Eckhard Bick - VISL

continuar + GER/a and so forth. Also, participles after ser and estar behave structurally
the same, but estar alternates with ficar (diluting its auxiliary-status), and its participles
alternate with adjectives, thus being syntactically equivalent to subject predicatives.
After removing estar from the auxiliary list, only a kernel of ter/haver with tense
readings, and ser with passive voice readings would be left in the auxiliary camp.
A more liberal view would allow modals and aktionsart markers, maybe also
ACI-constructions and causatives. These cover all kinds of direct and preposition
mediated infinitive chains. How to draw a formal line? Inspired by traits of the core
auxiliaries, a number of tests is proposed in the literature:
(a) leftmost position in a verb chain
(b) transclausal subject identity
(c) no selection restrictions for the subject
(d) no imperative
(e) no (semantic) selection restrictions on the number 2 verb
(f) allows object pronoun fronting (clitic fronting)
(g) exclusion of interfering "não"
(h) finite subclause substitution test
(i) passivisation test for clause coherence
While (a) obviously delineates the pool of verbs from which to choose auxiliaries, it
doesn't define them. (c), (d) and (e) are really about auxiliaries not having semantic
lexical content, a criterion that would exclude all but the tense and voice auxiliaries.
Some modals, for instance, violate (c), since they select +HUM in the subject (dever,
saber), the imperative criterion (d) asks for +CONTROL in the subject and splits the
otherwise coherent group of perception verbs (-CONTROL) and causative
(+CONTROL) in two. Similarly, some causatives (mandar), like some cognitives
(prometer), but again unlike perception verbs, violate (e) by selecting for +CONTROL
in the second verb's subject. Tests (f) and (g) are about "transparency": real auxiliaries
are expected to attach to their main verbs in an unseparable way. The stricter of the two
is the negation test (g), with only ser, ter and ir (!) passing, while the clitic fronting
test 151 (f) works well and coherently for most auxiliary-candidates that directly "govern"
non-finite verb forms. For these verbs the subject identity test (b), comparing the main
clause subject to the (often unexpressed) subject of the non-finite clause, yields very
similar results. The fact that two different tests, one morpho-syntactic, the other
semantico-syntactic, agree on the same list of words, strengthens both tests' legitimacy.
ACI-structures and causatives are excluded by both tests (the clitic to be fronted is the
151 non-nominal pronominal material is moved from a position between matrix-verb and non-finite verb to a fronted position
immediately to the left of the matrix verb.
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