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 The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters publishes four monograph series, an Annual Report and, occasionally, special publications. The format is governed by the requirements of the illustrations, which should comply with the fol­ lowing measures. Authorized Abbreviations Historisk-JilosoJiske Meddelelser, 8° Hist.Fil.Medd.Dan.Vid.Sel.sk. (printed area 175 xl04 mm, 2700 units) Historisk-filosofiske Skrifter, 4° Hist.Filos.Skr.Dan.Vid.Selsk. (History, Philosophy, Philology, (printed area 2 columns, Archaeology, Art History) each 199 x 77 mm, 2100 units) Matematisk-Jysiske Meddelelser, 8° Mat.Fys.Medd.Dan.Vid.Selsk. (Mathematics, Physics, (printed area 180 x 126 mm, 3360 units) Chemistry, Astronomy, Geology ) Biologiske Skrifter, 4° Biol.Skr.Dan.Vid.Selsk. 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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-