[Lingtyp] for-to infinitival

[Riccardo Giomi]

Oops! I now realize I misread your first glossed example, and thought the free-standing pronoun was actually a bound person marker! (In fact I did suspect I was missing something..) Apologies!

Best,
R

Riccardo Giomi
Assistant Professor of Functional Linguistics
University of Amsterdam
Faculty of Humanities: Department of Linguistics
Spuistraat 134, 1012 VB, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
________________________________
From: Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de>
Sent: 24 April 2024 13:28
To: Ellison Luk <ellisonluk at gmail.com>
Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>; Juergen Bohnemeyer <jb77 at buffalo.edu>; Nigel Vincent <nigel.vincent at manchester.ac.uk>; Riccardo Giomi <r.giomi at uva.nl>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] for-to infinitival

While I certainly have no desire to terminate the discussion here, for which I am very grateful, let me just use the occasion for a few clarifications.

@Elena: This is a surprising idea which I would have liked to adopt. Unfortunately, there are almost no rules to require or block coreference of any of the nominals of the superordinate clause with any of the nominals of the -klä nominalization (@Ellison). The only coreference which is apparently non-standard [assuming that such a concept makes sense in an almost unwritten language] is between the absolutive of the superordinate clause with the (overt!) absolutive of the infinitival.
@Jürgen and Nigel: Like other infinitives in the world, the Cabecar vacant-subject nominalized form [it serves as an infinitive, but also as a nomen agentis, which is why I call it that] is subject to syntactic control by rules of grammar in suitable contexts, as Jürgen observes; and in other contexts, as Nigel observes, it is not. I therefore prefer the more general term 'phoric control' [~ referential control; some attribute is necessary here to prevent confusion with that control which distinguishes the actor from the undergoer].
@Ellison: It is true that -klä partly undoes the effect of the vacant-subject nominalizer. However, the -klä nominalization does inherit a few properties of the vacant-subject nominalization; for instance, neither allows representation of an ergative actant. Otherwise, I concede that the hope of building a regular syntax on splitting little morphemes in inflected forms may be methodologically naive in certain cases.
@Riccardo: The grammar of the language does not lend itself to such a terminological move. On the one hand, as you say, the infinitive is an inflected form [something that should, in fact, prevent use of the term 'inflected infinitive' for cases like the Portuguese one]. On the other, Cabecar lacks person marking on the verb, no matter whether finite or non-finite.

I remain grateful for more ideas,
Christian
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