[Lingtyp] for-to infinitival

Tue Apr 23 20:15:24 UTC 2024

Dear Christian – My assumption is that bare infinitives are subject to syntactic control (i.e., their unexpressed subject or pivot must be coreferential with a core argument of the matrix), and that the function of the type of construction you are interested in is to block/remove that control requirement, and thus for the argument of the infinitive that would be its subject/pivot in matrix to become expressible. Accordingly, the following terminological choices come to mind:

  *   Anti-control (infinitive) construction
  *   Uncontrolled infinitive (construction)

I’m sure more creative folks than me can come up with more creative expressions of the basic idea.

Best – Juergen

Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
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From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Christian Lehmann via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Tuesday, April 23, 2024 at 07:10
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] for-to infinitival
Dear colleagues,

as so often, my question is terminological in nature. Let's presuppose the structure and function of the English for ... to infinitival. The property that is of relevance to me is that it allows its subject to be represented. Now Cabecar has a very similar construction:

            Yís te ayë́́ kjuä́ tju̱-á̱ ijé yö́-n-a̱-klä.

1.sg erg book buy-pfv [3.ps form-mid-vsn-fin]

            ‘I bought the book for him to study.’
Like the English construction, it adds an operator - the suffix -klä - to the plain infinitival - marked by the vacant subject nominalizer -a̱, which we could, to simplify the discussion, take to be an infinitive suffix. And the infinitival marked by -klä differs from the plain infinitival exactly by not suppressing the subject argument and involving no phoric control by any component of the superordinate clause. Its syntax is also comparable to the Portuguese inflected (or personal) infinitive of the kind para ele estudar 'for him to study', para estudarmos 'for us to study'.

What do we call the -klä operator; and what do we call this infinitival? In most, though not all contexts, this infinitival indicates the purpose of the action of the superordinate clause. I had therefore considered calling it by the term of traditional grammar final (suffix and infinitival). Now this way is not open to me because this grammar (like most grammars, I presume) needs the term final to designate something (including a finite or non-finite clause) that goes at the end of a syntagma.

The term that comes to mind is purposive. I am reluctant to adopt it, for the following reasons:

1) This infinitival does not always have a purposive function, as in the following example:

            Jé ó̱-r=mi̱  Juan wa̱ i aláklä wä́yu-ä-klä.

d.med do1-mid(ipfv)=pot [John dsp 3 woman cheat-vsn-fin]

            ‘It is possible that John cheats on his wife.’
(The diathesis of the non-finite construction is as if the transitive verb were in middle voice; DSP is a kind of agent postposition on 'John'.)

2) More generally, a term referring to the structure rather than to the function of the construction would be more useful. The decisive syntactic difference is that the infinitive marked by -klä, while rearranging the valency a bit, does not reduce it. Thus, contrasting with 'vacant-subject nominalizer', it could be called 'valency-rearranging nominalizer'. Not very elegant, though; and 'valency-rearranged infinitival' sounds even worse.

3) The word purposive has never felt particularly elegant to me, in terms of standard derivational morphology [although I'm afraid that what reacts in me here is a Latin-speaker intuition rather than an English-speaker intuition].

If English grammarians call the construction a for-to infinitive, then I might call the Cabecar construction a -klä infinitive. This however, would imply a bankruptcy declaration of linguistic analysis and would, moreover, not solve the problem of the interlinear gloss for -klä.

Has anybody seen a good term for this kind of construction? Any help would be most welcome. Thanks in advance,
Christian
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