Relativism and Universalism in Linguistics - Fachbereich 10 ...

Section H: Syntax 93
Contrasting finite, infinitival and gerundial complements
in extractions
Vosberg, Uwe
University of Paderborn (Germany)
vosberg@zitmail.uni-paderborn.de
Since Early Modern English, the verbalization of the English gerund has resulted in a rearrangement
of the entire system of complementation (cf. Fanego 1996). A long-term and
general development leading to the replacement of to-infinitives by -ing forms has brought
about a semantic specialization which many (in particular cognitive) linguists seemed to have
regarded as clear-cut and even categorical (for a critical assessment cf. Fanego forthcoming).
However, these semantic tendencies are very often accompanied (either reinforced or
weakened) by major (and potentially universal) extra-semantic factors likely to accelerate or
delay the rise or fall of -ing complements after certain verbs (such as fail or regret), adjectives
(like accustomed or desirous) and verb-noun collocations (e.g. have the opportunity).
Large-scale analyses of historical as well as present-day electronic corpora reveal a syntactic
constraint to the effect that the infinitival complement option will tend to be preferred to the
gerundial one in environments where a complement of the subordinate clause is extracted (by
relativization etc.) from its original position and crosses clause boundaries (cf. Vosberg 2003,
to appear; Hawkins 1999 for finite and infinitival complementation). As to the contrast
between to-infinitives and -ing complements, this factor must be seen against the background
of the complexity principle which postulates a higher degree of explicitness for grammatical
structures in contexts involving a substantial processing load (cf. Rohdenburg 1996). This
view, however, implies that the infinitive is more explicit than the -ing form (in terms of
sententiality).
In addition to surveying the general influence of this factor on the choice of sentential
complement variants, this paper will give a brief description of some in-depth analyses
covering the following aspects:
• Our corpus analyses have confirmed Hawkins’ (1999) assumption that filler-gap
dependencies tend to favour (short) infinitival complements rather than (long) finite
complement clauses.
• Similarly, finite complement clauses explicitly marked as such by the complementizer
that are apparently less acceptable in extraction contexts than those lacking the
subordinator.
• It is suggested that (more explicit complements as provided by) gerundial constructions
introduced by a preposition are more likely to be accepted by (the cognitively
more demanding) extraction contexts than directly linked -ing forms.
• Contrasting simple gerundial complement structures (-ing) of the verb remember and
their (semantically equivalent though less common) perfective counterparts (having
-ed), we find that extraction contexts are more hospitable to the (more explicit)
periphrastic constructions than to the simple ones.
• The tendency to use infinitival complements rather than gerunds in extractions is
found to vary according to the degree of complexity involved in different types of
extraction (relativization, comparativization, interrogation, topicalization etc.).
• Within the scope of complement verbs in extraction contexts additional complexity
factors such as an increased number of syllables or a lower frequency (of usage)
further increase the acceptability of the infinitival construction.
• Occasionally, different stylistic varieties are associated with different rates of change
in extraction contexts.