Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1994. [Vol. 2.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 22)

STUDIES - Csaba Czeglédi: On the Distribution of Infinitival and Gerundive Complements in English

mined by idiosyncratic (syntactic or semantic) properties of predicates, in which case it is unpredictable, or whether it can be accounted for in terms of some general principles. If the null hypothesis is rejected and it is assumed that the account for the occurrence of infinitival and gerundive complements can be reduced to some general principles, the next problem that arises is whether those principles can be formulated in syntactic, semantic, or perhaps pragmatic terms, or a combination thereof. It seems that no syntactic theory has been able to formulate the principles that would account for the distribution of nonfinite complements that was both observationally and explanatorily adequate. Standard syntactic machinery does not appear to be appropriate for the explication of the factors that govern the distribution of infinitives and gerunds in English. One is forced to conclude that the distribution of nonlinite complements, or complement selection in general, cannot be accounted for in purely syntactic terms. As Grimshaw (1979:318) concludes in an analysis of interrogative and exclamatory complements, "It is clear that complement selection is not predictable on the basis of syntactic characteristics of predicates. For example, there is no syntactic reason why wonder and inquire should not allow that- complements, or why believe should not allow interrogative complements. Whatever the degree of predictability that may exist, it is to be found in the semantic, and not the syntactic, domain." She does in fact successfully demonstrate that the distribution of embedded exclamatives, a subclass of sentential complements, is fairly consistently predictable on semantic grounds. She shows that nonfactive predicates do not allow inherently factive complements, that exclamations are inherently factive, therefore exclamations are never embedded under nonfactive predicates. This has a very important consequence with respect to the theory: the selectional mechanism that is otherwise assumed in an idiosyncratic treatment of the distribution of exclamations with respect to factive and nonfactive predicates is no longer necessary, because "the semantic and pragmatic characteristics of exclamations and of the factive/nonfactive distinction automatically guarantee that the ill-formed combinations will not be generated" (ibid., 323). 13