Control, restructuring and temporal interpretation: A View from Portuguese

Alexandra Fiéis; Ana Madeira

doi:10.5565/rev/isogloss.318

Control, restructuring and temporal interpretation

A View from Portuguese

Authors

Alexandra Fiéis Universidade NOVA de Lisboa https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8662-8795
Ana Madeira Universidade NOVA de Lisboa https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9870-007X

PDF

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate whether there is a correlation between the temporal properties of control verbs and the possibility of restructuring with obligatory control predicates, taking clitic climbing as a diagnostic for restructuring. We review the findings of previous studies on earlier stages of Portuguese and on (non-)standard varieties of contemporary European Portuguese. Additionally, we perform an analysis of both diachronic and synchronic corpus data, as well as of data collected through an acceptability judgement task. Based on our findings, we argue against a correlation between temporal dependence and restructuring and suggest that restructuring depends on the selectional properties of verbs, occurring when a functionally defective infinitive is selected. Diachronically, there is a change in the selectional properties of control verbs, whereas, synchronically, there is variation both across varieties and across speakers in the set of restructuring control verbs. Factors like the type of clitic and the presence of proclisis triggers affect the acceptability of clitic climbing.

Keywords

control, restructuring, clitic climbing, European Portuguese

References

Andrade, Aroldo Leal de. 2010a. A subida de clíticos em português: um estudo sobre a variedade europeia dos séculos XVI a XX [Clitic climbing in Portuguese: a study on the European variety from the 16th to the 20th century]. Ph.D. thesis, Universidade Estadual de Campinas.

Andrade, Aroldo Leal de. 2010b. The application of clitic climbing in European Portuguese and the role of register. In C. Borgonovo, M. Español-Echevarría, & P. Prévost (eds), Selected Proceedings of the 12th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, 97–108. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

Barbosa, Pilar, Paiva, Maria da Conceição de, & Kellen Cozine Martins. 2017. Clitic climbing in the speech of Braga and Lisbon. In P. Barbosa, M. C. de Paiva, & C. Rodrigues (eds), Studies on variation in Portuguese, 200–217. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.14.08bar

Cinque, Guglielmo. 2004. “Restructuring” and functional structure. In A. Belletti (ed.), Structures and beyond. The cartography of syntactic structures, 132–191. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195171976.003.0005

Costa, João, Fiéis, Alexandra, & Maria Lobo. 2015. Input variability and late acquisition: Clitic misplacement in European Portuguese. Lingua 161: 10–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2014.05.009

Duarte, Inês. 2003. Padrões de colocação dos pronomes clíticos [Placement patterns of clitic pronouns]. In M. H. Mateus, A. M. Brito, I. Duarte, & I. Hub Faria (eds), Gramática da Língua Portuguesa [Grammar of the Portuguese Language], 847–867. Lisboa: Caminho.

Duarte, Inês, & Gabriela Matos. 2000. Romance clitics and the Minimalist Program. In J. Costa (ed.), Portuguese Syntax: New Comparative Studies in Portuguese Syntax, 116–142. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195125757.003.0005

Fiéis, Alexandra, & Ana Madeira. 2012. Predicados de controlo na diacronia do português. In M. A. M. Costa, C. Flores, & N. Alexandre (eds), Textos Selecionados do XXVII Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística [Selected Texts from the 27th National Meeting of the Portuguese Linguistics Association], 271–284. Lisbon: Associação Portuguesa de Linguística.

Freixo, Andreia. 2021. Estruturas de subida do clítico: estudo comparativo entre língua falada e língua escrita [Clitic climbing structures: a comparative study of the spoken language and the written language]. MA dissertation, Univeristy of Lisbon.

Gonçalves, Anabela. 1999. Predicados Complexos Verbais em Contextos de Infinitivo não Preposicionado [Verbal complex predicates in non prepositional infinitival contexts]. Ph.D. thesis, University of Lisbon.

Gonçalves, Anabela, Carrilho, Ernestina, & Sandra Pereira. 2016. Predicados complexos numa perspetiva comparativa [Complex predicates from a comparative perspective]. In A. M. Martins, & E. Carrilho (eds), Manual de Linguística Portuguesa [Manual of Portuguese Linguistics], 663–687. Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110368840-022

Gonçalves, Anabela, Cunha, Luís Filipe, & Purificação Silvano. 2010. Interpretação Temporal dos Domínios Infinitivos na Construção de Reestruturação do Português Europeu [Temporal Interpretation of Infinitival Domains in the Restructuring Construction of European Portuguese]. In A. M. Brito, M. da Silva, J. Veloso, & A. Fiéis (eds), Textos Selecionados do XXV Encontro da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística [Selected Papers from the XXV Meeting of the Portuguese Linguistics Association], 435–447. Lisbon: Associação Portuguesa de Linguística /Colibri.

Kayne, Richard. 1989. Null subjects and clitic climbing. In O. Jaeggli, & K. Safir (eds), The Null Subject Parameter, 239–261. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2540-3_8

Landau, Idan. 2000. Elements of Control. Structure and Meaning in Infinitival Constructions. Dordrecht: Kluwer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3943-4

Luís, Ana R., & Georg A. Kaiser. 2016. Clitic pronouns: phonology, morphology, and syntax. In W. L. Wetzels, J. Costa, & S. Menuzzi (eds), The Handbook of Portuguese Linguistics, 210–233. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118791844.ch12

Magro, Catarina. 2004. O fenómeno de Subida do Clítico à luz de dados não-standard do PE [Clitic Climbing in the light of non-standard EP data]. Ms., University of Lisbon.

Magro, Catarina. 2005. Introdutores de orações infinitivas: O que diz a sintaxe dos clíticos [Introductors of infinitival clauses: What the syntax of clitics says]. In I. Duarte, & I. Leiria (eds), Actas do XX Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística [Proceedings of the 20th National Meeting of the Portuguese Linguistics Association], 649–664. Lisbon: Associação Portuguesa de Linguística.

Martins, Ana Maria. 1994. Clíticos na História do Português [Clitics in the History of Portuguese]. Ph.D. thesis, University of Lisbon.

Martins, Ana Maria. 2000. A Minimalist Approach to Clitic Climbing. In J. Costa (ed.), Portuguese Syntax. New Comparative Studies, 169–190. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195125757.003.0007

Martins, Ana Maria. 2006. Aspects of Infinitival Constructions in the History of Portuguese. In R. S. Gess, & D. Arteaga (eds), Historical Romance Linguistics: Retrospective and Perspectives, 327–355. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.274

Martins, Ana Maria. 2016. A colocação dos pronomes clíticos em sincronia e diacronia [Clitic Placement in synchrony and diachrony]. In A. M. Martins, & E. Carrilho (eds), Manual de Linguística Portuguesa [Manual of Portuguese Linguistics], 401–430. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110368840-017

Reis, Diana. 2022. Subida de clítico e reestruturação em português europeu. MA dissertation, University of Lisbon.

Salvi, Giampaolo. 1990. La sopravvivenza della legge di Wackernagel nei dialetti occidental dela Peninsola Iberica. Medioevo Romanzo (15): 117–210.

Stowell, Tim. 1982. The tense of infinitives. Linguistic Inquiry 3(13): 561–570.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4178293

Vitorino, Inês. 2017. Aquisição de estruturas com subida do clítico em português europeu [The acquisition of clitic climbing structures in European Portuguese]. MA dissertation, Nova University of Lisbon.

Wurmbrand, Susi. 2001. Infinitives. Restructuring and Clause Structure. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110908329

Corpora

Galves, C., & Faria, P. (2010). Tycho Brahe Parsed Corpus of Historical Portuguese. Retrieved from http://www.tycho.iel.unicamp.br/~tycho/corpus/en/index.html

Linguateca. (n.d.). CETEMPúblico – Corpus de Extractos de Textos Electrónicos MCT/Público. Retrieved from http://www.linguateca.pt/cetempublico/

Martins, A. M. (eds). (2010). CORDIAL-SIN: Syntax-oriented Corpus of Portuguese Dialects. Lisbon, Center of Linguistics of the University of Lisbon. Retrieved from https://www.clul.ulisboa.pt/en/recurso/cordial-sin-syntax-oriented-corpus-portuguese-dialects

Xavier, M. F. (ed.). (1998). CIPM: Corpus Informatizado do Português Medieval. [Digital Corpus of Medieval Portuguese]. Linguistics Center, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Retrieved from http://cipm.fcsh.unl.pt/