O infinitivo flexionado na diacronia do português

Abstract

This paper seeks to characterise the evolution of the Portuguese inflected infinitive, by investigating how it emerged in different syntactic environments. We show that it was in the 16th-19th centuries that its distribution underwent significant changes, whereby it gradually spread, not only to the contexts in which it is found nowadays, but also to other contexts from which it is excluded in the standard variety (but not in nonstandard ones). We argue that this may be explained by assuming the existence of two inflected infinitives, one which is characterised by nominal properties and another one which exhibits properties of control.