An Unexpected Root Clause

1 Introduction

Finiteness is a central concept in many linguistic theories, yet it is poorly understood. In this squib, we provide new data that must be incorporated into current research on finiteness: the Latin infinitival structure known as the "accusative and infinitive" (AcI), which has properties that are typical of canonical nonfinite clauses, can be syntactically unembedded.

It is clear that this is unexpected. A common view—found in one variant or another in Hornstein 1990:115–117, 146–154, Klein 1994, Rizzi 1997, Bianchi 2003, Adger 2007, and Giorgi 2010—is that finiteness is responsible for anchoring the clause to the actual utterance (e.g., for the interpretation of tense). Since a root clause must be temporally anchored to the utterance time, one would not expect nonfinite clauses to be root clauses.

Finiteness has morphological, syntactic, and semantic dimensions, which do not always align. An example from Latin is clauses with historical infinitives, which are morphologically nonfinite but syntactically unembedded and semantically like finite forms in having deictic time reference and speaker assertion semantics. What makes AcIs different from these and similar structures is that they behave like nonfinite clauses both morphologically and semantically, yet are demonstrably syntactically unembedded in certain situations.

2 The AcI Construction

The AcI canonically consists of an infinitive and a nominal subject that is in the accusative rather than the nominative. Nonsubject arguments and adjuncts are realized as in a finite clause. AcIs are common as complements of report predicates, like fateor 'confess' in (1), but also occur in longer passages of indirect discourse as in (2).

(1)

(2)

(2) contains three reported clauses, each of which takes the form of an AcI.¹ The two instances of the infinitive esse 'be' belong to the first and second AcIs; the infinitive in the third AcI has been elided.² The report predicate negavit 'denied' is sandwiched inside the first AcI, and the second and third AcIs follow without any additional overt report predicate.

Two explanations for the lack of an additional report predicate immediately spring to mind. First, it could be that the three AcIs are asyndetically coordinated and syntactically embedded as a whole under negavit. This analysis is ruled out by the context. The overt report predicate is a negative utterance verb, and the first AcI expresses what is being denied. The next two AcIs, on the other hand, are positively asserted, not denied, and therefore cannot be embedded on a par with the first AcI.

A second possible explanation is that there is an implicit affirmative utterance verb in the structures of the second and third AcIs. This is compatible with the interpretation we expect from the context, but in section 4 we show that such a null verb leads to empirically incorrect predictions.

We therefore defend a third analysis under which the first AcI is syntactically embedded under negavit while the second and third AcIs are syntactically unembedded. Combine this with the claim that AcIs are nonfinite, which we defend below, and we have counterexamples to the idea that nonfinite clauses cannot be root clauses.

3 Latin AcIs Are Nonfinite

There is no agreed-upon set of features to identify a clause as (non)finite. Nikolaeva (2007b, 2010) identifies morphological, syntactic, and semantic features of finiteness. Here, we look at deficient tense, aspect, and mood (TAM) categories, agreement, and subject case assignment. While none of these features can be taken as defining nonfiniteness crosslinguistically, we do show that AcIs pattern with what is expected from nonfinite forms on just about any test that has been proposed and that is relevant for Latin.

3.1 Deficient Tense, Aspect, and Mood

Infinitives cannot express tense relative to the utterance time (Hornstein 1990:147). Infinitives instead either have bound tense,³ which means that they are tenseless and use the matrix tense as their own, or have dependent tense and express time relative to (but not necessarily identical to) the matrix. For aspect and modality, the typical situation crosslinguistically is that these categories can be expressed but to a more limited degree than...