Logos

CONSTRUCTIONcon.spa.infinitivo-sustantivado

infinitivo sustantivado

A pattern in which a determiner stands before a nonfinite verb, so the whole phrase occupies a position a noun phrase would occupy.

The construction places a determiner before a nonfinite verb and produces a phrase that behaves as a noun phrase outside and as a verb phrase inside: it takes a subject position or an object position, and it keeps the objects and adverbs the verb would have taken. The determiner is invariably the masculine singular definite article, which is what makes the resulting phrase masculine and singular for the purposes of agreement whatever it names. The pattern shades into ordinary nouns derived from verbs, some of which are historically frozen instances of it, and the test that separates the two is whether verbal complements are still admitted inside the phrase.

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
  • metalanguagenominalised infinitive
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 artículo definido masculino singularlexically specified: only the fillers below may occupy it

    fillerslots[].filler
    functionslots[].fn
    FUNCTIONdeterminaciónfun.spa.determinacion

  2. 1el infinitivo, que conserva sus complementos verbaleslexically specified: only the fillers below may occupy it

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

Slot template

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

  1. el artículo definido masculino singular
    constrained
    • artículoclass

    names determinación

  2. el infinitivo, que conserva sus complementos verbales
    constrained
    • verboclass

    names núcleo

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

  • CLASSartículocls.spa.articulodocumented
    • conditionThe determiner is the masculine singular definite article whatever the gender associations of the event named, so the phrase is grammatically masculine by construction.

derives

edges.derives

the why-chain

derived by