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Part of
Studies on Variation in Portuguese
Edited by Pilar P. Barbosa, Maria da Conceição de Paiva and Celeste Rodrigues
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 14] 2017
► pp. 279–300

Chapter 12
The Portuguese inflected infinitive across varieties

| New University of Lisbon, Portugal
| New University of Lisbon, Portugal

The aim of this paper is to investigate the properties and distribution of the inflected infinitive in different varieties of Portuguese, both from a diachronic and a synchronic perspective. Considering the development of the inflected infinitive from the 12th century up to the present, we argue that there are three types of inflected infinitives in Portuguese, which differ in their degree of finiteness, ranging from a form that exhibits similar characteristics to finite verb forms to a form which behaves like an uninflected infinitive.

Keywords: finiteness, inflected infinitives, Portuguese, diachrony, synchrony, syntax, control verbs
Article outline
  • 1.Overview
  • 2.The inflected infinitive in contemporary Romance languages
  • 3.The inflected infinitive in Portuguese: Diachronic and synchronic facts
    • 3.1Diachrony
      • 3.1.1Old Portuguese (13th – 15th centuries)
      • 3.1.2Classical Portuguese (16th – 19th centuries)
      • 3.1.3Summary of the diachronic data
    • 3.2Contemporary varieties
  • 4.Theinflected infinitive in contemporary Portuguese
  • 5.Final remarks
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.14.12fie
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Rivas, Javier & Esther L. Brown
2021. O infinitivo flexionado en galego: unha análise variacionista baseada na lingua oral. Estudos de Lingüística Galega ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

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