Portuguese , Russian and the Theory of Control

1. Introduction: inflected infinitives and obligatory control European Portuguese is unusual in having both inflected and uninflected infinitives with partially overlapping but distinct distributions. Unlike uninflected infinitives, inflected infinitives can surface with overt/null referential subjects in EP in certain complement clauses as well as in subject/adjunct clauses (1) Será difícil [(eles) aprovarem a proposta]. be.FUT.3SG difficult they approve.INF.3PL the proposal 'It will be difficult for them to approve the proposal.' [EP, adapted from Raposo (1987: 86)] (2) Eu lamento [ terem (os deputados) trabalhado pouco]. I regret.1SG have.INF.3PL the MPs worked little 'I believe/regret the MPs to have/having worked very little.' Os professores i disseram aos alunos j que era preciso [pro i/j trabalharem] the teachers said to.the students that was necessary work.INF.3PL 'The teachers told the students that it was necessary to work.' The clear fact that inflected infinitives are banned in exhaustive local subject control has oft been taken as evidence that they are not, however, possible in instances of obligatory control (OC) Workshop on Portuguese Syntax, Venice, and at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge. Many thanks to the respective audiences for feedback and critique, especially Guglielmo Cinque, Richard Kayne, Ian Roberts and Theresa Biberauer. Thanks also to Ekaterina Chernova and Pavel Iosad for filling in gaps in the Russian data as well as to the many native Portuguese speakers who took the time to fill in the six online questionnaires on which this paper is based. In relation to the EP data, I also benefitted greatly from discussions with Ana Madeira and José Cruz da Angela. 1 Unless otherwise attributed, all EP examples were collected by the author.