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

(15) [ I' V o [ I' [ I o cl I o ] ] ]
0 does not possibly violate the ECP, since I' is not a minimality barrier (in the sense of
Chomsky (1986-a)) because it does not exclude V o ; it does not violate any affixation requirement
as far as I o is content-less. Therefore it is a possible structure. Kayne claims that 0 is actually the
structure for enclisis in Romance infinitives: the apparent fact that the clitic is right adjoined to
the (functional head containing the) verb is due to the verb having skipped the position of the
clitic. Kayne assumes that I o is T o , which is likely to be content-less in infinitives. On the other
hand, the proposal that clitic attachment (in Romance) is left adjunction to a functional head can
be assumed to hold without exception. And the very short span by which V o out-raises the clitic
accounts for the apparent right-adjunction of the clitic to the verb. For more details on this
proposal, see Kayne (1991).
The existence of a structure like 0 is only partially derived in Kayne's account: since it
involves long clitic movement, it should be restricted to NSLs (as argued in Kayne (1989)), but
being a NSL is not a sufficient condition for allowing 0, as far as there are NSLs not having
enclisis in infinitives (Occitan, Old French, Sardinian). In any case, Kayne develops a proposal
that makes the existence of such a structure highly appealing, in that it allows for an explanation
of the generalization we mentioned above, namely that only languages having enclisis in
infinitives allow 'if'-infinitives (recall the contrast 0/0).
Kayne's account is based on several assumptions. One is that 'if' is a C o -particle that,
contrary to empty infinitival C o , is able to govern the specifier of IP, which is occupied by PRO
in control infinitives. 111 If we simply assume that PRO cannot be governed (due to the PRO-
111 Kayne crucially assumes that prepositions preceding
(controlled) infinitives in Romance, as in French (i), are not
in C o :
(i) Jean essaie de comprendre
for they do not have the same effects as 'if'. I agree on this
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