Seeing clearly: Frame Semantic, Psycholinguistic, and Cross ...

CHAPTER 2. A FRAME SEMANTIC ANALYSIS 41
Although we are considering mainly active sentences, not passives, we should note
that there is an interesting alternation between actives with bare verb complements and
passives with to-in nitives (i.e. between patterns 6 and 14 in Table 2.1), as in Ex. (1). Fill-
more & Kay (1994:6.6) mention this alternation and Declerck (1983) gives a more detailed
discussion of it.
(1) a. Pat saw Jan write a letter.
b. *Pat saw Jan to write a letter.
c. Jan was seen to write a letter (by Pat).
d. *Jan was seen write a letter (by Pat).
With regard to clauses introduced by WH-phrases (including how), many of these are free
relatives, which can lead to some interesting ambiguities. In Ex. (2-a), what their parents eat
is a free relative, and could be paraphrased with whatever their parents eat or the food that
their parents eat. In Ex. (2-d), the WH-clause is an indirect question, the answer to which
is what the children want to nd out (this is the sense of see which we will call determine
below). Ex. (2-b) and Ex. (2-c) are ambiguous between the two types of WH-clause, and
hence, between two di erent sensesofsee; Ex. (2-c) could be paraphrased either as The
children want to see thefood that their parents eat or The children want to nd out the
answer to the question \What do my parents eat?". Therefore, in evaluating the sense of
see in sentences in which its complement is a WH-clause, we must take suchambiguities
into account; the presence of a word such aswant may suggest that the sense of see which
is more volitional or intentional is to be preferred, or other sentence context may help to
resolve the question.
(2) a. The children eat what their parents eat.
b. The children see what their parents eat.
c. The children want to see what their parents eat.
d. The children want to see whether their parents eat.
The only thing that the 17 patterns in Table 2.1 (except the rst one) have in
common is expressed in the minimal valence requirement for an experiencer and either a
stimulus for or a content of the experience. In fact, as we will see later in this chapter,
even these thematic roles are too restrictive for some uses; all that we can really say is that