Infinitival Clauses in the Romance Languages

The aim of this chapter is the investigation of the case assignment mechanisms by which subjects in Romance infinitive clauses are licensed. First, let us repeat the basic case properties we observed in the data described in chapter 2: In this chapter, I interpret these and other facts in the light of the results concerning subject positions of chapter 5, taking into account the basic assumptions made in chapter 3 and the earlier accounts summarized in chapter 4. The order in which I examine the different major languages is the same as in chapter 5. I begin with Italian in section 6.1, where we find two main case assignment mechanisms, which can then be extended to the other Romance languages. I then tum to Ibero-Romance (Spanish in 6.2 and Portuguese in 6.3). Afterward, I discuss French, where, among other things, one of the mechanisms I assume for Portuguese is rediscovered (6.4). Finally, in section 6.5 I consider the other linguistic varieties. I focus on preverbal and postverbal subjects. The clause-final position is usually not considered. In section 5.3, I argued that clause-final subjects are the result of extraposition; they therefore have to be considered as subjects derived through A’-movement from one of the case positions that are discussed. On the other hand, A’-movement must be considered for preverbal subjects. In this context I discuss some additional data in which the subject is extracted to the main clause.

The present article reviews some aspects of the content of a new reference grammar of English, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, while reflecting on the process of writing grammars at the beginning of the 2lst century, particularly regarding the relation between theory and description. It is not my goal to offer a comprehensive review of the contents of this grammar, but to examine critically the conceptual framework underlying the linguistic description. For this, I concentrate on the analysis of certain aspects of phrasal and clausal complements of verbs, with particular attention to non-finite (infinitival) subordinate clauses. Some pedagogical implications are also briefly discussed.

This paper offers a conceptual analysis of the Portuguese inflected (or personal) infinitive. The analysis makes use of a few concepts of Cognitive Grammar. The inflected infinitive is described as an objective construal of the main participant of a process type. This conceptual import is consistent with the grammatical behavior of the inflected infinitive. After giving an overview of the structural properties of the inflected infinitive in modern Portuguese, the paper will describe the continuum of event asymmetry in which the inflected infinitival clause holds an intermediate position between the subordinate finite clause and the infinitival clause. The meaning of the inflected infinitive is therefore characterized by imagery dimensions that are specific to subordinate constructions, namely independence, specificity, grounding, prominence and objectivity/subjectivity. Finally, some aspects relating to the distribution of inflected infinitival (complement, adverbial and subject) clauses will be analyzed in terms of semantic compatibility.

This study aims to find the function of controlling constituents in Acehnese subordinative constructions. The function in question is “places” in the syntactic structure that will be filled with specific categories. This research employs qualitative research methods, incorporating note-taking and document review techniques. The data is presented in written text, rather than numbers or statistics. The data is obtained from various sources, such as sentences in Aceh language books, Aceh grammar books, and Aceh language dictionaries. The results show that controlling constituents in Acehnese subordinative constructions occupy only the functions of subject, object, complement, and adverb. These functions play a crucial role in connecting the main clause and the subordinate clause, thereby determining the overall meaning of the sentence. The subject-controlling constituent, as subject, object, complement, or adverb, plays a direct role in connecting the main clause and the subordinate clause. The subject in the subordinate clause refers to the subject, object, complement, and adverb in the main clause so that the subject in the subordinate clause can be omitted. It can be said that all these syntactic functions play an important role in controlling the subject in the subordinate clause.

Hittite attests a set of complex sentences in which (mostly) relative clauses (other subordinate clauses are also attested) appear in linear syntax to be within another subordinate (usually conditional, rarely temporal) clause or main clause. The relative clause can be preceded by a very limited array of constituents from the matrix clause, e.g., mān ‘if’ or the quotative particle ⸗wa(r). There are also examples which attest the conditional subordinator and the irrealis particle in two positions simultaneously, at the left edge of the whole sentence and in the conditional clause (= main clause for the relative clause). I provide a fine-grained descriptive and structural analysis of the structure and show that the type cannot be explained as bare indefinites, embedded relative clauses or parenthetic clauses. It is shown that, structurally, the sentences containing subordinate (mostly relative) clauses within other clauses are heterogenous and of three types. The difference lies in the elements that precede the relative clause and in the structure of the sentences, whereby a standard Hittite relative clause adjoins at different heights. All three types display the same mismatch between prosodic domains and syntax/semantics—the constituent that is part of the main clause from the semantic and syntactic perspective is prosodically part of the relative clause. Since there is a clause boundary delimiting the end of the subordinate clause within the main clause, it makes sense to treat the surface structure as a distinct taxonomic unit, which is correspondingly labelled a mismatch sentence. The new evidence allows us to obtain a fuller understanding of the Hittite left periphery than was previously possible. It thus offers an important window into hitherto unrecognized aspects of the underlying structure of the complex sentence in Hittite.

This paper proposes a novel analysis of Spanish raising constructions in which the verb ‘parecer’ selects the infinitival clause and its subject raises to the matrix clause. According to the labeling algorithm proposed by Chomsky(2013, 2015), I argue that movement of the subject of the infinitival clause is due to determine the label for the syntactic object {DP, vP} in that DP and vP are non-heads and do not share a prominent feature. Furthermore, I analyze the raising constructions with postverbal subject in which the subject of the infinitival clause is not raised to the subject position of the matrix clause. I claim that the verbal phrase moves from the syntactic object {DP, vP} to prevent label failure. Based on the concept of external pair-merge of heads proposed by Epstein et al.(2016), it is argued that, in the course of the derivation, C and T in the infinitival clause and R and v* in the matrix clause undergo external pair-merge, respectively, and then the phasehood of C of the infinitival clause and that of v* of the matrix clause are cancelled.

In many Romance languages, negative expressions exhibit a robust distributional asymmetry.When in post-verbal positions, they require theco-presence of negation; when in pre-verbal positions,they are incompatible with it. In the same languages, bare nominals exhibit a distribution that parallels the negativeone in some striking respects. They are possible in post-verbal positions, but infelicitous as pre-verbal subjects. Similar distributionalparallelisms between these expressions are shown toobtain cross-linguistically and diachronically and are argued to derive from their common internal syntactic and semantics properties. Both expressions have a 'deficient' DP, lack quantificational force, and are unable to check the D feature of EPP. Bare nominals may lack D0, but negative expressions contain a null D0syntactically licensed under DP internal Spec Headagreement or head movement. As these operations result from parametricoptions in DP syntax and have consequences on the semantic nature of these expressions, the central result of the paper isto derive cross-linguistic variations in negative concord from independentchoices in DP syntax.

Even if the Romanian language, on the one hand, and the English language, on the other hand, have different historical backgrounds, with no genetic relatedness, there are quite a number of similarities in expressing politeness in both languages. Our present survey is focused on the investigation of politeness from the socio-cultural point of view, emphasizing the similarities and differences that exist between the two languages. We have discussed the main linguistic theoretical aspects regarding this phenomenon, from different points of view: the conversational view, the face-saving view and politeness viewed as a conversational contract. Afterwards, we have approached in detail the problem of linguistic politeness, highlighting the social and cultural factors that have the strongest impact on choosing a certain way of addressing. We have come to the conclusion that the similarities and differences that exist among the Romanian and English languages as regards politeness expression are triggered by various value systems and by different cultural and social systems.

This comprehensive study investigates the crucial role of clauses in English sentence structure, primarily focusing on the distinction between independent clauses and dependent clauses. This research explores how these two types of clauses function as essential components in forming sentence structures, facilitating the expression of complex ideas and effective communication. The investigation reveals that independent clauses possess the ability to position alone as thorough sentences, while dependent clauses depend on independent clauses on the context and meaning. The study identifies various types of dependent clauses and examines how they contribute to more complex sentence structures. Furthermore, this research highlights the importance of subordinating conjunctions in introducing dependent clauses and establishing logical relationships within sentence structures. By elucidating the functions of independent and dependent clauses, this study provides valuable insights into the formation of effective sentence structures. The research demonstrates how the strategic use of independent and dependent clauses, along with the appropriate utilization of subordinating conjunctions, can enhance the quality and complexity of sentence structures. This analysis offers a deeper understanding of sentence structure mechanisms, contributing to broader linguistic theories and applications. The study emphasizes the critical role of clause analysis in developing strong writing skills and effective communication. The results indicate that a solid understanding of independent clauses, dependent clauses, and the use of subordinating conjunctions is crucial in creating varied and expressive sentence structures. This study contributes significantly to the considerate of sentence structures in English, underscoring the importance of independent clauses, dependent clauses, and subordinating conjunctions in language learning, teaching, and research. The study concludes that mastery of various clause types and the ability to combine them effectively are key to enhancing language proficiency and communication skills.

Subordinate clauses of time with the conjunctions referring to a limit or boundary kol, iki, ligi can express not only relations of a sequence of events/situations or simultaneity, but also highlight duration and indicate efforts put into the performance of the action. Verbs in the main and subordinate clauses can make certain combinations of tense forms. The selection of a subordinate clause structure depends on the modality of the predicate in the main clause. In cases of epistemic modality, main and subordinate clauses are based on verb forms expressed by the same tense. Cases, when tense forms differ, in such sentences are concerned with the de dicto semantic relation. When the predicate of the main clause expresses deontic modality, for the subordinate clause of time the following type of structure is selected: a conjunction referring to a temporal limit or boundary + negation + verb in the past simple tense. Clauses of time are characterised by specific structural peculiarities and a higher degree of grammaticality, semantically they are related to a need to describe a situation of imminent change or a situation set against the background of the other situation.

The paper discusses ways of expressing temporal relations of simultaneity in the German language. Although the relations can be expressed by participle phrases, noun phrases, prepositional phrases and infinitive phrases, the adverbial clause is the most frequent means of expressing the relations. The temporal adverbial clause has an almost unlimited range of application, which stretches from a vaguely hinted relation to absolute necessity, and from general statements and clarifications to definite emotionally motivated utterances. Wherever there is an obvious connection between facts, events, actions, relations as well as personal will and feeling, it can be expressed by means of a temporal structure. The subject of the paper is the influence of conjunctions während, als, wenn, seit(dem) and solange on the time arrangement of situations introduced into the time clause and the main clause with regard to morphological, syntactic and semantic elements and dependence on the relation of the correspondence between events in the time clause and events in the main clause in German.

Previous approaches to early bilingualism have argued either that children exposed to two languages from birth are not able to separate their two languages and experience massive cross-linguistic influence or that they do separate their languages from birth and lack crosslinguistic influence. The present paper assumes that both early language separation and crosslinguistic influence coexist in one bilingual individual during the same developmental stage for different grammatical phenomena. The goal of the present paper is to show that how crosslinguistic influence manifests itself depends on particular grammatical properties and is independent of language dominance. The direction of the influence is related to computational complexity (in the sense of Jakubowicz 2000). Data from a bilingual Italian/German child are discussed with respect to argument omissions, V2, and finite verb placement in subordinate clauses. For argument omissions, the Germanic language influences the Romance language and has a delaying effect. For V2 and finite verb placement in subordinate clauses, the Romance language has an accelerating effect on the Germanic language in the case of V2 and a delaying effect in the case of finite verb placement in subordinate clauses.

A grammatical construction resembling Present-Day English locative inversion has already been found in Old English, with a fronted prepositional phrase prompting V2 word order, both in main and subordinate clauses. It has been demonstrated that several discourse-related factors influence the positioning of objects, fronted locatives, finite verbs and subjects in subordinate clauses. One of the main aims of the present paper is to provide a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the locative inversion construction in Old English subordinate clauses. The Old English data for this study were obtained from the York–Toronto–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose, and they were analysed using Corpus Studio. The results were compared with those for main clauses, and discourse-related factors such as PP anaphoricity or subject type were analysed in order to find the motivation for the existence of this alternation of word orders. PP anaphoricity proved not to be a determining factor in triggering finite verb inversion, while other factors such as subject weight and subject type do seem to motivate finite verb inversion, thus yielding an embedded PP-V-S word order.

This research is aimed to analyze sentence fragments in a comic. The main research questions raised in this paper are: What types of sentence fragments can be seen in comic Hunter X Hunter by Yoshihiro Togashi 1998? What factor types can be found in comic Hunter X Hunter by Yoshihiro Togashi 1998? The paper uses the qualitative method to conduct content and document analysis (Choy & Clark, 2010). The source of data was the comic entitled ‘Hunter X Hunter in which the researchers discovered six forms of Sentence Fragments after studying the data: fragments of adjective clause, adverbial clause, nominal clause, appositive, infinitive clauses, missing subject, participial, and prepositional phrase fragments. The information was gathered from 30 chapters of Yoshihiro's comic. There were 34 Sentence Fragments, 13 (38%) Dependent clause fragment, 21(62%) into-phrase fragment. There are 6 types of sentence Fragment factors that were investigated by Bashir (2016), but in this comic only 4 factors were found; namely, Omission of the Verb (50%), Subject (20%), and Object (10%), omission of both subject and verb (10%), and Appositive or list Fragments (10%).

This paper, which is based on a corpus of contemporary Australian English, investigates the structural and communicative properties of extraposed clause constructions. Such constructions will often be superficially similar to right-dislocated constructions, but are generally distinguishable from these on structural, communicative and prosodie grounds. If there are no grammatical factors impeding extraposition (such as a matrix predicate containing a subordinate clause or an identified complement), then finite and infinitival clauses may be freely extraposed. Present-participials, which are more highly nominalised, extrapose less freely. The matrix predicate, which typically expresses an 'objectified epistemic or moral judgement, exhibits a variety of structural patterns. Dominant among these is the 'Subject~Predicator~Predicative Complement' pattern, with the complement most commonly realised as an adjectival phrase. Three communicative factors which influence extraposition may be identified: 'weight*, information, and theme. The data suggest that there is strong pressure in English to avoid sentences with a clause as subject in initial position and a comparatively light matrix predicate in final position. Non-extraposed sentences with a clausal subject in fact require special rhetorical and/or cohesive motivation, their infrequent occurrence reflecting the preferred 'given - before -new' ordering found in English. Just as important as the end-positioning of material in extraposition is the initialisation of an expression of the speaker's angle, enabling it to serve as the theme.