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OF PERCEPTION VERB COMPLEMENTS:

EVIDENCE FOR TWO SYNTACTIC CONFIGURATIONS

ELENA CIUTESCU1

Abstract. This paper presents and discusses the infinitival complement structure of perception verbs in Romance languages. Building our analysis on evidence coming from argument structure, clitic climbing, fronting, and negation, we argue that verbs of perception which, apparently, take the same infinitival complements are able to enter two types of syntactic structures that should receive different analyses. We start our demonstration by drawing attention to the fact that the infinitival subject of the complement clause can occupy a pre- or a post-infinitival position, and that its behaviour becomes a crucial argument in favour of our analysis. This paper proposes that perception verbs license two syntactic configurations: on the one hand, an ECM- like configuration, and, on the other, a configuration in which the perception verb and the infinitive form a complex predicate, a process that will have obvious consequences on the case-marking of its arguments.

Keywords: perception verbs, infinitival complementation, exceptional case marking, complex predicates, Romance languages.

1. INTRODUCTION

The infinitival complementation of perception verbs in Romance and Germanic languages is an issue tackled in a large amount of works in the generative literature (Gee 1975, 1977, Akmajian 1977, Mittwoch 1990, Tanaka 1992, Safir 1993, Felser 1998, 1999, Ishihara 2009 for English; Declerk 1982, Bennis and Hoekstra 1989 for Dutch; Alsina 2002 for Catalan; Burzio 1986, Guasti 1993 for Italian; Labelle 1996, Miller and Lowrey 2003, Enghels 2007, Rowlett 2007 for French; Alarcos 1970, Cano 1981, Hernanz 1999 for Spanish; Maraldi 1980 for Latin, to name but a few). Plenty of these studies are concerned with the constituency of the infinitival perception verb complement and its categorial status.

These questions will also become relevant to our analysis and will be dealt with in the next sections.

One common property of these two families of languages is their ability to license constructions in which the perception verbs select infinitival complements with overt

1 Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona/Centre de Lingüística Teòrica, [email protected] I would like to express my gratitude to M. T. Espinal, Ángel J. Gallego, and Jaume Mateu for their helpful suggestions and comments on an earlier draft of this paper. This work was supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FFI2011-23356), and from the Generalitat de Catalunya (2009SGR-1079). All errors are mine.

RRL, LVIII, 3, p. 299–312, Bucureşti, 2013

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subjects in the accusative Case (Burzio 1986, Felser 1999, Rizzi 2000, etc.). These clauses embedded under perception verbs are representative of the so called Accusativus cum Infinitivo (‘Accusative with Infinitive’) construction.

(1) a. Oí a Juan tocar el clarinete. [Spanish]

heard to Juan play the clarinet ‘I heard John play the clarinet.’

b. Vedo Gianni riparare la macchina. [Italian]

see Gianni repair the car ‘I see John repair the car.’

c. Jag hör Peter sjunga en sang. [Swedish]

I hear Peter sing a song ‘I hear Peter sing a song.’

d. I saw Mary wash the dishes.

What is, however, unique to Romance languages, as opposed to the Germanic ones, is that they allow the presence of underlying subjects in both pre- and post-infinitival positions in the complement clause. This property is shown in the Catalan examples below.

(2) a. He vist l’ Orson Welles interpretar obres de Shakespeare. [Catalan]

have seen the Orson Welles perform plays of Shakespeare b. He vist interpretar obres de Shakespeare a l’ Orson Welles.

have seen perform plays of Shakespeare to the Orson Welles ‘I have seen Orson Welles perform plays by Shakespeare.’

The present paper aims at presenting and explaining the constructions illustrated in (2). We suggest, on the basis of evidence coming from argument structure, clitic climbing, fronting, and negation, that those cases should receive different analyses because they are actually built on different syntactic patterns.

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: section 2 provides a brief description of the data and explains how Case-assignment operates in the two constructions under scrutiny. Section 3 provides syntactic arguments that suggest the two configurations derive from different underlying structures. Section 4 deals with the constituency of the infinitival perception verb complements and provides arguments in favour of treating them as clausal constituents. Section 5 offers a tentative categorial analysis of the infinitival complements found in the two structures. The conclusions are summarized in section 6.

2. A BRIEF LOOK AT THE DATA

This study focuses mainly on data coming from Western Romance languages such as Catalan and Spanish, but also French and Italian. 2

2 Italian and French infinitival perception verb complements also present this double pattern for infinitival perception verb complements as shown in the examples below.

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We start our demonstration by showing that the double position in which the subject of the infinitive can appear is available cross-linguistically in the majority of Western Romance languages, irrespectively of the type of verb represented in the infinitive (transitive (a), unergative (b) or unaccusative (c)).3 Examples in (3) through (6) illustrate this with Catalan and Spanish data.

(3) a. Vaig veure en Joan tocar el clarinet. [Catalan]

saw the John.Acc play the clarinet.Acc ‘I saw John play the clarinet.’

b. Vaig veure en Joan córrer.

saw the John.Acc run ‘I saw John run.’

c. Vaig veure en Joan caure.

saw the John.Acc fall ‘I saw John fall.’

(4) a. Vaig sentir tocar el clarinet a en Joan.

heard play the clarinet.Acc to the John.Dat ‘I heard John play the clarinet.’

b. Vaig veure ballar en Joan.

saw dance the John.Acc ‘I saw John dance.’

c. Vaig veure marxar en Joan.

saw leave the John.Acc ‘I saw John leave.’

(5) a. Se oía a los frailes cantar gregoriano. (RAE 2010: 503) [Spanish]

SE heard to the monks.Acc sing Gregorian.Acc ‘One heard the monks sing Gregorian.’

b. Juan ha visto los soldados desfilar. (Hernanz 1999: 2236) Juan has seen the soldiers.Acc march

‘John has seen the soldiers march.’

(i) a. Jean voit Marie manger le gâteau. [French]

b. Jean voit manger le gâteau à Marie.

‘John sees Mary eating the cake.’

(ii) a. Maria ha visto Paolo riparare la macchina. [Italian]

b. Maria ha visto riparare la macchina a Paolo.

‘Mary has seen Paul repair the car.’

Spanish, Catalan, Galician, European Portuguese, French and Italian are the main Romance languages that permit the use of both of these constructions. Modern Romanian does not allow the embedding of an infinitival complement under perception verbs. Perception verbs complements in Romanian may be full clauses or gerunds.

3 For some discussion on the semantics of the embedded subject and its reflection in the syntactic positioning see Di Tullio 1998, Rodríguez Espiñeira 2000, and Enghels 2007. These three analyses resort to criteria such as animacy and dynamics of the embedded subjects in order to explain their syntactic behaviour.

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c. Vio a Rocío salir de su casa.

saw to Rocío.Acc get out of her house ‘He saw Rocío leave her house.’

(6) a. Juan ha visto comprar flores a María.

John has seen buy flowers.Acc to Mary.Dat ‘John has seen Mary buy flowers.’

b. Oigo sonar las campanas.

hear sound the bells.Acc ‘I hear the bells toll.’

c. Vimos salir a Juan.

saw leave to Juan.Acc ‘We saw John leave.’

The test of pronominalization helps us identify the Case patterns found in the constructions above, illustrating the special behaviour of the external and internal arguments of the infinitive. Have a look at the following sentences:

(7) a. Vaig veure en Joan tocar el clarinet. [Catalan]

saw the John.Acc play the clarinet.Acc b. El vaig veure tocar-lo.

CL.Acc saw play CL.Acc ‘I saw him play it.’

(8) a. Vaig veure tocar el clarinet a en Joan.

saw play the clarinet.Acc to the John.Dat b. L’ hi vaig veure tocar.

CL. Acc CL.Dat saw play ‘I saw him play it.’

(9) a. Vaig veure córrer/caure en Joan.

saw run / fall the John.Acc b. El vaig veure córrer/caure.

CL.Acc saw run / fall ‘I saw him run/fall.’

Notice that the assignment of Case to the subject of the infinitival in the structures above ((3) through (9)) is different and sensitive to the transitivity of the embedded predicate. In (7a), for instance, the embedded subject carries accusative Case, like the subject of complements that occur with believe–type of verbs. Its Case seems to be checked by the matrix verb rather than inside the complement. It is an exception for a matrix predicate to Case mark the subject of a complement clause and the type of case marking exhibited in these constructions is referred to, in the literature (since Postal 1974, Chomsky 1981, 1986, etc.), as Exceptional Case Marking (ECM). 4 That veure ‘to see’ has a Case to

4 This phenomenon has also been known in the literature as Subject-to-Object Raising. For a history of the syntactic phenomena of Raising within the Chomskyan tradition from Standard Theory to the Minimalist Program see Davies and Dubinsky 2004.

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assign to its complement is obvious from its ability to occur in transitive sentences in which it assigns accusative Case to its simple direct objects, as in Vaig veure en Joan (‘I saw John’). When the infinitive is a transitive verb that subcategorizes for a complement, this is assigned accusative too, as shown by the pronominalization test, as in (7b), which suggests that we deal with two separately Case-assigning domains.

In (8) the perception verb and the infinitive seem to be subject to a reordering phenomena and tend to form a complex predicate which inherits arguments from its members. Since the work of Aissen and Perlmutter 1976, Rizzi 1976, 1978, 1982, Rouveret and Vergnaud 1980, Burzio 1986, etc., it has been suggested in the literature that certain infinitives that lack clausal properties create a special relation with the matrix predicate due to their transparent behaviour regarding some processes such as cliticization, passivization, etc. (Wurmbrand 2001, 2006). They are therefore inclined to undergo a process of restructuring (see Wurmbrand 2006 for an overview of the phenomenon of restructuring and references therein) or a verb complex formation. This means that arguments of the infinitive become arguments of the complex predicate (clarinet and Joan receive Case from this complex) and this can be easily seen in (8b) which shows how the (transparent) infinitive allows the accusative and dative clitics to climb up to the matrix verb.

Along the same lines we can analyze (9). Take for instance the case in which the infinitive is an unaccusative, a verb that cannot assign structural Case. The perception verb plays an important role in the process of Case assignment of Joan, which is interpreted as its own argument and marked with Accusative. The same comparative observations apply to the Spanish examples in (5) and (6).

These differences in Case marking become even clearer in the next section, in which we extend the analysis on the behaviour of clitics, perhaps the strongest diagnostic for proposing a double configuration for the structures examined above.

3. EVIDENCE FOR TWO SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

The structures examined in the previous sections reveal a double configuration that can be licensed by the perception verbs (see Labelle 1996 and Rowlett 2007 for a demonstration along similar lines based on French data). The basic structures to which we refer are illustrated in (2), drawn from Catalan, and repeated here for convenience:

(10) a. He vist l’ Orson Welles interpretar obres de Shakespeare. [Catalan]

have seen the Orson Welles perform plays of Shakespeare b. He vist interpretar obres de Shakespeare a l’ Orson Welles.

have seen perform plays of Shakespeare to the Orson Welles ‘I have seen Orson Welles perform plays by Shakespeare.’

We said that the infinitival subject in (7a) cannot receive Case from the infinitive and receives it from the perception verb via exceptional Case marking. Now interpreted as the object, it agrees with the verb and is assigned accusative Case (Chomsky 2000, 2001). We further suggested that structures like (8a) involve complex predicate formation, since arguments of the infinitive end up Case-marked by the perception verb. We are now going

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to examine the syntactic behaviour of the arguments of the infinitive verb with respect to cliticization, fronting, and negation. We take them to be sound evidence for postulating two structures in (10).

Let us first compare the clitic placement in (11). All the examples involve transitive infinitives.

(11) a. He sentit el tenor cantar una ària coneguda. [Catalan]

have heard the tenor.Acc sing an aria.Acc known ‘I have heard the tenor sing a well-known aria.’

b. L’ he sentit cantar-la.

CL.Acc have heard sing CL.Acc ‘I have heard him sing it.’

The presence of two direct-object clitics, one attached to sentir (‘to feel’) and the other to the infinitive, suggests that we deal with two Case-marking domains (one dominated by the perception verb, and the other delimited by the embedded infinitive).

Therefore, what is important to observe is again the behaviour of the embedded subject that acts as the object of the perception verb. The infinitival subject and the embedded object in the complement clause in such examples bear accusative Case, and no dative-accusative alternation depending on transitivity of the embedded verb is possible. This alternation is possible instead in the constructions (11 c, d), in which the internal argument of the infinitive is assigned accusative, while the subject turns into the third argument of the complex predicate sentir cantar and is marked with dative. This process is explicitly illustrated through the phenomenon of clitic climbing. Both the internal argument of sing and the external argument the tenor can be expressed as clitics, in accusative and dative, respectively, and appear in a position preceding the perception verb and the infinitive as in (11d).5

c. He sentit cantar una ària al tenor.

have heard sing an aria.Acc to+the tenor.Dat ‘I have heard the tenor sing an aria.’

d. La hi he sentit cantar.

CL.Acc CL.D have heard sing ‘I have heard him sing it.’

French also seems to reveal a double configuration if we consider the placement of clitics and the Cases they bear:

(12) a. Jean voit Marie manger le gâteau. (Rowlett 2007: 762-764) [French]

Jean sees Mary.Acc eat the cake.Acc

5 That constructions in (11 a, c) are possibly build on different underlying patterns was also mentioned by Alsina (2002: 2423) in the Gramàtica del Català Contemporani. Without further developing the idea, he says that what we have in (11a) is a ‘non-argumental object control construction’ (construcció de control no argumental d’objecte), whereas in (11c) we deal with a

‘causative construction’ (construcció causativa), by analogy with the syntactic pattern of true causative constructions (Vaig fer córrer en Josep ‘I made Joseph run’).

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b. Jean la voit le manger.

Jean CL.Acc sees CL.Acc eat c. Jean voit manger le gâteau à Marie.

Jean sees eat the cake.Acc to Mary.Dat d. Jean le lui voit manger.

Jean CL.Acc CL.Dat. sees eat ‘Jean sees her eating it.’

The alternation noted in Catalan and French is present in Italian and Spanish too, a fact that suggests a cross-linguistic property of the Romance languages. 6

(13) a. Maria ha visto Paolo riparare la macchina. [Italian]

Mary has seen Paul.Acc repair the car.Acc b. Maria l’ ha visto ripararla.

Mary CL.Acc has seen repair Cl.Acc

c. Maria ha visto riparare la macchina a Paolo.

Mary has seen repair the car.Acc to Paul.Dat d. Maria glielo ha visto riparare.

Mary CL.Dat CL.Acc has seen ripair.

‘Mary has seen him repair it.’

(14) a. Vi a María comprar flores. [Spanish]

saw to Mary.Acc buy flowers.Acc b. La vi comprarlas.

CL.Acc saw buy.CL.Acc

c. Vi comprar flores a María.

saw buy flowers.Acc to Mary.Dat d. Se las vi comprar.

CL.Dat CL.Acc see buy ‘I saw her buy them.’

The possibility of fronting the infinitival complement is a second argument in favour of a double syntactic behaviour of the constructions under scrutiny. It should be more difficult to separate the perception verb from the infinitive, since we’ve said they form a complex unit which in principle should behave as an indivisible unity. The impossibility of fronting in this case is illustrated by the Spanish data in (15):

(15) a. ? [A Juan besar a María] es lo que vi.

‘John kiss Mary is what I saw.’

b. *[Besar a María a Juan] es lo que vi.

‘Kiss Mary John is what I saw.’

A third argument for our analysis comes from the clausal operator negation. If it is true that we deal with two different syntactic domains in the ECM configurations, then we

6 I thank Andrea Bellavia (p.c.) for providing me with the examples in (13).

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expect negation to be allowed in these structures and banned in the ones that form complex predicates. 7 The prediction is borne out, as can be seen in the examples below.

(16) [Context: Juan usually talks a lot, and on this particular occasion he doesn't share his opinions with his audience]

a. Vi a Juan no hablar esta noche. [Spanish]

‘I saw John not talk.’

[Context: Juan is ordered to leave the room]

b. Veo a Juan no moverse.

‘I see John not move.’

[Context: Joan is ordered to stand up]

c. He vist en Joan no aixercar-se. [Catalan]

‘I have seen John not stand up.’

(17) a. Ho visto i bambini non piangere più. (Guasti 1993: 117) [Italian]

‘I have seen the children not cry anymore.’

b. J’ai vu Pierre ne pas chanter. (Labelle 1996: 15) [French]

‘I saw Peter not sing.’

The narrow scope reading of the negation found in the structures (16) and (17) is not present in those constructions that involve a complex predicate and behave as mono-clausal structures (Rowlett 2007).

(18) a. *Vi no hablar a Juan. [Spanish]

saw not talk to John

b. *He vist no aixecar-se en Joan. [Catalan]

have seen not stand up the John

c. *Jean voit ne pas manger le gateau à Marie. [French]

Jean sees not eat the cake to Mary

b. *Ho visto non piangere i bambini. [Italian]

have seen not cry the children

4. TOWARDS AN ECM ANALYSIS

In order to better understand the data examined in the previous sections and the behaviour of the embedded subject, it is important to show that this is inserted into the derivation as the underlying infinitival subject and not as the object of the perception verb.

We will assume that the subject of the infinitive is the logical subject of the infinitival clause and, together with this verb, forms a syntactic unity (cf. Kirsner & Thompson 1976, Tanaka 1992, Felser 1998, 1999 for English, Labelle 1996, Miller and Lowrey 2003,

7 Negation inside the infinitival complement is easily accepted if a (discourse) context is provided. However there is a lot of variation with respect to the acceptability of negation in perception and causative verb complementation in the Romance languages (see Guasti 1993, Labelle 1996, Rowlett 2007).

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Rowlett 2007, for French, Hernanz 1999 for Spanish, Rizzi 2000 for Italian, etc.). This remark is crucial for postulating an ECM analysis of the structures in which the subject occupies a pre-infinitival position.

We will resort to two classes of arguments for demonstrating that the infinitive and its subject form a constituent. The first set of arguments is quite interpretive and is related to the commonsensical judgment that we perceive a global event, and not just the initiator of that event. As Kirsner and Thompson (1976: 210) already noticed years ago, ‘‘ [...] it is not the complement subject but rather the entire complement which must be considered the direct object of the sensory verbs.’’ Let us have a look at the following sentences:

(19) a. He visto la fe obrar milagros. (Enghels 2007: 143) [Spanish]

‘I have seen faith accomplish miracles.’

b. Je vois le temps s’approcher. [French]

‘I see time is getting close.’

c. J'entends l’homme tuer l’animal.

‘I hear the man kill the animal.’

d. I heard Mary ring a bell.

e. I could smell the toaster burn the toast.

In (19a, b) we cannot actually see the participant of the internal event because it is an abstract one; we cannot physically perceive the time or the faith. In the next sentences (19c, d), again, we don’t hear or smell the agents of the events but, instead, we hear or smell the consequences of their actions.

The second set of arguments we want to use in favour of a clausal analysis of the infinitival complement are syntactic arguments. First, the pre-infinitival DP is able to control subject-oriented adjuncts and bind reflexive pronouns, which shows that this DP belongs to the embedded clause rather than to the matrix one.

(20) a. Bill saw John kiss Mary before going home. (Felser 1999: 24)

b. He vist en Joan afaitar-se. [Catalan]

‘I saw John shave himself.’

Second, infinitival perception verb complements can be co-referential with anaphoric pronouns (21) and they can be antecedents of the relative pronouns, as in (22).

(21) a. Sentia la nena cridar des de l’altra habitació i els veïns també ho sentien. [Catalan]

‘She heard the child cry from the other room, and the neighbors heard it too.’

b. He visto a María bailar y Juan también lo/*la ha visto. [Spanish]

‘I have seen Mary dance and John saw it/*her too.’

c. Mary saw Mel dance and Ed saw it too.

(22) a.Vi el barco atracar en el puerto, lo que me resultó sorprendente. (Enghels 2007: 144) ‘I saw the sailboat being docked in the harbor, a fact that surprised me.’ [Spanish]

b. J'ai vu Marie danser, ce qui m’á étonné. [French]

‘I saw Mary dance, which surprised me.’

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Third, the infinitival clause can be referential with the interrogative pronoun qué/què

‘what’, which again confirms the complement status of the infinitival structure.

(23) a.¿Qué has visto? A María comprar flores. [Spanish]

‘What have you seen? Mary buying flowers.’

b. Què has sentit? A la mare entrar per la porta. [Catalan]

‘What have you heard? I heard mother coming in.’

A final piece of evidence for the constituency of the clausal complement is related to the observation that more than one infinitival complement subordinated to a perception verb can be coordinated inside the same construction:

(24) a. Vio a la niña jugar con las muñecas y al niño construir una casa de cartón. [Spanish]

‘She saw the girl play with the dolls and the boy build a cardboard house.’

b. Vaig veure la Maria pelar les patates i el Joan fregar els plats. [Catalan]

‘I saw Mary peel the potatoes and John wash the dishes.’

We take all these arguments to reinforce the claim that the subject and the infinitive verb form a syntactic unity that passes important tests of constituency, as shown in examples (20) through (24).

5. THE CATEGORIAL STATUS OF THE INFINITIVAL COMPLEMENT Our argumentation in favour of two types of configurations in which perception verbs license their infinitival complements was mainly built around the notion of subject and its behaviour, and we haven't said anything about the structure of these non-finite complements. Since we have claimed that we deal with two separate structures, we expect to have different perception verb complements (TP vs. vP) and different semantic interpretations of the two complements (a TP analysis is likely to correspond to a situation, while a vP/VP complement could be semantically interpreted as an event (see Labelle 1996)). With respect to the distinct nature of the complements, we follow Labelle's 1996 argumentation and propose a TP analysis for those complements embedded under perception verb that present a pre-infinitival subject in accusative.8 For those constructions that involve complex predicate formation we suggest the perception verb takes a vP complement (Labelle 1996 argues it is a bare VP). The infinitival subject is sensitive to this difference in complementation and its syntactic positioning has interpretive effects. We assume that the differences in the two structures are driven by discourse reasons.

8 Some of the tests that Labelle (1996: 14-20) takes into consideration are the following:

adverbial complements can modify the preverbal subject, but not the post-infinitival one, temporal complements cannot be controlled by a post-infinitival subject, negation can appear only where the subject occupies a pre-infinitival position (see examples (16)-(18) above), etc.

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We believe Rizzi (2000: 191–192) is right when saying that ‘‘the complements of perception verbs tend to be reduced structures, formally more impoverished than ordinary clausal complements (see Higginbotham 1983), [...] in which at least the CP level is missing.’’ For the ECM analysis of the first structure (take as a reference point the example in (25)) we follow Chomsky 2000, 2001 in analyzing the infinitival complement as headed by a defective T, which lacks complementizer properties, tense structure and assigns no Case to its subject.

(25) a. Vaig veure en Joan tocar el clarinet.

‘I saw John play the clarinet.’

b. …[v*P XP v* [VP veure [TP Joan T [v*P tJoan v* [VP tocar el clarinet ] ] ] ]...

This defective T is selected by V (in our case the perception verb). Therefore, the infinitival subject receives Case from the perception verb. In more technical terms, the functional small v that selects V has a complete set of ϕ features (it is ϕ complete) on the basis of which it functions as a probe. When selected by v, V is ϕ complete and enters into a Case/agreement structure. The object (the infinitival subject) agrees with V and is assigned accusative (see (26c) below).9 We assume Torrego´s 1998 analysis in which the accusative marked objects raise outside the VP (to Spec, v*P, in our case). So does the verb, which raises to the Tense head, and the external subject to the Spec, TP.

With respect to the second configuration, the complex predicate is known in the literature by different names, e. g. incorporation (Guasti 1993, Cinque 1998, 2006), restructuring (Rizzi 1976, 1978, Burzio 1986, Di Tullio 1998, Labelle 1996, Hernanz 1999), composition (Miller and Lowrey 2003), clause union (Aissen and Perlmutter 1976), etc. In the present analysis, we suggest that the perception verb selects a defective domain, but this time we take the infinitival complement to be a vP. Since the infinitive has an internal argument which receives accusative, the infinitival subject is assigned dative Case, by default.

See the configurations of the two structures in (26) and (27) below:

(26) a. Vaig veure en Joan tocar el clarinet.

b. ... [v*P XP v* [VP veure [TP Joan T [v*P tJoanv* [VP tocar el clarinet ] ] ] ]...

c. ... [TP XP veure [v*P Joan [v*P tXP v* [VP tveure [TP tJoan T [v*P tJoan v* [VP tocar el clarinet]]]]]]...

(27) a. Vaig veure tocar el clarinet a en Joan.

b. ... [v*P XP v* [VP veure [vP Joan v [VP tocar el clarinet ] ] ] ]...

c. ... [TP XP veure [v*P [VP tocar el clarinet ] [v*P a Joan [v*P tXP v* [ VP tveure [vP tJoan v tVP]]]]]...

9 For other analyses of the ECM construction (and for the debate covert/overt movement of the embedded subject from the infinitival complement) see Lasnik and Saito 1991, Lasnik 1999, 2001, 2002, in which the subjects of the infinitival complements move out of them to the matrix clause to some non-thematic position into which arguments move, for example Spec, AgrSP or Spec, AgrOP.

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5. CONCLUSIONS

The aim of this paper was to outline a possible double configuration for the infinitival complements of perception verbs in Romance languages. We started our demonstration by analyzing the behaviour of the infinitival subject, and we suggested two syntactic structures licensed by the perception verb: one based on an ECM pattern, and another one that involved a complex predicate formation. We built the analysis relying on evidence coming from clitic climbing, fronting and negation, and came to the conclusion that there were reasons to posit two distinct analyses for the two configurations.

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