The syntactic position of the perceived participant as indicator of the internal structure of the Spanish and French infinitival complement.

In most Indo-European languages, the direct perception of an event is represented by the construction [perceiver NP₁ + perception verb + perceived participant NP₂ + infinitive]. In Spanish and in French, the position of the perceived participant varies: it can be anteposed or postposed to the infinitive. This article examines the factors which determine the syntactic position of the perceived participant NP₂. Based on a large corpus — containing about 4000 infinitival constructions — it is shown that, although at first sight Spanish and French prefer different basic word orders, a more universal conceptual parameter explains some striking analogies between the two languages, namely the modality of perception of the main verb. Quantitative research is used to demonstrate that due to the “objectival” character of visual perception, the internal structure of the infinitival complement after ver/ voir and mirar/ regarder is prototypically of non propositional nature, whereas the “eventive” character of auditory perception explains the propositional structure of the infinitival complement subordinated to oír/ entendre and escuchar/écouter. These different internal structures explain word order in the infinitival complement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]