[Lingtyp] for-to infinitival

Wed Apr 24 10:42:45 UTC 2024

 Dear Christian,

>From what I gather,

   - V*-a̱* 'vacant subject nominaliser' suppresses an own-clause subject
   - V*-a̱**-klä* 'VSN-?' allows the appearance of an own-clause subject
   (=/= that of the superordinate clause?)
   - Both can mark purposive clauses and complements of stative predicates
   (e.g. 'possible for X to happen')

My first question is whether or not it makes sense for *-a̱* to retain the
VSN gloss when *-klä* is also present, since the subject suppression
feature is undone by *-klä*. Then, wouldn't it make more sense to analyse
*-a̱**-klä* as one form with the structural feature of allowing a subject,
contrasting with *-a̱* which does not?

Secondly, I wonder if you have considered that these two infinitival
constructions might make a contrast based on coreference? The VSN appears
when there is an available coreferential argument in the superordinate
clause, while *-a̱**-klä* appears when there is no possible coreferent
(allowing the introduction of a new one). In that case, I would suggest a
label based on this behaviour. This is however somewhat oblique to the
valency behaviour.

Best,
Ellison Luk

On Wed, 24 Apr 2024 at 12:33, Riccardo Giomi via Lingtyp <
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

> Dear Christian and all,
>
> This might sound (and actually, be) somewhat trivial, but, if you're after
> a structural rather than functional definition, could it make sense to
> adopt the Portuguese terminology and call the Cabecar construction *personal
> infinitive?* (As in Portuguese,* inflected* *infinitive * could also be
> an option, although it is obviously vaguer and less precise – since any
> infinitive form is ipso facto inflected, if it includes an infinitive
> marker.)
>
> This would obviously not work if you were looking for a term for the -*klä
> * morpheme as such, but I don't immediately see why it couldn't apply to
> the inflected word-form as a whole, to the extent that this includes a
> person marker. In Portuguese too, the infinitive marker -*r *(or for
> some, -*Vr*) and the person indexes (-*0, -es, -mos*, etc.) are actually
> separate morphemes, which as they occur together distinguish this
> inflectional form for the rest of the paradigm.
>
> Apologies if I am missing something!
>
> Best,
> Riccardo
>
> Riccardo Giomi
> Assistant Professor of Functional Linguistics
> University of Amsterdam
> Faculty of Humanities: Department of Linguistics
> Spuistraat 134, 1012 VB, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
> Nigel Vincent via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Sent:* 24 April 2024 08:26
> *To:* Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de>;
> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>;
> Juergen Bohnemeyer <jb77 at buffalo.edu>
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] for-to infinitival
>
> A couple of problems with Juergen's suggestion, one empirical and one
> terminological:
>
>    - the empirical problem is that there are instances of bare
>    infinitives that aren't dependent on an argument in the matrix clause: 'It
>    was fun to see everyone yesterday', 'It's hard to do that' - often called
>    'implicit control'
>    - and terminologically the problem is that these days, even if one
>    does not work within generative grammar, the term 'control' is commonly
>    used in a pair with 'raising' so better not to use it for Christian's
>    dataset, I'd say.
>
> Sorry not to be able to offer a more positive contribution to the
> discussion!
> Nigel
>
>
>
> Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA MAE
> Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
> The University of Manchester
>
> Linguistics & English Language
> School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
> The University of Manchester
>
>
>
>
> https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/nigel-vincent(f973a991-8ece-453e-abc5-3ca198c869dc).html
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
> Juergen Bohnemeyer via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Sent:* 23 April 2024 10:15 PM
> *To:* Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de>;
> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Lingtyp] for-to infinitival
>
>
> 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)
> Professor, Department of Linguistics
> University at Buffalo
>
> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
> Phone: (716) 645 0127
> Fax: (716) 645 3825
> Email: *jb77 at buffalo.edu <jb77 at buffalo.edu>*
> Web: *http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/*jb77/__;fg!!PDiH4ENfjr2_Jw!Gr-c_FlTP9dBXgWFtpgurU8R2lUcNE9S4J-aH7MVe8y0KPPLLrp-fXVKzCQrxqBKTr7lpys3rHm8zetfgG6elF9L7ZhR6UzsLR1_yQ$>** [acsu.buffalo.edu]
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/*jb77/__;fg!!PDiH4ENfjr2_Jw!Gr-c_FlTP9dBXgWFtpgurU8R2lUcNE9S4J-aH7MVe8y0KPPLLrp-fXVKzCQrxqBKTr7lpys3rHm8zetfgG6elF9L7ZhR6UzsLR1_yQ$>*
>
>
> Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID 585
> 520 2411; Passcode Hoorheh)
>
> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
> (Leonard Cohen)
>
> --
>
>
>
>
>
> *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 *-a*
> *̱*, 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
> --
>
> Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
> Rudolfstr. 4
> 99092 Erfurt
> Deutschland
>
> Tel.:
>
> +49/361/2113417
>
> E-Post:
>
> *christianw_lehmann at arcor.de <christianw_lehmann at arcor.de>*
>
> Web:
>
> *https://www.christianlehmann.eu [christianlehmann.eu]
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.christianlehmann.eu/__;!!PDiH4ENfjr2_Jw!Gr-c_FlTP9dBXgWFtpgurU8R2lUcNE9S4J-aH7MVe8y0KPPLLrp-fXVKzCQrxqBKTr7lpys3rHm8zetfgG6elF9L7ZhR6UyH6jTi2g$>*
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> https://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20240424/110856d9/attachment.htm>