A continuum of deficiency for Basque infinitives

This paper makes two claims about non-finite constituents headed by the affixes -tu/-i/-n/-Ø in Basque. First the semantics of these elements in modal contexts indicates that the standard analysis of these constituents as aspectual phrases is incorrect. We argue that -tu/-i/-n/-Ø are merged as infinitival markers, which we take to be of category n. In perfective contexts the verb+-tu/-i/-n/-Ø raises to a null perfective modal. Second, we argue that differences in behaviour of -tu/-i/-n/-Ø-headed constituents across contexts are usefully expressed in terms of variation in the richness of nominal and verbal functional layers following Alexiadou et al. (2009, 2010, 2011).