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'nominal' and 'adverbial' FC head. At least for infinitives, it cannot be COMP, because COMP
can be filled by the 'if' particle as we have seen. Let us assume it is a FC intervening between CP
and AGRP. We will call it NOM. 121 This head is probably not available in languages without
enclisis. This can be a good explanation for the strongly nominal character of infinitives in
languages like Italian, Catalan and Spanish, where it is used with a preceding definite article in
some constructions (a. examples), and, besides can be readily used as a nominalization (b.
examples): 122
(37) Catalan:
a. A l'arribar
At the-to-arrive
'In arriving'
b. El desvetllar-se de la natura
The to-awake of the nature
'The wakening of the nature'
121 Kayne (1991) suggests that there is an INFN
('infinitival') functional category which is specific to
infinitives. I agree on this point in proposing NOM. What is odd
about Kayne's proposal is that INFN is rather at the bottom of
the clausal FC-hierarchy. If this extra FC is to be responsible
for the categorial specificity of infinitives (their nominal
behavior, for instance), it is more natural that it is the shell
containing the other, sentence specific, FCs.
122 Actually, even Sardinian, which has proclisis in
infinitives, hence, in our terms, no movement of AGR o to NOM o ,
readily allows for infinitives as nominalizations. Perhaps
Sardinian really has this nominal head but does not use it.
After all, the nominal (or adverbial) character of English
gerunds does not imply long verb movement. So the existence of
an extra nominal FC would be a necessary but not sufficient
condition for verb extra-movement (amounting to enclisis) in
infinitives.
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