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Elements of Control

Structure and Meaning in Infinitival Constructions

  • Book
  • © 2000

Overview

Authors:
  1. Idan Landau

    1. Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva, Israel

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Part of the book series: Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory (SNLT, volume 51)

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Table of contents (5 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
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  2. Introduction

    • Idan Landau
    Pages 1-25

  3. Exhaustive and Partial Control

    • Idan Landau
    Pages 26-91

  4. Obligatory and Non-Obligatory Control

    • Idan Landau
    Pages 92-128

  5. Control and Predication

    • Idan Landau
    Pages 129-154

  6. Implicit Control and Control Shift

    • Idan Landau
    Pages 155-203

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 205-215
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Keywords

About this book

1. THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS OF CONTROL Imagine you are a child faced with the daunting task of acquiring the grammar of control in your language. You toddle around buoyantly (you should be past 3 by now), occasionally bumping into acoustic signals that miraculously map to "linguistic input". Some of them sound like this: (1) a. Robin, do you want _ to play with Kittie together? b. Come on, let me show you how _ to feed her. c. No Robin, Kittie doesn't like _ to be smacked. d. Robin, look what you've done! Bad boy! Time _ to go to bed. From your shelter under the kitchen table, you may draw the following conclusions: i) Mommy is very mad now; ii) Kittens make rotten toys; iii) My name must be Robin. Apart from the lesson in parental control, you also ought to learn something about grammatical control. In each of the sentences above, an element is missing (from the underlined position) that is nonetheless "filled-in" by your target grammar. This is what linguists term the "understood subject" of the infinitive. In order to be able to understand such sentences and produce similar ones yourself, you have to figure out the reference of the understood subject in every case. Thus, unless you are after some big trouble with Mommy, you had better conclude that the understood subject is Robin and Mommy in (la), Robin in (Ib), Kittie in (Ic) and everyone (especially Robin!) in (ld).

Authors and Affiliations

  • Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva, Israel

    Idan Landau

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Elements of Control

  • Book Subtitle: Structure and Meaning in Infinitival Constructions

  • Authors: Idan Landau

  • Series Title: Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3943-4

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2000

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-7923-6620-1Published: 30 November 2000

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4020-0293-9Published: 30 November 2001

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-011-3943-4Published: 06 December 2012

  • Series ISSN: 0924-4670

  • Series E-ISSN: 2215-0358

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: IX, 215

  • Topics: Syntax, Theoretical Linguistics, Semantics

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