Nonfinite Inquiries: Materials for a Comparative Study of Nonfinite Predicative Domains

Description

This study aims at developing a unified perspective on nonfiniteness, encompassing its morphological, syntactic and semantic aspects. It puts the emphasis on clause types distinct from standard infinitives (gerund clauses, Celtic verbo-nominal structures, Portuguese inflected infinitives, Latin dominant participle constructions) and takes advantage of the most recent developments in syntactic theory. The notions of defectiveness and completeness, the inheritance hypothesis, the labeling requirement, the syntactic definition of lexical categories, once combined together, appear to make accessible tighter and more elegant analyses than previous accounts. Acknowledgments Contents Foreword I Questions about nonfiniteness 1 Finiteness, tense, person agreement 2 How nonfinite domains differ from finite ones 3 Crossing the verb/noun border 4 A program II Key concepts and emerging issues in recent syntactic theorizing Introduction 5 Categories and their labels 6 Categories and their features: Inheritance and the C-T connection 7 The licensing of overt and controlled subjects 8 The semantics of nonfinite tense III The morphosyntax of English gerund forms Introduction 9 The syntax/morphology interface 10 Transcategorial items, mixed projections 11 A preliminary classification of gerund phrases 12 Lexical approaches to trancategoriality 13 Syntactic accounts of transcategoriality 14 Conclusion IV The syntax of English gerund clauses Introduction 15 Some semantic properties of gerund domains 16 How gerund constructions differ from one another 17 A labeling analysis of Acc-ing constructions 18 A category-switching analysis of Poss-ing constructions 19 A note on nominal gerund constructions 21 Summary V The morphosyntax of verbo-nominal heads in contemporary Welsh Introduction 22 The two uses of the verb-noun 23 The internal structure of VNP projections 24 Aspectual properties of Welsh verb-nouns 25 Conclusion VI The syntax of Welsh verbo-nominal clauses Introduction 26 i-initial verbo-nominal clauses 27 Bod-initial constructions 28 Labeling Welsh VN-clauses 29 The tense of VN-clauses 30 Conclusion VII Verbo-nominal root clauses in Middle Welsh Introduction 31 Some remarkable data 32 A short excursus on unergative VNs 33 Against the nominal analysis 34 The ergativity of verbo-nominal root and embedded clauses 35 Making the ergative analysis explicit 36 Coexistence of ergative-absolutive and nominative-accusative patterns 37 The interpretation of tense 38 Conclusion 39 Appendix: Proposals for the analysis of ergative structures VIII The syntax of inflected infinitives in European Portuguese 40 Introduction 41 Three asymmetries 42 The non-existence of an auxiliary/main verb asymmetry 43 The case licensing of IIC subjects 44 The eventive/stative divide 45 The factive/nonfactive asymmetry and the categorial identity of IICs 46 Labeling IICs 47 Inflected/uninflected infinitive clauses with a null subject 48 Conclusion 49 Appendix: Verb classes in European Portuguese IX Extraposition phenomena Introduction 50 The extraposition of embedded finite clauses 51 Why Welsh VN-clauses obligatorily extrapose, why Welsh VN-phrases cannot 52 A principled approach to extraposition 53 Why gerund clauses don’t extrapose 54 Why Portuguese inflected infinitive structures sometimes extrapose, sometimes don’t 55 Conclusion X The Latin ab urbe condita construction Introduction 56 Domain of study 57 Basic syntactic and semantic properties of the DPC 58 The analysis of passive past participles: A few landmarks 59 DPCs as mixed projections 60 Agreement and case in DPCs 61 The origin of linguistic variation 62 Conclusion XI Facts and events, attitudinal objects and states of affairs Introduction 63 Do gerund clauses name facts? 64 Verbo-nominal clauses 65 On attitudinal objects 66 Inflected infinitive constructions 67 Taking stock XII Conclusion: The many faces of defectiveness Introduction 68 Semantics 69 Morphosyntax 70 Syntax 71 On defectiveness References Index