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

as Wierzbicka's (1988:29) 'prediction' to the effect that infinitival clause complements on volitional matrix verbs express 'wanting*) to some true generalizations. Some are more, others are less restricted in scope, and occasionally they make contradictory predictions, as we will see below, and none, it seems, achieves the desired degree of generality, which is probably the reason why each leaves some of the data unaccounted for. All this suggests that if there are more general principles that govern the distribution of nonfinite complements in English, we have not found them yet Ijet us now consider some of these observations and proposals in a little more detail. Consider the following examples: (2) a. Did you think to ask Brown? b. Did you think of asking Brown? (3) a. I decided to go. b. I decided on going. The Kiparskys' explanation for the occurrence of gerundive complements on prepositional verbs in sentences like (2b) and (3b) as opposed to the choice of the infinitive in their nonpreposiűonal counterparts in (2a) and (3a) is that "after prepositions infinitives are automatically converted to gerunds ..." (Kiparsky and Kiparsky 1970:157). Wierzbicka (1988:32), however, points out that the choice of complement in such examples is not arbitrary because "decide ON doesn't mean the same as decide TO. Decide on implies that a number of possibilities have been considered ('gone through' in a person's mind) and that the subject decided to 'stop' on one of these possibilities. Decide to doesn't imply any such series of possibilities." In her analysis, infinitival complements imply wanting and gerundive complements imply possibility. Thus, the explication of the meanings of (la-b) in Wierzbicka's terms is like this: 1. a did you (at some point) think this: 'I want this: I will ask Brown' and did you do it because of that? 15