Cover not available
Part of
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2018: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 32, Utrecht
Edited by Sergio Baauw, Frank Drijkoningen and Luisa Meroni
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 357] 2021
► pp. 25–48

Chapter 2
Infinitival complement clauses

Data from L2 acquisition of European Portuguese

| University of Lisbon
| University of Lisbon
| University of Lisbon
Assuming the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (FRH) (Lardiere 2008, 2009), we argue that the acquisition of Exceptional Case Marking (ECM), Inflected Infinitive Structures (IIS) and Prepositional Infinitival Structures (PIC) by Spanish learners of European Portuguese (EP) presents different challenges. Two Acceptability Judgment Tasks show that identifying and reconfiguring the specific features associated with the PIC is a difficult task and that Spanish native speakers perform better in the case of ECM, whose properties can, for the most part, be transferred from the L1. However, the absence of an overt morphosyntactic counterpart for features related to Differential Object Marking (DOM) in EP represents a challenge. Finally, the results for the IIS present an interesting case study, since they force us to question the usual descriptions of the native grammar.
Keywords: syntax, L2 acquisition, feature reassembly hypothesis, European Portuguese, Peninsular Spanish, infinitival complements, inflected infinitive, prepositional infinitival construction, causative verbs, perception verbs
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Infinitival complement clauses in European Portuguese and in Peninsular Spanish
    • 2.1Exceptional case marking (ECM) and inflected infinitive structure (IIS)
    • 2.2Prepositional infinitival structure (PIC)
  • 3.Non-native acquisition of European Portuguese infinitival complement clauses: A case of feature reassembly
  • 4.Experimental design: Methodology and participants
  • 5.Acceptability judgment tasks: Data analysis
    • 5.1Exceptional case marking and inflected infinitive structure
    • 5.2Prepositional infinitival construction
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 December 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.357.02car
References (47)
References
Ambar, Manuela. 1992. Para uma sintaxe da inversão sujeito-verbo em Português. Lisbon: Edições Colibri.Google Scholar
Barbosa, Pilar & Fernanda Cochofel. 2005. A construção de infinitivo preposicionado em PE. In Inês Duarte & Isabel Leiria (eds.), Actas do XX Encontro Nacional da APL, 387–400. Lisbon: APL/Edições Colibri.Google Scholar
Barbosa, Pilar, Cristina Flores & Cátia Pereira. 2018. On subject realization in infinitival complements of causative and perceptual verbs in European Portuguese. Evidence from monolingual and bilingual speakers. In Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes & Alejandro Cuza (eds.), Language acquisition and contact in the Iberian Peninsula, 125–158. Boston: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barbosa, Pilar & Eduardo P. Raposo. 2013. Subordinação argumental infinitiva. In Eduardo P. Raposo, Maria Fernanda Bacelar do Nascimento, Maria Antónia Coelho Mota, Luísa Segura & Amália Mendes (eds.), Gramática do Português, Volume 2, 1901–1977. Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.Google Scholar
Bordelois, Ivonne. 1988. Causatives: From lexicon to syntax. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6. 57–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brugè, Laura & Gerhard Brugger. 1996. On the accusative a in Spanish. Probus 8. 1–51. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Casalicchio, Jan. 2013. Pseudorelative, gerundi e infiniti nelle varietà romanze: Affinità solo superficiali e corrispondenze strutturali. Ph.D. Dissertation: Università degli Studi di Padova.Google Scholar
. 2019. Gerunds become prepositional infinitives in Romance Small Clauses: The effects of later Merge to the syntactic spine. Probus 31(1). 75–117. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Castillo, Concha. 2001. The configuration of ECM structures. Studia Linguistica 55(2). 113–140. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Michael Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken Hale: A life in language, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
. 2008. On phases. In Robert Freidin, Carlos P. Otero & Maria-Luisa Zubizarreta (eds.), Foundational issues in linguistic theory, 291–321. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Contreras, Heles. 1987. Small clauses in Spanish and English. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5. 225–245. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Demirdache, Hamida & Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria. 1997. The syntax of temporal relations: A uniform approach to tense and aspect. Proceedings of the Sixteenth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, WCFL 16, 145–159. Standford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Duarte, Inês. 1992. Complementos infinitivos preposicionados e outras construções temporalmente defectivas em Português Europeu. Actas do VIII Encontro da APL, 145–158. Lisbon: APL/Edições Colibri.Google Scholar
. 2003. Subordinação completiva – as orações completivas. In Maria Helena M. Mateus, Ana Maria Brito, Inês Duarte, Isabel H. Faria, Sónia Frota, Gabriela Matos, Fernanda Oliveira, Marina Vigário & Alina Villalva (eds.), Gramática da língua Portuguesa, 5th edn., 593–651. Lisboa: Caminho.Google Scholar
Duarte, Inês & Anabela Gonçalves. 2002. Construções de subordinação funcionalmente defectivas: o caso das construções perceptivas em Português Europeu e em Português Brasileiro. In Anabela Gonçalves & Clara N. Correia (eds.), Actas do XVII Encontro da APL, 161–173. Lisbon: APL/Edições Colibri.Google Scholar
Duarte, Inês, Anabela Gonçalves & Matilde Miguel. 2005. Propriedades de C em frases completivas. In Inês Duarte & Isabel Leiria (eds.), Actas do XX Encontro Nacional da APL, 549–562. Lisbon: APL.Google Scholar
Gonçalves, Anabela. 1999. Predicados complexos verbais em contextos de infinitivo não preposicionado do português europeu. Ph.D. Dissertation: University of Lisbon.Google Scholar
Gonçalves, Anabela & Inês Duarte. 2001. Construções causativas em Português Europeu e em Português do Brasil. In Clara N. Correia & Anabela Gonçalves (eds.), Actas do XVI Encontro da APL, 657–671. Lisbon: APL.Google Scholar
Gonçalves, Anabela, Ana Lúcia Santos & Inês Duarte. 2014. (Pseudo-) Inflected infinitives and Control as Agree. In Karen Lahousse & Stefania Marzo (eds.), Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ Leuven 2012, 161–180. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hale, Ken. 1986. Notes on world view and semantic categories: Some Walpiri examples. In Pieter Muysken & Henk van Riemsdijk (orgs.), Features and projections, 233–254. Dordrecht: Foris. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, Roger & Hajime Hattori. 2006. Interpretation of English multiple wh-questions by Japanese speakers: A missing uninterpretable feature account. Second Language Research 22. 269–301. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hernanz Carbó, María L. 1999. El infinitivo. In Ignacio Bosque & Violeta Demonte (eds.), Gramática descriptiva de la Lengua Española, Volume 2. Madrid: Real Academia Española/Espasa Calpe.Google Scholar
Hornstein, Norbert, Ana Maria Martins & Jairo Nunes. 2008. Perception and causative structures in English and European Portuguese: ɸ-feature agreement and the distribution of bare and prepositional infinitives. Syntax 11(2). 205–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kraš, Tihana. 2010. Unaccusativity in L2 Italian at the lexicon-syntax interface. In Michael Iverson, Ivan Ivanov, Tiffany Judy, Jason Rothman, Roumyana Slabakova & Marta Tryzna (eds.), Proceedings of the 2009 Mind/Context Divide Workshop, 60–71. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Lardiere, Donna. 2000. Mapping features to forms in second language acquisition. In John Archibald (ed.), Second language acquisition and linguistic theory, 102–129. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
. 2008. Feature-assembly in second language acquisition. In Juana Liceras, Helmut Zobl & Helen Goodluck (eds.), The role of formal features in second language acquisition, 106–140. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
. 2009. Some thoughts on the contrastive analysis of features in second language acquisition. Second Language Research 25. 173–227. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Longobardi, Giuseppe. 2005. A minimalist program for parametric linguistics. In Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver, Riny Huybregts, Ursula Kleinhenz, Jan Koster (eds.), Organizing grammar: Linguistic studies in honor of Henk van Riemsdijk, 407–414. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Madeira, Ana Maria. 1994. On the Portuguese inflected infinitive. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 6. 180–203.Google Scholar
Martins, Ana Maria. 2018. Infinitival complements of causative/perception verbs in a diachronic perspective. In Ana Lúcia Santos & Anabela Gonçalves (eds.), Complement clauses in portuguese. Syntax and acquisition, 101–128. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mensching, Guido. 2000. Infinitive constructions with specified subjects. A syntactic analysis of Romance Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Montrul, Silvina & James Yoon. 2009. Putting parameters in their proper place. Second Language Research 25(2). 291–311. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pereira, Sílvia A. 2015. Predicative constructions with gerunds in European Portuguese dialects. Dialectologia. Special Issue 5. 351–371.Google Scholar
Rafel, Joan. 2000. Complex small clauses. Ph.D. Dissertation: Universitàt Autonoma de Barcelona.Google Scholar
Raposo, Eduardo P. 1981. A construção “União de orações” na cramática do Português. Ph.D. Dissertation: University of Lisbon.Google Scholar
1987. Romance infinitival clauses and case theory. In Carol Neidle & Rafael A. Nuñez Cedeño (eds.), Studies in Romance Languages, 237–250. Dordrecht: Foris. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1989. Prepositional infinitival constructions in European Portuguese. In Osvaldo Jaegli & Kenneth J. Safir (eds.), The null subject parameter, 277–305. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rodríguez-Mondoñedo, Miguel. 2008. The acquisition of differential object marking in Spanish. Probus 20. 1–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rothman, Jason & Roumyana Slabakova. 2018. The generative approach to SLA and its place in modern second language studies. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 40(2). 417–442. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Santos, Ana Lúcia, Anabela Gonçalves, & Nina Hyams. 2016. Aspects of the acquisition of object control and ECM-type verbs in European Portuguese. Language Acquisition 23(3). 199–233. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sprouse, Jon. 2007. A program for experimental syntax: Finding the relationship between acceptability and grammatical knowledge. Ph.D. Dissertation: University of Maryland.Google Scholar
Torrego, Esther. 1998. The dependencies of objects. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. Variability in the case patterns of causative formation in Romance and Its Implications. Linguistic Inquiry 41(3). 445–470. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Treviño, Estela. 1994. Las causativas del español con complemento de infinitivo. Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico.Google Scholar
Tsimpli, Ianthi M. & Maria Dimitrakopoulou. 2007. The interpretability hypothesis: Evidence from wh-interrogatives in second language acquisition. Second Language Research 23(2). 215–242. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tubino, Mercedes. 2010. Contrasting causatives: A minimalist approach. Ph.D. Dissertation: University of Arizona.Google Scholar