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9.2.2.Modal infinitives

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This section discusses the attributive use of the modal infinitives (which are also known as passive infinitives; cf. Kester (1994a). We will start by showing that this use is only compatible with verbs that take an accusative object.

I. Verb types
II. Attributive inflection
III. Two types of modal infinitives
IV. Concluding remarks

[+] I. Verb types

Participles are not the only verbal elements that can be used attributively: te-infinitives can also be used in this way, as is shown by the examples in (83).

a.	de	te lezen	boeken	transitive
	the	to read	books
	'the books that are to be read'

b.	de	af	te leggen	afstand	transitive
	the	prt.	to cover	distance
	'the distance that is to be covered'

c.	het	groen	te verven	hek	resultative construction
	the	green	to paint	gate
	'the gate that has to be painted green'

The verbs that may enter this construction are limited to those that take an accusative object; in other words, intransitive and unaccusative verbs cannot occur in this construction. This is shown in (84).

a.	*	de	te lachen	mensen	intransitive
		the	to laugh	people

b.	*	de	te vallen	bladeren	unaccusative
		the	to fall	leaves

c.	*	de	(ons)	te bevallen	boeken	nom-dat verb
		the	us	to please	books

Since the head noun in (83) corresponds to the direct object of the active counterpart of the infinitival verb, the impossibility of (84a) is not very surprising. The ungrammaticality of (84b&c), on the other hand, is surprising given that attributively used past/passive participles can be used to modify both the object of a transitive verb and the subject of an unaccusative verb; cf. Section 9.2.1. One possible approach to accounting for the ungrammaticality of these examples is to appeal to the fact that the construction expresses a notion of obligation (cf, subsection III), which must be ascribed to some (implicit) +human argument in the structure. Such an approach would still leave examples such as (85) unaccounted for, where the obligation could be ascribed to the noun.

*	de	(vroeg)	te vertrekken	mensen
	the	early	to leave	people
	'the people that have to leave early'

Example (86) with the unaccusative verb verschijnen'to appear' is exceptional as it is judged acceptable by many Dutch speakers, which may be due to English influence. Note that this example does not express the root modality of ability or obligation but future aspect.

%	het	nog/in een internationaal tijdschrift	te verschijnen	artikel
	the	still/in an international journal	to appear	article
	'the article still to appear/to appear in an international journal'

[+] II. Attributive inflection

Since modal infinitives end in schwa (orthographically represented as -en), they do not get the attributive ending; cf. Section 5.1.1, sub II. Still, the examples in (87) show that it is justified to treat them on a par with the attributively used adjectives. As a rule, coordination is restricted to elements of the same category or to elements that have the same syntactic function: for instance, nouns cannot be coordinated with adjectives nor with verbs. The fact that modal infinitives can be coordinated with APs strongly suggests that they have the same syntactic status. In (87a) and (87b), this is illustrated for the modal infinitives on their verbal and nonverbal readings, respectively.

a.		een	zwaar	en	door de atleten	binnen een uur	af	te leggen	parcours
		a	hard	and	by the athletes	within an hour	prt.	to cover	track

b.		een	intelligente	maar	niet	gemakkelijk	te overtuigen	student
		an	intelligent	but	not	easy	to convince	student

[+] III. Two types of modal infinitives

This subsection shows that there are two types of modal infinitives, which can be distinguished on the basis of meaning as well as syntactic behavior.

[+] A. Meaning

Modal infinitives inherently express some form of modality. The examples in (83) from Subsection I, for instance, express obligation: example (83a) expresses that the books have to be read (by someone), and (83b) that the distance has to be covered (by someone). Another modality that can be expressed by means of these modal infinitives is that of ability. Although this reading is not very salient in (83), it can be favored by adding an adverbially used adjective such as gemakkelijk'easily' or the negative adverb niet'not', as in (88). Note that the modal infinitive constructions in (88) can be readily confused with the so-called easy-to-please-construction; see Section 6.5, sub IV, for a discussion of the differences between the two constructions.

a.	een	gemakkelijk/niet	te lezen	boek
	a	easily/not	to read	book
	'an easily accessible book/'an inaccessible book'

b.	een	gemakkelijk/niet	af	te leggen	afstand
	a	easily/not	prt.	to cover	distance
	'a distance that can be covered easily/that cannot be covered'

Examples such as (89), which can be found in Dutch public transport, show that it is also possible to express permission by means of the modal infinitive. To our knowledge, this has not been investigated so far.

Noodrem	alleen	te gebruiken	in geval van nood.
safety brake	only	to use	in case of emergency
'It is only allowed to use the safety brake in case of emergency.'

[+] B. Realization of the implied agent

The cases in (83) and (88) differ for some speakers in that the implied agent of (83) can normally be expressed by means of a door-PP, whereas the implied agent is (preferably) expressed by means of a voor-PP in (88). This is illustrated in (90) for the examples in (83b) and (88b).

a.	de	door/%voor	de atleten	af	te leggen	afstand
	the	by/for	the athletes	prt.	to cover	distance
	'the distance to be covered by the athletes'

b.	een	voor/%door	de atleten	gemakkelijk/niet	af	te leggen	afstand
	a	for/by	the athletes	easily/not	prt.	to cover	distance
	'a distance that the athletes can cover easily/cannot cover'

[+] C. Degree of verbalness

The fact that the door-phrase can be added in (90a) strongly suggests that the infinitive is still verbal in nature under the obligation reading. This is supported by the facts that, e.g., the indirect object or the predicative complement of the verb can be overtly expressed in the attributive construction under the obligation reading; cf. the examples in (91).

a.	de	(aan)	de studenten	te sturen	brief
	the	to	the students	to send	letter
	'the letters that must be sent to the students'

b.	de	in de kast	te zetten	boeken
	the	in the cupboard	to put	books
	'the books that must be put in the cupboard'

The fact that the predicatively used modal infinitive in (92) is not compatible with an obligation reading actually suggests that the infinitive cannot be adjectival in nature under this reading; this is only possible if the modality expressed by the infinitive is ability; see Section 9.3.1, sub III, for more discussion.

Deze afstand	is (door de atleten)	af	te leggen.
this distance	is by the athletes	prt.	to cover
Impossible reading: 'This distance must be covered by the athletes.'
Possible reading: 'This distance can be covered by the athletes.'

The voor-phrase in (90b) is not an argument of the verb, but acts as an argument of the adjectival modifier gemakkelijk (cf. Het is gemakkelijk voor hem'It is easy for him') or as an independent adverbial restrictor. Actually, the examples in (91) suggest that the te-infinitive cannot be readily supplemented by the arguments of the active verb under the ability reading. This is also supported by example (93a), which shows that adding a door-phrase to example (88a) is impossible. This has given rise to the idea that the te-infinitives are nonverbal on their ability reading. The fact that the copular constructions in (92) and (93b) do allow the ability reading is of course fully compatible with that idea.

a.	%	een	door Peter	gemakkelijk/niet	te lezen	boek
		a	by Peter	easily/not	to read	book

b.	Deze boeken	zijn	(gemakkelijk/niet)	te lezen.
	these books	are	easy/not	to read
	'These books are (easily/not) accessible.'

[+] IV. Concluding remarks

Contraction verbs like ontslaan'to sack' in (94a) often cannot be used in attributive position, although Haeseryn et al. (1997) provides a number of acceptable examples with the (adjectival) ability reading. Given that the acceptable examples in (94b&c) have an idiomatic ring to them, we may be dealing with fully lexicalized formations.

a.	*	de	te ontslane	werknemers
		the	to sack	employees

b.	niet	te overziene	consequenties
	not	to survey	consequences
	'consequences that cannot be overlooked'

c.	in niet	mis	te verstane	bewoordingen
	in not	wrongly	to understand	words
	'in an unmistakable phrasing'

For completeness’ sake, we want to mention that we have called the te-phrases modal infinitives, because te is an infinitive marker and the element following it has the appearance of an infinitive. It should be noted, however, that the complement of zu in the German counterparts of these phrases has the appearance of an inflected present participle; cf. Kester (1994a). This is illustrated in (95), in which the inflection is given in italics.

a.		ein	nicht	zu verkennendes	Zeichen
		a	not	to mistake	sign

b.		ein	nicht	leicht	zu überzeugender	Junge
		a	not	easy	to convince	boy

References:

Haeseryn, Walter, Romijn, Kirsten, Geerts, Guido, Rooij, Jaap de & Toorn, Maarten C. van den1997Algemene Nederlandse spraakkunstGroningenNijhoff
Kester, Ellen-Petra1994Eurotra grammar: adnominal participles and infinitives in Germanic and Romance languagesStudi e ricerche 11AlessandriaEdizioni dell'Orso
Kester, Ellen-Petra1994Eurotra grammar: adnominal participles and infinitives in Germanic and Romance languagesStudi e ricerche 11AlessandriaEdizioni dell'Orso

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About this article

Author(s): Hans Broekhuis

Category: Dutch Syntax

Publication date: 22 November 2023

Keywords: AttributiveModal InfinitivePassive Infinitive

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