Introduction

This chapter is devoted to the derivation of infinitives and to the control of their syntactic projections. Infinitive formation is a diathesis-based operation that composes the diathesis of a lexical verb stem V, which is common to all finite and nonfinite verbal categories, with the diathesis of the infinitive-forming suffix -inf (whose exponents are -t' ~ -ti ~ -č' in Russian). This entails that an infinitive's syntactic projection consists of VP embedded as the complement of -inf, which heads its own affixal projection, the infinitive phrase, i.e., [infP…[inf' [infV-inf] [vp …tv…]]]. Although infinitive phrases have the same skeletal syntactic structure as the nonfinite verbal categories in chapter 3, it is not a hybrid category because -inf has the same set of verbal categorial features as V. Unlike participles and hybrid adverbials, infinitives are not inherently adjuncts. I will argue that infinitive complements are not all infinitive clauses, as assumed in earlier generative theory, which entails that the control of infinitives cannot be reduced to the antecedent binding of an infinitive clause's PROi subject.

Since Russian paradigmatic suffixes do not affect V's internal arguments, our first step will be to determine how affixation of -inf affects V's external {i^N}1 argument.