Abstract
In European Portuguese (henceforth EP), the surface sequence in (1), where the NP is the understood subject of the infinitival verb and a is a preposition morphologically equivalent to the English preposition ‘to’, occurs in adjacency to different types of matrix verbs, among which object control verbs like persuadir ‘to persuade’, obrigar ‘to force’, perception verbs like ver ‘to see’, ouvir ‘to hear’, and a few others. This is illustrated in (2) and (3) for control and perception verbs, respectively:
- (1)
...NPaVinfin...
- (2)
Eu obriguei os meninos a ler(em) esse livro. I forced the children to read (AGR) that book.
- (3)
Eu vi os meninos a ler(em) esse livro. I saw the children to read (AGR) that book. I saw the children reading that book.
Notice that in both cases the infinitival verb may display the Agr(eement) features (with its understood subject) typical of the so-called inflected infinitive (for discussion of inflected infinitival clauses in EP see Raposo(1987)).
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Raposo, E. (1989). Prepositional Infinitival Constructions in European Portuguese. In: Jaeggli, O.A., Safir, K.J. (eds) The Null Subject Parameter. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2540-3_10
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