/ instituut voor de Nederlandse taal / Taalportaal
bibliography glossary about
  • Dutch
  • Frisian
  • Saterfrisian
  • Afrikaans
Show all
    The argument IPI features optional control
    quickinfo

    The Imperativus-pro-Infinitivo (IPI) does not have a lexical subject (but see the imperative IPI), but the bare infinitival verb of the IPI-construction entails an implied subject. This implied subject is controlled by its antecedent. There are two types of control: obligatory control and optional control. The adjunct IPI features obligatory control (see the adjunct IPI features obligatory control). The argument IPI, in contrast, may feature optional control.

    readmore

    The argument IPI may be optionally controlled. Consider the following example:

    1
    De plysje soe him opslute mei it doel en beskermje my
    the police would him.OBJ up.lock with the aim and protect me
    The police would lock him up to protect me

    Here the implied subject of the IPI may be controlled either by the matrix subject or the matrix object. The following example shows that the implied subject of an argument IPI may be controlled by the main clause object. This example below involves an IPI that is an argument of the matrix predicate:

    2
    It slagget dy nea en oertsjûgje him
    it succeeds you.OBJ never and convince him
    You'll never manage to convince him

    In sum, the argument IPI may feature optional control, whereas the adjunct IPI must feature obligatory control.

    References
      About this article
      Author(s): Eric Hoekstra
      Category: Frisian Syntax
      Keywords: IPI-construction
      Version: 1.0, December 2015
      Version history:
      version editor(s) date remarks
      1.0 Eric Hoekstra December 2015
      printreport errorcite
      Jump to:
      X