Copy control in Copala Triqui George Aaron Broadwell, University at Albany, State University of New York Introduction Types of control In a language like Spanish or English, there is a class of infinitival verbs. In a sentence, these verbs are used without a syntactic subject, but their subjects must interpreted as another NP in the sentence. 1. Juan necesita Ø venir. Juan needs Ø to come. In an example like this, the implicit subject (Ø) of venir/come is interpreted as the same as necesitar and the relation between the first verb and the infinitival verb is a relationship of control. And because the implicit subject is after the overt subject Juan, this kind of control is known as 'forward control'. In many Oaxacan language, there are no infinitival verbs and no omitted subjects. For example, in Copala Triqui, the equivalent of a sentence like (1) would be 2. Nó xcúún Juán ca-'na a' Juán obliged Juan pot-come Juan 'Juan needs to come/Juan must come.' Here the subject of the first verb appears with both verbs. This type of control is very infrequent in the world, and this pattern is known as copy control. (Polinsky y Potsdam 2006). The pattern of English or Spanish is not normal in Copala Triqui: 3. ??Nó xcúún Juán ca-'na a' Ø obliged Juan pot-come 'Juan needs to come/Juan must come.' Although my Triqui consultants tell me that a sentence like (3) is understandable, in our text corpus of 250,000 words, there is no example of this sort. The syntax of Copala Triqui Copala Triqui is a Mixtecan language of Oaxaca, México. The most basic word order is VSO: 1