Control, temporal orientation, and the cross-linguistic grammar of &lt;i&gt;trying&lt;/i&gt;

Thomas Grano

doi:10.5334/gjgl.335

Abstract

The verb try plays a starring role in many example sentences in the control literature. But one of its most basic properties has eluded satisfying explanation: for many speakers of English, try rejects non-control infinitival complements, as in %I tried for John to notice me or %John tried for there to be food on the table. A number of scholars have hypothesized that this fact about try has a semantic basis, but this hypothesis has yet to be fully reconciled with the problem of cross-dialectal and cross-linguistic variation and with existing formal semantic approaches to try-sentences. In this paper, based in part on a novel observation from Spanish and Hebrew about how try’s complement type interacts with its temporal orientation, I aim to further substantiate the semantic approach to try’s behavior. The proposal is couched in an explicit compositional treatment of the formal semantics of try-sentences, whereby non-control try-sentences induce a presupposition failure which can be repaired in some languages via a coercion mechanism that is independently detectable in that in some languages it enables a future orientation for the complement. The implication is that cross-linguistic variation in the inventory of coercion mechanisms obscures an underlyingly principled semantic basis for try’s behavior.

Highlights

A fundamental question for control theory is the distribution question: what principles regulate the relative distribution of controlled arguments1 as compared against non-controlled arguments? At least two cross-linguistically valid dimensions to PRO’s distribution appear to be purely syntactic in nature: with very few possible exceptions, PRO can appear only in subject position, as illustrated in (1), and only in a nonfinite clause, as illustrated in (2). (See e.g., Landau 2013: Chapter 4 for an overview).(1) a
7 Conclusion The central conclusion of this paper is that superficial cross-linguistic variation in try’s syntactic behavior conceals an underlying regularity: try semantically demands a control complement because only a control complement satisfies the presupposition that try’s complement bear an unsaturated agent relation, and apparent counterexamples are handled via a coercion mechanism that is independently detectable in that it enables future orientation in some languages
14 A prediction made by this second possibility is that languages similar to Greek in lacking nonfinite complementation should be similar to Greek in how try behaves

Summary

Introduction

A fundamental question for control theory is the distribution question: what principles regulate the relative distribution of controlled arguments ( known as PRO) as compared against non-controlled arguments (which include full NPs, ordinary pronouns, and pro)? At least two cross-linguistically valid dimensions to PRO’s distribution appear to be purely syntactic in nature: with very few possible exceptions, PRO can appear only in subject position, as illustrated in (1), and only in a nonfinite clause, as illustrated in (2). (See e.g., Landau 2013: Chapter 4 for an overview). The conclusion that the contrast in (2) is purely syntactic is based on the premise that there is no (relevant) semantic difference between finite and nonfinite clauses on which the contrast in (2) could be blamed; supporting evidence comes from the fact that on the intended reading, (2a) and (2b) are truth-conditionally equivalent, yet only the former is grammatical When these two dimensions are factored out, there are residual distributional puzzles in PRO’s behavior whose source is more obscure. For try, we see instability, both across dialects of English, as well as across languages, with some including French and Mandarin rejecting non-control complements but others like Greek, Hebrew and Spanish allowing them.5 This is expected on the idiosyncrasy approach, but what would still remain unexplained on the idiosyncrasy approach is why the observed cross-linguistic and cross-dialectal instability is confined to try to the exclusion of want and begin. Hoy Juan ha intentado [que Pedro abriese la puerta today Juan have.3sg tried that Pedro opened.sbjv.3sg the door mañana]

A note on the reliability of the data

A semantics for try as used in control sentences

Conclusion