morphological? - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

• The sharp decrease of frequency of the nominal infinitive with subject may due to a
more general constraint on infinitival subjects, which are marginal in Modern Spanish
(50) la corrupción es ... [ el incesante utilizar el puesto público para hacerse de un
beneficio no legítimo ]
'Corruption is the incessant using the public post to obtain an unlawful advantage.'
Figure 1. Occurrences of the constructions with nominal infinitives in the Corpus del Español.
100%
percentage
3 French
Nominal infinitives - Three different constructions in the course of time
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
century
el INF de DP el INF DP-OBJ el INF DP-SUBJ
French lacks a construction comparable to the Spanish infinitive, the English gerund or the
German infinitive.
3.1 Modern French
DET VInfinitive de DP
• In Modern French, infinitives occur as nouns, as in (51), besides being used as verbs,
e.g., in constructions with causative verbs or perception verbs.
(51) le boire 'the drinking, what is drunk', le manger 'the eating, food'
le déjeuner 'lunch', le dîner 'dinner', le souper 'supper', le goûter 'snack'
le lever 'rise', le coucher 'the lying down'
• Infinitives like those in (51) can refer to events
(52) b. [ Le déjeuner ] a eu lieu entre 13h00 et 14h20.
'Lunch took place between 1 and 2:20.'
a. au moment [ du coucher et du lever du soleil ]
'at the moment of sunrise and sunset'
DET VInfinitive DPObj
DET VInfinitive DPSubj (DPObj)
110