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 91 (48) [PRO to leave now] is impossible for John. The subject—predicate pairing would only be reconstructed at the level of logical representation, where the crucial point to notice is that it would be reconstructed at some level of representation. In other words, the clausal nature of infinitives and gerunds would be recognized at the level of logical representation, but there only. It is a corollary of the VP hypothesis that semantic structures are derived independently of syntactic structures (cf. Chierchia 1984). To summarize, there is overwhelming evidence that nonfmite complements have subjects at some level of representation. The arguments discussed in the preceding sections also suggest that the appropriate level of representation of the clausal structure of nonfinite complements is Sstructure. 3 The Constituent Structure of Gerunds As we have seen in the preceding sections a number of observations suggest that not only infinitives but also gerunds have a clausal structure in English. Although I believe that in general it is correct to assume a clausal internal structure for gerunds, we must note a few problems in this respect, since the evidence is not conclusive. One of these problems concerns the topmost node dominating a gerundive complement. Assuming the principles of X' Syntax (cf. Jackendoff 1977) and Government-Binding Theory (cf. Chomsky 1981, 1982, 1986), on which embedded clause complements are normally analyzed either as IP or as CP, the possibilities include IP, CP, and NP (dominating IP). Jackendoffs (1977) proposal is that gerunds (Chomsky's (1970) 'gerundive nominals') have the internal structure of sentences, but at the maximal level of projection, which is level X'" in Jackendoff 1977, they are NPs. This is a most problematic option, however: if basic principles of X-bar Theory are to be observed, we cannot simply stick an NP node at the top of a complement clause, or else the X-bar theoretic principle is violated which requires that all phrases be endocentric. There are at least two reasons that (49b) cannot be the structure of (49a) below. First, the topmost NP lacks a head, and second, V cannot project an NP (cf. Abney 1987).