Sujeitos explícitos em orações infinitivas de controlo e elevação

Abstract

This paper discusses evidence that control and raising infinitives have overt subjects in European Portuguese as well as in the other Romance Null Subject Languages (NSLs). Drawing on previous proposals that verbal agreement morphology in the NSLs is “nominal”, it is suggested that the relation between a lexical subject “in situ” and T is invariably mediated by verbal agreement in a configuration of clitic doubling. This assumption, combined with a theory of control based on Agree, is argued to adequately capture the existence of subjects of control and raising infinitives in these languages as opposed to others.