Abstract In configurations where inflected and uninflected infinitives may alternate in Portuguese, the option without overt agreement may be incompatible with adjectival predicates, passivized verbs, or reflexive clitics and is subject to a puzzling dialectal variation among speakers. This paper argues that the infinitival form without agreement may be analyzed by speakers as involving a T head with no ϕ-features, a T head with just a number feature, or a T head with just a person feature. Each of these specifications has different consequences for minimality computations when adjectival predicates, passives, or reflexive clitics intervene between T and the subject, yielding the dialectal variation found.
Martins et al. (Wed,) studied this question.