Infinitive-gerund alternations in Polish post-verbal complementation: a corpus-based study

Abstract

The paper constitutes a contribution to semantically based research on the so called ‘syntactic alternations’, defined as “structurally and/or lexically different ways to say functionally very similar things” (Gries 2017: 8). More specifically, the study is concerned with Polish verbal predicates which accept both the gerundive and infinitival complement, with the difference between these two alternatives being a matter of construal or focus rather than any clear-cut semantic contrasts. Taking as its point of departure the cognitive linguistic thesis that a change in form always entails a change in meaning, the present paper seeks to determine the factors that significantly affect the choice of one or the other complement type in situations where both are fully acceptable. The study provides an in-depth, corpus-based analysis of three selected pairs of constructions, and offers a new theory (referred to as reduced-increased involvement theory) to explain the choices that Polish speakers make with respect to the two constructions in question.