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

1.3. Kayne's Proposal
Kayne (1991) shows that in Romance languages there is a correlation between enclisis in
infinitives and the possibility of having interrogative infinitives with a COMP particle of the type
'if', which he convincingly argues is a C o particle:
(9) Italian:
a. andarci / vederlo (enclisis)
to-go-there to-see-it
b. Non so se andarci
(10) French:
Not know-I if to-go-there
'I don't know whether to go or not'
a. y aller / le voire (proclisis)
there-to-go it-to-see
b. *Je ne sais pas si y aller
I ne know not if there to-go
'I don't know whether to go or not'
Kayne argues that this is a genuine correlation holding of many Romance languages, and
that it does not correlate with the (non) NSL status of the language. 109 So Catalan, Spanish, and
some Italian dialects (Piedmontese, Milanese and Paduan) are like Italian, while Occitan,
Sardinian and some Italian dialects (Gardenese) are like French. As for English (and languages
having short V-movement in infinitives in general), they would pattern with French in not
109 Kayne argues that the NSL status is a necessary but not
sufficient condition for a language to have enclisis and thus
'if'-infinitive constructions.
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