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This chapter examines the change that contributes to the extension of inflected infinitives to the complement of Exceptional Case Marking (ECM) verbs from the sixteenth century on. The chapter is organized in six sections. Section 14.2 draws some diachronic parallels between ECM verbs and control/raising verbs. Section 14.3 shows that causative and perception verbs entered both the faire-infinitive construction and the ECM construction in Old Portuguese. This is a relevant matter because it was the existence of the ECM structure that made room for the emergence of the inflected infinitive in the clausal complements of ECM verbs. Section 14.4 identifies a type of independent inflected infinitival clause, in Old Portuguese, which played a central role in the change. Section 14.5 spells out a proposal to explain how the inflected infinitive came to be allowed in the clausal complements of ECM verbs. It discusses how the change also affected raising and control verbs. Section 14.6 concludes the chapter.

This chapter compares the partial/exhaustive control distinction in Russian, Icelandic and European Portuguese and argues that all three share a common core: genuine partial control readings are only possible where PRO has case. An analysis of these patterns is outlined whereby partial control involves agreement between a higher thematic head and pro in the edge of a lower CP phase. Although this thematic head Agrees with pro, it is unable to attract it to absorb its θ‎-role. As a result, a distinct controller is merged with said thematic head and a condition is imposed at the interface that the controller and pro must be non-distinct, yielding partial control. New evidence is presented for this analysis based on negative controllers and the interaction with wh-movement.

The main goal of this chapter is to provide a descriptive and critical overview of the some of the most striking and interesting problems and questions related to issues in Romance complementation and its development from Latin, covering such as areas as finite and non-finite complementation; loss of accusative with infinitive construction; distribution of full, reduced and VP clausal complements and their differing structural and semantic interpretations (such as clitic climbing and auxiliary selection); control (obligatory and non-obligatory control); restructuring; distribution and syntax of personal and inflected infinitives; avoidance of infinitive in southern Italo-Romance dialects and Daco-Romanian and competition with finite structures; dual complementizer systems; recomplementation; paratactic complementation (including asyndeton, AC-coordination and ET-coordination).

In this chapter, a number of crucial observations are presented and discussed that prove the inadequacy of current theories of grammar—especially ‘cognitivist’ approaches—which deny any universals and claim that language in the speaker’s mind is merely the result of statistical frequencies. In this sense, the chapter provides a ‘test bed’ for any theory, with the troublesome observations divided into class A and class B facts. The former are typically not the result of language acquisition or language teaching but are brought to awareness via immediate intuition on the basis of even imperfect knowledge of the language in question and are thus strong evidence in favour of language universals. The latter follow from ‘abstract’ rules and principles forming part of specific grammars and thus require a high level of competence in the language at issue. The final conclusion is that ‘abstract’ rules and principles cannot be done without. It is now up to the cognitivists and close relations to provide answers.