Alleged obligatorily controlled inflected infinitives

This paper examines the arguments presented in Modesto (2009, 2018) and Sheehan (2013, 2018) in favor of the idea that inflected infinitival complements of desideratives, commissives, and object control verbs such as persuadir ‘persuade’ in Portuguese can be obligatorily controlled. It argues that the relevant complements are not instances of obligatory control (OC); they rather contain pro, interpreted by the same operations that govern its interpretation in finite clauses. This conclusion reinforces Landau’s (2015) claim that the presence of agreement inflection blocks control in attitude complements. Focusing on European Portuguese, the paper argues that this conclusion allows for a precise characterization of the distribution of the inflected infinitive in verbal complement position: the inflected infinitive is barred in the complement position of restructuring verbs and in interrogative complements. The paper offers an account of this distribution that is based on the idea that inflected infinitives are bare TP projections. Evidence in favor of this claim comes from an examination of the distribution of pre-verbal subjects. The restrictions on subject reference found in inflected infinitival complements of different OC attitude verbs in European Portuguese stem from the particular status of Actional complements in OC contexts (Farkas 1992; Jackendoff & Culicover 2003).