Cover not available
Part of
Structuring Variation in Romance Linguistics and Beyond: In honour of Leonardo M. Savoia
Edited by Mirko Grimaldi, Rosangela Lai, Ludovico Franco and Benedetta Baldi
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 252] 2018
► pp. 73–84

Chapter 4
Notes on infinitival relatives in Italian

| Ca' Foscari University of Venice
| University of Padova

Here certain properties of Italian infinitival relatives will be discussed which to our knowledge have not been addressed in previous work on this topic (Napoli 1976; Cinque 1988: § 1.1.5; Bianchi 1991, 2007). In particular, we will point out a distinction between two ‘da + infinitive’ relative constructions and a difference between da infinitival relatives and infinitival relatives introduced by relative pronouns; furthermore, we will illustrate the bounded vs unbounded nature of relativization under restructuring, and the properties of restrictive vs non-restrictive infinitival relatives.

Keywords: da and wh-infinitival relatives, modal force, island constraints, restructuring
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Nonrestrictive da infinitival relatives?
  • 3.Two da infinitival relatives in Italian
  • 4.A difference between the da + infinitive and the P cui/art. + qual‑ infinitive construction
  • 5.Another difference between the da + infinitive and the P cui/art. + qual‑ infinitive construction
  • 6.Are there subject infinitival relatives in Italian?
  • 7. Da infinitival relatives and restructuring
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 December 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.252.04cin
References
Abeillé, Anne, Godard, Danièle, Miller, Philip & Sag, Ivan
1996 French bounded dependencies. < [URL]> (6 February 2018).
Belletti, Adriana
1982 ‘Morphological’ passive and pro drop: The impersonal construction in Italian. Journal of Linguistic Research, 2(4): 1–33.Google Scholar
Benincà, Paola
2012 Determiners and relative clauses. Iberia 4(1): 92–109. < [URL]> (6 February 2018).Google Scholar
Benincà, Paola & Cinque, Guglielmo
2014 Post-copular relative clauses in the diachrony of Italian. In Diachrony and Dialects, Paola Benincà, Adam Ledgeway, Nigel Vincent (eds), 257–278. Oxford: OUP.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bhatt, Rajesh
2006 Covert Modalities in Non-finite Contexts. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bianchi, Valentina
1991 Le relative infinitive e altre strutture modali infinitive in italiano. Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica 5: 51–69. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore.Google Scholar
2007 Wh-infinitives and the licensing of “anaphoric tense”. In Proceedings of the ‘XXXII Incontro di Grammatica Generativa’, M. Cecilia Picchi & Alan Pona (eds), 35–47. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso.Google Scholar
Burzio, Luigi
1986 Italian Syntax. A Government-Binding Approach. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo
1978 La sintassi dei pronomi relativi ‘cui’ e ‘quale’ nell’italiano moderno. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 3: 31–126.Google Scholar
1982 On the theory of relative clauses and markedness. The Linguistic Review 1: 247–294. Reprinted, with corrections, in Cinque, Guglielmo, Italian Syntax and Universal Grammar, 54–103. Cambridge: CUP.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1988 La frase relativa. In Grande Grammatica Italiana di Consultazione, Vol. 1, Lorenzo Renzi (ed.), 443–503. Bologna: il Mulino.Google Scholar
2006 Restructuring and Functional Heads. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Giurgea, Ion & Soare, Elena
2010a Modal non-finite relatives in Romance. In Modality and Mood in Romance: Modal Interpretation, Mood Selection, and Mood Alternation, Martin G. Becker & Eva-Maria Remberger (eds), 57–80. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
2010b Predication and the nature of non-finite relatives in Romance. In Edges, Heads, and Projections. Interface properties [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 156], Anna Maria Di Sciullo & Virginia Hill (eds) 191–213. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hackl, Martin & Nissenbaum Jon
2012 A modal ambiguity in For-infinitival relative clauses. Natural Language Semantics 20: 59–81.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hasegawa, Iroshi
1998 English infinitival relatives as prepositional phrases. English Linguistics. Journal of the English Linguistics Society of Japan 15: 1–27.Google Scholar
Huot, Helène
1981 Constructions infinitives du français: Le subordonnant De. Geneva: Droz.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard S.
2016 Comparative syntax and *IS TO*. Linguistic Analysis 39(1–2): 35–82.Google Scholar
Maiden, Martin & Robustelli, Cecilia
2013 A Reference Grammar of Modern Italian. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Napoli, Donna Jo
1976 Infinitival relatives in Italian. In Current Studies in Romance Linguistics, Marta Luján & Frederick Gerald Hensey (eds), 300–329. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Pesetsky, David
1998 Some optimality principles of sentence pronunciation. In Is the Best Good Enough? Optimality and Competition in Syntax, Pilar Barbosa, Daniel Fox, Paul Hagstrom, Martha McGinnis & David Pesetsky (eds), 337–383. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Edwin
1980 Predication. Linguistic Inquiry 11: 203–238Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Cinque, Guglielmo
2020. The Syntax of Relative Clauses, DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.