Logos

CONSTRUCTIONcon.spa.completiva-de-infinitivo

oración completiva de infinitivo

A subordinate clause with a nonfinite verb filling an argument position, admitted only where its subject is the same as the main clause subject.

The construction is in complementary distribution with the finite complement for a large class of main verbs: where the two clauses share a subject the nonfinite version is used, and where they do not the finite version with the subjunctive is used instead. That alternation is one of the clearest cases in the grammar of a syntactic condition determining a construction rather than a meaning determining it, and it is what makes the pair worth authoring as two objects rather than one. A small set of verbs escapes the pattern in both directions: some admit a nonfinite complement with a different subject, and some admit a finite complement with the same subject, and both sets are stored rather than predicted.

statusstatus
documentedasserted, and the sources agree
provenanceprovenance
authoredwritten for Logos, from first principles
derivation statusderivation_status
unstatednobody has said whether it follows from anything
saliencesalience
No salience. Where no frequency source applies the object carries none, rather than a default or a guess (03-schema.md §3.5).
aliasesaliases
  • metalanguagenonfinite complement clause
sourcessources
  • SOURCENueva gramática de la lengua española (2009)src.nueva-gramaticano page in v1
  • SOURCEA New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish (Butt and Benjamin)src.butt-benjaminno page in v1

Why this is a construction at all

construction.admission

Goldberg's admission test: a template earns storage either by being unpredictable or by being frequent.

admissionadmission
frequentit is stored because it recurs often enough to be learned whole

The slots

construction.slots

At least two, by the schema: fewer is not a multi-element template. Every filler is a link, never a name in prose.

  1. 0el verbo principal, finitolexically specified: only the fillers below may occupy it

    fillerslots[].filler
    functionslots[].fn
    FUNCTIONnúcleofun.spa.nucleo

  2. 1el infinitivo, sin sujeto propiolexically specified: only the fillers below may occupy it

    fillerslots[].filler
    functionslots[].fn
    FUNCTIONcomplemento directofun.spa.complemento-directo

Slot template

2 slots: 2 constrained, 0 positional, 2 naming a grammatical function.

  1. el verbo principal, finito
    constrained
    • verboclass

    names núcleo

  2. el infinitivo, sin sujeto propio
    constrained
    • verboclass

    names complemento directo

Confusable with

construction.confusable

Objects a reader is likely to mix up with this one, and the difference that separates them. The edge is symmetric and stored once, so this renders on both objects' pages from the one statement.

Everything joined to this object

One group per typed edge, in both directions. A1b guarantees no object node is an orphan, so this is the whole navigation: an object with no edges would have failed the build rather than reached this page.

What this object is a kind of

Walking this object's own `is-a` edges: what it is a kind of. Several branches from one object are several classification axes, not competing supertypes.

objects
1
places drawn
1
multi-parent
None in this view. This subgraph happens to be a tree, which the explorer draws as one without assuming it is one.

Siblings are listed by name, then by id to break ties. That is a display choice made here and not an order the graph asserts.

Fan-out per dimension

A4

One row per dimension, largest first. That is a display order, not a verdict: 03-schema.md declares no threshold above which fan-out is too much, so this reports the count and grades nothing.

  • case13 values
  • mood8 values
  • voice8 values
  • aspect7 values
  • aktionsart6 values
  • number6 values
  • person6 values
  • tense6 values
  • comparison4 values
  • evidentiality4 values
  • gender4 values
  • politeness4 values
  • valency4 values
  • animacy3 values
  • definiteness3 values
  • deixis3 values
  • finiteness2 values
  • information structure2 values
  • interrogativity2 values
  • polarity2 values
  • switch-reference2 values

What kinds of this object there are

Walking the `is-a` edges that point at this object: what kinds of it there are. An object reachable two ways is drawn in both places and is still one object.

objects
1
places drawn
1
multi-parent
None in this view. This subgraph happens to be a tree, which the explorer draws as one without assuming it is one.

Siblings are listed by name, then by id to break ties. That is a display choice made here and not an order the graph asserts.

has-a

edges.has-a

the parent carries this

this object carries

selects

edges.selects

the parent requires this elsewhere

this object requires, elsewhere

  • FUNCTIONsujetofun.spa.sujetodocumented
    • conditionThe nonfinite clause has no subject of its own and takes the subject of the main clause, so the construction is refused where the two would differ.

derives

edges.derives

the why-chain

derived by