Abstract

In generative grammar, the proper notion of finiteness is the subject of ongoing debate. In most languages, finiteness in a sentence is only present if the verbal complex exhibits both tense and agreement morphology. In this case, the verb Iicenses a subject in the nominative case. Thus, we can formulate the following implication: tense ➔ agreement ➔ nominative subject. That is, if a verb obligatorily lacks a nominative subject, neither tense nor agreement are realised morphologically. But there are Special cases where an „infinite" verb has a lexical subject: this article discusses the Latin Accusativus Cum Infinitivo (ACI). In this infinitival complement, the verbal morphology exposes a tense morpheme when there are no agreement markers. The infinitival construction has a lexical subject, which surfaces in the accusative case. Thus, the above-mentioned implication is not fully met. In order to account for the structural properties of the accusative subject, first it is shown that the checking relation between the infinitival subject and the infinite verb is a local one, i.e. no checking involving movement of the infinitival subject into the matrix sentence takes place. Second, I propose that finiteness does not just result from tense and agreement morphology on the verb but that finiteness consists in the denotation of modality. Moreover, I assume that the denotational power of an infinitival paradigm can license a subject. Finally, I demonstrate that the subject accusative results from a language-specific feature instrumental in the nominal paradigm. In this article I do not submit any empirical findings on the Latin ACL My aim is to take such well-founded research findings as have emerged to date in this regard and hamess them for syntactic modelling and the interpretive approaches ofmodem generative grammar.