Infinitive Control in Danish

155 Pages·2015·54.66 MB·English

Infinitive Control in Danish
By SØREN BRANDT
Historisk-Filosofiske Meddelelser 69
Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab
The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
Commissioner: Munksgaard . Copenhagen 1995
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Infinitive Control in Danish
By SØREN BRANDT
Historisk-Filosofiske Meddelelser 69
Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab
The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
Commissioner: Munksgaard . Copenhagen 1995
Abstract
We present a detailed descriptive survey of infinitive constructions
in Danish, discussing for each type of construction the possible
choice(s) of logical subject or “controller” for the infinitive. The
survey includes, but is not limited to, those infinitives commonly
supposed to fall under the so-called “Control Theory” component
of the Government and Binding paradigm, and the purpose of the
survey is to collect the complete set of Danish data which such a
theory presumably would have to be able to explain.
We conclude that the choice of infinitive controller is determi­
ned by the meaning of the construction in which it is a part and
that it does not depend on any meaning-independent configurati­
onal structures. Also, we suggest that the entire concept of an in­
dependent control theory module of grammar is mistaken; but
this suggestion is not defended in detail.
SØREN BRANDT
Ved Volden 10, 2. th
DK-1425 København K
A cknowledgement
The author wishes to express his sincere appreciation of the extre­
mely penetrating and meticulous comments provided by the re­
view committee: professor Hans Basbøll, Odense University, and
professor Jørgen Rischel, Copenhagen University.
D Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab 1995
Printed in Denmark by Special-Trykkeriet Viborg a-s
ISSN 0106-0481 ISBN 87-7304-264-1
Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction.................................................................... 7
1.1 Descriptive Framework...................................................... 7
Lexical Structures............................................................... 7
Pragmatic Options............................................................... 8
Thematic Roles...................................................................... 8
1.2 Editorial Notes........................................ 14
Source Material.................................................................... 14
Notational Conventions.................................................... 15
Literature............................................................................... 15
Scope of Presentation........................................................ 16
Overview................................................................................. 18
Chapter 2 Predicative Constructions........................................... 19
2.1 ACI Constructions............................................................... 19
2.2 Appearance Verbs............................................................... 23
2.3 Cognitive Verbs.................................................................... 25
2.4 Copulative Verbs................................................................. 27
Auxiliary Modal Infinitives............................................... 28
Modal Predicatives............................................................... 30
Applicative Constructions.................................................. 32
Digression about Adjectival Constructions.................. 34
Aspectual Constructions.................................................... 36
Purposive Constructions.................................................... 38
Equative Constructions...................................................... 38
Chapter 3 Infinitives in Adverbials............................................... 40
3.1 Sentence Replacements...................................... 40
Result...................................................................................... 40
Cause........................................................................................ 41
Comparison.......................................................................... 41
Performance Constructions............................................. 42
3.2 Speaker’s Comments........................................................... 44
3.3 Purposive Constructions.................................................... 46
Nominal Purposives............................................................. 47
Adverbial Purposives.......................................................... 52
Sentential Purposives........................................................... 55
3.4 Other Sentential Adverbials............................................. 59
Description of Prepositional Constructions.................. 60
Discussion of Adverbial Construction........................... 68
Chapter 4 Infinitives as Arguments............................................. 75
4.1 Bech’s Rules........................................................................... 75
Control Rules for German.................................... 75
Control Rules for Danish.................................................... 76
4.2 Minor Types.......................................................................... 78
Instrumental Verbs............................................................... 78
Cognitive Verbs.................................................................... 80
Complements with “for” .................................................... 81
4.3 Infinitival Subjects............................................................... 81
Basic Source Material........................................................... 81
Grammatical Rules for Infinitival Subjects.................... 83
Exceptions to the Grammatical Rules........................... 85
Summary..................................................................... 86
4.4 Absolutive Constructions.................................................... 87
4.5 Monotransitive Agentives.................................................. 89
Generic Agentive Constructions....................................... 89
Affective Constructions.......................................... 90
Attitudinal Verbs................................................................. 91
Activity Verbs........................................................................ 93
4.6 Augmentable Monotransitive Verbs................................ 96
Teaching and Learning...................................................... 97
Promises and Threats........................................................ 98
Owing...................................................................................... 99
Wishing.................................................................................... 99
4.7 Optionally Ditransitive Verbs............................................. 100
Teaching................................................................................. 100
Proposals and Offers........................................................... 101
Permissions and Prohibitions........................................... 101
Aid and Assistance............................................................... 102
4.8 Obligatorily Ditransitive Verbs......................................... 102
Chapter 5 Basic Control Theory.................................................. 105
5.1 What is Control Theory?................................................... 105
Classic TG Control Theory................................................ 105
Issues in GB Control Theory............................................. 109
Generalized GB Control Theory....................................... Ill
5.2 Features of Control Constituents.................................... 115
5.3 Control and Binding........................................................... 120
Chapter 6 Control Relationships in Danish............................. 123
6.1 Types of Control Constituents......................................... 123
6.2 Dependent Infinitives............................. 124
Infinitives in Noun Phrases . .............................................. 124
Other Dependent Infinitives............................................. 127
6.3 Independent Adverbial Infinitives.................................. 128
Speaker’s Comments........................................................... 128
Sentence Modifier Adverbials........................................... 130
6.4 Predicative Verb Arguments............................................. 130
6.5 Non-predicative Verb Arguments.................................... 131
Absolutive Constructions.................................................... 132
Agentive Constructions...................................................... 132
6.6 Discussion............................................................................... 133
The Control Problem is Semantic.................................. 133
Types of Trivalent Verbs...................................................... 135
The Control Problem Unsolved...................................... 139
6.7 Infinitive Control Rules...................................................... 142
Dependent Infinitives ......................................................... 142
Independent Adverbial Infinitives.................................. 143
Verb Argument Infinitives.................................................. 143
Conclusion............................................................................. 144
Appendix: Examples of Floating Control.................................... 145
Temporal Adverbial............................................................. 145
Conditional Adverbial........................................................ 146
Method, Means or Procedure Adverbial....................... 146
Free Predicative.................................................................... 147
Subject of Predicative Sentence...................................... 147
References.......................................................................................... 148
•
HfM 69 7
Chapter 1
Introduction
Many sentences contain a non-finite verb construction among
their constituents, and in such cases there is normally no ex­
pressed subject directly in construction with the non-finite verb.
Nevertheless, we are perfectly capable of identifying the “logical
subject” of that verb, and so the question arises how this identifica­
tion is made. In transformational grammar (TG), particularly in
the theory known as Government and Binding (GB), the subtheory
related to this question is called Control Theory, but in the following
we shall use this term generically, without thereby committing our­
selves to GB theory.
1.1 Descriptive Framework
The discussion will be couched in terms of a descriptive framework
which here is just stipulated, since a detailed argument is outside
the scope of the present paper.
Lexical Structures
We base our exposition on a lexical structure for sentences, in
which the grammatical relations in a sentence correspond to struc­
tural relations in a tree structure in which sequential ordering is
immaterial. This is a fairly theory-neutral conception of a sen­
tence, and one which is subsumed at some level of abstraction in
most modern grammar theories. Actually, we think that there
need not be any other abstract levels of description, that our pro­
posed single level and certainly all putable additional ones are not
“real” but artifacts of linguistic description, and that the “shape” of
the syntactic tree is determined by the lexical items it contains; but
our characterization of a lexical structure is also formally compat­
ible with theories positing two or more levels of description, theo­
ries claiming psychological reality, and theories assuming that lexi­
cal items are “inserted” into structural trees generated by phrase
structure rules.
8 HfM 69
The nodes in a lexical structure we assume capable of bearing
features of different types, particularly features indicating pragmat­
ic options and features indicating thematic roles.
Pragmatic Options
The pragmatic option features capture our intuition that certain
non-identical sentences “do not really mean different things”, and
they thus allow several different actual sentences to have isomor­
phic lexical structures, e.g. the following Danish set:
Der blev begået et mord i Odense i går.
’There was committed a murder in Odense yesterday’.
Der blev begået et mord i går i Odense.
Der blev i går begået et mord i Odense.
I går blev der begået et mord i Odense.
I går blev et mord begået i Odense.
I Odense blev der begået et mord i går.
I Odense blev der i går begået et mord.
Et mord blev begået i går i Odense.
Et mord blev begået i Odense i går.
The last two variant types are infrequent, and even more infre­
quent are some other formally possible variations; it is clear that to
describe all these possiblities we shall need a fairly elaborate appa­
ratus which, however, we need not discuss here, since we have
found no evidence whatever to suggest that the choice of infinitive
controller can be influenced by the topology of the sentence (i.e.,
the chosen linearization of its lexical structure).
Thematic Roles
The thematic role features capture our intuition that certain sen­
tences may mean different things but are still somehow related.
The obvious example is active and passive sentences involving the
same verb and the same participants, but there may be several oth­
ers, depending on the syntactic versatility of the verb. By ascribing
the same thematic role to different syntactic functions in the dif­
ferent possible verb constructions, we indicate that the semantic
relationship between an actant and the verb is the same in all
cases.
Since Fillmore’s seminal paper The Case for Case (1968), several
semantic or thematic role systems have been suggested, and fol-