Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 3. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 29)

Csaba Ceglédi: On the Constituent Structure of Infinitives and Gerunds in English

INFINITIVES AND GERUNDS IN ENGLISII 79 processes that affect the latter also affect the former. Second, it is shown that "infinitives (and gerunds) must have subjects at some level of representation" (ibid., 136). Third, it is pointed out that certain properties of the semantic component and of X' syntax provide further arguments for the claim that infinitives and gerunds are clauses. Since many syntactic processes affect finite as well as nonfinite clauses but never VPs, they can be used to distinguish between VPs and clauses. 2.3 Pseudo-Clefting Clauses but not VPs may occur in the focus of a pseudo-cleft: (6) a. What he suspected was [

c

p that Bill saw Monument Valley] b. *What he suspected that Bill was [

v

p saw Monument Valley] (7) a. What he wanted was [

c

p for Bill to see Monument Valley] b. *What he wanted for Bill was [

V

P to see Monument Valley] (8) What he wanted was [

c

p to visit Monument Valley] Köster and May note that only for-to infinitival complements may be pseudo-clefted, that is, pseudo-clefting of an infinitive complement is restricted to matrix verbs that allow or require a complementizer C in their clausal CP complement to be filled by the C for (1982:132, fn. 10). This group of verbs may be identified semantically as the subclass of "subject-oriented" (see Maxwell 1984) emotive verbs (see Kiparsky and Kiparsky 1971, Maxwell 1984, and also Quirk et al. 1985), which describe the opinion or emotional attitude of the person denoted by the subject. The class includes want

, like, bate, prefer

; etc. but not believe, know, try, or condescend, for example, which seem to belong in the class of "epistemic" verbs that are characterized by Chomsky and Lasnik (1977:475) as selecting a 0 (zero) complementizer. Verbs of the latter group do not select the complementizer for and they do not allow pseudo-clefting of their infinitival complements, as is demonstrated by the following examples.

1 1 It must be noted, however, that analyses as well as acceptability judgments sometimes vary, as in this case. (10) above is rejected as ungrammatical by Köster and May, but a close analog is deemed acceptable in Boskovic 1997, where, importantly, it