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Home , Article (grammar), Demonstrative, Determiner

Patterns of . A comparative analysis of Italian and Spanish

Federica Cominetti* & Valentina Piunno**

1. INTRODUCTION appearance of the in nominal function is a well-known and well- studied phenomenon of Romance languages1. In many cases the infinitive is preceded by a ; such a feature is attested in the earlier stages as well as in contemporary stages of Romance . Nevertheless, the presence of the determiner is not obligatory: alongside determined infinitives, nominal bare infinitives may be found, namely infinitives used in nominal function and not preceded by any determiner. Compare examples (1) and (2) from Italian: (1) Dopo un’ora di questo girovagare tornammo indietro. After a hour of this wander.INF go.PST.1PL back ‘After hour of this wandering went back’. (2) Girovagare per Roma mi rilassa. wander.INF for Rome CL relax.PRS.3SG ‘Wandering around Rome relaxes me’. The data presented in this paper show determined infinitives and bare infinitives are distinguished by clear distributional differences. If Gaeta (2002) has shown that the categories of derived verbal and of nominal infinitives can be kept apart by virtue of different syntactic and semantic features, our suggestion is that determined infinitives and bare infinitives should as well be considered as two different strategies for the realization of Process Nouns. Furthermore, we intend to show the role played by different in

* Università Roma Tre. [email protected] ** Università Roma Tre. valentina.piunno@uniroma3. The authors are extremely grateful to Raffaele Simone for his insightful comments to previous versions of the paper and to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. Responsibility for any errors lies solely with the authors. The is the result of the close collaboration of the two authors. For academic purposes, though, Federica Cominetti bears the responsibility for Sections 2 and 5, and Valentina Piunno for Sections 6 and 7. Sections 1, 3, 4 and 8 were elaborated and written together. 1 Among others, cf. Skytte 1983, Vanvolsem 1983, Salvi 1985, Jansen et al. 2002, Simone 2003, Sleeman 2010, Egerland & Simone 2011 for Italian; Gross & Kiefer 1995, Simone 2004, Buridant 2005, 2008, Bidaud 2010, Sleeman 2010, Marzo - Umbreit 2013, Umbreit 2014, for French; Plann 1981, Miguel 1996, Bosque - Demonte 1999 for Spanish. See also Fabrizio 2015 for the features of the infinitive in . Furthermore, the nominal infinitives is not only a Romance feature, but it is attested for instance in Germanic and (cf. Simone 2004, Alexiadou et al. 2011).

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 11:14:38PM via free access 228 Federica Cominetti & Valentina Piunno conferring different distributional and semantic properties to the infinitives. Differently from English, where the appearing in nominal function can only be preceded by the definite article the (Grimshaw 1990: 56), in Romance languages2 the nominal infinitive may indeed be preceded by the masculine singular forms of the articles – definite (.e. IT: il, ES: el, FR: le) and indefinite (i.e. IT: un, ES: un, FR: un) –, and the – proximal (IT: questo, ES: este, FR: ce), medial (just for Spanish: i.e. ese) and distal (IT: quel, ES: aquel, FR: ce) –. We intend to show that determined infinitives may keep verbal properties even when appearing in nominal function, or may exhibit features prototypically belonging to nouns. Accordingly, each type of determined infinitive can be located on different positions along the - continuum3.

2. THE VERB-NOUN CONTINUUM The long-time proposed conception of noun and verb as continuous categories explains the existence, in various languages, of nominals endowed with verbal properties, such as argument structure and aspectual values (Ross 1972, Grimshaw 1990, Sasse 2001, Simone & Pompei 2007). We will refer to these forms as Process Nouns. The encoding of Process Nouns is -specific. Among the different strategies, we find both derivation (cf. for example the category of Action Nominals, Koptjevskaja-Tamm 1993) and the use of existing paradigm forms. Such paradigmatic sources may be found in diverse parts-of-speech: for example, Chinese uses classifiers for the realization of the Nouns of Once (Cominetti 2014, Cominetti & Simone 2017). However, the probably most spread strategy for the realization of Process Nouns – and especially the Nouns of Indefinite Process – is the use of non- forms, namely the gerund (English), the maṣdar (), the (Lithuanian, cf. Arkadiev 2014) and the infinitive (). Many languages resort to more than one strategy for the realization of Process Nouns, leading to possible semantic overlapping between derivation and non- finite verb forms. Although meaning and function may overlap, the syntactic and semantic properties of derived verbal nouns are not the same as those of nominal infinitives (cf. Gaeta 2002: 38-39). In the following, we will suggest that bare nominal infinitives and determined nominal infinitives constitute as well two different strategies for the realization of Process Nouns, characterized by different degrees of verbal and nominal properties.

3. NOMINAL INFINITIVES IN THE DISCOURSE AND IN THE SYSTEM Much work on the nominal infinitives has been devoted to their long-time observed tendency to lexicalize4. This process produces nouns whose semantics

2 In this paper we will consider Italian and Spanish, beside a minor comparison with French. 3 Since we are interested in infinitives performing nominal function, we will not take into account the verbal uses of the infinitive, as for example in implicit subordinate clauses. 4 For Italian: Tekavčic 1972, Vanvolsem 1983, Skytte & Salvi 1991, Thornton 2004. For Spanish and French, cf. §6 and §7.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 11:14:38PM via free access Patterns of nominal infinitives 229 is more or less deeply related to the original verb, but anyway independent. In previous analyses, lexicalization was seen as the final phase of the process of nominalization of the infinitive. In contemporary Italian, however, the list of the fully lexicalized nominal infinitives includes around a dozen items (GRADIT, De Mauro 1999), while nominalization is widely spread and virtually available for all the . This datum suggests that lexicalization is not the natural ending step of the nominalization of infinitives. Rather, the small class of lexicalized forms constitutes a different – although diachronically dependent – phenomenon, which pertains to a different space of linguistic analysis, as opposed to the widespread possibility of syntactic nominalization. We assume here a conception of the linguistic space as threefold, adding to the acknowledged saussurian distinction between langue and parole the intermediate space of discourse5. Located between the rules belonging to the langue and the individual and personal linguistic productions of the parole, the space of discourse includes a variety of unpredictable and unstable phenomena, prone to decay right after the fulfilment of their function. The use of the infinitives in nominal function qualifies as a discourse phenomenon (discourse infinitive)6, while the lexicalized infinitives are part of the linguistic system and as such are stored in the as independent nominal entries (and, accordingly, are listed as nouns in dictionaries). The former are a resource that must be built any time anew, the latter are part of the lexicon: as such, constitute truly different entities.

4. CORPORA AND METHODOLOGY To verify the actual syntactic and semantic properties of the different patterns of determined infinitives and of the bare infinitive, we relied on statistical analysis of corpus-driven data from Italian, Spanish and French7. We referred to La Repubblica for Italian, to the Corpus del Español Actual (CEA) for Spanish and to the Chambers-Rostand du français journalistique corpus for French8. We first extracted from the corpora the total occurrences of each of the patterns of determined infinitives. The same evaluation was not possible for the bare infinitive, since, differently from the determined infinitives, the bare form occurs in a variety of non-nominalized contexts, such as periphrastic constructions or causative structures (cf. Egerland 2011). Such diversification results in millions of occurrences in the corpora9. This huge amount of data cannot be automatically processed in order to isolate the cases which perform

5 Cf. Benveniste 1964, 1966, and more recently Simone 2006 and references therein. 6 Simone 2004, Bidaud 2010. 7 The data collected for French do not provide any quantitatively relevant information (both for the corpus extension and for the rarity of occurrence of determined nominal infinitives). Therefore, we will not provide any statistical data related to French. Cf. §7. 8 The three corpora are comparable in genre (journalistic) and in chronology (1990-2010); IT and SP corpora are also comparable in size. 9 Over 6,700,000 occurrences in La Repubblica corpus.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 11:14:38PM via free access 230 Federica Cominetti & Valentina Piunno nominal function, and a manual analysis would be unrealistic as well. In any case, as will be shown, the statistical data referred to the bare infinitive would be scarcely useful, since its verbal – compared to nominal – behavior is patent. In order to evaluate the degrees of “verbiness” and “nouniness” of the patterns of determined infinitives, we identified a set of verbal features and a set of nominal features. As for the verbal properties, we considered the following: a) the possibility to be negated, b) the possibility to govern a direct (when the verb is transitive), c) modification by manner , d) the possibility to be conjugated into the past form. As for the features typical to nouns, we have considered the following: e) modification by postposed , f) modification by preposed adjectives10, g) the expression of the subject and the object as genitives (in the form of prepositional ). Each of the patterns of determined infinitives has been evaluated against each of the verbal and nominal features: the total occurrences of each combination were counted and normalized according to the total frequency of the pattern. Before coming to an inter-linguistic comparison, we will present language- internal analyses.

5. ANALYSIS – ITALIAN 5.1. Total occurrences of determined infinitives The infinitive introduced by the definite article proved to be the most frequently attested, followed by the indefinite article, while the two demonstratives are comparatively fewer:

Patterns of infinitive il11 un questo quello Total occurrences 18,086 5,814 1,449 1,097 Table 1: Overall frequencies of the four kinds of determined infinitives.

5.2. Bare infinitives

The automatic counting of the total occurrences of bare infinitives in nominal function was impossible, the verbal and nominal features of the bare infinitives cannot be analyzed statistically. However, both qualitative corpus analysis and mother-tongue intuitions indicate that the bare nominal infinitive shows a clear tendency to combine with verbal features (negation, direct object, manner adverbs and past tense). As for the nominal properties, bare infinitives cannot govern preposed adjectives and cannot express the subject or the object as

10 The languages we considered admit both preposed and postposed adjectives: some adjectives are only admitted in one of the two positions, while others may occur in both, being the post-nominal the unmarked, with slight changes in meaning (cf. Simone 2003). 11 What we synthetically dub as the “pattern introduced by il” also includes the different morpho-phonological variants of the determined article (namely lo and l’). Same for “un”, also including uno. “questo”, including quest’, and “quello”, including quel and quell’.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 11:14:38PM via free access Patterns of nominal infinitives 231 genitives. Only a few occurrences of bare infinitives followed by adjectives may be found in the corpus. However, many of those adjectives seem to be used in adverbial function, like in following example, taken from the web:

(3) Pensare verde è diventato molto di moda. think.INF green become.PST.3SG very of fashion ‘Thinking green (ecologically) has become very fashionable’.

5.3. Determined infinitives - Verbal features Differently from bare infinitives, the four forms of determined infinitives could be analyzed statistically. In this section, for each verbal feature, we will present examples and figures relevant to all the four patterns.

5.3.1. Negation: The four patterns of determined infinitives prove to be compatible with negation:

(4) La gente identifica il non apparire col non esistere. The people identify.3SG the NEG appear.INF with.the NEG exist.INF ‘People identify the not appearing with the not existing’.12

The feature appears to be quite rare compared to the total frequency of each pattern. In particular, the pattern where the indefinite article un appears returned only 9 occurrences (0,15%), as may be seen in the table:

Patterns of infinitive il un questo quello Total occurrences 29091922 Normalized percentage 1,60%13 0,15% 1,31% 2,01% Table 2: Negation patterns and normalized percentages.

5.3.2. Direct object14: All the patterns of infinitive can govern direct objects:

(5) E quel consegnare la nazionale nelle tue mani? And that deliver.INF the national team in.the POSS.2PL hand.PL ‘And what about that delivering the national team in your hands?’

This feature is quite frequent among all the four patterns. Nevertheless, the overall trend of the percentages is similar to the one attested for the feature of negation, with the lowest percentage as far as the indefinite article un is attested:

12 Due to space limits, only one example will be presented for each property. 13 Here and in the following, the percentages should be read as follows: “The 1,60% of the nominal infinitives preceded by the definite article show the property of negation”. 14 It may be noted that we excluded the property of the direct expression of the subject, included in other discussions of the nominal infinitive (Skytte 1983, Vanvolsem 1983, Salvi 1985). Our choice reflects the intuition that this feature is quite weak, as far as the non-literary varieties of Italian are concerned. The occurrences in the corpus are indeed very few and not statistically relevant.

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Patterns of infinitive il un questo quello Total occurrences 2042 275 165 136 Normalized percentage 11,29% 4,73% 11,39% 12,31% Table 3: Patterns with direct object and normalized percentages.

5.3.3. Manner adverbs: Not frequent, but nevertheless available for all the four patterns, is the occurrence of determined infinitives modified by manner adverbs:

(6) si è adeguato a questo andare costantemente sopra le righe REFL adapt.PST.3SG to this go.INF continuously above the lines ‘(Soccer) adapted to this going continuously above the lines’.

The feature proves to be particularly rare when the indefinite article is involved:

Patterns of infinitive il un questo quello Total occurrences 166 8 21 10 Normalized percentage 0,92% 0,14% 1,45% 0,91% Table 4: Patterns with manner adverbs and normalized percentages.

5.3.4 Past form: The conjugation in the past form is possible for all the four patterns of determined infinitives:

(7) È merito dell’ Europa l’ aver messo sul tavolo la questione be.3SG credit of Europe the put.INF.PST on.the table the question ‘It is credit of Europe the having put the question on the table’.

Even if attested for all the patterns, the past form is by far more common when the infinitive is preceded by the definite article il. In particular, the infinitive preceded by un shows only one occurrence:

Patterns of infinitive il un questo quello Total occurrences 1651 1 17 13 Normalized percentage 9,13% 0,02% 1,17% 1,19% Table 5: Patterns in combination with past and normalized percentages.

5.4 Nominal features

5.4.1. Postposed adjectives: The most evident nominal property found in this work is the possibility for infinitives to be modified by adjectives. As the Italian ’s non-marked position is usually the post-nominal one, we firstly considered adjectives postposed to the infinitive. This feature is admitted by all the patterns:

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(8) È stato respinto da un vociare indignato15 reject.PST.PASS.3SG by a shout.INF indignant ‘ was rejected by an indignant shouting’.

This property is not equally attested, and proves to be proportionally more frequent in combination with the distal quello and the indefinite article un:

Patterns of infinitive il un Questo quello Total occurrences 941 536 68 126 Normalized percentage 5,20% 9,22% 4,69% 11,49% Table 6: Patterns with postposed adjectives and normalized percentages.

5.4.2. Preposed adjectives: Pre-nominal adjectival modification is admitted by all patterns:

(9) questo miserabile rovistare negli archivi this miserable ransack.INF in.the archive.PL ‘This miserable ransacking in the archives’.

As for the frequencies, un proves to be the determiner more frequently combined with preposed adjectival modification:

Patterns of infinitive il un questo quello Total occurrences 1165 1835 197 165 Normalized percentage 6,44% 31,46% 13,60% 15,04% Table 7: Patterns with preposed adjectives and normalized percentages.

It is interesting to notice that preposed adjectives are much more common with nominalized infinitives than the postposed ones. This contrasts with the common order of Italian adjectives modifying nouns, being the unmarked position the postnominal one. This topic, however interesting, cannot be discussed here.

5.4.3. Subject and object encoded as genitives: Nominal infinitives can express one of the arguments as a genitive introduced by the preposition di16 or through a pronoun. In the following examples the subject (10) and the object (11) of the infinitive are represented:

(10) Ci interrogheremo su quel brulicare di genti question.FUT.REFL.1PL over that swarm.INF of people ‘We will ask ourselves about that swarming of people’.

15 The adjective indignato ‘indignant’ cannot be assumed to have adverbial function, since it cannot be replaced by the corresponding (indignatamente ‘indignantly’): in fact, it does not express the manner of execution of the action, but it qualifies the resulting process noun. 16 The choice of considering subject and object together reflects the corpus-driven nature of this study, since the syntactic strings corresponding to subject and object are formally identical (determiner + infinitive + di + noun). Furthermore, the difference between subject and object is not useful for the distinction between nominal and verbal behaviors of the determined infinitives, which is the primary purpose of this research.

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(11) quasi un premere di grilletto almost a press.INF of trigger ‘almost a pressing of trigger’.

As a whole, this nominal feature proves to be quite widespread among the different kinds of nominal infinitives, although quello and un show – once more – the highest frequencies:

Patterns of infinitive il un questo quello Total occurrences 1805 946 210 317 Normalized percentage 9,98% 16,27% 14,49% 29,26% Table 8: Patterns with subject or object encoded as genitives.

5.5. Mixed properties It has been observed that Process Nouns, and especially non-finite verb forms in nominal function, not only can show both verbal and nominal properties, but may show them combined together in the same occurrence (cf. the case of the Lithuanian participle in Arkadiev 2014). This is also the case of Italian nominal infinitive. The most frequent combination of one verbal and one nominal property is the expression of a direct object together with adjectival modification, attested for all the patterns of determined infinitives:

(12) Il semplice riaffermare le ragioni dello Stato The simple reaffirm.INF the reason.PL of.the state ‘The simple reaffirming the Reasons of State’.

Very few occurrences are attested also for the combination of adjectival modification and negation:

(13) Questo prudentissimo non fare risulta pericoloso This prudent.SUP NEG do turn out.3SG dangerous ‘This very prudent not doing turns out to be dangerous’.

Only one item shows the combination of adjectival modification and past tense:

(14) Hai un bell’ aver collezionato 18 maglie azzurre! have.2SG a beautiful collect.INF.PST 18 shirt.PL blue.PL ‘ may also have collected 18 presences in the national team’17.

5.6. Results

As the corpus-based analysis has shown, the determined infinitive patterns of Italian do not exhibit the same degree of compatibility with the sets of verbal and nominal features. We collected the data in a graph, summing the percentages of occurrence in combination with nominal and verbal features for each pattern of determined infinitive.

17 [Avere un bel + INF] means ‘doing – and often boasting – something that is irrelevant’.

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60,00% 57,05% 55,79%

50,00%

40,00% 32,78% Verbal features 30,00% 22,94% Nominal features 21,62% 16,41% 20,00% 15,32%

10,00% 5,04%

0,00% IL UN QUESTO QUELLO

Figure 1: Compatibility of determined infinitive with verbal / nominal features

A first sketch of the graph immediately supports our initial hypothesis that the four different patterns of determined infinitives are not alike under a syntactic point of view. In particular, the pattern introduced by the definite article il is the only one that shows a balance between verbal (22,94%18) and nominal features (21,62%); in comparison to the other configurations, such a combination qualifies the pattern as the most verbal. The other three patterns show a greater compatibility with the nominal features: such a tendency is particularly sharp in the patterns comprising the indefinite article un (57,05% vs. 5,04%) and the distal demonstrative quello (55,79% vs. 16,41%), while the proximal demonstrative questo shows a more intermediate behavior (32,78% vs. 15,32%). The analysis allows us to pinpoint the four patterns in the verb-noun continuum, in comparison also to the bare infinitive, which for the reasons said above (§5.2) is placed next to the verbal extreme:

Figure 2: Bare and determined infinitives on the verb-noun continuum in Italian.

6. ANALYSIS – SPANISH

Infinitive patterns are rather diffused in contemporary Spanish. Just like Italian (cf. §3), also Spanish exhibits both lexicalized infinitives and discourse infinitives19. However, in comparison to Italian, the phenomenon of lexicalized

18 The percentages should be read as follows: the 22,94% of the nominal infinitives preceded by the definite article show at least one verbal feature. 19 In most of the analysis of the Spanish infinitive, authors usually distinguish between nominal and verbal infinitive. For an overview on Spanish infinitives, see Plann 1981, De

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 11:14:38PM via free access 236 Federica Cominetti & Valentina Piunno infinitives is much more exploited and attested in Spanish. Lexicalized infinitives are called "false infinitives" and represent out-and-out nominal lexical entries of a dictionary (ex. amanecer, cantar). Some of them appear integrated in more complex structures; in fact, being regularly associated between them, pairs of infinitives can constitute irreversible binomials patterns20, which are completely lexicalised multiword units (es. ir y venir)21. As for discourse infinitives, Spanish employs six different patterns22: i. the bare infinitive; ii. the infinitive preceded by the definite article el; iii. the infinitive preceded by the indefinite article un; iv. the infinitive preceded by the proximal demonstrative este; v. the infinitive preceded by the medial demonstrative ese; vi. the infinitive preceded by the distal demonstrative aquel. However the six patterns are not equally diffused in contemporary Spanish: they particularly differ from each other in terms of frequency of occurrence.

6.1. Spanish Determined Infinitives Attestations of infinitive preceded by the determined article el are highly frequent; even if they show fewer occurrences in the corpus, patterns with the indefinite article un seem to be frequently attested as well. Instead, in the corpus there are only few attestations of the proximal and medial demonstratives (respectively este and ese) and extremely rare attestations of the distal demonstrative aquel. Moreover, the different patterns of discourse infinitive do not provide the same compatibility with sets of verbal and nominal features.

Patterns of infinitive el un este ese aquel Absolute frequency 12,067 406 64 21 2 Table 9: Overall frequencies of the five kinds of Spanish determined infinitives.

Table 9 suggests that the productivity of the determined patterns is rather different from that of Italian infinitives23. However, we have chosen to show the results related to each pattern in order to maintain a comparative perspective.

Miguel 1995, Demonte - Varela Ortega 1997ab, Bosque - Demonte 1999, Hare 2001, Ramírez 2003, Fábregas - Varela Ortega 2006. 20 For the topic of irreversible binomials, see Malkiel 1959 and Masini 2008. 21 See also Bosque - Demonte (1999: 1968-1969). 22 Bosque - Demonte (1999) suggest that the productivity of Contemporary Spanish discourse infinitive patterns has considerably reduced with respect to the Old Spanish. 23 The poor productivity of demonstrative patterns may be due to the fact that Spanish demonstratives are often used in a similar configuration, where they assume a pronominal function. In fact, Spanish employs demonstratives as subjects of infinitives in temporal subordinate clauses (especially those introduced by the adverbs antes and despuès): (1) Después de este no jugar en la copa del mundo... (2) Continuó la casa su hijo Luís II Enríquez, cinco años antes de este morir. In these configurations the demonstrative is generally co-referent to the noun introduced in the main clause. Since this construction has the same superficial encoding of the pattern where an infinitive is determined by a demonstrative, this configuration can

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6.2. Verbal features 6.2.1. Negation: As for verbal properties, the negation is not attested in all patterns. It is highly admitted in the configurations including the definite article and rarely attested in the indefinite article pattern, and it never appears with demonstrative determiners.

Patterns of infinitive el un este ese aquel Total occurrences 784 6 - - - Normalized percentage 6,50 %24 1,48% - - - Table 10: Total occurrences of the negated patterns and normalized percentages.

(15) Es común el no asistir a la escuela. be.PRS.3SG common the NEG attend.INF to the school ‘Not attending to the lessons is common’.

6.2.2. Direct object: The direct object is very frequently attested in patterns built with determined article el. This property proves to be less frequent in combination with the indefinite article un and it is rare with demonstratives.

Patterns of infinitive el un este ese aquel Total occurrences 4176 39 4 2 - Normalized percentage 34,61% 9,61% 6,25% 9,52% - Table 11: Patterns with a direct object and normalized percentages.

(16) el cuestionamiento de este compartir competencias va... the questioning of this share.INF competency.PL go.PRS.3SG ‘The questioning of this sharing competencies goes...’.

6.2.3. Manner adverbs: Adverbial modification is attested in patterns with the determined article el, and it shows a minor compatibility with other patterns. There are no occurrences of adverbs preceding the patterns with the medial and distal demonstratives.

Patterns of infinitive el un este ese aquel Total occurrences 224 4 2 - - Normalized percentage 1,86% 0,99% 3,13% - - Table 12: Patterns with manner adverbs and normalized percentages.

(17) no sería sincero el afirmar perentoriamente sí NEG be.COND.3SG sincere the affirm.INF decisively yes ‘It would not be honest to affirm decisively yes’.

produce ambiguity. This may be the reason why the demonstrative infinitive pattern tends to be avoided. 24 As for the previous section, the percentages should be read as follows: the 6,50% of the nominal infinitives preceded by the definite article el show the property of negation.

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6.2.4. Past form: While the past form is highly attested in combination with the definite article, is never (or almost never) registered in the other kinds of configurations, as shown in the following table:

Patterns of infinitive el un este ese aquel Total occurrences 594 1 - - - Normalized percentage 4,92% 0,25% - - - Table 13: Patterns in combination with past and normalized percentages.

(18) los alumnos celebran el haber terminado sus estudios. the.PL students celebrate.3SG the end.PST.INF POSS.PL study.PL ‘The students celebrate the end of their studies’.

6.3. Nominal features 6.3.1. Postposed adjectives: As for nominal properties, the adjectival modification is attested in all patterns. However, there are some differences in the distribution and in the productivity of this feature among each pattern, depending on the adjectival position in the . The occurrences of post-nominal adjectival modification are higher than pre-nominal modification.

(19) ... han visto el navegar airoso de nuestros ...... see.PST.3PL the sail.INF successful of POSS.1PL ‘...they have seen the successful sailing of our (boats)’.

Considering normalized frequency, un proves to be the determiner the most frequently combined with postposed adjectives. This feature is relatively frequent in patterns with proximal demonstrative and with the definite article.

Patterns of infinitive el un este ese aquel Total occurrences 226 98 8 3 1 Normalized percentage 1,87% 24,14% 12,5% 14,29% 50% Table 14: Patterns with postposed adjectives and normalized percentages.

It is worth noting that the occurrence of adjectival modification in combination with those patterns seems to be very high25. However, considering that the absolute frequency of occurrence of infinitive preceded by the medial and the distal demonstratives is very low, this feature is not statistically significant.

6.3.2. Preposed adjectives: Prenominal adjectival modification is attested in all patterns but the one introduced by the medial demonstrative ese.

(20) Su vida se convirtió en un delirante escribir POSS.3SG life REFL convert.PST.3SG into a delirious write.INF ‘His life was converted into a delirious writing’.

25 As for the distal demonstrative aquel this feature (postnominal and prenominal adjectival modification) covers the 100% of attestations, since the only two attestations registered in the corpus admit a preposed and a posposed adjective.

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Pre-nominal adjectival modification shows an equal distribution among patterns with definite and indefinite article and it is very rarely attested in combination with demonstratives (apart from the distal demonstrative, whose normalized frequency is not statistically relevant, cfr 6.3.1).

Patterns of infinitive el un este ese aquel Total occurrences 84 82 3 - 1 Normalized percentage 0,70% 20,20% 4,69% - 50% Table 15: Patterns with preposed adjectives and normalized percentages.

6.3.3. Subject and object of the infinitive encoded as genitives: The expression of the subject and object as a genitive is possible also in Spanish, and its syntactic configuration is similar to Italian: determiner + infinitive + de + noun. While there are only very few occurrences of this feature in combination with demonstrative patterns, the expression of the subject and the object as a prepositional phrase is largely admitted for patterns introduced by the articles. The table below represents the total frequency of attestation of subject and object encoded as a prepositional phrase.

Patterns of infinitive el un este ese aquel Total occurrences 1403 90 11 - 1 Normalized percentage 11,63% 22,17% 17,19% - 50% Table 16: Patterns with subject and object encoded as genitives.

The expression of the subject of the infinitive as a prepositional phrase is admitted and attested in all the patterns introduced by articles and demonstratives26, except for the medial demonstrative.

(21) por este brotar y resbalar del agua. for this arise.INF and run.INF of.the water ‘This arising and running of the water’.

On the contrary, the genitive object is only registered in the patterns with the definite and indefinite articles.

(22) ... el secuestrar de tres periodistas rumanos en Iraq. the kidnap.INFof three reporter.PL Romanian in Iraq ‘...the kidnapping of three Romanian reporters in Iraq’.

6.4. Mixed properties

As other studies of Spanish infinitives have already shown27, verbal and nominal properties can rarely be combined in Spanish nominal infinitives. The only

26 Obviously, the subject can also be expressed through complex prepositions, like the ones typically attested in passive constructions, which introduce the Agent of the infinitive (i.e. por parte de, de parte de). However these data are not included in the statistical information about the frequency of attestation of this feature.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 11:14:38PM via free access 240 Federica Cominetti & Valentina Piunno combination attested in the corpus is that of the preposed adjectival modification and the object, as in the following example:

(23) un óptimo fluir y estimular toda la energía del cuerpo a optimal flow.INF and stimulate.INF all the energy of.the body ‘an optimal flowing and stimulating all the energy of the body’.

6.5. Results We can therefore assume that determiners can confer different nominal or verbal properties to the infinitive patterns. The graph below shows Spanish discourse determined patterns' compatibility with verbal and nominal features28.

Figure 3: Compatibility of determined infinitive patterns with verbal and nominal features

The definite article el proves to convey the most verbal features (14, 20 % vs. 47,97 %), while the indefinite article un tends to introduce infinitives with more nominal properties and is comparatively more nominal (66,50 % vs. 12,56 %). Even if not all data on demonstrative patterns register a significant number of attestations, we can see that they show greater compatibility with nominal features – at least as far as the configurations with este and ese are concerned –. We can therefore compare the four determined patterns to the bare infinitive along the verb-noun continuum.

27 Plann (1981), Demonte - Varela (1997a). 28 The graph does not include results on the distal demonstrative aquel, whose data are not statistically relevant since the absolute frequency of this pattern is extremely low.

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Bare infinitive el + INF ese + INF este + INF un + INF VERB NOUN

Figure 4: Spanish bare and determined infinitives on the verb-noun continuum.

Being the most compatible with verbal features the pattern with the definite article is placed next to the bare infinitive, while the pattern with the indefinite article is located next to nouns. Showing an intermediate behaviour, demonstrative patterns are placed in the middle between the other configurations.

7. ANALYSIS – FRENCH The distribution and the productivity of nominal infinitive patterns in contemporary French are rather different from those of Italian and Spanish. Just like Italian and Spanish, contemporary French exhibits both lexicalized and discourse infinitives. As for other languages, completely lexicalized infinitives show typical morpho-syntactic and distributional properties – i.e. presence of determiner (2), nominal (25), adjectival (26) and prepositional (27) modification –:

(24) "la terre, le travail", le boire et le manger. the soil, the work, the drink.INF and the eat.INF ‘"the soil, the work", the drinking and the eating’.

(25) amusants pour égayer leurs dîners convenus funny for amuse.INF POSS.3PL dinner.INF.PL conventional.PL ‘funny to amuse their conventional dinners’.

(26) ... le passager aura payé pour un aller simple ... the passenger pay.FUT.3SG for a go.INF simple ‘Passenger will have paid for a simple journey’.

(27) ... s' interrogent sur le devenir de ces trouvailles. ... REFLwonder.3PL on the become.INF of these finding.PL ‘(They) wonder about the future of these findings’.

Nevertheless, differently from the other languages, contemporary French does not register a frequent use of determined infinitive. For this reason, French seems to employ only one pattern for discourse nominal infinitives, the one of bare infinitives.

(28) Peindre est aussi un questionnement Paint.INF be.PRS.3SG also a questioning ‘Painting is also a questioning’.

Bare infinitives in French, as well as in other languages, maintain the most verbal properties of a proper infinitive, such as the possibility to be negated, the expression of a direct object, the adverbial modification and the past form. Nominal infinitives very rarely occur in patterns with the determiners. This seems

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 11:14:38PM via free access 242 Federica Cominetti & Valentina Piunno to be due mainly to the homophony between the masculine singular article "le" and the direct "le", and the consequent risk to incur in ambiguity. Furthermore, the pre-infinitive position of clitics29 creates ambiguity and cacophony when the definite determiner is followed by a pronoun (Kerleroux 1990, Sleeman 2010)30. Nevertheless, the tendency to resort to infinitives preceded by determiners seems to be allowed only in scientific or philosophical texts, as already shown in previous theoretical analyses31. The following examples have been extracted from the web:

(29) Ils se bercèrent dans ce dormir (J. Barbey D'Aurevilly, Les Tourmentées) they rock in this sleep.INF ‘They rock themselves in this sleeping’.

However, it is worth noting that the use of determined infinitive was already attested between XII and XIII centuries (examples from Buridant 2005: 111):

(30) Cui li alers moult abeli (Graal, 7842-44) of the go.INF very happy ‘So happy to go'.

(31) Li parlers, li biaus maintenirs (Jehan et Blonde, 1540-1541) the talk.INF.PL the sweet mantain.INF.PL ‘The talk, the sweet entertainment’.

Old French exhibits both lexicalized infinitives (i.e. avoir 'possession', baisier 'kiss', devoir 'duty', disner 'dinner', plaisir 'pleasure') and non-lexicalized infinitives with more nominal or more verbal properties (Buridant 2008). The use of discourse infinitives becomes more restricted in XV century, when it was used as translation from Spanish or Italian texts, and comes again into being very productive in XVI century, when "tout infinitif peut être substantivé" (Gougenheim 1974: 137; see also Kerleroux 1990)32:

(32) Abattons ce cuider (Montaigne, II, 12; t. II, 1, p. 166) knock down.IMP this think.INF ‘Let's knock down this opinion’.

8. CONCLUSION

Our analysis has shown that the distribution and the frequency of occurrence of the nominal infinitives are not the same across Romance languages. Moreover, when we speak of nominal infinitives in Romance languages we may be referring

29 For example: (1) ... de faire rempart de leurs corps pour le défendre ... (2) ... Il fallait le réduire au silence. Lui, et d'autres syndicalis ... 30 For further explanations about the absence of determined infinitive patterns in French, see Buridant (2005, 2008) and Sleeman (2010). 31 Among others, Vanvolsem (1983), Simone (2004), Bidaud (2010), Sleeman (2010). 32 Examples from Gougenheim (1974: 137).

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 11:14:38PM via free access Patterns of nominal infinitives 243 to very different things. In fact, a first distinction needs to be made between infinitives as a system resource (lexicalized infinitive) and as a discourse resource (discourse infinitives). Both are available in the three languages we considered, but with significant differences in frequency and productivity. In Italian, the lexicalization of the nominal infinitives is quite rare, while both Spanish and French show a large collection of lexicalized infinitives. It should be clear that the two resources are very different in their grammatical properties: the lexicalized infinitives are stored in the lexicon as true nouns, and as such they may be inflected in the , while the discourse infinitives are verbal paradigm forms temporarily “borrowed” in order to fulfil specific linguistic tasks. Coming specifically to the discourse infinitives, more differences among the three languages may be found. French does not allow the nominal infinitives to be determined by articles and demonstratives, while Italian and Spanish do. In particular, Italian makes a comparatively large use of all its determiners to build the infinitive patterns, whereas Spanish particularly exploits its definite article, as immediately leaps out from the table below.

Definite ART Indefinite Proximal DEM Medial Distal DEM ART DEM IT il 18,086 un 5,814 questo 1,449 - - quel 1,097 SP el 12,067 un 406 este 64 ese 21 aquel 2 Table 17: Absolute frequency of Italian and Spanish determined patterns.

The table 18 summarizes the resources realizing nominal infinitives in Italian, Spanish and French, with attention to Discourse infinitives and Lexical infinitives (Li in the table).

Language Discourse infinitives Li Bare Determined infinitive infinitive ARTdef ARTind DEMproximal DEMmedial DEMdistal + INF + INF + INF + INF + INF Italian + + + + - + + Spanish + + + +/- +/- (+) + French + - - - -- + Table 18: Types of infinitive and infinitives patterns in IT, SP and FR

The languages we considered also show some common features, which allow us to move from the inter-linguistic comparison to more general issues. Table 18 actually suggests how the different patterns of nominal infinitives should be located on the verb-noun continuum. Firstly, bare infinitives and determined infinitives differ from each other in terms of nominal and verbal properties. In fact, the presence of a determiner confers to the infinitive nominal behaviors, such as the possibility to be modified by adjectives or to govern subjects or objects encoded as genitives, while bare infinitives usually do not admit nominal properties. This means that bare infinitives and determined infinitives should not be treated alike in the analysis of nominal infinitives on the verb-noun continuum. Secondly, different determiners can confer different properties to the

Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 11:14:38PM via free access 244 Federica Cominetti & Valentina Piunno patterns in which they are included. This is particularly clear in Italian, where all the patterns of determined infinitives are quite frequent, but it emerges also in Spanish. In both these languages the pattern introduced by the definite article shows the most verbal features, while the pattern introduced by the indefinite article tends to introduce more nominal infinitives. In Italian, the demonstratives seem to be located in between the two articles; in particular, the distal shows a greater compatibility with the nominal features, which suggests that it should be located closer to the indefinite article along the verb-noun continuum. The general tendency of Italian and Spanish can be represented as below:

BARE INF ARTdef + INF DEMproximal/medial/distal + INF ARTindef + INF

VERB NOUN Figure 5: IT and SP bare and determined infinitives on the verb-noun continuum.

The fact that the definite article is associated to the most verbal determined infinitive may be surprising, since is a nominal – more than verbal – category: in fact, definite entities are generally “more nominal” than indefinite ones. However, this apparent contradiction may be explained considering some secondary functions of the two kinds of article. On the one hand, the definite article also has the function of marking the following noun as generic, non- referential (Grandi 2010). When preceding an infinitive, the definite article gets this “extensional” meaning: the pattern does not refer to a definite instance of the infinitive, but to a generic one. Somehow paradoxically, the indefinite article does instead mark a specific instance of the infinitive. This is connected to the fact that indefinite articles can precede both specific and non-specific nouns. Actually, the indefinite article mostly confers to the infinitive an “indefinite specific” meaning.

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