Belief or Action?

Semantic Ambiguity in the Italian Non-finite Domain

Abstract

This paper examines the belief/intention semantic alternation found in Italian clause-embedding verbs like convincere (‘convince’), a phenomenon that is typically attributed to finiteness or mood (Giannakidou & Mari 2021, Grano 2018, 2024). Interestingly, Italian exhibits this alternation within its non-finite domain: di-infinitives convey belief readings, while a-infinitives give rise to intention readings. We argue that this semantic distinction corresponds directly to the structural size of the complement clauses. Syntactic evidence shows that di-infinitives project larger structures, accommodating modal auxiliaries and allowing both subject and object control, consistent with a propositional interpretation. In contrast, a-infinitives are structurally smaller, lack higher functional projections, and allow only object control. Our semantic analysis proposes that a selects complements whose eventuality argument remains unsaturated, thereby establishing a direct causal link to the matrix attitude, in line with previous intention-encoding accounts (Grano 2024), whereas di-infinitives, selecting larger structures, are fully propositional.