Two Puzzles about Infinitivals with Too

Reading the object pronoun him in (1a) as anaphoric to John, (1a) and (1b) are synonymous. Two related questions arise: what makes it possible for infinitivals with too to contain a non-subject gap? And how do sentences like those in (1) get to be synonymous? Chomsky (1977) argued for an approach to the first question in which the non-subject gap in an infinitival with too is a trace left behind by a phonetically null operator that has moved to the edge of its clause to form a predicate of individuals. While Chomsky did not address the second question, he did assume that the infinitival is a complement of too. Under this assumption, a straightforward extension of Chomsky’s proposal would posit two homophonous degree operators too, one that takes a propositional infinitival clause as its complement and one that takes a property-denoting infinitival. In this paper we will spell out such an analysis, but then present two types of surprising observations that it fails to predict, both having to do with the interpretation of too when it appears under intensional verbs. We argue that the first of these appears to be a restriction on the logical scope of the degree operator, while the second appears to be a restriction on the binding of world variables.