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1.2. V-movement in Infinitives
Pollock (1989) shows that verb movement (for lexical verbs) in infinitives is shorter than
in (French) finite sentences:
(7) a. Jean ne pense pas toujours au futur
J. ne thinks not always of-the future
b. Ne pas (toujours) penser (toujours) au futur...
ne not (always) to-think (always) of-the future.
c. Not to always think of the future...
Pollock's theory derives this fact from the 'weak' or 'poor' character of Tense in non-finite
sentences. Since all Romance infinitives show no Tense morphology on the infinitival verb, the
prediction should be that infinitives in these languages do not allow long verb movement,
contrary to fact: in Italian, Spanish and Catalan, infinitival verb movement is apparently as long
as finite verb movement. 108
(8) a. Non ama più Maria (Italian)
Not loves anymore M.
b. Non ( * più) amare più Maria...
Not to-love anymore M.
108 If not longer: we will argue that enclisis in infinitives
should be analyzed as extra verb movement (our proposal will
differ from Kayne (1991), who argues for a very short kind of
extra movement). See Belletti (1991) for the idea that elements
like più, mai, etc. occupy a position similar to French pas,
plus and other negative elements. On the other hand, there are
NSLs with short V-movement in infinitives. We will address the
question in section 1.3.
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