Duality of control in gerundive complements of P

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Abstract

Sentences like They tricked him into believing them and They charged him with abandoning them raise interesting issues for selection and control. We show that these two sentences exemplify two distinct classes, subsuming P-gerund constructions that are formed with seven distinct prepositions: implicative vs. nonimplicative constructions. The first class displays a cluster of restrictions, both syntactic and semantic, which are absent from the second class: It resists partial control or embedded lexical subjects, and it bans object drop and movement of the P-gerund phrase. The existence of these two classes, as well as their empirical profiles, follow from Landau's (2015) theory of control and challenge alternative approaches.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)783-813
Number of pages31
JournalJournal of Linguistics
Volume57
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 18 Nov 2021
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Causative
  • Control
  • Gerunds
  • Implicative complements
  • Predication

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Philosophy
  • Linguistics and Language

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