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    The adjunct IPI features obligatory control
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    The Imperativus-pro-Infinitivo (IPI) does not have a lexical subject (but see the imperative IPI, but the bare infinitival verb of the IPI-construction entails an implied subject. This implied subject is controlled by its antecedent. There are two types of control: obligatory control and optional control. The adjunct IPI features obligatory control, whereas the argument IPI may feature optional control.

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    Optional control implies a choice: the antecedent is not fixed, and may for example be discontinuous. An example of optional control is given in (1).

    1
    Odysseus soe my fêstbine om ússels te behoedzjen foar wat ik dwaan soe
    Odysseys would me fast.tie for ourselves to protect from what I do would
    Odysseus would tie me down in order to protect ourselves from what I would do

    In the example above, the implied subject of the to-infinitival clause refers to a discontinuous antecedent, namely to Odysseus and to the speaker. However, depending on the choice of embedded verb and context, the implied subject can also refer to the matrix subject alone, or the matrix object alone, as illustrated in (2):

    2
    a. Odysseus soe my fêstbine om mysels te behoedzjen foar wat ik dwaan soe
    Odysseys would me fast.tie for myself to protect from what I do would
    Odysseus would tie me down in order to protect myself from what I would do
    b. Odysseus soe my fêstbine om himsels te behoedzjen foar wat ik dwaan soe
    Odysseys would me fast.tie for himself to protect from what I do would
    Odysseus would tie me down in order to protect himself from what I would do

    It is characteristic of optional control that the antecedent of the implied subject is in itself free, but varies depending on the pragmatic context. Obligatory control has the property that the antecedent is a fixed argument of the selecting predicate.

    The adjunct IPI features obligatory control. To illustrate this, consider the example in (3):

    3
    De plysje soe him opslute en beskermje my
    the police would him.OBJ up.lock and protect me
    The police would lock him up and protect me

    The example can only have the interpretation in which the implied subject is controlled by the matrix subject, not the interpretation in which the implied object is controlled by the matrix object. In contrast, an infinitive of purpose can have either interpretation:

    4
    De plysje soe him opslute om my te beskermjen
    the police would him.OBJ up.lock for me to protect
    The police would lock him up to protect me

    In this example, either the matrix subject or the matrix object can control the reference of the implied subject. The latter interpretation obtains in case the person locked up by the police is going to protect the speaker, who is also locked up. Note, finally, that a normal coordination of infinitives also features obligatory control, as shown in (5).

    5
    De plysje soe him opslute en my beskermje
    the police would him.OBJ up.lock and me protect
    The police would lock him up and protect me

    Of course, it is not clear that the sentence involves control, but it if does, it features obligatory control by the matrix subject.

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      About this article
      Author(s): Eric Hoekstra
      Category: Frisian Syntax
      Keywords: adjunct IPI
      Version: 1.0, December 2015
      Version history:
      version editor(s) date remarks
      1.0 Eric Hoekstra December 2015
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