Constructions with Non-subordinate Infinitives: An Exploratory Study for a Semantic Characterization

Abstract

This article explores the use of the infinitive in verbs that select subordinate clauses in contexts that do not normally license such usage, based on minutes of Portuguese municipal council meetings. Drawing on a subcorpus of 118 target sentences extracted from a dataset consisting of 439 minutes corresponding to meetings held between 2021 and 2024, occurrences of this construction were identified and analysed in cases of direct speech. The analysis focused on the contexts of occurrence, the aspectual and temporal properties of the stand-alone infinitive and its clausal complements, as well as the temporal relations established between the situation introduced by the infinitive and the embedded situation expressed in the subordinate clause. The results show that this infinitive occurs with different types of complements and selects subordinate clauses with diverse aspectual profiles. At the temporal level, regular patterns of overlap, anteriority and posteriority are observed between the situation introduced by the stand-alone infinitive and the situation expressed in the subordinate clause. The analysis suggests that, in the absence of a situation in which the subordinating situation can be anchored, the infinitive establishes a preferential overlap relation with the moment of utterance, which functions as its temporal perspective point (Kamp & Reyle, 1993). Developed within the framework of Discourse Representation Theory (Kamp & Reyle, 1993), this study aims to contribute to the description of the infinitive used in the matrix verb of subordinate clauses in contexts of institutional political direct speech, as well as to the discussion of its aspectual and temporal status.