Agreement and Focus in Galician Inflected Infinitives

Abstract

In Galician Inflected Infinitive (henceforth II) clauses we can get the subject in three different positions: postverbal, preverbal or at the very end of the clause. The most common unmarked word order obtains when the subject is either in postverbal position or dropped (Galician is a pro-drop language). I argue that the other two positions are reserved for the subject in focus. This paper accounts for all different subject positions in the II construction: postverbal (straight in-situ checking), preverbal (by means of a Focus Phrase) and sentence final (by means of p-syntactic movement). The various positions of the subject in Galician II clauses provide further support for a bifurcation of the syntax into narrow syntax and p-syntax.