Control in the infinitive purpose construction with the verbs prinesti ‘bring’ and vzjat’ ‘take’ in Russian

In the article I consider the use of the conjunctionless purpose infinitive with the verbs prinesti ‘bring’ and vzjat’ ‘take’ in the matrix position in Russian. It is unclear whether the expressed object is a dependent of the matrix verb or the embedded verb and whether the two verbs form a single predicative complex or each constitutes a clause. In the paper, I demonstrate the results of syntactic tests regarding the monoclausality / biclausality of the construction. The data provided speaks in favour of the biclausality of the constructions and suggests that the object resides in the dependent clause. Such a configuration can be called “object-to-object backward control”, and it has been documented previously neither in literature on control nor in studies on purpose clauses. The control of the infinitival subject is also non-trivial. The choice between non-obligatory and subject control depends on the argument structure of both verbs and on their lexical semantics. Finally, I give a possible explanation for the emergence of the construction through merging of the verbs from the GIVE and TAKE frames and purpose constructions with motion verbs.