Los verbos de opinión con infinitivo en la lengua oral

From a Spanish-Italian contrastive point of view, the alternation of the subordinate verbbetween the finite and the infinitive form is particularly interesting. In order to determine the way the noun clauses are used in the case of a subject coreference, an analysis of the CREA oral corpus (1990-2000) helps to check the frequency of these forms of the subordinate verb and to verify if these uses are grammatical or acceptable. According to the results of the analysis, the use of <‘creo’ + finite form> represents 78% of the matches, <‘creo’ + infinite form> 22%. This last structure is normally used in formal register, as a politeness discourse strategy. Despite this low percentage, it is important to highlight that, in a pragmatic perspective, the substitution of the infinite with the finite form is not adequate, because the sentence weakens or loses its discourse and pragmatic function.