Relative clauses have been a major concern in syntax, semantics, acquisition, and processing studies, however, the focus has been placed, for obvious reasons, on finite prototypical cases. In this paper, we are moving to a less explored terrain, infinitive relatives, with three main goals in mind. First, we will provide a description of left periphery of infinitival relatives in Romance, which is structurally defective in different degrees. Second, we will argue that the truncated left periphery of infinitival relatives in Romance helps us explain certain interpretive properties, namely their particular modal readings. Finally, we will discuss the consequences that our analysis of infinitive relatives has for cartographic analyses involving remnant movement to a rich left periphery
