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4.4.2.Bare infinitivals

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This section discusses a number of formal properties of so-called bare infinitivals and shows that we should distinguish at least three different subcategories.

I. The infinitive verb is not preceded by te
II. Verb clustering
III. The infinitivus-pro-participio (IPP) effect
IV. Three subtypes of bare infinitival clauses

[+] I. The infinitive verb is not preceded by te

Bare infinitivals are characterized by the fact that they contain neither the complementizer-like element om nor the infinitival marker te, that is, the infinitive is bare in the sense of not being accompanied by any of the elements that we may find in the two other types of infinitival clauses. The question as to whether a verbal complement may appear as a bare infinitival depends on the matrix verb; a verb like willen'to want', for example, may take a finite clause or a bare infinitival, but not an ( om +) te-infinitival. Note in passing that English to want crucially differs from Dutch willen in selecting a to-infinitival, not a bare infinitival.

a.	Jan wil	[dat	Peter het boek	naar Els	stuurt].
	Jan wants	that	Peter the book	to Els	sends
	'Jan wishes that Peter will bring the book to Els.'

b.	*	Jan wil	[(om) PRO	het boek	naar Els	te sturen].
		Jan wants	comp	the book	to Els	to send

c.	Jan wil [PRO	het boek	naar Els	sturen].
	Jan wants	the book	to Els	send
	'Jan wants to send the book to Els.'

[+] II. Verb clustering

Customarily, the bare infinitive forms a verb cluster with the verb selecting the bare infinitival complement. This is clear from the fact that the two verbs cluster in clause-final position and that, as a result, the infinitival clause may be split: example (36a) shows that whereas the bare infinitive follows the matrix verb in clause-final position, all other constituents of the infinitival clause must precede it. For convenience, we italicize the infinitival clauses in the examples below.

a.	dat	Jan het boek	naar Els	wil	sturen.
	that	Jan the book	to Els	wants	send
	'that Jan wants to send the book to Els.'

dat Jan het boek wil naar Elssturen.

b'.

dat Jan wil het boek naar Elssturen.

The percentage signs in the two (b)-examples in (36) are added to indicate that certain southern varieties of Dutch also allow parts of the remaining part of the embedded infinitival clause to follow the matrix verb; we will ignore this for the moment and refer the reader to Section 5.2.3 for an extensive discussion of this.

[+] III. The infinitivus-pro-participio (IPP) effect

Monoclausal behavior in the sense indicated in the previous subsection is typically signaled by the so-called infinitivus-pro-participio effect, that is, the phenomenon that a verb does not surface in its expected past participial form when governed by a perfect auxiliary, but as an infinitive. That constructions with bare infinitival complements exhibit monoclausal behavior can be shown by comparing the perfect-tense constructions in (37): if the matrix verb willen selects a finite clause, as in (37a), it behaves as expected by appearing as a past participle in perfect-tense constructions, but when it selects a bare infinitival complement, it must appear as an infinitive in such constructions.

a.	Jan had gewild/*willen	[dat	Peter het boek	naar Els	had gestuurd].
	Jan had wanted/want	that	Peter the book	to Els	had sent
	'Jan had wished that Peter would have sent the book to Els.'

b.	Jan had	het boek	naar Els	willen/*gewild	sturen.
	Jan had	the book	to Els	want/wanted	send
	'Jan had wanted to send the book to Els.'

[+] IV. Three subtypes of bare infinitival clauses

Bare infinitival complements may occur in at least three different syntactic environments, which differ in the way their subject is realized in the surface structure: the subject can be realized as an accusative noun phrase in an AcI-construction, the phonetically empty element PRO in a control construction, or as the subject of the matrix clause in a subject raising construction. In the following examples the infinitival clauses are italicized and their subjects are underlined.

a.	Jan zag	Marie/haar	op de hei	lopen.	AcI-infinitival
	Jan saw	Marie/her	on the heath	walk
	'Jan saw Marie/her walk on the heath.'

b.	Jan wil PRO	een boek	kopen.	control infinitival
	Jan wants	a book	buy
	'Jan wants to buy a book.'

c.	Marie/Zij	kan	vertraagd	zijn.	subject raising infinitival
	Marie/she	may	delayed	be
	'Marie/She may be delayed.'

We will refer to these infinitival constructions by means of the names given in straight brackets, for reasons that will become clear in the following subsections.

[+] A. Accusativus-cum-infinitivo infinitivals

Bare infinitival complement clauses selected by perception verbs like zien'to see' or the causative/permissive verb laten'to make/let' exhibit an accusativus-cum-infinitivo effect: the subjects of the bare infinitival clauses do not appear as the phonetically empty element PRO, as would normally be the case in infinitival clauses, but as an accusative noun phrase. This is illustrated in (39), in which the subject of the infinitival clause is underlined.

a.	dat	Jan	het meisje/haar	een lied	hoorde	zingen.
	that	Jan	the girl/her	a song	heard	sing
	'that Jan heard the girl/her sing a song.'

b.	dat	Jan	het meisje/haar	een lied	liet	zingen.
	that	Jan	the girl/her	a song	made/let	sing
	'that Jan made/let the girl/her sing a song.'

It is generally assumed that the subject of the infinitival complement is case-marked by the matrix verb, that is, that we are dealing with so-called exceptional case-marking across the boundary of an infinitival clause. That it is the matrix verb which assigns case to the subject of the embedded clause is, however, not so easy to prove for Dutch because the examples in (40) show that matrix verbs of AcI-constructions cannot be passivized. We are therefore not able to provide evidence that the underlined noun phrases in (39) are indeed assigned accusative case by the active matrix verbs. This claim must therefore be motivated by appealing to the fact that there is simply no other element available that could be held responsible for case-assignment.

a.	*	dat	het meisje/zij	een lied	werd	gehoord/horen	zingen.
		that	the girl/she	a song	was	heard/hear	sing

b.	*	dat	het meisje/zij	een lied	werd	gelaten/let	zingen.
		that	the girl/she	a song	was	made/make	sing

That the underlined phrases in (39) are not selected by the matrix verbs but function as the subjects of the bare infinitival clauses seems undisputed and can be supported by means of pronominalization; the fact that the accusative noun phrase cannot be realized in (41a) shows that it is not selected by the matrix verb horen'to hear' but must be part of the infinitival clause pronominalized by dat'that'. Unfortunately, (41b) shows that pronominalization cannot readily be used as a test in the case of the verb laten'to make/let', as it is at best marginally acceptable with this verb under its permissive reading and completely excluded under its causative reading.

a.	dat	Jan (het meisje/haar)	dat	hoorde.	perception verb
	that	Jan the girl/her	that	heard
	'that Jan heard that.'

b.		dat	Jan	??(het meisje/haar)	dat	liet.	permissive verb
		that	Jan	the girl/her	that	let

b'.	*	dat	Jan	(het meisje/haar)	dat	liet.	causative verb
		that	Jan	the girl/her	that	let

Accusativus-cum-infinitivo constructions of the type discussed here exhibit monoclausal behavior. First, as is indicated by italics in (39) above, the bare infinitival complements are normally split; whereas the bare infinitives normally follow the matrix verbs in clause-final position, their arguments must precede them. Second, the examples in (42) show that they exhibit the IPP-effect; the matrix verb cannot surface as a past participle in perfect-tense constructions, but must be realized as an infinitive.

a.	dat	Jan	het meisje/haar	een lied	heeft	horen/*gehoord	zingen.
	that	Jan	the girl/her	a song	has	hear/heard	sing
	'that Jan has heard the girl/her sing a song.'

b.	dat	Jan	het meisje/haar	een lied	heeft	laten/*gelaten	zingen.
	that	Jan	the girl/her	a song	has	make/made	sing
	'that Jan has made/let the girl/her sing a song.'

[+] B. Control infinitivals

A bare infinitival clause selected by a so-called root/deontic modal like kunnen'to be able', mogen'to be allowed' or willen'to want', or a verb like leren'to teach/learn' has its subject realized as the phonetically empty pronominal-like element PRO. As in the case of ( om +) te-infinitivals, the PRO-subject of a bare infinitival can be either controlled by the subject or by the object of the matrix clause. The choice again depends on the matrix verb: whereas de deontic modals and intransitive leren'to learn' require PRO to be controlled by their subjects, transitive leren'to teach' requires PRO to be controlled by its object. Again, we have italicized the bare infinitival clause and underlined its subject.

a.	dat	JaniPROi	het boek	naar Marie	kan	brengen.
	that	Jan	the book	to Marie	is.able	bring
	'Jan is able to bring the book to Marie.'

b.	dat	[zijn dochtertje]iPROi	piano	leert	spelen.
	that	his daughter	piano	learns	play
	'that his daughter is learning to play the piano.'

b'.	dat	Jani	[zijn dochtertje]jPROj/*i	piano	leert	spelen.
	that	Jan	his daughter	piano	teaches	play
	'that Jan teaches his daughter to play the piano.'

Control constructions of the kind discussed here exhibit monoclausal behavior. First, the constructions in (43) show once more that the bare infinitival can be split; as is indicated by italics, the arguments of the bare infinitival precede the matrix verb in clause-final position, whereas the bare infinitive normally follows it. Second, the examples in (44) show that the construction exhibits the IPP-effect; the matrix verbs cannot appear as past participles in perfect-tense constructions, but must surface as infinitives.

a.	dat	Jan PRO	het boek	naar Marie	heeft	kunnen/*gekund	brengen.
	that	Jan	the book	to Marie	has	be.able/been.able	bring
	'that Jan has been able to bring the book to Marie.'

b.	dat	zijn dochtertje PRO	piano heeft	leren/*geleerd	spelen.
	that	his daughter	piano has	learn/learned	play
	'that his daughter has learnt to play the piano.'

b'.	dat	Jan zijn dochtertje PRO	piano heeft	leren/*geleerd	spelen.
	that	Jan his daughter	piano has	teach/taught	play
	'that Jan has taught his daughter to play the piano.'

That the noun phrases Jan in (43a) and zijn dochtertje in (43b&b') do not function as subjects of the bare infinitivals is clear from the fact illustrated in (45) that they must also be present when the infinitival clauses are pronominalized; this shows that these noun phrases are assigned thematic roles by the matrix verbs. The agent role of the bare infinitive must therefore be assigned to some independent argument, which motivates the postulation of a PRO-subject in these examples.

a.	Jan	kan	dat.
	Jan	is.able	that
	'Jan is able to do that.'

b.	Zijn dochtertje	leert	dat.
	his daughter	learns	that
	'His daughter is learning that.'

b'.	Jan leert	zijn dochtertje	dat.
	Jan teaches	his daughter	that
	'Jan is teaching that to his daughter.'

Note in passing that, if we adopt the conclusion from Section 4.6 that the quality of being predicational is a defining property of main verbs, the fact that the root modal kunnen'to be able' in the (a)-examples above is able to license the noun phrase Jan independently of the embedded infinitival shows that the traditional assumption that root modal verbs are non-main verbs cannot be maintained and that they must instead be seen as regular transitive verbs; cf. Klooster (1984/2001). We return to this issue in Section 4.5.

[+] C. Subject raising infinitivals

The previous subsection has put on hold the fact that examples such as (43a) are actually ambiguous: the matrix verb can not only receive a deontic/root reading but also a so-called epistemic reading. Although the most prominent reading of (43a) is the deontic one, the ambiguity can be brought out by putting this example in the perfect tense; if the modal verb is realized as a non-finite verb, it can only be interpreted deontically as "to be able to", but if it is realized as the finite verb it can only be interpreted epistemically as "may".

a.	dat	Jan PRO	het boek	naar Marie	heeft	kunnen	brengen.	deontic
	that	Jan	the book	to Marie	has	be.able	bring
	'that Jan has been able to bring the book to Marie.'

b.	dat	Jan het boek	naar Marie	kan	hebben	gebracht.	epistemic
	that	Jan the book	to Marie	may	have	brought
	'that Jan may have brought the book to Marie.'

That constructions with epistemic modals exhibit monoclausal behavior cannot be demonstrated by the IPP-effect as the perfect auxiliary is now part of the infinitival complement of the modal verb (see below), but it is still clear from the fact that the bare infinitival can be split: the arguments of the infinitival clause precede the modal verb in clause-final position whereas the bare infinitive normally follows it. The underlining in (46) suggests entirely different structures for the two constructions: if the modal verb has a deontic interpretation, the subject of the infinitival clause is realized as the phonetically empty pronominal element PRO; if the modal verb has an epistemic interpretation. the subject surfaces as nominative subject of the entire sentence by being promoted to subject ("raised to the subject position") of the matrix clause. Grounds for this assumption are again related to pronominalization of the infinitival clause; example (47a) illustrates again that the nominative subject is not affected by pronominalization if the modal verb is deontic, whereas (47b) shows that the nominative argument cannot be realized if the modal is epistemic and should therefore be assumed to belong to the pronominalized infinitival clause. We have added example (47b') in order to support our earlier claim that the perfect auxiliary in the epistemic constructions in (46b) is part of the infinitival complement, which is pronominalized by dat in the (b)-examples in (47).

a.	Jan heeft	dat	gekund.	deontic/*epistemic
	Jan has	that	been.able
	'Jan has been able to do that.'

b.		Dat	kan.	epistemic/*deontic
		that	may.be.the.case

b'.	*	Dat	kan	hebben.
		that	may.be.the.case	have

There is another good reason for assuming that the nominative subject in the epistemic example in (46b) originates as the subject of the infinitival complement clause. This immediately accounts for the fact that in passive constructions such as (48b) the internal argument of the bare infinitive stelen'to steal' surfaces as the nominative subject of the sentence; passivization of the bare infinitive first promotes the noun phrase die auto'that car' to subject of the infinitival clause, and subject raising subsequently promotes it to subject of the matrix clause.

a.	Jan kan	de auto/hem	gestolen	hebben.
	Jan may	that car/him	stolen	have
	'Jan may have stolen that car/it.'

b.	Die auto/Hij	kan	gestolen	zijn.
	that car/he	may	stolen	have.been
	'That car/It may have been stolen.'

Under the alternative hypothesis that the nominative noun phrases in the examples in (48) originate as arguments of the epistemic modal kunnen, we can only account for the pattern in (48) by adopting the highly unlikely assumption that passivization of the embedded verb affects the selectional properties of the matrix verb.
A final argument we mention here is that example (49a), with a subject clause introduced by the anticipatory pronoun het'it', is semantically more or less equivalent to (49b), at least with respect to the thematic relations between the italicized elements. If we assume that the nominative subject in (49b) originates as the subject of the infinitival clause and is subsequently promoted to subject of the matrix clause, the observed semantic equivalence follows straightforwardly.

a.	Het	kan	dat	Jan gevallen	is.
	it	may.be.the.case	that	Jan fallen	is
	'It may be the case that Jan has fallen.'

b.	Jan	kan	gevallen	zijn
	Jan	may	fallen	be
	'Jan may have fallen.'

Each of the examples in (47) to (49) strongly suggests that nominative subjects in epistemic constructions such as (46b) originate as the subject of the infinitival clause and are subsequently "raised" to the subject position of the matrix clause. We can formally derive this by assuming that the subject of the infinitival clause cannot be assigned accusative case and must therefore be assigned nominative case by being promoted to subject of the matrix clause in a fashion similar to objects in passive constructions.

___ Vepistemic [NP .... Vinfinitive ]

underlying structure

NPi Vepistemic [ti .... Vinfinitive ]

Subject Raising

Note that the analysis in (50) implies that epistemic modals do not assign an external thematic role. They must be able to assign an internal thematic role, however, which is clear from the fact that the finite complement clause in (49a), or the anticipatory pronoun in subject position introducing it, must be semantically licensed. Given the similarity in meaning between the two constructions in (49), we may also assume that the infinitival clause in (49b) must likewise be assigned an internal thematic role. If we adopt the conclusion from Section 4.6 that being predicational is a defining property of main verbs, the conclusion that epistemic modal verbs assign an internal thematic role would imply that the traditional view that epistemic modal verbs are non-main verbs cannot be maintained; we should, instead, consider them as unaccusative main verbs.

[+] D. Conclusion

The previous subsections have shown that bare infinitival clauses may occur in at least three types of syntactic environment which affect the way their subject is realized: the subject can be realized as an accusative noun phrase, the phonetically empty element PRO, or it may be "raised", that is, be promoted to subject of the matrix clause and be assigned nominative case. What we did not discuss, and what is in fact a still largely unresolved issue, is what the syntactic mechanisms are that determine the form of the subject of the infinitival clause. For example, why is it that the modal verb willen'want' lacks the ability of perception verbs to assign accusative case to the subject of their infinitival complement. Is this simply a lexical property of the verbs involved, or are we dealing with different syntactic structures? And, why is it that the subject of the infinitival clause is realized as PRO when the modal verb moeten is deontic but not when it is epistemic; cf. Klooster (1986)?

a.	*	Jan wil	[Marie komen].
		Jan wants	Marie come
		Intended reading: 'Jan wants Marie to come.'

b.	Jan moet [PRO	om drie uur	aanwezig	zijn].	deontic
	Jan must	at three oʼclock	present	be
	'Jan must be present at 3.p.m.'

c.	Jani moet [ti	om drie uur	aanwezig	geweest	zijn].	epistemic
	Jan must	at three oʼclock	present	been	be
	'Jan must have been present at 3.p.m.'

Since we do not have anything insightful to offer on the first question, we leave it as an unsolved issue for future research. The second question poses a severe problem for the traditional formulation of control theory in Chomsky (1981), which in effect states that traces of movement and PRO cannot occur in the same syntactic configuration. The answer may lie in an appeal to the alternative proposal in Koster (1978:ch.2) and, more specifically, Koster (1984a/1984b) that the difference is a property of the antecedent of the empty category (trace/PRO); we will briefly return to this issue in the conclusion of Section 5.2.2.1.

References:

Chomsky, Noam1981Lectures on government and bindingStudies in generative grammar 9DordrechtForis Publications
Klooster, Wim1984Ontkenning en noodzakelijkheid. Observaties met betrekking tot negatie en <i>moeten</i>GLOT763-120
Klooster, Wim1986Problemen met complementenTabu16122-132
Klooster, Wim2001Grammatica van het hedendaags Nederlands. Een volledig overzichtDen HaagSDU Uitgeverij
Koster, Jan1978Locality principles in syntaxDordrechtForis Publications
Koster, Jan1984Infinitival complements in DutchGeest, Wim de & Putseys, Yvan (eds.)Sentential complementationForis Publications141-150
Koster, Jan1984Anaphoric and non-anaphoric controlLinguistic Inquiry15417-459

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About this article

Author(s): Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver

Category: Dutch Syntax

Keywords: AcI-ConstructionBare InfinitivalInfinitival ClauseInfinitivus-pro-ParticipioPassiveSubject Raising

Version: 1.0, January 2016

Version history:

version	editor(s)	date	remarks
1.0	Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver	January 2016

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