ABSTRACT
In chapter two, after studying the structure and distribution of the inflected infinitive and related syntactic phenomena, I proposed one general condition on its use: the inflected infinitive must be the final predicate of its clause. This entails that the inflected infinitive will be prohibited from monoclausal constructions in which it is a non-final predicate, and that it will be acceptable in biclausal constructions where it functions as the final predicate of its clause. This condition restricting its use correctly predicts the precise range of environments where the inflected infinitive will be acceptable and others where it will be excluded. In contrast to previous accounts which attempted to describe the distribution of the inflected infinitive with long lists of rules and examples, my analysis offers a unified account consisting of one concise condition on its use which predicts all possible occurrences of the inflected infinitive. In chapter three, I examined previous accounts given for the occurrence of the inflected infinitive in Portuguese and Galician, comparing the rules of each to my proposed condition. It was shown that these previous accounts offered rules that were vague and contradictory and that they failed to accurately predict the occurrence of the infinitive in these languages. Only my analysis presents a unified account which correctly and accurately describes the distribution of this form.
