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

ment of a particular set of semantic entities and all other elements of that set is vital for the understanding of the meaning of linguistic expressions. It is evident that the understanding of implied contrasts presupposes the knowledge of the particular set an element of which is being identified. Therefore the proper identification of the set is crucial. It is reasonable to conclude, then, that the understanding of implicit contrasts is an important part of understanding the meaning of sentences because implied contrasts simply are an important part of the meaning of sentences. The next question that we obviously need to ask is what devices, if any, are there in language to express these aspects of meaning. In particular, is there anything in the syntactic or phonological form of sentences that can be shown to contribute systematically to this aspect of their meaning? One well-known device in language for the expression of implied contrasts is focusing. Semantically, two types of focus are commonly recognized in current linguistic and logical theories, which I will call, following Rúzsa (1988—89:584—87), strong, or contrastive, and weak focus. If focus is understood semantically as an identificational operator, contrastive focus may be defined as exhaustive listing, and weak focus may be interpreted as identification by exclusion (cf. E. Kiss 1987 and 1992, E. Kiss and Szabolcsi 1992, Kenesei 1983 (quoted in É. Kiss 1987:40), and Rúzsa 198&—

89). Since it is not my goal to explore problems of focus in detail here, I will not discuss it any further. All I wish to point out finally is that the recognition of these functions of focus lends empirical support to the hypothesis about implied contrasts being proposed. Rather than elaborate on the notion of focus, I will turn to the more immediate concern of trying to determine whether or not there is any further empirical evidence in English that implied contrasts are systematically expressed in grammar. Quirk et al. (1985) observe a very interesting systematic contrast between the position adverbial and other adverbials in how they contribute to the meaning of sentences. They note that "sentences which superficially differ only in so far as one has a position adverbial and the other a direction, goal, or source adverbial are found on closer inspection to involve a considerable difference in the meaning of the verb concerned, triggered by the different prepositions: 21