Open AccessTHE LACK OF SUBJECT INVERSION IN PUERTO RICAN INFINITIVE CLAUSES.
Author(s) -
Raquel González Rodríguez
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
dialectologia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.112
H-Index - 8
ISSN - 2013-2247
DOI - 10.1344/dialectologia2020.25.8
Subject(s) - infinitive , puerto rican , verb , linguistics , inversion (geology) , subject (documents) , history , psychology , geography , computer science , geology , philosophy , ethnology , seismology , library science , tectonics
This paper explores the syntactic variation in Spanish focusing on a difference between European and Puerto Rican Spanish: the lack of subject-verb inversion in Puerto Rican infinitive clauses. Whereas infinitive subjects must follow the verb in European Spanish, they can also appear in preverbal position in Puerto Rican Spanish. On the one hand, this paper provides a detailed description of the phenomenon; for example, it determines what type of subjects can occupy the preverbal position in Puerto Rican Spanish. On the other hand, it offers empirical evidence for the following claim: this asymmetry between European and Puerto Rican Spanish is derived from infinitive subjects occupying different positions in these varieties, but not from the verb moving from T(ense) to C(omplementizer) in European Spanish.