Jaume Solà i Pujols - Departament de Filologia Catalana ...

c. No diu mai la veritat (Catalan)
Not tells never the truth
d. No ( * mai) dir mai la veritat...
Not to-tell never the truth
e. No està nunca cansado (Spanish)
Not is never tired
f. No ( * nunca) estar nunca cansado...
Not to-be never tired
Thus, there seems to be a correlation between the Null-Subject status of the language and
the possibility for the infinitival verb to raise to a high (the highest) functional category: AGR in
Belletti (1991)'s theory and our own. Another fact, which is likely to be parasitic on the former,
is the possibility of clitic climbing. Kayne (1989) argues that clitic climbing (and also long V-
movement in infinitives) is due to the strong character of INFL in NSLs languages.
The problem is how to express the correlation between the strong character of AGR in
finite clauses and the purported strong character of AGR in non-finite clauses. In infinitival
clauses, AGR is not apparently strong in Italian or Spanish, as far as morphology can tell us. To
simply stipulate that infinitival AGR is strong because finite AGR in the same language is strong
appears to be a mere stipulation.
What I want to propose is the idea that what extends from finite to infinitival clauses is a
parameter value. But before proceeding, let us consider the facts considered in Kayne (1991)
concerning V-movement and clitic placement in infinitives, and the proposal Kayne presents to
account for the facts.
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