Raising and Control (Parecer, Querer, Mandar)

Two of the most useful verbs in Portuguese — parecer (to seem) and querer (to want) — look almost identical on the surface: both take a subject and an infinitive complement. Ele parece estar cansado and ele quer estar em casa have the same shape and the same word order. But hidden in this surface similarity are two entirely different grammatical mechanisms. Parecer is a raising verb: the subject of the main clause was originally inside the infinitive clause and has been "raised" up to take the front seat. Querer is a control verb: the subject of the main clause is the real subject, and it silently controls who the implied subject of the infinitive is. The distinction is invisible in English (and in Portuguese) most of the time — but it surfaces in a dozen subtle tests, and understanding it explains why certain sentences are grammatical and others are not.

This page works through raising, control, and the related causative pattern (mandar, fazer, deixar) as one unified topic. By the end, you'll know which class each of the major verbs belongs to, why parece chover is grammatical (but strange-sounding), why quer chover is not, why mandei-o ir is a clitic attached to mandar even though him is the agent of ir, and how all of this slots together in a natural Portuguese sentence.

Raising verbs

A raising verb is one whose apparent subject is not really its own subject. The real subject belongs to the infinitive complement, and the raising verb just inherits it. The canonical raising verb in Portuguese is parecer, and its close cousins are costumar (to usually…), poder used evidentially, vir a (to come to…), and a handful of impersonal weather/occurrence verbs.

The diagnostic shape is this:

Ele parece estar cansado. — He seems to be tired.

Logically, he is not doing any seeming. He is the subject of estar cansado; parecer is just reporting how that state appears to an observer. The grammatical evidence for this is that parecer happily takes a weather predicate:

Here there is no subject at all — parecer has inherited the non-subject status of the weather predicate. A true control verb like querer cannot do this: quer chover is ungrammatical because querer demands a real subject to be the one doing the wanting, and weather predicates have none. This is the sharpest diagnostic for raising.

Parecer patterns

Parecer has three productive patterns:

Pattern 1: parecer + infinitive (the raising construction)

Pattern 2: parecer que + full clause

Pattern 3: parecer + adjective (bare predicate)

Patterns 1 and 2 are near-synonymous, but only pattern 1 is the raising construction. Pattern 2 (parece que) is extraposition — see the extraposition page for the details of that structure.

Other raising verbs

Costumar is a raising verb meaning "to usually / habitually do":

Poder is ambiguous: it can be a raising verb meaning it may be that… (epistemic) or a control verb meaning to be able to… (deontic/circumstantial). The raising reading allows weather predicates; the control reading does not.

Vir a and acabar por are raising aspectual verbs ("to end up ...ing"):

Control verbs

A control verb is one whose own subject is real and whose infinitive complement has a silent subject controlled by something in the main clause. Portuguese control verbs come in two main flavours.

Subject control

In subject control, the silent subject of the infinitive is identical to the subject of the main clause. The canonical subject-control verb is querer in its same-subject use:

Eu quero ir. — I want to go. (I want, and I am the one who would go.)

Here there is only one agent — eu — who is simultaneously the wanter and the potential goer. The infinitive ir has no overt subject, but it is controlled by eu. When the two subjects diverge, querer switches to a que-clause with subjunctive:

Eu quero que tu vás. — I want you to go. (different subjects require a full clause)

Other subject-control verbs include decidir, tentar, esperar, prometer, planear, conseguir, preferir, recusar, evitar, começar a, continuar a, parar de, acabar de. Many of them require a preposition (a, de, em) between the main verb and the infinitive; the preposition page covers those details.

Object control

In object control, the silent subject of the infinitive is controlled by the object of the main clause, not its subject.

Mandei o João sair. — I ordered João to leave. (I did the ordering, but João is the one who leaves.)

Here there are two agents: eu does the ordering, and o João does the leaving. The infinitive sair has a silent subject controlled by the object o João. Object-control verbs include mandar, ordenar, pedir (with a alguém), permitir, proibir, aconselhar, convidar, and the causative fazer and deixar (see below).

When the object is a pronoun, it cliticises to the main verb in the usual way. We'll see below that this leads to the characteristic mandei-o ir pattern — the o is the object of mandar, even though semantically o is the one who will be going.

The big four: parecer, querer, mandar, fazer

These four verbs together exemplify the whole system. Let's place them side by side:

Understanding these four patterns gives you the skeleton for the entire raising/control system. Every other verb in the domain slots into one of these four templates.

Querer: same-subject vs. different-subject

Querer deserves its own treatment because it is the most frequent control verb and the one whose split between infinitive and que-clause is most diagnostic.

Same subject → infinitive. When the wanter and the doer are the same person, Portuguese must use the infinitive. A que-clause here is ungrammatical.

Different subjects → que + subjunctive. When the wanter and the doer are different people, querer que + subjunctive is obligatory. An infinitive cannot express the second subject.

This two-way pattern is the same pattern that governs all subject-control verbs in Portuguese: espero, decido, prefiro, prometo — same subject takes infinitive, different subject takes que-clause.

What about a personal infinitive?

European Portuguese allows a personal infinitive as a compromise in some control contexts — but not after querer. Querer disallows the personal infinitive because the person-marked infinitive would express a subject different from the matrix subject, and querer doesn't allow that configuration to skip the que-complementiser.

Quero ires. — ungrammatical. Quero que vás. — grammatical.

Verbs that do allow the personal infinitive (like permitir, proibir, and the impersonal extraposition verbs) are those where the infinitive can sit directly under the matrix without a que. We cover that pattern on the infinitive-clauses page.

Mandar: object control with a causative flavour

Mandar ("to order / send") is the classic object-control verb, and it has a distinctive behaviour: the object that mandar selects is the subject of the infinitive. When that object is a pronoun, it cliticises to mandar, and the result is the iconic Portuguese pattern mandei-o ir, which is surprising to English speakers because him is doing the going, not the being-sent.

The clitic (o, a, nos) is accusative when the infinitive is intransitive or when the infinitive's own object is a full noun phrase (not pronominal). The accusative comes from the fact that mandar is syntactically treating its object as the direct argument of the command.

When mandar has a que-clause alternative, the object becomes the subject of the embedded clause, and the verb is in the subjunctive. This is more formal and less punchy.

Accusative vs. dative

Mandar takes an accusative object when the infinitive is intransitive (mandei-*o sair — o = he/him, the one going out). It takes a *dative object (mandei-lhe que escrevesse / mandei-lhe escrever uma carta) when the infinitive is transitive and already has its own direct object. The rule mirrors how causatives work across Romance: when the embedded clause already has its own accusative, the causer's object shifts to dative to avoid a case clash.

This dative/accusative choice is one of the most debated corners of Portuguese grammar. In practice, European Portuguese speakers strongly prefer accusative with mandar, fazer, and deixar regardless of the transitivity of the infinitive — mandei-o fazer a cama, fi-la sair, deixa-os entrar.

Fazer and deixar: the other causatives

Fazer + infinitive means "to make someone do something." It is grammatically parallel to mandar but semantically stronger: it implies causation, not just instruction.

Deixar + infinitive means "to let / allow someone to do something." It is the permissive cousin of fazer.

All three causatives (mandar, fazer, deixar) take a bare infinitive — no a or para between the verb and the infinitive. This is one of the cleanest, simplest patterns in Portuguese grammar, and it is a sharp contrast with English, where "make" takes bare infinitive but "allow" takes a to-infinitive (let me see vs. allow me to see).

A diagnostic toolkit

When you're unsure whether a verb is raising or control, apply these tests:

Test 1: The weather predicate

Can the verb combine with a weather predicate with no subject? If yes, it is raising.

Parece chover. ✓ (raising) Costuma chover. ✓ (raising) Quer chover. ✗ (control, so this is impossible) Mandou chover. ✗ (control, so this is impossible)

Test 2: Idiom preservation

Raising verbs preserve idiomatic subjects; control verbs do not. A vaca foi para o brejo ("things went badly," literally "the cow went to the swamp") has an idiomatic subject. Raising verbs leave the idiom intact:

A vaca parece ter ido para o brejo. ✓ (raising preserves idiom) A vaca quer ir para o brejo. ✗ (control breaks the idiom — a real cow would be wanting to go)

Test 3: Expletive subjects

Only raising verbs allow impersonal "there"-type constructions:

Parece haver um problema. ✓ (there seems to be a problem) Quer haver um problema. ✗ (ungrammatical)

Test 4: Semantic selection of the subject

Control verbs place semantic restrictions on their subject; raising verbs don't.

Quero ir. — the subject must be animate (an agent who can want). Pareço ir. — no such restriction; anything can "seem" to go.

Common Mistakes

Key takeaways

• Raising verbs (parecer, costumar, epistemic poder) have a subject that really belongs to the infinitive clause. They pass the weather-predicate test.
• Control verbs have a real subject of their own. Same-subject control uses the infinitive (quero ir); different-subject requires a que-clause (quero que vás).
• Object-control causatives (mandar, fazer, deixar) take a bare infinitive with no preposition, and their object is the subject of the infinitive.
• When the object is pronominal, it cliticises to the causative verb: mandei-o ir, fi-la rir, deixa-me ver.
• Querer never takes the personal infinitive. For a different subject, it must switch to que
  • subjunctive.
• Raising ≠ control, but in most everyday sentences the difference is invisible. It becomes visible in idioms, weather predicates, and grammatical tests.