Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1991. British and American Philologycal Studies (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 20)
A. I. Pronichev: On the Question of Distinguishing Between Syntactic Constructions in English
51 construction. We can see this, if we use the definite article with the word "caretaker" in the previous example : 13. She wants the caretaker to look after her house (=* She wants that the caretaker should look). In same very rare cases such word combinations may be ambiguous. For example: 14. ... he just wants somebody to understand. (P. Abrahams) (=... he just wants that somebody should understand.) (=... he just wants somebody who would understand) Here, only the shades of lexical neaning af the verb "to want", which may be identified in a wider context, can help us distinguish between the above mentioned syntactic constructions. Difficulties may also arise in distinguishing between the infinitive as an attribute to the preceding substantive and as an adverbial modifier of purpose. In this case it is important whether the infinitive can be correlated with some other preceding substantive as its logical subject (not the substantive after which the infinitive stands) which is usually possible if such a substantive expresses an animate object. Let us take this example: 15. The news did something to arrest the run of the new doctor's unpopularity. (A.Cronin) In this sentence the infinitive is an attribute to the preceding substantive (= something that arrested). But if we replace the word "news" with a word expressing a human being (The secretary did something to arrest the run ...), then it will be possible to correlate the infinitive with the word "secretary 7' as its logical subject and understand it as an adverbial modifier of purpose (The secretary did something in order to arrest the run ...). And still, there is some possibility to understand the infinitive as an attribute to the word "something" (The secretary did something that arrested the run ...), because the indefinite substantive requires some modification. But if we replace the word "something" with some definite substantive, say the word "this", then the infinitive in such a sentence can be understood only as an adverbial modifier of purpose (The secretary did this to arrest the run ... = in order to arrest). We suppose that the meaning of definiteness or indefinitenes of a substantive may predetermine usage and meaning of other wards and forms in a sentence. Let us take this example: 16. She wanted to close a door behind her .... (G .Greene)
