An Unexpected Root Clause

Abstract

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.