Infinitives and Gerunds in Recent English : Studies on Non-Finite Complements with Data from Large Corpora

94 Pages·2017·2.21 MB·English

by  Juhani Rudanko (auth.)

fi
In nitives and Gerunds in Recent
English
Also by Juhani Rudanko
COMPLEMENTATION AND CASE GRAMMAR
PRAGMATIC APPROACHES TO SHAKESPEARE
PREPOSITIONS AND COMPLEMENT CLAUSES
DIACHRONIC STUDIES OF ENGLISH COMPLEMENTATION
PATTERNS
CORPORA AND COMPLEMENTATION
COMPLEMENTS AND CONSTRUCTIONS
THE FORGING OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH
CHANGES IN COMLEMENTATION IN BRITISH
AND AMERICAN ENGLISH
DISCOURSES OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH
LINKING FORM AND MEANING
JuhaniRudanko
fi
In nitives and
Gerunds in Recent
English
Studies on Non-Finite Complements with Data
from Large Corpora
JuhaniRudanko
DepartmentofEnglish
UniversityofTampere
Tampere,Finland
ISBN978-3-319-46312-4 ISBN978-3-319-46313-1(eBook)
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-46313-1
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2016950856
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CKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is my pleasure to thank Palgrave Macmillan for including the present
workin theirPalgrave Pivotseries.
Thechaptersinthisvolumewerewritteninthesummerandautumnof
2015,whenIhadthegoodfortunetohaveMaijaKyytsönenasapart-time
researchassistantattheUniversityofTampere.Shehelpedmeinessential
ways in the analysis of the material and the checking of the manuscript,
andI want tothank her forher assistance.Over the years I have also had
thegoodfortunetoattendinternationalconferencesinEnglishlinguistics
and to talk to some of the people whose work is referred to in this book,
and I have learned a great deal from them. I also want to thank my
students at the University of Tampere. Before I retired from my post at
theUniversityofTampereattheendofJanuary2016,Iwasabletoteach
annual seminars on complementation for several years, and many of the
students in the seminars raised searching questions, helping me to think
somemoreaboutcomplementationandaboutvariationandchangeinthis
area of English grammar. The two anonymous referees for the publisher
also deserve my thanks for their comments. Of course, none of those
mentioned, directly or indirectly, is in any way responsible for the faults
andshortcomingsthatremaininthepresentwork—Iamtheonlyperson
responsible forthose.
Tampere, July2016 Juhani Rudanko
v
C
ONTENTS
1 Introduction 1
2 Non-Finite Complementsof the VerbConsent
inCurrent American andBritish English 11
3 Non-Finite Complementsof the Adjective Subject
inRecent American English 27
4 TheSemantics ofto Infinitives andof-ing Complements:
ACaseStudyon theAdjective Ashamed 41
5 Lexico-GrammaticalCreativityin American Soap Operas:
ACaseStudyof the Transitiveinto -ing Pattern 57
6 ConcludingObservations 77
References 83
Index 87
vii
L C
IST OF ORPORA
CASO CorpusofAmericanSoapOperas
CLMET CorpusofLateModernEnglishTexts
COCA CorpusofContemporaryAmericanEnglish
COHA CorpusofHistoricalAmericanEnglish
GloWbE GlobalWeb-BasedEnglishCorpus
ix
L T
IST OF ABLES
Table2.1 [+Choice]and[–Choice]lowerpredicatesintoinfinitive
andto-ingcomplementsofconsentintheAmericanEnglish
segmentoftheGloWbECorpus 21
Table2.2 [+Choice]and[–Choice]lowerpredicatesintoinfinitive
andto-ingcomplementsofconsentintheBritishEnglish
segmentoftheGloWbECorpus 22
Table3.1 Frequenciesoftoinfinitiveandto-ingcomplementsofthe
adjectivesubjectinthedifferentdecadesofCOHA 30
Table3.2 Toinfinitiveandto-ingcomplementsoftheadjectivesubject
inthenineteenthandtwentiethcenturies 32
Table3.3 Theverbwantfollowedbyacommaoraperiodin
COHAfromthe1810stothe1880s 37
Table4.1 [+Choice]and[−Choice]interpretationoftoinfinitive
andof-ingcomplementsofashamedinCOHAinthe
1940sand1950s 46
Table4.2 [+Choice]and[−Choice]interpretationsoftoinfinitive
andof-ingcomplementsofashamedinCOCAfrom
2000to2009 48
Table5.1 Creativeusesofmatrixverbswiththetransitiveinto-ing
patternintheAmericanSoapOperaCorpus 64
Table5.2 Semanticclassesofcreativelyusedmatrixverbswiththe
transitiveinto-ingpattern 71
xi
CHAPTER1
Introduction
Abstract Thecentralobjectiveofthisbookistoshednewlightonselected
controlconstructionsinvolvingtoinfinitivesanddifferenttypesofgerundial
-ing clauses in recent English. This chapter outlines the key ideas that are
usefulinthestudyofcontrol.Sincethebookdealswithnon-finitesentential
complements,onekeyideaisthenotionofanunderstoodsubject.Further,
the notions of subject control and object control are presented. A basic
assumptionadoptedforthestudyofcontrolisBolinger’sPrinciple,accord-
ingtowhichadifferenceinformcanbeexpectedalsotoinvolveadifference
in meaning. The chapter also offers descriptions of the main patterns of
control that are investigated in more detail in the subsequent chapters.
Corpus data are a key source of evidence in the investigations, and the
maincorporatobeusedareintroducedinthechapter.
Keywords Complementation (cid:1) Complement takingpredicate (cid:1) Subject
control(cid:1) Objectcontrol (cid:1)Understoodsubject
Thisbookinvestigatesthepropertiesofaselectedsetofcomplementation
patterns in English. A suitable point of departure for this introductory
chapter is provided by the following statement on the nature of comple-
mentsin Huddleston andPullum(2002,219):
Themostimportantpropertyofcomplementsinclausestructureisthatthey
arelicensedbyanappropriateverb.
©TheAuthor(s)2017 1
J.Rudanko,InfinitivesandGerundsinRecentEnglish,
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-46313-1_1