Infinitival Complements Research Articles

Word order change in German infinitival complementation

Abstract The present article discusses whether processing factors might play a role in the reduction of word order variability in German infinitival complements of control verbs, connecting evidence from a diachronic corpus study to processing considerations and psycholinguistic findings. We show that intraposition, a linearization pattern that has been claimed to be costly in comprehension due to both center-embedding and temporary ambiguity, became less frequent in language use over time. Findings from language production experiments show that present-day German speakers avoid producing intraposition patterns even following repeated exposure to this pattern. Taken together, our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that processing factors can influence the distribution of word order variants. Looking at the diachronic dimension, however, reveals that the effect of processing factors can be modulated by sociolinguistic factors and the impact of language modality.

Disunity of personal taste

The article argues that, linguistically speaking, there is no uniform class of personal taste predicate. There is an F(un)‐type PPT that takes infinitive complements expressing events. In effect, these PPTs are predicates of events involving participants. There is also a T(asty)‐type that cannot take an infinitive complement and does not enter into the alternation pattern of the F‐type predicates. These predicates express dispositions of objects to generate experiences or responses. Some experiencer/judge is involved in the truth of the respective kinds of claims, but for different reasons, and in neither case is such a role encoded linguistically as an index for the predicate.

A Corpus-Based Multifactorial Study of Help/help to Alternation in Learners’ Language: From the Perspective of Probabilistic Grammar

This corpus-based multifactorial study delves deeper into the well-known alternation between bare and full infinitive complements, specifically regarding the help concordances. It extends the line of research to learners’ language productions with a focus on comparing and contrasting the probabilistic grammatical knowledge reflected in the help/ help to choices, which are constrained by a complex network of factors. Regression modeling indicates that constraints such as the horror aequi and certain morphological forms of the verb help are comparatively stable among groups of Chinese English language learners and native English speakers. Therefore, the principle of cognitive complexity and the avoidance strategy fueling infinitive variations are further tested. While the object typology differs in effect strength, it also prompts consideration of cultural influences on the part of Chinese English learners. In addition, two different patterns of interaction effects are explored in each dataset, which implies that learners’ language choice is usage-based, determined by an unconscious assessment of multiple clues that are learned from language input and shaped by language experiences.

Mind the Gap! Null Modals (and Other Functional Verbs) in Finite Complementation in Italo-Greek

Although Italo-Greek is characterized by a general retreat of infinitival complementation, it partly preserves the infinitive in restructuring contexts: a handful of functional auxiliaries—in an overt or covert form—allow for infinitival complements, with which they enter in a monoclausal union. Such a preservation also triggers consequences for finite complementation. Indeed, those predicates that still select for infinitival complements may lack finite complementation, resulting in only the lexical embedded verb surfacing instead of the complex sentence AUX + na + finite verb: δen du ékame típote ‘he could not do anything to him’ (lit. ‘he did not do anything to him’). I claim that such an absence—which gives rise to a semantic or even a syntactic gap—depends on the effects of the restructuring rule, which creates a high level of dependency and interlacing between the matrix and embedded verbs. When finite complements gradually replaced infinitival ones, though only sporadically, some predicates stopped selecting for finite complements, ultimately depriving the sentence of modal and other functional specifications.

Control in Romanian and Se constructions

In this paper, we account for different patterns found in complement clauses of se constructions in Romanian and Spanish. In Romanian, a se construction cannot host an infinitival complement, an apparently controlled clause, whereas in Spanish a se construction can. However, when an additional se is added to the complement clause (a “double se construction”), the Romanian structure becomes grammatical, while the Spanish equivalent becomes ungrammatical. The Romanian patterns have been previously argued in Giurgea & Cotfas (2021) to be cases of control, with a failed agreement relation forcing the obligatory presence of se in the complement. We propose an alternative based on two major differences found in Romanian and Spanish. First, in se constructions, Spec, Voice is saturated by the external argument in Spanish, but it is unsaturated in Romanian. We argue that this prevents the external argument in Romanian from acting as a controller. Second, Romanian infinitival clauses appear to share properties with finite clauses, in contrast to Spanish. We argue that the grammatical Romanian double se construction is not an instance of control and suggest that it is the finite nature of the infinitival complement that allows for a double se construction.

Simple and complex help constructions in English and Norwegian

Abstract This paper reports on a study of verbal help constructions in English and Norwegian. It is based on data from the English–Norwegian Parallel Corpus, and discusses 11 constructions in all, nine of which have a close parallel in the other language. The constructions vary in syntactic complexity from the simple intransitive, on the one-hand, to complex-transitives containing infinitive complements, on the other. The hypothesis is advanced that the simpler the basic syntactic structure of a construction, the more likely it is to be translated by a construction with a similar syntax. This hypothesis receives no support from the data. On the contrary, it is more complex constructions, containing an explicit helpee, that are more likely to be translated by a syntactically similar construction.

Processing Factors Constrain Word-Order Variation in German: The Trouble with Third Constructions

A subset of German control verbs allows for the discontinuous linearization of their infinitival complements, a word-order pattern known as the “third construction” pattern. Compared to alternative word-order options (notably, extraposition), third constructions are very rare in present-day German. Here we ask whether the third construction pattern’s low occurrence frequency can be accounted for by processing factors. We report the results from a self-paced reading task and a production priming task investigating whether third constructions are difficult to comprehend, difficult to produce, or both. Our results show that the third construction pattern’s local structural ambiguity impedes comprehension, and that the pattern is also resistant to priming. We conclude that this word-order pattern is an example of a “latent” construction that is grammatically licensed but strongly dispreferred in language use because easier-to-process word-order variants are available.

The acquisition of infinitive and gerund as complements in ESL by Mexican undergraduates

Metalinguistic awareness has been assessed primarily throughout metalinguistic knowledge and grammaticality judgment tests. Then, very limited research has been conducted on the attempt to understand how metalinguistic awareness may be developed among adolescents or young adults in verbal group reflection tasks. The present study aims to explore the performance of university students when they reflect on gerund and infinitive complements in English as L2 while they complete consciousness-raising grammar tasks with the intention to develop their metalinguistic awareness. The study links a sociocultural framework with semi-structured stimulated recall interviews on the development of metalinguistic awareness, as both help participants reflect on usage patterns and generalizations of underlying linguistic structures through verbal interaction. The evaluated data consisted of the scores of each task and the speech analysis of the participants. The results reveal that having students identify the underlying rules of gerund and infinitive complements will indirectly contribute to their acquisition. The conclusions pointed to students paying attention to specific features of the language to be fully aware of the form of the linguistic patterns.

Simplifying the theoretical treatment ofwagerverbs

AbstractSince at least Postal (1974.On raising. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press), English has been assumed to possess a class of verbs that does not syntactically tolerate an overt noun phrase in the “usual” subject position of an infinitival complement clause but will allow one if it has undergone passivization,Wh-formation, Heavy-NP Shift, etc. This class of verbs has been variously described as Derived Object Constraint (DOC) verbs (Postal, Paul. 1974.On raising. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, Postal, Paul. 1993. Some defective paradigms.Linguistic Inquiry24(2). 347–364), ECM-with-Focus verbs (Rooryck, Johan. 2000.Configurations of sentential complementation: Perspectives from Romance languages. London & New York: Routledge), andwager-class verbs (Pesetsky, David. 2019.Exfoliation: Towards a derivational theory of clause size. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Unpublished ms., Version 2.0.http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004440(accessed 26 April 2022)). Based on the author’s own judgments, supplemented by the results of an acceptability survey conducted at an American university, this paper makes the novel claim that an English verb class with these grammatical properties does not exist, a finding that significantly reduces the inventory of grammatical mechanisms needed to account for complementation types generally. In addition, this paper develops new accounts of two distributional characteristics of thewagerverbs that certain other Raising to Object (RO)/Exceptional Case Marking (ECM) verbs do not exhibit. First, infinitival complements towagerverbs are argued to be aspectually linked to the matrix verb, while those ofpredict-type verbs are not. This explains a well-known stative restriction on complements to this verb class, which includesbelieve. Second, judgments of unacceptability previously attributed to Postal’s DOC or its counterpart in other theories are argued to result from three pragmatic usage preferences involving register and atypical degree that are encoded by the selection of the marked RO option with this verb class, preferences that play out differently forbelieveas opposed towagerverbs.

Quantitative Methoden in diachronen Studien: Anwendung am Beispiel der Wortstellungsvariation in deutschen Infinitiven

Abstract On the basis of a case study on the linearisation of German infinitival complements, the present paper illustrates the advantages of selected quantitative and statistical methods in diachronic studies. In particular, it first discusses, the problem of the availability of balanced diachronic corpora and how mixed-effects modelling can help make the best of “bad data” and second, it deals with the question of periodisation and shows the advantages of a data-driven method.

A Principled Explanation of the Believe-Type Verb Infinitival Complement Constructions

The purpose of this study is to present a principled explanation for the believe (B)- type verb infinitival complement constructions. For this, the embedded CP- deletion adopted from the ECM account (Chomsky 1981) and the overt raising-to-VP-Spec of the matrix sentence from LA-based (Chomsky 2014) and MERGE-based approach (Chomsky 2019, 2020, 2021a, 2021b) are posited on the ground of the property of the B-type verb (cf. Bach 1977; cf. Carnie 2002), Chomsky's Agree-upon (1998, 1999, 2001) EF (2005, 2006, 2008), Chomsky’s (2013, 2014) movement of LA and Chomsky’s (2013) Inheritance- IM (cf. Kim 2018a, 2018b, 2021). This postulation operated in the workspace (WS) (Chomsky 2019, 2020, 2021a, 2021b) based on the tripartite prolific domain (Grohmann 2003), (strong) Phase (Chomsky 1999, 2001) and Phase higher evaluation (Chomsky 1999) considers the complete and defective property of the post-verbal NP. Hence, the controversies of the post-verbal NP are solved. Besides, the challenges like the Projection Principle, the θ-criterion, and the placement problem of the matrix B-verb are no longer problematic.

Facing Two Ways Syntactically: On the Grammar and Use of Promise and Threaten in Three Regional Varieties

ABSTRACT The predicates promise and threaten with a to infinitive complement can be used in two main senses, with each sense representing a different argument structure: subject control, and subject to subject raising. Recent work has shown both uses to have been available for several centuries, with the raising variant emerging later than the control. The present investigation aims to provide insight into the usage patterns of the two predicates in the Englishes of New Zealand, Britain, and North America. The former is compared to the two latter varieties to help further our understanding of the complex system of the grammar of English predicate complementation. The data is examined from quantitative and qualitative perspectives, and the results indicate not only significant variation in usage among the varieties, but also high levels of correlation in some areas. New findings emerge from the study, including on the notion of stance, offering fresh avenues of research into the nature of the complementation patterns examined and their use in three core varieties of English.

Completivas de para no Português de Moçambique

This paper a nalyses verb c omplements, finite a nd i nfinitival, i ntroduced by para 'for' in Mozambican Portuguese (MP). In the analysed data, on the one hand, there is a tendency already studied and referred to in the literature (Issak 1998, P. Gonçalves 2002, 2010, a.o.), which consists of introducing finite complements to directive verbs by the preposition para and, on the other hand, the tendency not yet studied, which consists of introducing corresponding infinitival complements by the same preposition. These results reveal a tendency to standardize the c-selection properties of finite and infinitival complements of directive verbs. Furthermore, they allow to infer that para is a true preposition, as an alternative to previous analyses which have shown that para is a complementizer (Duarte 2003, Barbosa & Raposo 2013, A. Gonçalves et al. 2018) or it is as part of the conjunctional phrase para que'for that' (see Barbosa 2013, for European Portuguese (EP)), and also as part of the complex c omplementizer para-que (see P . G onçalves 2 002, 2 005, 2 010, f or MP). I n MP, but not in EP, para complements selected by directive verbs can be taken up anaphorically by demonstratives like isso 'that'preceded by this preposition. Furthermore, the preposition para can also occur when directive verbs are constructed with nominal arguments. These facts favour the assumption that, in PM, the complements to directive verbs, finite and infinitival, introduced by para, are oblique complements and the preposition para is external to the complement clause/CP.

Subjectless infinitive complements of periphrastic causative verbs in Middle English and possible reasons for the loss of the construction

The article presents selected facts concerning two kinds of analysis of Subjectless Infinitive Complements (ØI) of Causative Verbs in Middle English. One of them is the Indefinite Object Deletion Analysis (hence IOD), which can be considered natural in terms of the Object Deletion principles. The other one is the Verb Raising Analysis (hence VR) which provides some interesting facts about the history of English causatives. Among others, the article addresses the auxiliary-like behaviour of causative verbs in Middle English and says that the very loss of ØI can be accounted for reasonably by postulating that the existence of ØI and passive aci constructions are mutually exclusive. In addition, one should also remember about the double application of IOD and VR, which yielded unclear and semantically complicated structures, as possible factors in the loss of ØI constructions in English.

External merge in spec,CP: Complementizers projecting an argument

AbstractThe standard assumption that spec,CP is always an A′ position has been questioned for several languages where embedded C heads are involved in agreement and case assignment; however, the idea that no XP can be introduced in spec,CP by external merge has remained unchallenged. The article presents novel data from control phenomena in Mari (Uralic; nominative, SOV) and argues that, in this language, a particular type of C head is capable of thematically licensing an overt argument externally merged in spec,CP: the complementizer manən used in infinitival complement clauses projects a dative goal of communication. This behavior of manən follows from its dual nature: it is a semigrammaticalized verb ‘say’ that retains some lexical characteristics. I further suggest that the dative goal can be considered an overt realization of the addressee discourse variable, in line with the recent work on the presence of speaker, addressee, and logophoric center in syntax.

A multivariate analysis of causativedoand causativemakein Middle English

AbstractMiddle English had a rich inventory of verbs that could be used as causatives in periphrastic (or analytic) constructions. Interestingly, we see that two verbs likedoandmake, which share several similarities in their basic meaning, are both used as causative verbs. The present paper explores the relationship and the uses of causativedoand causativemakewith an infinitive complement in the Middle English period. By means of a Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), it will be investigated which semantic domains are more distinctively associated with each verb. The results of the statistical analysis will shed light on the semantic features that characterise these two verbs in Middle English. In addition, the quantitative analysis will help us understand whymakebegan to be used as a causative verb and how productive these verbs were in Middle English.

Nominative subjects of infinitives in Hungarian subject-control predicates: Postsyntactic copying and the overt realization of <em>PRO</em>

In Hungarian, the focused subject of the infinitival complement of a subject-control verb appears as a pronoun or lexical DP in nominative case. I propose that this nominative form realizes PRO at PF, but does not exist at Syntax, where PRO is caseless. PRO is overtly realized by postsyntactic copying of the phi-feature of case (and other material) from the controlling nominative matrix subject.

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

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.

Subject Control Infinitive Constructions in Early Modern English

This study aims to analyze and describe infinitive sentences with verbs of volition such as desire, wish, want, hope, intend, promise, determine, command in Early Modern English within a generative framework. It is argued that the infinitival clauses have a thematic subject PRO controlled by the matrix subject. It is proved that complex sentences with infinitive complements of matrix predicates of volition obtain subject control function. The findings show syntactic peculiarities of infinitive complementation of monotransitive verbs of volition as subject control infinitive constructions in the studied period of English. Having taken into consideration subject control properties of matrix verbs of volition, direct object monotransitive infinitive function, complementary nature of infinitives, it has been assumed that an infinitive clause generates in a complementizer phrase CP domain, putting forward three possible variants of syntactic analysis of the infinitive types’ configurations as: SVOd (to / bare INF clause), SVOd (NP to / bare INF clause), SVOd (wh- to INF clause) with ‘two-argument arrangement’ of matrix verbs and the infinitive clause as an object predicative complement.

Regional Variation and Syntactic Derivation of Low-frequencyneed-passives on Twitter

This paper examines constructions formed by the verb need taking a passivized complement. While previous dialectological, sociolinguistic, and micro-syntactic analyses have focused primarily on the past-participle complement (need+ED) as a regional syntactic variable, this study expands the purview of need-passives to examine gerund-participle (need+ING) and infinitival (need+TO) complements. It also looks beyond purported need+ED regions to examine need-passive variation in Englishes spoken around the world. Data from Twitter confirm previous findings that need+ED is a productive feature of the US Midland, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Tyneside, England. However, tweets also show that need+ING is produced disproportionately frequently in England and Wales. These results reveal a more complex pattern of need-passive variation in global Englishes than has previously been reported. Additionally, a transitive construction formed with need as a matrix verb is examined and found to co-vary regionally with need+ING. Syntactic analyses of tweets reveal similarities in the ways that need+ED and need+ING vary with need+TO. These findings lead to a proposed syntactic analysis that need+ED and need+ING share the same derivational structure. More generally, the work argues for greater attention in linguistic research to low-frequency features.