza edi-torial, 1998.

Barrett, Rafael (1876-1910)Ensayos (1906-1910), ed. Francisco Corral Sanchez-Cabezudo, Instituto Cervantes. Antologıadel Ensayo Ibero e Iberoamericano, ed. Jose Luis Gomez-Martınez.

Ortega y Gasset, Jose (1883-1955)

‘Verdad y perspectiva’ (1916), in El espectador, vol. 1. Madrid, 1916.

‘La idea de las generaciones’ (1923), in El tema de nuestro tiempo. Madrid, 1923.

‘El sentido historico de la teorıa de Einstein’ (1924), in El tema de nuestro tiempo. Madrid,1923.

‘La idea de la generacion’ (1933), in Jose Ortega y Gasset: Obras Completas, 12 vols., vol. 5.Madrid: Alianza Editorial/Revista de Occidente, 1983.

‘Creer y pensar’ (1940), in Ideas y creencias. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1940.

Zubiri, Xavier (1898-1983)

‘La idea de naturaleza’, in La nueva Fısica – (Un problema de Filosofıa), Cruz y Raya 10 (1934):8-94.

‘En torno al problema de Dios’, in Revista de Occidente 149 (1935): 129-59.

‘Socrates y la sabidurıa griega’, in Escorial 2 (1940): 187-226; 3 (1941): 51-78.

‘Nuestra situacion intelectual’, in Naturaleza, Historia, Dios. Madrid: Editoria Nacional, 1944.

‘Notas sobre la inteligencia humana’, in ASCLEPIO, Archivo Iberoamericano de la Medicina yAntropologıa Medica 18-19 (1966-67): 341-53.

Polo, Leonardo (1926-)

‘El hombre en nuestra situacion’ (1976), in Nuestro tiempo 295 (Pamplona, 1979): 21-50.


‘Sobre las cuatro dimensiones del abandono del lımite mental’, in Presente y futuro del hombre.Madrid: Rialp, 1993, pp. 162-4, 178-89, 194-5.

La esencia del hombre (1994), Antologıa del Ensayo Ibero e Iberoamericano, ed. Jose LuisGomez-Martınez.

Marıas, JavierCorazon tan blanco. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1992.

Corpus oral en castellanoFrancisco Marcos Marın, Departamento de Linguıstica, Lenguas Modernas, Logica y Filosofıade la Ciencia, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, 1992

El PaısEl Paıs digital . 2.5 million words of journalistic texts available on the website http://www.elpais.es on 8 February, 2001.

Diario ABC2.5 million words of journalistic texts available on the website http://www.abc.es on 9 February,2001.

Digital text sourcesThe digital texts listed in this appendix were available on-line between 2001 and 2003 at thefollowing URLs:

Antologıa del Ensayo Ibero e Iberoamericano, ed. Jose Luis Gomez-Martınez: http://ensayo.rom.uga.edu/

Biblioteca virtual Miguel de Cervantes de la Universidad de Alicante: http://www.duke.edu/web/cybertextos/

Project Gutenberg: before November 2003: http://promo.net/pg/; after November 2003: http://ibiblio.org/

Proyecto LEMIR “Literatura Espanola Medieval y del Renacimiento” (Universidad de Valencia):http://parnaseo.uv.es/

Proyecto Mariano Jose de Larra en Internet: http://www.irox.de/larra/index.htmlUniversity of Arizona, Department of Spanish and Portuguese: http://www.coh.arizona.edu/

spanish/comedia.htm

Appendix B: Portuguese texts

Early Medieval Galaico-Portuguese Corpus

‘Testamento de Estevo Perez’ (1230), in Coleccion diplomatica do mosteiro cisterciense de Sta.Maria de Oseira (Ourense). 1025-1310, vol. 1, ed. Miguel Romanı Martınez. Santiago:Torculo Edicions, 1989, pp. 316-7.

228 cantigas (troubadouresque poetry), 32,605 words, written by the following authors betweenthe late 12th and the mid 14th century (average date 1265):

Sancho I (late 12th century), Vaasco Praga de Sandin (1st quarter of 13th century), Pero GomezBarroso (1st quarter of 13th century–1273), Meendinho (1st (?) third of 13th century), Gon-zalo Eanes do Vinhal (1st third of 13th century–1280), Lopo (1st half of 13th century), GarciaSoarez (1st half of 13th century), Paio Soarez (1st half of 13th century), Paio Gomez Charinho(1225–1295), Airas Corpancho (13th century), Fernan Frojaz (13th century), Joam Garcia (13th

century), Martin de Ginzo (13th century), Nuno Porco (13th century), Pero Viviaez (13th cen-tury), Pero de Veer (13th century), Pero de Dardia (ou Bardia) (13th century), Pero Meogo (13th

century), Rodrigo Eanes d’Alvarez (13th century), Sancho Sanchez (13th century), Vaasco Ro-driguez de Calvelo (13th century), Joam Lopez d’ Ulhoa (mid 13th century), Martin Codax (mid13th century), Pero Goncalvez Portocarreiro (mid 13th century), Pedro Eanes Solaz (mid 13th

century), Pero d’ Armea (mid 13th century), Paio de Cana (mid 13th century), Joam Baveca(2nd third of 13th century), Roi Fernandez (2nd third of 13th century), Fernan Rodriguez deCalheiros (2nd third of 13th century), Fernan Goncalvez de Seabra (2nd third of 13th century),Afonso Eanes do Coton (2nd third of 13th century), Joam Garcia de Guilhade (2nd third of 13th

century), Vaasco Gil (2nd third of 13th century), Lourenco (2nd third of 13th century), RodrigoEanes Redondo (2nd third of 13th century), Bernal de Bonaval (1230–1260), Joam Airas de San-tiago (1230–1265), Pero da Ponte (active 1235–1260), Roi Queimado (2nd half of 13th century),Fernan Figueira de Lemos (3rd quarter of 13th century), Vaasco Perez Pardal (3rd quarter of 13th

century), Meen Rodriguez Tenoiro (3rd quarter of 13th century), Rodrigo Eanes de Vasconcelos(3rd quarter of 13th century), Joam Vaasquez de Talaveira (3rd quarter of 13th century), JuiaoBolseiro (3rd quarter of 13th century), Nuno Fernandez Torneol (3rd quarter of 13th century),Pero Garcia Burgales (3rd quarter of 13th century), Joam Nunez Camanez (3rd quarter of 13th

century), Joam Servando (3rd quarter of 13th century), Pero Mafaldo (3rd quarter of 13th cen-tury), Gomez Garcia (died 1286), Airas Nunes de Santiago (123?–1289), Afonso Lopez de Baiam(active 1245–1280), Joam Soarez Coelho (active 1248–1280), Afonso Meendez de Beesteiros (ac-tive 1250–1275), Fernan Fernandez Cogominho (1255–1274), Fernan Velho (1255–1284), Joamde Requeixo (late 13th century), Martın de Caldas (late 13th century), Galisteu Fernandez (late13th century), Golparro (late 13th century), Nuno Perez (ou Fernandez) (late 13th century),Paio Calvo (late 13th century), Martın de Padrozelos (late 13th century), Joam Zorro (late 13th

century), Nuno Perez Sandeu (late 13th century), Martın Campina (late 13th century), AirasPaez (late 13th –14th century), Estevam Reimondo (late 13th –14th century), Estevan Fernandezd’Elvas (late 13th century–14th century), Fernan do Lago (late 13th –14th century), Fernando

213

214 APPENDIX B: PORTUGUESE TEXTS

Esquio (late 13th –14th century), Estevam Travanca (late 13th –14th century), Joam de Can-gas (late 13th –14th century), Roi Martinz do Casal (late 13th –14th century), Pedro Amigo deSevilha (active 1260–1302), Don Dinıs (1261–1325), Joam Meendez de Briteiros (1270–1320),Afonso Sanches (1279–1329), Estevam da Guarda (1270/80–1352), Estevam Coelho (early 14th

century), Joam d’Avoim, Pero d’Ornelas, Meen Vaazquez de Folhete, Reimon Goncalvez, Perod’Ambroa.

Sources:

Bertolucci Pizzorusso, V. (ed.). 1992. As poesıas de Martin Soares. E. X. Gonzalez Seoane(transl.). Vigo: Galaxia.

Indini, Maria Luisa Indini (ed.). 1978. Bernal de Bonaval. Poesie. Bari: Adriatica Editrice.

Mendez Ferrın, Xose Luıs (ed.). 1966. O cancioneiro de Pero Meogo. Vigo: Galaxia.

Mettmann, Walter (ed.). 1959-72. Alfonso X, o Sabio, Cantigas de Santa Maria., Acta Univer-sitatis Conimbrigensis, 4 vols. Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra.

Nunes, Jose Joaquim (ed.) 1926. Cantigas d’amigo dos trovadores galego-portugueses, 3 vols.Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade. Reprint (1971): New York, Kraus Reprint.

Panunzio, Saverio (ed.). 1992. Pero da Ponte. Poesıas. R. Marino Paz (trans.). Vigo: Galaxia.

Rodrıguez, Jose Luis (ed.). 1980. ‘El cancionero de Joan Airas de Santiago’, Verba: Anexo 12.Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela.

Rodrigues Lapa, M. (ed.). 1970. Cantigas d’escarnho e de mal dizer dos cancioneiros medievaisgalego-portugueses, 2nd ed. Vigo: Galaxia.

Tavani, Giuseppe Tavani (ed.). 1993. A poesıa de Airas Nunez. R. Alvarez Blanco (trans.).Vigo: Galaxia.

Valledor, Armando (ed.). 1934. Cancionero de Payo Gomez Charino. Madrid: Librerıa Generalde Victoriano Suarez.

Medieval Corpus, 27,091 words, average date 1350, containing:

O bosco deleitoso, part 3, chaps 30, 138, 153, ed. Augusto Magne. Rio de Janeiro: InstititoNacional do Livro, 1950.

Cronica geral de Espanha de 1344, chaps 540, 546, 549-50, 552, 556-67, 687, 692, 695-700, ed.Luıs Felipe Lindley Cintra, vol. 4. Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional–Casa da Moeda, 1990.

Cronica troiana (extract), ed. Ramon Lorenzo. A Coruna: Fundacion Pedro Barrie de la Maza,1985, pp. 226-227.

‘Cronica breve do arquivo nacional’, ed. Alexandre Herculano, in Portugaliae Monumenta His-torica, Scriptores. Lisboa: Typis Academicis, 1850, pp. 27-30.

Cronicas de Sahagun (extract), ed. Antonio Ubirto Arteta, Col. Textos Medievales 75, Zaragoza:Anubar Ediciones, 1975.

‘Historia Hispanica’ (extracts), in La traduccion gallega de la Cronica General y de la Cronicade Castilla, ed. Ramon Lorenzo. Ourense: Instituto de Estudios Orensanos “Padre Feijoo”,1975, pp. 6-8, 217-218.

O orto do esposo (extract), ed. Bertil Maler. Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensia,1964.

‘Frei Junipero’, in Cronica da ordem dos frades menores, ed. Jose Adriano de Freitas Carvalho.Lisboa: Commissao Nacional para as Comemoracoes e Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1991.

‘O Livro de Tristan’ (extract), in Fragmento de un “Livro de Tristan” galaico-portugues, ed.Jose Luis Pensado. Santiago de Compostela, 1962: pp. 44-48.

O livro velho e o livro antigo de linhagens (extracts), ed. Joseph M. Piel & Jose Mattoso, inPortugaliae Monumenta Historica, nova serie, vol. 1. Lisboa: Academia das Ciencias de

215

Lisboa, 1980.

D.Pedro, Conde de Barcelos (ca. 1342). Livro de linhagens do Conde D.Pedro (extracts), ed.Jose Mattoso, in Portugaliae Monumenta Historica, nova serie, vol. 2. Lisboa: Academiadas Ciencias de Lisboa, 1980.

‘Os milagros de Santiago’ (extracts), in Miragres de Santiago, ed. Jose Luis Pensado, Revistade Filologıa Espanola, anejo 68. Madrid, 1958, pp. 70-3, 145-8, 151-2, 159-62, 186-8.

A demanda do santo graal (extract), ed. Augusto Magne, vol. 1. Rio de Janeiro, 1955.

‘A vida de Sao Teotonio’, in Livro de ensinanca de bem cavalgar toda sela, ed. Joseph M.Piel.Lisboa, 1944.

Lopes, Fernao (1380?–1460?)

Cronica de Dom Pedro I, ed. Torquato de Sousa Soares. Lisboa: Classico Editura, 1963.

‘Cronica de Dom Fernando’, in Cronica de Dom Joao I, ed. Giuliano Macchi. Lisboa: ImprensaNacional – Casa da Moeda, 1975.

‘Cronica de El-Rei D. Joao I de Boa Memoria’ (ca. 1430), in Historia de uma Revolucao,Primeira parte da Cronica de El-Rei D. Joao I de Boa Memoria, ed. Jose H. Saraiva, 2nd

edn. Lisboa: Publicacoes Europa–America, 1990, pp. 316-321.

Azurara (Zurara), Gomes Eanes de (1410–74)

Cronica da Tomada de Ceuta, chaps 18, 87, 88, ed. Francisco Maria Esteves Pereira. Lisboa:Academia das Ciencias de Lisboa, 1915.

Cronica do Descobrimento e Conquista de Guine (ca. 1451), ed. Reis Brasil, in A AventuraPortuguesa 5, No 8. Mem-Martins: Europa–America, 1989.

Camara Municipal do Funchal:

Vereacoes da Camara Municipal do Funchal do seculo XV (1481–1497), ed. Jose Pereira daCosta. Funchal: Centro de Estudos de Historia do Atlantico, 1995.

Caminha, Pero Vaz de:

‘Carta de Pero Vaz de Caminha’ (1500), in Carta a El Rei D.Manuel. Sao Paulo: Dominus, 1963.

Vicente, Gil:

Auto da India (1509) Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo: Universidade deSao Paulo.

O velho da horta (1512) Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo: Universidade deSao Paulo.

A barca do inferno (1516) Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo: Universidadede Sao Paulo.

Auto da Alma (1518) Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo: Universidade deSao Paulo.

Farsa ou auto de Ines Pereira (1523) Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo:Universidade de Sao Paulo.

Auto da Feira (1527) Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo: Universidade deSao Paulo.

Resende, Garcia de (1470–1536)

Cancioneiro geral (1516, extract), Projecto Vercial, Coimbra: Instituto Pedro Nunes.

Camara Municipal do Funchal:


‘Vereacoes do Funchal’ (1508–1551), in Vereacoes do Funchal. Primeira metade do seculoXVI/Vereacoes do seculo XVI: Santa Cruz, ed. Jose Pereira da Costa. Funchal: Cen-tro de Estudos de Historia do Atlantico, 1998.

Classical Corpus25,561 words, average date 1553, containing extracts provided by Projecto Vercial (Coimbra:Instituto Pedro Nunes) from texts by the following authors:

Andrade, Francisco de Paiva de (1540–1614)Andrade Caminha, Pedro de (152?–1589)Aveiro, Frei Pantaleao de (16th century)Barros, Joao de (1496–1517)Bernardes, Diogo (1520–1605)Brandao, Luıs Pereira (1530/1540–?)Brito, Frei Bernardo de (1569–1617)Camoes, Luıs Vas de (ca. 1524–1580)Castanhada, Fernao Lopes de (1500–1559)Corte Real, Jeronimo (1530–1588)Cruz, Frei Agostinho da (1540–1619)Falcao de Sousa, Cristovao (1515/1518–?)Ferreira, Antonio (1528–1569)Miranda, Francisco Sa de (1481–1558)Oriente, Fernao Alvarez do (1540–1600)Pina, Rui de (1440-1522)Pinto, Fernao Mendes (1510–1583)Quevedo e Castelo Branco, Vasco Mouzinho de (15th –16th century)Ribeiro, Bernardim (ca.1490–ca.1537)Trancoso, Goncalo Fernandes (ca.1515–1596)Velho, Alvaro (15th –16th century)Vicente, Gil (1465–1537)

Camoes, Luıs Vaz de (ca. 1524–1580)

Os Lusıadas (1572), 2 vols. Porto: Figuerinhas, 1982.

Magalhaes Gandavo, Pero de

O Tratado da Terra do Brasil (1576). Belem: Universidade da Amazonia, 2001.

Baroque Corpus31,070 words, average date 1658, containing extracts provided by Projecto Vercial (Coimbra:Instituto Pedro Nunes) from texts by the following authors:

Bacelar, Antonio Barbosa (1610–1663)Baıa, Jeronimo ca.1625–1688)Bernardes, Padre Manuel (1644–1710)Castro, Antonio Serrao de (1610–1684)Ceu, Soror Maria do (1658–1753)Ceu, Soror Violante do (1602–1693)Chagas, Frei Antonio das (1631–1682)Estaco, Padre Baltasar (1570–16??)Figueiroa, Diogo Ferreira de (1604–1674)Lobo, Francisco Rodrigues (1579–1621)

217

Macedo, Antonio de Sousa de (1606–1682)Mascarenhas, Bras Garcia de (1596–1656)Matos, Gregorio de (1628–1696)Meneses, Francisco de Sa (1600–1664)Noronha, Tomas de (?–1651)Santa Catarina, Frei Lucas de (1660–1740)Santos, Frei Joao de (1570–1625)Sousa, Frei Luıs de (1556–1632)Vasconcelos, Francisco de (1665–1723)

Vieira, Antonio (1608–1697)

Sermoes (post-1655), col. Obras imortais da nossa literatura. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Tres, 1974.

Neoclassical Corpus17,297 words, average date 1775, containing extracts provided by Projecto Vercial (Coimbra:Instituto Pedro Nunes) from texts by the following authors:

Abreu, Bras Luıs deAlorna, Marquesa de (Leonor de Almeida Portugal) (1750–1839)Barbosa du Bocage, Manuel Maria (1765–1807)Brandao, Tomas PintoCabral de Vasconcelos, Paulino Antonio, Abade de Jazente (1719–1789)Coutinho, Teodoro de SaCruz e Silva, Antonio Dinis da (1731–1799)Cunha, Jose Anastacio da (1744–1787)Cunha, Xavier daElısio, Filinto (1734–1819)Figueiredo, Manuel de (1725–1801)Garcao, Pedro Antonio Correia (1724–1772)Gonzaga, Tomas Antonio (1744–1810)Semedo, Curvo (1766–1838)Silva, Antonio Jose da (o Judeu) (1705–1739)Tolentino de Almeida, Nicolau (1741–1811)Verney, Luıs Antonio (1713–1792)as well as from the Historia Tragico-Marıtima (1735–36)

Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo, Alexandre (1810–1877)

O bispo negro, Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo: Universidade de Sao Paulo.

Arras por foro de Espanha Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo: Universidadede Sao Paulo.

Harpa do crente Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo: Universidade de SaoPaulo.

Garrett, Joao Baptista da Silva Leitao Almeida (1799–1854)

Viagens na minha terra (1846). Lisboa: Estampa, 1983.

Romantic Corpus17,072 words, average date 1856, containing extracts provided by Projecto Vercial (Coimbra:Instituto Pedro Nunes) from texts by the following authors:

Azevedo Castelo Branco, Antonio


Cabedo, Antonio deCaldeira, FernandoCastilho, Antonio Feliciano de (1800–1875)Girao (Antonio Luıs Ferreira)Herculano de Carvalho Araujo, Alexandre (1810–1877)Lemos Seixas Castelo Branco, Joao de (1819–1890)Macedo, Diogo deNunes, Claudio JoseRibeiro, TomasRoussado, Manuel Barao de (1833–1911)Silva Gaio, Antonio de Oliveira da (1830–1870)Soares de Passos, Antonio Augusto (1826–1860)Sousa Viterbo, Francisco Marques deVidal, Eduardo

Castelo Branco, Camilo

Coracao, cabeca e estomago (1862). Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo:Universidade de Sao Paulo.

Apontamentos Biograficos sobre alguns autores portugueses. Projecto Vercial, Coimbra: Insti-tuto Pedro Nunes.

Dinis, Julio (1839–1871)

As pupilas do Senhor Reitor (1867). Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo:Universidade de Sao Paulo.

Oliveira Martins, Joaquim Pedro de (1845-1894)

Os Lusıadas – Enasio sobre Camoes e a sua obra em relacao a sociedade portuguesa e aomovimento da Renascenca (1872). Projecto Vercial, Coimbra: Instituto Pedro Nunes.

Perfis (edicao postuma, 1930). Projecto Vercial, Coimbra: Instituto Pedro Nunes.

Queiroz, Jose Maria Eca de (1846–1900)

Os Maias (1875). Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo: Universidade de SaoPaulo.

O primo Basilio (1878). Obras de Eca de Queiroz, vol. 2. Lisboa: Livros do Brasil.

A relıquia. Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo: Universidade de Sao Paulo.

Alves e Cia. Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo: Universidade de Sao Paulo.

A cidade e as serras. Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo: Universidade deSao Paulo.

O mandarim. Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo: Universidade de Sao Paulo.

O Crime do padre Amaro. Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo: Universidadede Sao Paulo.

Singularidades de uma rapariga loura. Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro, Sao Paulo:Universidade de Sao Paulo.

Post-Romantic Corpus39,287 words, average date 1887, containing extracts provided by Projecto Vercial (Coimbra:Instituto Pedro Nunes) from texts by the following authors:

Almeida, Jose Valentim Fialho de (1857–1911)Azevedo, Guilherme Avelino Chave de (1839–1882)Botelho, Abel Acacio de Almeida (1856–1917)

219

Bulhao Pato, Raimundo Antonio de (1829–1912)Carvalho, Maria Amalia Vaz de (1847–1921)Crespo, Antonio Candido Goncalves (1846–1883)Deus, Joao de (1830–1896)Dias, Jose Simoes (1844–1899)Dinis, Julio (1839–1871)Feijo, Antonio Joaquim de Castro (1859–1917)Garcia Monteiro, Manuel (1859–1913)Gomes Leal, Antonio Duarte (1848–1921)Guerra Junqueiro, Abılio de (1850–1923)Ivo, Pedro (1842–1906)Mendonca, Henrique Lopes de (1856–1931)Nobre, Antonio (1867–1900)Ortigao, Ramalho (1836–1915)Pinheiro Chagas, Joao (1863–1925)Pinheiro Chagas, Manuel Joaquim (1842–1895)Quental, Antero de (1842–1891)Trinidade Coelho, Jose Francisco (1861–1908)Verde, Jose Joaquim Cesario (1855–1886)

Ficalho, Conde de (Francisco Manuel de Mello Breyner) (1837–1903)

5 stories from Uma Eleicao Perdida (1888)‘A cacada do malhadeiro’‘Os cravos’‘Mais uma’‘A maluca d’a dos corvos’‘A pesca do savel’(Projecto Vercial. Coimbra: Instituto Pedro Nunes)

Sa-Carneiro, Mario de (1890–1916)

A Confissao de Lucio (1914). Rio de Janeiro: Ediouro, 1993.

Oliveira, Carlos de (1921–1981)

Uma Abelha na Chuva da Mudanca ou a Interseccao dos Paradigmas (1953). Lisboa: LivrariaSa da Costa, 1979.

Barreno, Maria Isabel

Novas cartas portuguesas (1972), 3rd edn.Lisboa: Moraes, 1980.

Migueis, Jose Rodrigues (1901–1980)

‘Um portugues em Nova Iorque’ (1962). Obras completas de Jose Rodrigues Migueis, 2nd edn.Lisboa: Estampa, 1982.

‘Avenida Almirante Reis’ (1962). Obras completas de Jose Rodrigues Migueis, 2nd edn. Lisboa:Estampa, 1982.

‘Mudanca de posto’ (1973). Obras completas de Jose Rodrigues Migueis, 2nd edn. Lisboa:Estampa, 1982.

‘Pac/ssos confusos’. Obras completas de Jose Rodrigues Migueis, 2nd edn. Lisboa: Estampa,1982.

Antunes, Antonio Lobo (1942–)


Os Cus de Judas (1979), 5th edn. Lisboa: Dom Quixote, 1988.

CETEM Publico journalistic Corpus (1995–2000)ca. 1600 issues of the daily newspaper Publico, with ca. 100.000.000 words(http://cgi.portugues.mct.pt/cetempublico/)


Biblioteca Virtual do Estudante Brasileiro (Sao Paulo: Universidade de Sao Paulo): http://bibvirt.futuro.usp.br/

Projecto Vercial (Coimbra: Instituto Pedro Nunes): http://www.ipn.pt/literatura/

Appendix C: Romanian texts

Old Romanian Corpus

Texts/extracts taken from:Iordan, I., M.Avram & N.Danila. 1962. Crestomatie romanica, vol. 1. Bucuresti: Editura

Republicii Socialiste Romania, pp. 144-95.

Text DateScrisoarea lui Neacsu, ed. Mioara Avram 1521Codicele Voronetean, ed. Florica Dimitrescu ca.1540Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, ed. Florica Dimitrescu ca.1540Psaltirea Scheiana, ed. Florica Dimitrescu ca.1540Epilogul Tetraevanghelului, ed. Florica Dimitrescu 1561Tetraevanghelul, ed. Mioara Avram 1561Lucrul Apostolesc, ed. Florica Dimitrescu 1563Epilogul Tılcului Tetraevanghelului, ed. Mioara Avram 1564Carte de cıntece, ed. Mioara Avram 1570/1573Psaltirea slavo-romına, ed. Florica Dimitrescu 1577Prefata Evangheliei cu ınvatatura, ed. Mioara Avram 1580/81Evanghelia cu ınvatatura, ed. Mioara Avram 1580/81Din prefata Paliei de la Orastie, ed. Mioara Avram 1581/82Palia de la Orastie, ed. Mioara Avram 1581/82Petru Cercel, ed. Florica Dimitrescu ca.1583Sentinta din 1588, ed. Mioara Avram 1588Sentinta din 1591, ed. Mioara Avram 1591Act particular din 1592, ed. Mioara Avram 1592Scrisoare oficiala din 1593, ed. Mioara Avram 1593Act particular din 1593, ed. Mioara Avram 1593Scrisoare oficiala din 1595, ed. Mioara Avram 1595Act particular din 1596, ed. Mioara Avram 1596Act particular din 1600, ed. Mioara Avram 1600Legenda sfintei Vineri, ed. Mioara Avram ca.1600

1640-1700:

All texts/extracts taken from:Gabor, Gabriela (ed.). 1996. Poezia romaneasca de la origini la 1830. Bucuresti: Editura

Fundatiei Culturale Romane.

Motoc, Vasile (Mitropolitul Varlaam)(?-1657): ‘Stihuri ın stema Domniei Moldovei’ (1643)Nasturel, Udriste: ‘Stihuri ın stema domniei tarii romanesti, neam casei basarabeasca’ (1644);

‘Epitaful lui Mateias Basarab’ (1652)

221

222 APPENDIX C: ROMANIAN TEXTS

Panoianul, Daniil Andrean: ‘Versuri la stema metropolitana’ (1652)

Milescu, Nicolae: ‘Stihuri la dumnezaescul David’ (1661-1665)

Costin, Miron (1633-1691): ‘Viata lumii’ (1671-73); ‘Apostrof’ (1673)

Halici-Fiul, Mihail: ‘Oda’ (1674)

mitropolitul Dosoftei (1624-1693): ‘Liturghierul’ (1679); ‘Evanghelia’ (1682); ‘AcrostihulSibilin’ (1683); ‘Comentariu pe marginea psalmului 132’ (1673); ‘Imnuri’ (1682-1686); ‘Sti-huri ın Stema Moldovei’ (1682); ‘Psalmul 50’; ‘Psalmul 99’

Greceanu, Radu: ‘Poveste de jale si pre scurt asupra nedreptei morti a preacinstitului Co-standin Cantacuzino, marelui postialnic al tarii Romanesti’ (1696-1699)

Stefanovici, Mihail: ‘Versuri politice 8 asupra cistitei cruci din stema prealuminatului siınaltatului domn Io Constandin Basarab Voevod’ (1696); ‘Stihuri politice 12 asupra stemeiprealuminatului, slavitului si blagocestivului Io Constandinu B. Basaraba-Voevoda’ (1706)

1700-1730:

Cantemir, Dimitre (1673-1723): ‘Prundul evfrathului margaritariu naste’; ‘In muntele celınalt’; ‘In cındzaci de sıngeroase’; ‘Cu penele soimul’ (1705), in Poezia romaneasca de laorigini la 1830, ed. Gabriela Gabor. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1996.

O lume ıntr-o carte de bucate (Brancovenesc manuscript, ca.1705), in Bucate boieresti. 291retete de post si de dulce. Bucuresti: Folium.

‘Versuri inchinate Sf. Ioan Damaschin’ (1706), in Poezia romaneasca de la origini la 1830,ed. Gabriela Gabor. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1996.

Ivreanul, Antim (1650-1716): ‘Versuri la stema lui Constantin Brancoveanu’ (1703); ‘Versurila blazonul mitropolitului Antim’ (1713), in Poezia romaneasca de la origini la 1830, ed.Gabriela Gabor. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1996.

Cozianu, Ghenadaie: Doao cai; Academiia sau scoala; Rusinare (ca.1727), in Poezia roma-neasca de la origini la 1830, ed. Gabriela Gabor. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei CulturaleRomane, 1996.

1740-1790:

Diata Stancai (1748), from the archives of the Sf. Silvestru Church, Bucharest, ed. GabrielLicaroiu, Master’s Thesis, Facultate de Teologie Ortodoxa, Universitatea din Bucuresti,1999.

Brasoveanul, Dimitrie Eustatievici: Ahrosticon (1755-1757), in Poezia romaneasca de laorigini la 1830, ed. Gabriela Gabor. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1996.

Faptura Uneia (1768), in Poezia romaneasca de la origini la 1830, ed. Gabriela Gabor.Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1996.

Vacarescu, Ienachita (1740-1799): Intr-o gradina; Amarata turturea; Spune, inimoara; ‘Tes-tament literar’ (1787), in Poezia romaneasca de la origini la 1830, ed. Gabriela Gabor.Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1996.

‘Stihuri asupra peirii raposatului Manolache Bogdan vel vornie si a lui Jon Cuza,biv vel spatar’ (1778), in Poezia romaneasca de la origini la 1830, ed. Gabriela Gabor.Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1996.

Occiso Gregorii ın Moldova Vodae tragedice expressa (1777-1780), in Poezia romaneascade la origini la 1830, ed. Gabriela Gabor. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane,1996.

223

1790-1830:

Vacarescu, Alecu (1765-179): Oglinda, in Poezia romaneasca de la origini la 1830, ed.Gabriela Gabor. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1996.

Preotii Tudorache si Damian: ‘Jaluirea preotilor Tudorache si Damian’ (1791-1793), ed.Gabriel Licaroiu, Master’s Thesis, Facultate de Teologie Ortodoxa, Universitatea din Bu-curesti, 1999.

Istoriia a Alexandrului celui mare (1796), in Poezia romaneasca de la origini la 1830, ed.Gabriela Gabor. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1996.

Epitropul Nicolae: ‘Scrisori’ (1794-1799), ed. Gabriel Licaroiu, Master’s Thesis, Facultate deTeologie Ortodoxa, Universitatea din Bucuresti, 1999.

Doctorul Silvestru/Mitropolitul Dositei: ‘Acte privind schimburi de tigani ıntre doctorulSilvestru si mitropolitul Dositei’ (1796-1802), ed. Gabriel Licaroiu, Master’s Thesis, Facul-tate de Teologie Ortodoxa, Universitatea din Bucuresti, 1999.

Barac, Ion: Istoria prea frumosului Arghir si a prea frumoasei Elena (1801), in Poezia roma-neasca de la origini la 1830, ed. Gabriela Gabor. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei CulturaleRomane, 1996.

Golescu, Iordache: Cantare da tanguire la sfarsitul vietii (ca.1810), in Poezia romaneasca dela origini la 1830, ed. Gabriela Gabor. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane,1996.

Cantacuzano, Ioan: Poveste; Dimineata poeticeasca (ca.1810), in Poezia romaneasca de laorigini la 1830, ed. Gabriela Gabor. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1996.

Vacarescu, Nicolae (1784-1825): Durda; In rai; A trai, in Poezia romaneasca de la origini la1830, ed. Gabriela Gabor. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1996.

Caragea, Ioan Gheorghe: ‘Judecatile domnitorului Gheorghe Caragea’ (1814-1818), ed.Gabriel Licaroiu, Master’s Thesis, Facultate de Teologie Ortodoxa, Universitatea din Bu-curesti, 1999.

Vacarescu, Iancu (1792-1863): Buna vestire; Primavara amorului, in Poezia romaneasca dela origini la 1830, ed. Gabriela Gabor. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane,1996.

Aaron, Vasile: Istoria lui Sofronim si a haritei cei frumoase (1821), in Poezia romaneasca dela origini la 1830, ed. Gabriela Gabor. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane,1996.

Conachi, Costache: Ce este nurul; ‘Raspunsul unei scrisori’; Jaloba mea (1821), in Poezia ro-maneasca de la origini la 1830, ed. Gabriela Gabor. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei CulturaleRomane, 1996.

Mumuleanu, Barbu Paris: Cei mari; Alt chip (1825), in Poezia romaneasca de la origini la1830, ed. Gabriela Gabor. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1996.

1830-1870:

25,000 word corpus by the following authors:Asachi, Gheorghe (1788-1869); Radulescu, Ion Heliade (1802-1872); Cipariu, Tim-otei (1805-1877); Hrisoverghi, Alexandru (1811-1837); Alexandrescu, Grigore (1814-1885); Muresanu, Andrei (1816-1863); Rosetti, C.A. (1816-1885); Alecsandri, Vasile(1821-1890); Bolintineanu, Dimitrie (1825-1872); Scavinschi, Daniil; Stamati, Costache;Bob-Fabian, Vasile; Carlova, Vasile; Bolliac, Cezar.Taken from: Anghelescu, Mircea (ed.). 1997. Poezia romaneasca ın epoca romantica. Bu-curesti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane.


1875-1880:

Creanga, Ion (1839-1889): ‘Cinci pıni’; ‘Fata babei si fata mosneagului’; ‘Mos Ion Roata’;‘Poveste’; ‘Povestea Porcului’; ‘Povestea unui om lenes’; ‘Punguta cu doi bani’; ‘Soacra cutrei nurori’; ‘Danila Prepeleac’; ‘Popa Duhu’, in Ion Creanga: Povesti. Povestiri. Amintiri.Iasi: Junimea, 1983.

Slavici, Ioan (1848-1925): Scormon (1878), in Ioan Slavici: Zana zorilor si alte povesti. Bu-curesti: Coresi, 2000.

Hasdeu, Bogdan Petriceicu (1838-1907): Micuta (trei zile si trei nopti din viata unui stu-dent). in B.P.Hasdeu: Scrieri alese. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1998.

Eminescu, Mihai (1850-1889): Proza si poezii, ed. Radu Iliescu, Biblioteca Electronica, 1999.

Maiorescu, Titu (1840-1917): Poezii populare romane; Directia noua ın poezia si proza roma-na; Comediile d-lui I.L.Caragiale; Poeti si critici; Eminescu si poeziile lui; In chestia poezieipopulare, in Titu Maiorescu: Critice. Bucuresti: Folium.

Ispirescu, Petre (1830-1887): Legende sau Basmele Romanilor (1882), 2 vols. Bucuresti:Folium.

Ghica, Ion: Ion Ghica: Scrisori catre V. Alecsandri (1887), Bucuresti: Folium.

Caragiale, Ion Luca (1852-1912):

O noapte furtunoasa (1879); O scrisoare pierduta (1884); Moftul roman: Caldura mare – Mo-mente si schite (1893), in I.L.Caragiale. Teatru. Vol.1. Bucuresti: Folium.

Conul Leonida fata cu reactiunea; (1880), D-ale carnavalului (1885); Napasta (1890), in I.L.Ca-ragiale. Teatru. Vol.2. Bucuresti: Folium.

Adamescu, Gheorghe: Istoria literaturii romane (1911), Bucuresti: Eminescu, 1999.

Caragiale, Matei (1885-1936): Craii de Curtea-Veche. Bucuresti: Folium.

Ionescu, Nae (1890-1940): Curs de teorie a cunostintei (1925-26), Bucuresti: Crater, 2000.

Iorga, Nicolae (1871-1940): Despre Basarabia (1912-38), Bucuresti: Folium.

Sadoveanu, Mihail (1880-1961): Tara de dincolo de negura: povestiri de vanatoare (1926).Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1996.

Voiculescu, Vasile (1884-1963): ‘Calatorie spre locul inimii’; ‘Contemporan’; ‘Doamne’; ‘Graivalah’; ‘In gradina Ghetsemani’; ‘Sonete ınchipuite’; ‘Stiu fara sa pricep’; ‘Tiparul’, in Poetiromani 1951-1973, ed. Ilie Constantin. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane,1996.

Munteanu, Ion (1899-1949): Istoricul societatilor scriitorilor romani, Bucuresti: Eminescu,1998.

Bacovia, George (1881-1957): Scıntei galbene; Plumb (1916), Bucuresti: Folium.

225

Petrescu, Camil (1894-1957): Ultima noapte de dragoste, ıntaia noapte de razboi (1930), 2vols. Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1996.

Cioran, Emil (1911-1994): Pe culmile disperarii (1934). Bucuresti: Humanitas, 1990.

—— Schimbarea la fata a Romaniei (1936). Bucuresti: Humanitas, 1990.

—— ‘Sfırtecare’ (1979), Vlad Russo (trans.), in Scrisorile lui Cioran, vol. 2. Bucuresti, 1995.

—— Indreptar patimas (1991). Bucuresti: Humanitas, 1991.

Noica, Constantin (1907-1987): Mathesis sau bucuriile simple (1934), Bucuresti: Humanitas,1992.

—— De caelo (1937). Bucuresti: Humanitas, 1993.

—— Jurnal filozofic. Bucuresti: Humanitas, 1990.

—— Modelul cultural european (1986/87). Bucuresti: Humanitas, 1993.

Vulcanescu, Mircea (1904-1952): Scoala sociologica a lui Dimitrie Gusti, ed. Marin Dia-conu. Bucuresti: Eminescu, 1998.

Barbu, Ion (1895-1961): ‘Addenda’; ‘Din periodice’; ‘Dupa melci’; ‘Joc secund’; ‘Uvedenrode’,in Ion Barbu: Joc secund. Isarlac. Bucuresti: Folium.

Lovinescu, Vasile (1905-1984): ‘Interpretari inedite ale simbolismului din doua snoave apar-tinınd lui Ion Creanga’, in Incantatie sngelui. Iasi: Institutul European, 1993.

—— Miorita, in O icoana crestina pe columna traiana (glose asupra melancoliei). Bucuresti:Cartea Romaneasca, 1996.

Ilie Constantin (ed.). 1996. Assorted poetry 1951-73, in Poeti romani 1951-1973. Bucuresti:Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1996.

Blandiana, Ana (∗1942): Geniul de a fi (1966-1974, extracts). Bucuresti: Litera, 1997.

Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov: ‘Yoga nutritiei’, Colectia Izvor 204. Frejus: Prosvesta.

—— ‘Forta sexuala sau dragonul ınnaripat’, Colectia Izvor 205. Frejus: Prosvesta.

—— ‘O filosofie a universalului’, Colectia Izvor 206. Frejus: Prosvesta.

—— ‘Egregorul porumbelului sau ımparatia pacii’, Colectia Izvor 208. Frejus: Prosvesta.

—— ‘Centrii si corpurile subtile’, Colectia Izvor 219. Frejus: Prosvesta.

—— ‘Alchimia sau cautarea perfectiunii’, Colectia Izvor 221. Frejus: Prosvesta.

‘Cartea magiei divine’, —— Colectia Izvor 226. Frejus: Prosvesta.

—— ‘Semintele fericirii’, Colectia Izvor 231. Frejus: Prosvesta.

—— ‘De la om la Dumnezeu’, Colectia Izvor 236. Frejus: Prosvesta.

—— ‘Craciun’, lecture given on December 25, 1958.

—— ‘A primi si a darui’, lecture given on July 28, 1968.

—— ‘Determinism si nedeterminism’, lecture given on December 29, 1972.

—— ‘Cateva aspecte simbolice ale Craciunului’, lecture given on December 25, 1979.

—— Calea taceri. Frejus: Prosvesta.

—— Viata bunul cel mai de pret. Frejus: Prosvesta.

—— Rugaciunea. Frejus: Prosvesta, 1989.

Stanescu, Nichita (1933-1983): 12 poems in Poezii, ed. Stefania Micu (Clasici romaniinterpretati). Constanta: Pontica, 1997.


Caragiu, Toma: Momente vesele (1976, transcribed speech), Radu Narcis Velicescu (transcr.).Romanian Voice – Poezii Romanesti, 1994-2003.

Paler, Octavian (∗1926): Apararea lui Galilei (1978, extracts). ed. Radu Iliescu, BibliotecaElectronica, 1999.

Cretia, Petru: Norii; Oglinzile (1979, extracts). ed. Radu Iliescu, Biblioteca Electronica,1999.

Tutea, Petre: Cugetari memorabile (1980). ed. Radu Iliescu, Biblioteca Electronica, 1999.

Sora, Simona (ed.). 1996. Assorted contemporary poetry, in Poezia romana contemporana.Bucuresti: Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, 1996.

Smarandache, Florentin: Profesor ın Africa: Jurnal marocan (1984). Phoenix–Chicago: Er-hus University Press, 1995.

Cartarescu, Mircea (∗1956): Poezii: Cand ai nevoie de dragoste etc. (ca.1985), ed. RomanianVoice – Poezii Romanesti, 1994-2003.

Steinhardt, Nicolae (Nicu-Aurelian) (1912-1989): Jurnalul fericirii (1987, extracts). Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1991.

Baiski, Dusan: Luna si tramvaiul 5, proza scurta. Timisoara: Editura Marineasa, 1994.Balota, Bianca: ‘Noapte de dragoste’; ‘Ah, petrecerile acelea de familie’, in Iubiri subversive.

Cele mai bune povestiri 1997, ed. Dan-Silviu Boerescu. Bucuresti: All, 1998.Necula, Nicolae: ‘Este necesar si folositor sa postim ınainte de a ne ımpartasi?’ in Vestitorul

Ortodoxiei, March 1997.—— ‘Ce trebuie sa faca un credincios care vine la biserica?’ in Traditie si ınnoire ın slujirea

liturgica. Galati, 1994.Pellea, Amza: Povestiri umoristice (1998, transscribed speech), Radu Narcis Velicescu (tran-

scr.). Romanian Voice – Poezii Romanesti, 1994-2003.Romania Literara, all issues 1995-2001. Bucuresti: Fundatia “Romania Literara”, 1995-2001.Herjeu, Radu: Incident de Craciun (1998). Author’s web-URL: http://www.geocities.com/

radu-herjeu/teatru/teatru.htmMihaies, Mircea: Un sloi de gheata pentru Guiness Book si Reciclarea Nimicului. Timisoara:

Editura Marineasa, 2000.Mihai, Octavian: Istorie si etnografie pe teritoriu Kosovoului. Montreal: Romanian Organi-

zation of Student Society of McGill University, 1999.


Biblioteca Electronica, ed. Radu Iliescu, 1999: http://www.lme.ro/byblos/Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane, Bucuresti: http://biblioteca.euroweb.ro/autori.htmFolium, Bucuresti: http://www.folium.ro/ebooks/Fundatia “Romania Literara”, Bucuresti, 1995-2001: http://www.romlit.ro/Romanian Voice, ed. Radu Narcis Velicescu, 1994-2003: http://www.romanianvoice.com/poezii/

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