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

n this study we analyze the similarities and the differences between the infinitive in Spanish and in French from a suprasentential perspective. For this study, we used a corpus of 100 texts, 50 in Spanish and 50 in French. Infinitives from our corpora showed features in common, but also considerable differences. Indeed, in both languages infinitive clauses played a variety of roles of junction with values of time, cause, inclusion, exclusion, purpose, condition and concession. However, the linking words were more varied in Spanish than in French. Moreover, independent infinitives from both languages displayed fragmentary, interrogative, imperative and performative roles. Besides that, we observed that they had similar functions in both languages. In French we did not find any infinitive in an exclamation construction, whereas in Spanish we found a single example. Finally, only in French we observed constructions that experts of this language have called infinitif de narration.