When are adjectives raisers? Tough to get it

Abstract

This article deals with some unsolved problems raised by tough-adjectives in Romance languages. We present some new data from some Romance languages (Romanian, French, Italian) supporting a raising analysis, and we argue that in these languages, unlike in English, infinitivals in tough-constructionss are reduced structures, which do not case-mark the object. Since arguably the same reduced structures appear in modal non-finite relatives, we will extend our analysis to these constructions.

Keywords

• adjective
• raising
• infinitive
• tough-constructions
• Romance