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

80 CSABA CZEGLÉDI (9) *What John believes is him to have seen Monument Valley. (10) *What John tried was to see Monument Valley. (11) *What the manager condescended was to have lunch with us in the canteen. 2.4 Extraposition from NP Since infinitival VPs do not extrapose but finite clauses with filled C, as in (12b), may, extraposition of an infinitive, as in (13b), testifies to its clausal status (cf. Köster and May 1982:133). (12) a. A book which we didn't like appeared, b. A book appeared which we didn't like. (13) a. A book on which to work appeared, b. A book appeared on which to work. 2.5 Finite and Infinitival Clauses Conjoined A universal constraint on coordination requires that the coordinated constituents be of the same syntactic category. Therefore we do not expect to find VPs coordinated with clauses. But, as Köster and May observe, infinitives do have the ability to conjoin with finite clauses, which furnishes us with a further argument in favor of the sentential status of infinitival complements. Consider the following examples: (14) To write a novel and for the world to give it critical acclaim is John's dream. (15) John expected to write a novel but that it would be a critical disaster. supports the minimalist claim that all control infinitives are IPs, which, in turn, justifies Boskovic's move, motivated by economy considerations, to eliminate c-selection from grammar (p. 21): (i) What the terrorists tried was (j

P PRO to hijack an airplane] Alternatively, it might also be that we are simply witnessing variability, or perhaps even an ongoing change, in the use of patterns of complementation in the sense of Mair (2002), which then means that we indeed need different grammars of complementation to account for dialectal differences.