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 93 Noun phrases with a head noun in -ing will also be excluded from the investigation as irrelevant. This class includes action nominals in ing, Abney's (1987) "

Ing-of",

4 verbal nouns, and deverbal nouns. The head of all these nominal structures is lexically derived by ing,

, hence -ing does not project its own functional category in any of them. 3.1 Why Gerunds Are Noun Phrases The principal motivation for the assumption that gerunds, but not infinitives or /^/-clauses, are dominated by an NP/DP node at the level of X

ma

x derive from their external syntactic properties, and include the following (cf. Horn 1975, Jackendoff 1977, and Abney 1987): Gerunds, but not //W-clauses or infinitives, occur in all NP positions, namely, they can be (a) the subject of questions, (b) the subject of relative clauses, (c) the subject of infinitival clauses, (d) the subject of a sentence following a sentence-initial adverb, (e) the object of prepositions, and (f) the focus of clefts: (50) a. What would b. a man who < John's leaving *that John left *for John to leave John's leaving *that John left *for John to leave reveal about him? would irritate 4 Abney classes Ing-of constructions with gerunds in spite of the fact that they have nothing in common with Acc-ing or Poss-/«g gerunds except their superficial morphological form. In addition to the inability of the -ing form in Ing-of constructions to Case-mark its object, for example, phonological evidence also testifies to the categorial difference. As Laczkó (1995:250-51) shows, Ing-of -ing, like denvative -ing and unlike gerundial -ing, does not display an alternation between a velar and an alveolar realization, cf. (l) the enemy's destroying the city (ii) the enemy's destroyin' the city (in) the enemy's destroying of the city (iv) *the enemy's destroyin' of the city (v) *singing outside the buildin'