Infinitives in a for-to dialect

ALISON HENRY

I N F I N I T I V E S IN A F O R - T O D I A L E C T *

This paper considers the structure of infinitives in Belfast English, which allows a wide range of infinitives to be preceded by for to. It is argued that the for of for to is the complementizer for, which differs from standard English for in being able to cliticize to to. This accounts for a number of features of infinitives in the dialect, including the placement of negation and the possibility of the infinitival subject preced- ing for. The implications of this analysis for the structure of infinitives in general is discussed, in particular in relation to the subcategorization of verbs which take infinitival complements.

0 . I N T R O D U C T I O N

This paper considers the structure of infinitives in Belfast English, one of a number of dialects of English in which it seems that the complementizer for may appear directly before to, as shown in (1) and (2) below:

(1) I want for to meet them.

(2) It is difficult for to see that.

Other such varieties include Ottawa Valley English (Carroll 1983) and Ozark English (mentioned briefly in Chomsky & Lasnik (1977), Chomsky (1981), Koster & May (1982)). It has been acknowledged for some time that detailed analysis of the data from for to dialects would be of consider- able significance for the analysis of infinitives in general (see for example Chomsky (1981), Borer (1989)), but apart from Carroll (1983), which documents a dialect with a relatively restricted use of for to, such data has not previously been available.

The main reason for the interest in for to dialects is that they seem, at first sight, to provide problems for analyses of infinitives proposed on the basis of standard English. Such analyses (see e.g. Chomsky (1981)) view the role of for to be as a governor and Case-marker of the subject; thus, it occurs when there is a lexical subject requiring Case-marking, but must be absent where the subject is PRO, as (3) and (4) illustrate.

* Much of this paper was developed during a stay as a visiting scholar in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT. I am grateful to the Department for affording me this opportunity and to Noam Chomsky, Ken Hale and David Pesetsky for much useful dis- cussion. I am also most grateful for the helpful comments and suggestions of three anonymous NLLT reviewers.

Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 10: 279-301, 1992. (~) 1992 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

280 ALISON H E N R Y

(3)a.

b.

(4)a.

b.

For John to win would be amazing.

*John to win would be amazing.

To win would be amazing.

*For to win would be amazing.

The grammaticality of examples like (4b) in the for to dialects thus appears contrary to the prediction of the standard analysis, at least if one wishes to maintain that PRO is ungoverned, as it contains what appears to be a governed PRO.

In this paper, I will consider data from a dialect which makes use of for to in a wide range of structures, concluding that the difference between Belfast English and Standard English is that for can cliticize to INFL in the former but not in the latter.

The paper is organised as follows. Section 1 outlines the major characteristics of the distribution of for to in Belfast English. In Section 2, the analysis of these facts will be discussed. It will be shown that the for which occurs in for to constructions is the complementizer for; it will then be argued that Belfast English allows for to cliticize to to, this single characteristic accounting for a variety of facts about the dialect. The significance of this for the analysis of infinitives is discussed; it is argued that all infinitives are CPs at D-structure, and that for may occur with any infinitive. Exceptional Case Marking and raising verbs must be seen as S'(CP)- deleting in a literal sense, rather than subcategorised for IP complements. And the difference between want- and try-type verbs cannot lie in whether or not they are subcategorized for for; rather, the obligatory control character of the try-type derives from the obligatory deletion of for where it immediately follows these verbs. Section 3 considers the relationship between Belfast English and the other for-to dialects, concluding that there is not a unified for to phenomenon, the occurrence of for to arising from different characteristics in other dialects.

1. T H E U S E OF for to IN B E L F A S T E N G L I S H

1.1. Introduction

There are two distinct for to dialects spoken in Northern Ireland. One, which I will term the 'weak for to dialect', is relatively widespread through- out the north of Ireland; it uses for to only in purpose clauses, as in (5) and (6).

(5) I went to the shop for to get bread.

I N F I N I T I V E S I N A F O R - T O D I A L E C T 281

(6) They are going home for to See their parents.

This is in fact the more common variety and the majority of for to speakers restrict their use to this type of clause. Finlay (1988), in a study of the speech of Belfast schoolchildren, found examples of for to only in purpose clauses, suggesting that the variety of Belfast English featuring a wider use of for to may be restricted to older speakers and hence disappearing.

It is, however, to the less common and more interesting 'strong for to' variety, which uses for to as an alternative to to in the majority of infinitive types, that we turn our attention here. I will refer to this as 'Belfast English', although that is a simplification in two ways; first, by no means all Belfast English speakers use for to, and many of those who do are 'weak' for to users as noted above; secondly, this variety is also found in some small areas outside Belfast, in particular in the border areas of South Armagh. 1

A word of caution about data from such dialects is in order, at the risk of throwing my own data into question also. All of these dialects are non- standard, and the use of for to is highly stigmatized; speakers of these varieties are aware that the use of for to is judged to be 'incorrect' or 'ungrammatical' in a prescriptive sense. It is thus extremely difficult to gather reliable grammaticality judgments on such varieties, and this has led to a number of incorrect statements about them; thus for example Milroy (1983) argues that 'I want for to go' is ungrammatical in Belfast English when in fact it is not. In gathering data on Belfast English I

1 It appears that this dialect was more widespread in the relatively recent past; thus Joyce (1910), in his book "English as We Speak it in Ireland" notes that "'For' is constantly used before the infinitive," quoting as an example the following lines from a folksong:

And "Oh sailor dear" said she, "How came you here by me?" And then she began for to c r y . . .

Although Joyce suggests that this is a characteristic borrowed from Irish, it seems in fact that 'for to' occurs in earlier varieties of English; it is found in Chaucer, and indeed also occurs in Shakespeare and as late as Dickens, though in the latter only in the reported speech of the 'lower classes.' Lightfoot (1981, p. 111) notes that it was in common use in standard English until around 1600, quoting the following examples:

(i)a.

b.

c

d.

e.

f.

g.

For to go is necessary

It is good for to go

• . . that stood in aunter for to die

The king did it for to have sibbe

This is a fouler theft than for to breke a chirche

He taketh of nought else kepe, but for to fill his bages

For to say the sothe, ye have done marvellously.

282 ALISON H E N R Y

repeatedly encountered a phenomenon which I will term 'negative over- reporting'; thus speakers, even when they appeared to understand that what was being asked was a question about what people could say in their dialect, often judged as ungrammatical sentence types which they frequently used in the naturalistic data gathered from them. This means that extreme caution must be used in gathering data on such dialects and that in particular starred examples must be viewed with some scepticism.

It is for this reason that all the data in this paper has been checked against speech samples, the grammatical examples are as far as possible 'real' recorded examples, and the lack of occurrence of the ungrammatical cases has been checked against a large quantity of data; of course it is impossible to be sure that absence from a corpus means that something does not occur, but at least care has been taken to check judgments. Carroll (1983) resorted to using repetition rather than grammaticality judgments in the face of similar problems in gathering data on Ottawa Valley English. The problem of getting grammaticality judgments on non- standard dialects is a serious one and deserves further consideration which is however beyond the scope of this paper.

With these cautions in mind, let us now look at the facts of for to use in the strong for to variety of Belfast English. What is striking about this variety is that for to can occur in infinitives in a range of different positions, contrary to the data reported for other for to dialects where usage seems to be limited to those infinitives which are the complement of want-type verbs and adjectives which in standard English take for complements, for example want and difficult. In addition to these environments, Belfast English uses for to infinitives in a variety of other cases. Since this data has not previously been available, and it is data that any account of infinitives must take into consideration, it will be useful to outline its major characteristics before going on to discuss its analysis.

1.2. Infinitives with PRO Subjects

Belfast English uses for to instead of the standard English to quite freely with 'subjectless' infinitives. As Chomsky (1981) points out, the occurrence of for with PRO subjects in the for to dialects presents something of a problem for GB theory, since this PRO would appear to be governed; we return to discuss this in Section 2.

In addition to occurring with want-type verbs as in (1), for to occurs for example in isolated infinitives used as exclamations:

(7) For to let that mongrel into my yard!

I N F I N I T I V E S IN A F O R - T O D I A L E C T 283

(8) For to tell her like that!

Belfast English also uses for to with infinitives in 'subject' position: 2

(9) For to stay here would be just as expensive.

(10) For to pay the mortgage is difficult.

Moreover, for to can be used even with verbs which do not take for in standard English, and which are usually assumed not to be subcategorised for the for complementizer.

(11) I tried for to get them.

The use of for to after try has also been reported in Ozark (see Chomsky & Lasnik 1977), Carroll (1983)); however, in Ozark try apparently permits a lexical subject, whereas this is not the case in Belfast English; a sentence like (12), which is grammatical in Ozark is completely ungrammatical in Belfast English.

(12) OE/*BE I tried for him to go home.

For to also occurs with 'object control' verbs:

(13) I persuaded John for to go home.

(14) She convinced them for to give up.

However, there is one instance where we never find for to and that is after whether, which in Belfast English acts as a wh-complementizer.

(15) *I don't know whether for to go.

As we shall see later, this is one indication that for of for to is the same item as the complementizer for.

1.3. Infinitives with Lexical Subjects

In the case of most infinitives with a lexical subject, for must occur before the subject, just as in standard English, and for to does not occur. This is presumably because, as in standard English, for is required in order to assign Case to the lexical subject, which otherwise would not receive Case and would thus violate the Case Filter, which requires that all lexical NPs have Case.

2 I do not wish to suggest that these infinitives are true subjects - there is indeed evidence

that they are not (See for example Stowell (1981)).

284 A L I S O N H E N R Y

The requirement that for occur before the lexical subject applies to infinitives in most positions - for example to those in 'subject' position:

(16)a. For him to pay the mortgage would be just as expensive.

b. *Him for to pay the mortgage would be just as expensive.

c. *For him for to pay the mortgage would be just as expensive.

to infinitives which are in 'extraposition':

(17)a. It was stupid for them to do that.

b. *It was stupid them for to do that.

c. *It was stupid for them for to do that.

to complements of adjectives:

(18)a. Mary was keen for them to be there.

b. *Mary was keen them for to be there.

c. *Mary was keen for them for to be there.

and also to the complements of want-type verbs where something appears between the matrix verb and the embedded subject:

(19)a. I want very much for him to get accepted.

b. *I want very much him for to get accepted.

c. *I want very much for him for to get accepted.

Two occurrences of for are impossible, as (16c), (17c), (18c) and (19c) show. For to cannot co-occur with for

However, Belfast English, unlike the other for to varieties so far as I am aware, places for to after the lexical subject where the infinitive is the complement of a want-type verb (provided that the lexical subject occurs directly after want).

(20) I wanted Jimmy for to come with me.

(21) I don't like the children for to be out late.

In fact, this is the only place where for can occur in this structure. Sen- tences like (22), which are grammatical in some other dialects, are ungrammatical in this variety:

(22) *I wanted for Jimmy to come with me.

For to speakers can, like standard speakers, omit the for entirely:

(23) I wanted Jimmy to come with me.


The only case where for can precede the lexical subject in such constructions is where something intervenes between the matrix verb and the complement, as in (19a) above.

It might be thought that in structures like (20) and (21), the NP which appears to be the subject of the infinitive could in fact be part of the main clause, so that the structure of examples like (20) would be:

(24) I wanted Jimmy [for PRO to come with me].

However, the same construction occurs with the expletive there, which is restricted to subject position, showing clearly that for to can indeed occur after the infinitival subject:

(25) I want there for to be some peace and quiet sometime.

(26) I 'd hate there for to be ill-feeling.

1.4. For to with 'S' Deleting' Verbs

For to occurs in cases where under standard analyses one would not expect a complementizer to be present at all, for example after raising verbs, as in (27a). Raising is nevertheless obligatory with such verbs in Belfast English, just as in standard English; despite the presence of for as a potential Case-marker, the lexical subject may not remain in situ, as (27b) shows:

(27)a. John seems for to be better.

b. *It seems for John to be better.

It also occurs with Exceptional Case Marking (ECM) verbs, as in (28a). Here, for and to must occur together after the subject; for may not occur before the subject, as (28b) shows:

(28)a. I believe them for to have done it.

b. *I believe for them to have done it.

1.5. Negatives in for-to Infinitives

There is an apparently curious fact about negative for to infinitives, and that is that the negative not always follows for to; it cannot occur between for and to. Nor can it precede for.

(29)a. I would prefer them for to not go.

b. *I would prefer them for not to go.


(29)c.

(30) a.

b.

C.

*I would prefer them not for to go.

For to not go would be foolish.

*Not for to go would be foolish.

*For not to go would be foolish.

However , where for precedes the lexical subject, a negative may occur before or after to, as in standard English, with the position before to being preferred.

(31)a. I would prefer very much for them not to go.

b. I would prefer very much for them to not go.

(32)a. For John not to go would be foolish.

b. For John to not go would be foolish.

My data contains a number of examples where the speaker uses a for to infinitive with a negative, and subsequently modifies this to a form without for, at the same time altering the position of the negative: all are of the following form, with the sequence for to not, altered to not to:

(33) I wouldn't like my children for to not m a r r y . . , not to marry.

It is to be expected that there is some unified explanation for the facts of for to use in Belfast English, a difference between the two varieties which triggers the various features we have noted above; and that is indeed what we shall propose in the next section.

2. A N A L Y S I S OF T H E F O R TO C O N S T R U C T I O N IN

B E L F A S T E N G L I S H

2.1. The Status of for

Before we go on to analyse the Belfast English data, we need to exclude one possibility: that is, that, as the Oxford English Dictionary suggests, for to is simply a lexical variant of to in some varieties; if that were the case the data would be of little syntactic interest.

It is not difficult to show that this is not the case however; we have seen a number of cases where to is possible but for to is not. Thus for to does not occur where there is a for complementizer present, as (19c) repeated below shows.

(19c) *I want very much for him for to get accepted.

Its failure to occur with for suggests that the for of for to is in fact the


complementizer itself. This is reinforced by the fact that it cannot co- occur with whether, as shown in (15) repeated below.

(15) *I don't know whether for to go.

Note that for to can in general occur with wh-words; thus sentences like (34) and (35) are grammatical.

(34) I don't know where for to go.

(35) He wasn't sure what for to do.

This is exactly what we would predict if both whether and for are complementizers; for can co-occur with wh-words which appear in the (SPEC, CP) position, but not with another item which occurs in the complementizer position itself. Thus, the lack of for to after whether arises because the complementizer position is already filled by whether.

The suggestion that whether is a complementizer is however not uncontroversial. In particular, it is in contradiction to the analysis proposed by Kayne (to appear) following suggestions by Larson (1985). Kayne argues that whether occurs in SPEC/CP, and that this explains the contrast between whether (which allows the wh-infinitive construction) and if, which does not, as shown in (36a&b) below:

(36)a. He doesn't know whether to go to the movies.

b. *He doesn't know if to go to the movies.

According to Kayne's analysis, the presence of a lexical complementizer is incompatible with PRO; if, being in Co cannot therefore be followed by PRO, but whether, being like other wh-words in SPEC/CP, can do so.

In Belfast English, however, although the judgments on (36a&b) are as in standard English, there is evidence that whether is in fact in C. One type of evidence comes from the pattern of occurrence of that after wh- words. In Belfast English, for many speakers, the 'Doubly filled COMP filter' does not operate and that can occur after a wh-element, 3 as in (37) and (38):

(37) I don't know when that he's going.

3 This possibility does not exist for all speakers. There is a group of speakers for whom that can only occur if it does not directly follow a wh-word, so that (ii) is grammatical but (iii) is not:

(ii) It depends which story that you believe

(iii) *It depends which that you believe

For this group of speakers that is of course impossible after whether.


(38) It depends who that I see.

However , whether never co-occurs with that:

(39) *I don' t know whether that he's going.

Thus in Belfast English whether differs from other wh-words in that it cannot co-occur with a complementizer, which seems to indicate that whether is not in SPEC/CP but in Co itself.

A further argument for whether being in C comes from the occurrence of subject-auxiliary inversion in embedded clauses. As McCloskey (1990) notes, Hiberno-English dialects allow inversion in embedded yes-no questions:

(40) I wonder did he get there on time.

(41) They asked him was he by himself.

In Belfast English, inversion is also possible in embedded wh-questions:

(42) I wonder what street does he live in.

(43) The man on the door asked her who had she come to see.

However , such inversion is impossible with whether;

(44)a. *I wonder whether did he get there on time.

b. I wonder whether he got there on time.

(45)a. *They asked him whether was he by himself. b. They asked him whether he was by himself.

Assuming that the inversion here is the same process as in matrix sentences, that is, the movement of I to C, the reason for its being blocked with whether falls out naturally if whether is in C; since C is already filled, I cannot move to it. That this is the correct analysis is confirmed by the fact that inversion is also impossible with that.

(46)a. *I wonder what street that does he live in.

b. I wonder what street that he lives in.

(47)a. *The man on the door asked her who that had she come to see.

b. The man on the door asked her who that she had come to see.

Thus whether in Belfast English does appear to be in C, and so to be in complementary distribution with other elements which occur in that posi- t ion. The fact that it does not occur with for, then, indicates that for is also a complementizer.


Carroll (1983) in her study of Ottawa Valley English argues that the for of for to infinitives is not in fact the complementizer for but the preposition for associated with certain verbs such as want and like. This may indeed be the case in that variety, a possibility to which we will return later. However, it is clearly not the case in Belfast English; there, for to infinitives occur in isolation, as in (7) and (8) repeated below:

(7) For to let that mongrel into my yard!

(8) For to tell her like that!

Moreover, in certain constructions, the for preposition and the for complementizer can surface:

(48) What I'm longing for is for to have a break. 4

If however for is a complementizer, certain questions immediately arise:

a) How is it that PRO is permitted after the for, which is presumably a governor since it must assign Case as in (16a) and (17a)? b) How can the lexical subject occur before the complementizer? c) Why should the positioning of negatives be influenced by the presence or absence of a complementizer? d) How can the for complementizer occur with verbs which are normally assumed to take only IP complements?

Although the evidence above suggests that the for of for to infinitives is indeed the for complementizer, the questions raised in a)-d) suggest that it differs from the normal for complementizer in a number of ways.

2.2. For with PRO Subjects

We mentioned above that one problem raised by Belfast English, and the other for to dialects, is that they appear, unlike standard English, to allow PRO in a governed position.

For, if we assume that Case is assigned under government, then for must be a governor, since it assigns Case to the subject of infinitives such as (16a) and (17a), repeated below.

(16)a. For him to pay the mortgage would be just as expensive.

(17)a. It was stupid for them to do that.

4 It is of course possible to repeat the preposition for before an NP, as in:

(iv) Wha t I 'm longing for is for a break

but (48) does not have the repetitive quality of this example.


We are left then with the conclusion that Belfast English appears to contain examples of a governed PRO; noting that this is a problem in analysing the for to dialects, Chomsky (1981) suggests that in those dialects for is optionally a governor. However, although this will produce the correct results in terms of allowing subjectless infinitives with for to to occur, it fails to account for the other features of Belfast English we have noted, namely, the restrictions on negative placement and the occurrence of lexical subjects before for; for we would expect to be able to get a negative like (49) if for is optionally a governor:

(49) *For PRO not to go would be stupid.

whereas as we have seen this is ungrammatical; moreover, there is nothing in the optional governing status of for that would lead us to expect to find a lexical subject before it, as in (20) and (21) repeated below:


(21) I don't like the children for to be out late.

Note that it is not only the standard account of PRO that runs into difficulties here; for example Bouchard's (1983) proposal that it is lack of Case rather than government which sanctions PRO also has problems, since for is a Case assigner. Borer's (1989) account of infinitival subjects, under which these are not PRO but pro, also encounters problems, as it requires an empty C slot into which INFL can raise, and the complementizer position appears to be filled in the for to construction.

Thus, we seem to have a contradiction. For appears to be a complementizer capable of governing (and assigning Case), but it also appears to be able to occur with PRO. We can resolve this by claiming that, although for is a complementizer, it may move out of the complementizer position. More precisely, for can be a clitic in Belfast English, moving to INFL and cliticising to to. This would not be the only example of complementizers cliticising; Shlonsky (1988) argues that the Hebrew complementizer se has clitic status, moving out of the complementizer position and cliticizing to INFL or the subject.

Let us explore the consequences of allowing for to cliticize to to. The structure of a sentence like (9) above would then be:

(50) PRO for to stay here would be just as expensive.

I assume, essentially following Chomsky (1989), that items which do not enter into semantic interpretation at LF do not leave traces, and that


for is such an item. Thus, once for has moved, PRO is ungoverned as required.

The claim that for has no semantics is not uncontroversial; a number of analyses of infinitives such as Bresnan (1972), Stowell (1982) and Peset- sky (in preparation) have argued that for has a meaning, in particular, that for clauses are irrealis with respect to the matrix verb. These accounts draw attention to the contrast between infinitives with for (or which can potentially take for) and those which cannot take for. The former are necessarily 'unrealised' with respect to the matrix verb, whereas the latter are not, as the contrast between (51) and (52) (with for) on the one hand and (53) and (54) (which cannot take for in standard English) on the other serves to show:

(51) I want very much for John to win.

(52) I 'd like very much for John to play the piano.

(53) I remember John to be the smartest.

(54) Bill considers himself to be intelligent.

However, all of these analyses are based on the observation that there are certain types of infinitive with which for does not occur in standard English - in particular raising and ECM verbs - and that the complements of those verbs are not, unlike other infinitival complements, necessarily unrealised with respect to the matrix verb. But we have noted that this distinction does not exist in Belfast English - all infinitives may have for, including those which are complements of raising and ECM verbs, as (27a) and (28a) repeated below indicate."

(27)a. John seems for to be better.

(28)b. I believe them for to have done it.

Thus for does not seem to have a semantic contribution, since any infinitive can occur with for. Therefore the observations about the semantic content of for cannot hold. This means that for need not be considered as having semantic content in this dialect, and therefore the observations about the semantics of for in standard English noted above do not contradict our claim that for does not leave a trace. 5

5 In order to maintain the argument that for is associated with complements with a particular semantics, it could conceivably be argued that there are two different fors in Belfast English, one of which has semantic content and behaves exactly like the standard English for, and one which has no semantic content and may appear elsewhere; there would however appear to be no arguments in favour of this from the Belfast English data, where for appears to behave in the same way in all cases.

2 9 2 A L I S O N H E N R Y

Shlonsky (1988) also argues that a cliticized complementizer does not leave a trace. In Hebrew, constructions with the cliticized complementizer se do not show that-trace effects:

(55) Ze ha- is se- ani na'amina, se- (hu) lo ohev

this the man that I believe that (he) NEG like

salat xacalim.

salad eggplants.

This is the man that I believe that (he) doesn't like baba ganouj.

There is thus independent evidence that complementizers can move without leaving traces; therefore the cliticization of for we propose can account for the occurrence of PRO subjects with for in Belfast English. After for has moved, the subject position is ungoverned and may be PRO.

Note that what we are claiming in relation to these structures indicates that the requirement that PRO be ungoverned is not one that applies at all levels; in particular, before the movement of for, PRO is clearly governed in a structure like:

(56) I want for PRO to go.

It is only when cliticization takes place that PRO is ungoverned, as in (57):

(57) I want PRO for to go.

That PRO need not be ungoverned at D-structure is fairly uncontroversial; it presumably also applies in sentences like (58):

(58) John tried PRO to be liked t.

In the D-structure of (58), PRO is governed by liked. This, and the Belfast English cases, seem to provide clear evidence that

the requirement that PRO be ungoverned is not one which applies at D- structure level.

2.3. Negation and for-to Infinitives

We noted above that, where an infinitive is preceded by for to, the negative not must occur after for to, as shown in (29) and (30) repeated below.

(29)a. I would prefer them for to not go.

b. *I would prefer them not for to go,

c. *I would prefer them for not to go.


(30)a. For to not go would be foolish.

b. *Not for to go would be foolish.

c. *For not to go would be foolish.

If for is in C there is no obvious explanation for this; there would appear to be no reason why the presence of a complementizer should affect the placement of not. However, if ou r claim that for cliticizes to to is correct, then the reasons become clearer. First, it is obvious that the sequence for not to as in (29c) and (30c) will be unable to occur because for-to will form a single unit. (The sequence for PRO not to go is of course ruled out as it would contain a governed PRO). Secondly, we can explain, in a rather more complex way, the impossibility of not appearing before for. To see how, we need to look at recent proposals regarding the structure of negatives.

Pollock (1989) proposes to account for the placement of negatives in English and French by means of a much more richly articulated structure for IP than was previously proposed. The structure of IP is claimed to be along the following lines:

(59) TP(=IP)

NP T'

T NegP

Spec Neg'

Neg AgrP

Spec Agr'

Agr VP

It is claimed that in French, because A G R is comparatively rich, V can raise to A G R while still maintaining its 0-marking properties, so that negatives like (60a) can be derived from an underlying (60b):

(60)a. I1 ne parle + T + A G R pas.

2 9 4 A L I S O N H E N R Y

(60)b. I1 ne T pas AGR parle.

However, in English, the main verb cannot raise because its weak AGR does not allow it to assign its 0-roles in the derived position. It must therefore be the case that A G R and Tense lower on to the verb. However, this lowering is blocked, it is claimed, in negatives, for the following reason. Lowering leaves a trace in I, c-commanding its antecedent; this forms an impossible chain which must be removed by raising the affix again at LF. However, this raising is an instance of head movement and thus subject to the Head Movement Condition (HMC), under which a head can only move into an adjacent head position. The presence of not

in the head position of NegP therefore blocks this movement, and an ungrammatical sentence at LF results. 6 Thus, Do-support must apply;

(61) He does + T + AGR not speak

In infinitives, Pollock suggests, the to occupies the same slot as tense does in finite clauses. Thus, the underlying order for negative infinitives is to + not + V. According to Pollock, the sequence not to V is produced by the affixation of to to go, to being optionally an affix. One problem with this is explaining why to can lower to V across NEG, but tense cannot. Chomsky (1989) suggests that lowered affixes are subject to LF raising only if they have semantic content, since only then are they required to be present at all at LF; affixes without semantic content (such as to) are thus not present at LF, so not subject to the locality conditions (such as the HMC) which apply there. Thus, to, which is not an item needed for semantic interpretation at LF, can lower over the negative, while tense affixes cannot.

If to can host for-cliticization in Belfast English only when it is phonolog- ically independent, but not when it is itself an affix, then the ungrammaticality of examples like (29b) and (30b) (repeated below) follows from Pollock's account of negation.

(29b) *I would prefer them not for to go.

(30b) *Not for to go would be foolish.

In (29b), for has clearly cliticized to to, since it occurs after the infinitival subject them; thus to must be the independent, non-affix to, and so cannot lower over the negative to affix to the verb. Similarly in (30b), for has necessarily lowered under our analysis to leave PRO ungoverned, and

6 Chomsky (1989) suggests that the H M C can in fact reduce to the ECP.

INFINITIVES IN A FOR-TO DIALECT 295

therefore to cannot be the affix and cannot move over the negative to affix to V.

2.4. Complements of want-type Verbs

We noted above that one of the striking features of Belfast English was the appearance of a lexical subject before for in the complements of want- type verbs, as in (20) and (21) repeated below.


(21) I don't like the children for to stay out late.

In an earlier framework such as that assumed in Postal (1974), and indeed within current approaches such as Lexical Functional Grammar and Re- lational Grammar, this could be seen as an example of subject-to-object raising, moving the infinitival subject across the complementizer to become the object of the main clause. Such an operation is, however, excluded by the Projection Principle (Chomsky 1981), which disallows non-thematic objects and thus the possibility of an empty object slot into which the infinitival subject could move. Moreover, as an anonymous NLLT reviewer points out, Raising to Object would lead to a violation of the COMP-trace effect. There must therefore be some other explanation for why, in such constructions, the infinitival subject precedes the complementizer. One possibility is that the subject has moved to a position in front of the complementizer, the SPEC, CP position. This possibility is envisaged for some languages in Massam (1985). However, though accounting for the occurrence of a lexical subject before for, this does not provide a unified explanation for the facts of infinitives in Belfast English. On the other hand, our claim that for may cliticize to to in that dialect can handle the facts of infinitives with lexical subjects also, as follows.

Cliticization across a subject is permitted, but subject-to the require- ments of the Case Filter being satisfied. We noted above that for does not leave a trace after cliticization, so that it cannot assign Case once it has moved. Thus, cliticization can only occur where there is something other than for to assign Case; this suggests that want-type verbs are Exceptional Case Markers, which can assign Case to the embedded subject, which allows for to cliticize and gives sentences like (20) and (21).

An argument in favour of a cliticization approach to such structures, or more precisely in favour of for being in INFL rather than COMP at S- structure (this was pointed out by an anonymous NLLT reviewer), is obtained from the placement of adverbs. There are adverbs such as deft-


nitely which can be placed between the subject and the first occurrence of INFL.

(62) I want the boys definitely to be there.

Such adverbs can only occur before for and never between for and to:

(63)a. I want the boys definitely for to be there.

b. *I want the boys for definitely to be there.

If for were in COMP, one would expect (63b) to be grammatical. Where Exceptional Case Marking is impossible because something in-

tervenes between the matrix verb and the infinitival subject, for must be used just as in standard English, as shown in (19a) repeated below:

(19a) I want very much for him to get accepted.

There is a problem with this analysis, however. Sentences where a want-type verb is followed by for plus a lexical subject are ungrammatical in Belfast English, as (22) repeated below shows:

(22) *I wanted for Jimmy to come with me.

It might therefore seem that cliticization is obligatory after want-type verbs, whereas all we have said so far implies that cliticization may but need not apply. Examination of other varieties of English in the British Isles, however, indicates that in these also (including standard English) sentences like (22) are ungrammatical, even though the dialects in question are not for to dialects and therefore presumably do not allow for cliticization. This suggests that another process is at work here, probably a rule of for deletion in PF as proposed by Chomsky (1981). This rule is present in certain dialects, but absent in others (including some American dialects) in which (22) is grammatical. Note that the existence of this rule provides additional support for our cliticization proposal. In Belfast English for can occur after want-type verbs if no lexical subject is present, as (64) indicates:

(64) I want for to go.

If for were in C here, it would be difficult to explain why for-deletion was optional here although it is obligatory in (22); hOwever, under our analysis where for has cliticized to I in (64) and is thus no longer adjacent to want, the absence of for deletion receives an explanation.

The cliticization of for also explains why wh-extraction is possible from a for infinitive after want-type verbs in Belfast English but not in Standard English, as (65) shows:


(65) BE (*SE) Who do you want for to help you?

The S-structure of this in Standard English would be like (66):

(66) Who1 do you want cp[tl for ip[t I to help you]]

The ungrammaticality of this in Standard English can be explained naturally if for is not a proper governor. The trace in infinitival subject position is thus not lexically governed and must therefore be antecedent governed to satisfy the ECP; but for in C acts to block antecedent government just as that does.

However, in Belfast English, once for has cliticized, the structure would be the following

(67) Who do you want cp[tl eip[ti for to help you]]

Here, for is no longer in C and antecedent government is therefore not blocked.

Moreover, if this is so, there must be some other means of governing and assigning Case to the subject position of the infinitival complement of want-type verbs after for has moved, because a lexical NP is possible in this context as indicated by (20) repeated below:


The fact that for-lowering is impossible if anything intervenes between the matrix verb and the infinitival subject, as in (19b) repeated below, is further evidence that for does not leave a trace that can Case-mark the subject; if there were a trace in C here capable of Case-marking, then (19b) should be grammatical.

(19b) *I want very much him for to get accepted.

Want-type verbs, then, can be Exceptional Case Markers; that is, they may delete CP in which case the subject of the infinitive is governed and Case-marked by the matrix verb and so may be a lexical NP, or trace.

(68) Who do you want t for to win?

A structure with CP-deletion will of course exclude PRO; but if CP deletion does not take place, then the subject will be protected from government by the intervening barrier, and PRO may be the subject (but not, of course, in this configuration, a lexical NP or trace).


2.5. Raising and ECM Verbs

If we assume that raising and ECM verbs are S' (CP) deleting, rather than being subcategorised for IP complements, then we can explain the occurrence of for to with them. Since there is no C position at S-structure, examples like (27b) and (28b) repeated below will be impossible:

(27b) *It seems for John to be better.

(28b) *I believe for them to have done it.

Note that CP-deletion must occur at some point in the derivation after for-cliticization has applied, so that we find examples like (27a) and (28a) where for has cliticised to to:

(27a) John seems for to be better.

(28a) I believe them for to have done it.

It would thus not seem to be the case that such verbs select IP at D- structure; rather, all verbs taking sentential complements have CP at D- structure, and the deletion of the CP node is an operation which takes place after certain verbs in the course of the derivation.

2.6. Try-type Verbs

We have argued that several of the properties of Belfast English infinitives can be explained if for is a clitic. This accounts for a number of facts about the dialect. However, it also raises some problems relating to the subcategorization of verbs taking infinitives.

One of these relates to the status of the difference between want-type verbs, which can take infinitives wlth lexical subjects, and try-type verbs, which cannot. This distinction holds in Belfast English just as in standard English. In analyses of standard English infinitives (see for example Chom- sky (1981)), it is often claimed that the difference between these two types is that the former take the for complementizer whereas the latter do not, and thus do not have any means of Case-marking the lexical subject of an embedded clause, which is therefore excluded. The occurrence of for with try-type verbs in Belfast English is thus something of a problem. One would predict that a dialect which allowed for with try would also allow lexical subjects with try, but as we have seen that is not the case in Belfast English. This indicates that the difference between want- and try-type verbs cannot lie in the selection of for, and that the difference must be encoded in the lexicon by other means. One possibility is that there is a semantic difference between the two types. Pesetsky (in preparation), who


claims for somewhat different reasons that try-type verbs take for, suggests that the difference lies in the fact that try-type verbs have agentive subjects whereas want-type verbs do not. A problem with this analysis however is that try can, as we have noted, be followed by an infinitive with a lexical subject in some dialects, such as Ozark English; unless there is a difference between the semantic role of the subject with try in Ozark and other varieties, which seems unlikely, the difference cannot be wholly attributed to the semantics of the verbs concerned.

Thus, in Belfast English at least, the difference between the want-class and the try-class cannot reduce to subcategorisation for for.

It seems to be the case, rather, that try is not CP-deleting, but it does, like want, trigger obligatory for deletion when for is adacent to it. Thus try will be followed by a CP with an empty C slot at S structure (for having either moved or been deleted). Because there is nothing to Case- mark the subject, it must be empty.

It is interesting to note that the for to dialect which allows lexical subjects after try, Ozark, is also one in which for deletion does not occur after want:

(69) I tried for John to go.

(70) I want for John to go.

Belfast English, however, has obligatory for-deletion after both these types. Note that for-deletion does not necessarily trigger CP deletion; for can delete while the CP remains, protecting PRO from government by try in cases like (69) as required.

Thus, to summarise, I am suggesting that verbs which take infinitives are not distinguished, at least in Belfast English, by whether or not they may take for. Rather they differ as to whether or not they are CP-deleting, with believe-type and raising verbs falling into the CP-deletion class, try- type verbs into the non-CP-deleting, and want-type verbs having optional CP-deletion. With want and try-type verbs, for deletion is obligatory where for is adjacent to the verb at S-structure.

3. O T H E R F O R - T O D I A L E C T S

In this section, I will discuss briefly the ways in which the other for to dialects appear to differ from Belfast English.

The only other for to dialects on which data is available to me are Ottawa Valley English and Ozark English; moreover, it is only in the case of the former that an in-depth study has been done. Data on Ozark are

300 ALISON HENRY

confined to a limited number of examples in Chomsky & Lasnik (1977), Chomsky (1981) and Koster & May (1982).

In Ottawa Valley English (Carroll 1983) for to occurs only in the complements of verbs which in standard English can take for infinitives with lexical subjects, and which are associated with the preposition for. Raising and believe-type verbs do not take for to, and lexical subjects do not appear to the left of for. It therefore does not seem that the use of for to arises from for-cliticization in that dialect.

Carroll argues that the for of these infinitives is not the complementizer but a preposition. Another possible explanation, suggested by Chomsky (1981) in respect of Ozark English but which could also apply to the Ottawa Valley data, is that for is optionally a governor in some varieties. Carroll notes that this can handle the Ottawa Valley English data but regards it as unlikely that a relatively conservative dialect should have acquired a property such as optionality of government. Carroll's argument that for has been recategorised as something other than a complementizer gains some weight from the fact that, in the weak for to variety of Northern Irish English, which permits for to only in purpose clauses, something similar seems to have happened; the for here would seem not to be a complementizer but an item similar to in order as in in order to.

It seems likely that, as the use of for to dies out, at some point for becomes recategorised as something other than a complementizer, which seems to have happened in rather different ways in Ottawa Valley English and the weak variety of the for to dialect in Northern Ireland.

This leaves us with Ozark English, where the data is as we have noted somewhat unclear. Assuming that the paradigm is as reported in Chomsky & Lasnik (1977), however, it seems that here for to as in Ozark is restricted to cases where 'for + lexical subject' is possible in standard English, (and also try, discussed above). The arguments for Ottawa Valley English may thus apply there also.

In the light of the facts of Belfast English, other for to varieties need to be re-examined; for example, we would wish to know how the use of for to interacts with negative placement. However, from the data that is available, it seems likely that there is not a unitary for to phenomenon but rather that this results from different factors in different dialects.

R E F E R E N C E S

Borer, Hagit: 1989, 'Anaphoric AGR', in Osvaldo Jaeggli and Kenneth Safir (eds.), The Null Subject Parameter, Reidel, Dorclrecht, pp. 69-109.

Bouchard, Denis: 1983, On The Content of Empty Categories, Foris, Dordrecht.

INFINITIVES IN A F O R - T O D I A L E C T 301

Bresnan, Joan: 1972, 'The Theory of Complementation in English Syntax', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.

Carroll, Suzanne: 1983, 'Remarks on FOR-TO Infinitives', Linguistic Analysis 12, 415-451. Chomsky, Noam: 1981, Lectures on Government and Binding, Foris, Dordrecht. Chomsky, Noam: 1989, 'Some Notes on Economy of Derivation and Representation', MIT

Working Papers in Linguistics 10, 43-74. Chomsky, Noam and Howard Lasnik: 1977, 'Filters and Control', Linguistic Inquiry 8, 425-

504. Finlay, Catherine: 1988, 'Syntactic Variation in the Speech of Belfast Schoolchildren', unpub-

fished D.Phil. dissertation, University of Ulster at Jordanstown. Joyce, P. W.: 1910, English as We Speak it in Ireland, Longmans, London. Kayne, Richard S.: (to appear), 'Romance Clitics and PRO', to appear in Proceedings of

NELS 20. Koster, Jan and Robert May: 1982, 'On the Constituency of Infinitives', Language 58, 116-

143. Larson, Richard: 1985, 'On the Syntax of Disjunction Scope', Natural Language and Linguis-

tic Theory 3,217-264. Lightfoot, David: 1981, 'The History of Noun Phrase Movement', in C. L. Baker and J.J.

McCarthy (eds.), The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 86-119.

Massam, Diane: 1985, 'Case Theory and the Projection Principle', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.

McCloskey, James: 1990, 'Clause Structure, Ellipsis and Proper Government in Irish', unpublished ms., University of California at Santa Cruz.

Milroy, James: 1983, Accents and Dialects of English: Belfast, Blackstaff Press, Belfast. Oxford English Dictionary: 1989, Clarendon, Oxford. Pollock, Jean-Yves: 1989, 'Verb Movement, UG and the Structure of IP', Linguistic Inquiry

20, 365-424. Pesetsky, David (in preparation), 'For in infinitives', ms., MIT. Postal, Paul: 1974, On raising, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Sfilonsky, Ur: 1988, 'Complementizer-cliticization in Hebrew and the Empty Category Prin-

ciple', Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6, 191-205. Stowell, Timothy: 1981, 'Origins of Phrase Structure', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Stowell, Timothy: 1982, 'The Tense of Infinitives', Linguistic Inquiry 13, 561-570.

Received 5 October 1989 Revised 28 October 1991

Department of Communication University of Ulster at Jordanstown Newtownabbey BT37 0QB N. Ireland [email protected]

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Infinitives in a for-to dialect