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 85 b. I persuaded Bill

2 [PRC)

2 to carefully cut the cake], (ibid., 136) If the infinitives are assumed to have a (phonetically unrealized) subject, the regularity of the behavior of subject-oriented adverbs is restored, and the generalization can be maintained. The adverbs will be construed as expressing a property predicated of the embedded subject, and under control by the matrix object with which it is coreferential, the property is eventually predicated of the matrix object. Since without assuming PRO (the phonetically empty subject controlled by the matrix object) in the embedded infinitives we would lose an explanation for the regularity of subject-oriented adverbs in English, and since the assumption of PRO in otherwise 'subjectless' infinitives helps restore the generalization, it may be taken as evidence that all infinitives have subjects, hence all are sentential. 2.10 C-Commanded Predicates Köster and May (1982) show that a further argument may be constructed in favor of the clausal hypothesis on the constituency of infinitives and gerunds assuming Williams' (1980) condition on predication, which requires that predicates be c-commanded by an argument with which they are coindexed. What the argument directly shows is, again, that infinitives and gerunds have subjects, and therefore it provides indirect evidence that infinitives and gerunds are sentences. Consider the following example (cf. Köster and May (1982:136): (31) John ate the meat nude. Given a reading of (31) on which nude is predicated of John, the predicate nude is co-indexed with the subject NP, its c-commanding argument. Now consider the following examples (ibid.): (32) a. [PRO eating the meat nude] is a little obscene. b. [PRO killing the giant by himself ] made David famous. The complement clause in (32a) must be construed as having an unspecified subject in order for there to be an argument of which nude is predicated, simply because there is no other c-commanding NP for the predicate to be coindexed with. In (32b) the NP David controls PRO, thus