Contrastive analysis of the infinitive in Spanish and French from a morphosyntactic perspective

In this research it will be presented a general view about similarities and differences between infinitives in Spanish and French from a morphosyntactic perspective. The corpus on which the study is based consists of 100 texts of different diaphasic properties, 50 in Spanish and 50 in French. The infinitives in both languages display some common characteristics, but also some significant differences. In fact, the infinitives in both languages can go along with determiners and also with verbal complements in specific situations. However, the degree of nominalization in Spanish infinitives is bigger than in French infinitives. Regarding the functions that infinitives display at the level of the phrase, in both languages we find that infinitives may function as subjects, verbal complements, noun complements and adjective complements. However, the frequencies of the infinitives in every function are different in each language. Finally, there is the possibility in both languages that infinitives go along with an auxiliary verb in order to constitute a verbal periphrasis. In our corpus we discover that periphrastic infinitives are more abundant in Spanish than in French.