Cinque’s functional verbs in French

This article focuses on the syntax of a number of subcategories of verb in French which are compatible with a following bare infinitive and which express various kinds of grammatical tense, mood, modality, aspect and voice, as well as such (more lexical?) notions as perception, causation and locomotion. The article starts by cataloguing a number of properties that these verbs display, and outlines various traditional accounts. It then sketches recent proposals by Cinque (1999, 2006a) [Cinque, Guglielmo, 1999. Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Oxford University Press; Cinque, Guglielmo, 2006a. Restructuring and Functional Heads. Oxford University Press] regarding functional clause structure. Finally, the article uses Cinque’s framework to account for the properties identified.