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== When it rains, it pours ==
== Infinitives ==


Note the following sharp contrasts:
Having dealt with complements in the form of NP, PP, and subordinate clauses, we now turn to infinitives. Here are a few typical examples:


(1) It rained.<br>
(1) Ingrid tried [to buy olives] <br>
(2) *Ingrid rained<br>
(2) Ingrid pursuaded Fred [to buy olives] <br>
(3) Ingrid promised Fred [to buy olives]


(3) There arose a storm<br>
Let us investigate the meaning of these sentences first. 'buy' is a predicate that needs an AGENT and a PATIENT. The patient in each of the sentences above is mentioned directly: ''olives''. But who is the agent? As is shown by the following (not always natural sounding) paraphrases, in (1) and (3), Ingrid is understood to be the one buying olives and in (2) Fred is understood as the intended olive buyer
(4) *Ingrid arose a storm


What these examples show is that there are places where only meaningless expressions like ''it'' and ''there'' can occur in English, but not meaningful expressions like ''Ingrid'' or ''the cat''. ''rain'' and similar words are called '''weather verbs''' and the construction in (3) has the name '''existential construction'''. This leads to the ''it'' of weather verbs being referred to as '''weather-it''' and the ''there'' in the existential construction as '''existential there'''. It is assumed that both expressions are meaningless and that the only subject th weather verbs permit is ''weather-it'' and the only subject that the existential construction tolerates is the ''existential there''.
(1b) '''Ingrid''' tried to bring it about that '''she (= Ingrid)''' buys olives.<br>
(2b) Ingrid pursuaded '''Fred''' that '''he (= Fred)''' buys olives. <br>
(3b) '''Ingrid''' promised Fred that '''she (= Ingrid)''' buys olives.


Note: for both of these meaningsless pronouns, there are pronouns spelled identically that are meaningful and in fact that is no coincidence: the meaningless pronouns developed historically from the meaningful ones in environments where their meaning came to be more and more bleached. As a consequence, we need two different lexical entries with the spelling ''it'' and two different ones for ''there'' as well.
Interestingly, even though a. there is an understood agent in each case and b. ''buy'' assigns the agent role to its subject, this subject cannot be expressed inside the infinitive. An attempt to add one, for instance as a pronoun leads to ungrammaticality:


Altogether, with respect to their subjects, there are three different verb classes in English:
(1c) * Ingrid tried ['''she''' to buy olives] <br>
(2c) * Ingrid pursuaded Fred ['''he''' to buy olives] <br>
(3c) * Ingrid promised Fred ['''she''' to buy olives]


1. 'Normal' verbs: they require a meaningful subject. They make up almost all verbs. Examples: ''sing, dance, put, tell, insult''.
As the examples above show, the understood subject of the infinitive is not always the same. That naturally raises the question of how the interpretation of the understood subject is determined.
2. wheather-verbs: require wheather-it as their subject. Examples: ''rain, snowed, thunder''.
3. Existential verbs: demand that their subject be the existential ''there''. Examples: ''arise, be, arrive''.


=== Implementation ===
A little thought shows that the understood subject of the infinitive is determined by the (meaning of) the upper verb. When one tries or promises to do something, then one does so for an action that one will perform oneself. On the other hand, when one persuades somebody to do something, it is the pursuaded person that is supposed to perform the action, not the pursuader. The phenomenon that we witness here is called '''Control'''. We say that ''try'' and ''promise'' make their subject control the infinitive, whereas ''pursuade'' makes its the object to control the infinitive.


It is actually fairly easy to implement these ideas in XLFG. We need the following:
These are the facts that we wish to capture in this unit. As always, we will need lexical entries and annotated phrase structure rules to accomplish that. Here are some guiding ideas to help you do that.


a. A way of marking the distinction between words that do and do not have meaning
== Guiding ideas ==
b. To make sure that normal verbs only tolerate meaningful subjects.
c. To find a way of making weather-verbs require their subject to be the meaningless weather-it and that the existential verbs require their subject to be the existential-there.


==== A ====
1. The infinitive marker '''to''' can be assumed to belong to part of speech '''I''' (for infinitive marker). <br>
2. The infinitive ''buy'' is a new type of verb form for us. So far, all the verb forms that we encountered were tensed forms in the present and past tense, e.g. the third person singular present tense form ''buys'' or the non-third person singular present tense form ''buy'', as in ''I buy olives, you buy olives'', etc. Note that even though the non-third person singular tense forms and the infinitives of most verbs are homophonous (= are pronounced the same way), they must be kept distinct. They have different grammatical properteis and for some verbs, they are not homophonous. Note, for instance, ''I am, you are'' vs. ''to be''!<br>
3. To separate these finite and infinitival verb forms from each other, we introduce a new feature called '''VFORM''', with the values '''FIN'' (= finite = tensed) and '''INF''' (= infinitive = non-tensed). There will eventually also be VFORM values for progressive verb forms like ''buying'' and participles like ''bought'', but we will not deal with those here.<br>
4. As always, when we introduce a new kind of argument (in this case the infinitive), we need to specify a grammatical function for it. For tensed subordinate clauses we chose the grammatical function COMP (= complement clause). For infinitival complements we postulate the grammatical function '''XCOMP'''. The X stands for the unexpressed subject inside the infinitive complement.
4. The most complex task is to encode the control behavior of the different verbs. We need statements to the effect that the subject (or object) of the higher verb controls (= is identical) to the subject of the XCOMP. For that, we need to add special equations to the lexical entries of control verbs, which are of the general form:


We already have a way to distinguish meaningful from meaningless nouns. Recall that we specify the meaning of a noun in its PRED value. To model a meaningless noun simply means to '''not''' give it a PRED value.
(↑ GF) = (↑ XCOMP SUBJ);


==== B ====
where GF is either SUBJ or OBJ. In the first case we get:


This is also straightforward: meaningful subjects are those which are assigned a semantic role in the verb's PRED value. Meaningless subjects are of course not assigned a semantic role. After all, since meaningless expressions do not refer to anything, there is nothing that could play that role in an event.
(↑ SUBJ) = (↑ XCOMP SUBJ);
 
This means, informally: my subject is identical to my XCOMP's SUBJ. In other words, this encodes subject control. Object control works the same. Remember to use the arrows from the XLFG editor rather than those from your keyboard!


==== C ====


This is a little more involved and requires two theoretical innovations.


1. FORM values for meaningless ''it'' and ''there''. The problem is that weather verbs ONLY tolerate the meaningless ''it'' as a subject and existential verbs ONLY the meaningless ''there''. But, how can these verbs tell these two meaningless items apart? The answer is that we need to give these two nouns functional information that the verb can selects. This is what the new FORM feature is for. In their lexical entries, ''it'' is marked FORM:it and ''there'' is marked FORM:there. Meaningful items don't need the form feature.


2. The completeness and coherence conditions assume that all the grammatical functions in a verb's PRED value are assigned a thematic role. For the subjects of weather and existential verbs, however, that is precisely not the case. Therefore, these subjects have to be listed outside the verb's PRED value. The PRED value of ''rain'', for instance, will then be: [PRED:'RAIN'<>SUBJ'] . Since ''rain'' has no meaningful dependent, the brackets after its meaning stay empty. The non-semantic subject is then listed after the brackets.


With this, we have all the pieces in place for the next excercise.


<span style="color: blue>Exercise 11 </span>


1. Open Grammar Grammar 8<br>
2. For all the words in the sentences below, add lexical entries if that is necessary.<br>
3. Add these sentences as test items with their grammaticality status.<br>
4. Parse.


(5) Ingrid bought olives <br>
(6) *it bought olives <br>
(7) *There bought olives <br>


(8) it rained<br>
(10) *Ingrid rained<br>
(7) *there rained<br>


(11) There arose a storm<br>
(12) *Ingrid arose a storm<br>
(13) *it arose a storm<br>


<!--
<!--
* Go to <span class="newwin">[https://xlfg.labri.fr/ https://xlfg.labri.fr/]</span>.
* Create a new project and copy your previous grammar into your new project.
* On the basis of pages 102-108 in the textbook, make all the additions to the grammar that are necessary to yield the following o
(1) Ingrid tried to buy olives
[[File:Ingrid-tried-to-buy-olives-cs.JPG | 500px]] &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
[[File:Ingrid-tried-to-buy-olives-fs.JPG | 500px]]
<br>
Make sure that your grammar makes the correct predictions for the sentence below:
(2) Ingrid buys olives <br>
(3) *Ingrid tried buys olives
-->


== Existential sentences ==
In this unit, we will extend the grammar to license sentences with verbs like 'try' and 'seems' which have interesting properties.


English has a second expletive, namely the word ''there'' in sentences like (3):
== Subject control: ''try''==


(3) There arose a storm<br>
Notation:


These sentences are called existential sentences, because they express that an instance of the concept named by the postverbal NP exists or comes about. Sentence (3), for instance, says that a storm came into existence. This can also be expressed by "A storm arose", but (3) stresses the existential aspect more strongly.
In the exercises of this unit, we will have to implement '''Control''': this means that a GF of the higher verb and the SUBJ of the higher verb's XCOMP are identical.


Existential sentences require the '''expletive''' ''there'' as a SUBJ, because the existence is expressed by the verb ''arise'' and ''there'' contributes no meaning to the sentence. In this usage, ''there'' is a noun. In its usage as a locative element (which we are not dealing with here), it is an adverb.
In XLFG, this is written as follows:


From what was said above, the constrast between (3) and (4) follows. Implement these two sentences:
* (↑SUBJ) = (↑XCOMP SUBJ);  means: the SUBJ of the higher verb and the XCOMP's SUBJ are identical.
* (↑OBJ) = (↑XCOMP SUBJ);  means: the OBJ of the higher verb and the XCOMP's SUBJ are identical.


(4) *Ingrid arose a storm
<span style="color: blue>Exercise 9.1 </span>
* Go to <span class="newwin">[https://147.210.117.56 https://147.210.117.56]</span>.
<!-- * Extend your lastest grammar or make yourself a copy of Grammar5-Ex8.2-solution. -->
* On the basis of pages 102-103 in the textbook, make all the additions to the grammar that are necessary to yield the following outputs for sentence (1):


Sentence (3) should get a single Argument Structure, namely the following one:
(1) Ingrid tried to buy olives.


[[ File:Arose-a-storm-as.JPG   | 340px]]
<!--
[[File:Ingrid-tried-to-buy-olives-cs.JPG | 500px]] <br>
-->
-->
[[File:Ingrid-tried-to-buy-olives-fs.JPG | 1000px]]
<br>
Implement the following grammatical assumptions:
* 'to' (the infinitive marker): assume that it is marked [IM:+].
* 'buy': [VFORM:INF]
Make sure that your grammar makes the correct predictions for the sentences below:
(2) Ingrid buys olives <br>
(3) *Ingrid tried buys olives
<__


==== <span style="color: blue>Exercise 6.1 Infinitives</span>  ====
(4) Ingrid buys olives.<br>
(5) Ingrid tried to buy olives <br>
(6) * Ingrid tried buys olives <br>
(7) Ingrid pursuaded Fred to buy olives <br>
(8) * Ingrid pursuaded Fred bought olives <br>
(9) Ingrid promised Fred to buy olives<br>
(10) * Ingrid promised Fred buys olives<br>
(11) * Ingrid tried she to buy olives <br>
(12) * Ingrid pursuaded Fred he to buy olives <br>
(13) * Ingrid promised Fred she to buy olives<br>
Make sure that the following sentences come out to be ungrammatical:
(14) * Ingrid tried to rain<br>
(15) * Ingrid persuaded Fred to rain<br>
(16) * Ingrid promised Fred to rain
-->




<!--
<!--
(10) *It tried to rain<br>
 
(11) *There tried to arise a storm<br>
 
(12) It seemed to rain<br>
 
(13) There seemed to arise a storm
==''seem (Raising verb)''==
 
Notation:
 
The verb ''seem'' differs from the verb ''try'' in that ''seem'' does not assign a semantic role to its SUBJ. This is the first time we encounter such verbs. In XLFG, GFs that the predicate does not assign a role to are written between the closing > and the final apostrophe, as follows:
 
* PRED:'X<...><span style="color: red>Y</span>'
 
Meaning of the line above: the GFs listed in ... are assigned semantic roles by the predicate, but the grammatical function <span style="color: red>Y</span> is not.
 
<span style="color: blue>Exercise 9.2 </span>
* Go to <span class="newwin">[https://147.210.117.56 https://147.210.117.56]</span>.
* Make sure that under 'Output Parameters' '''Extended Coherence test on Feature-Structures''' is set to '''Yes'''</span>.
* Extend your previous grammar.
 
* On the basis of pages 104-108 in the textbook, make all the additions to the grammar that are necessary to yield the following outputs for sentence (4):
 
(4) Ingrid seemed to buy olives.
 
[[File:Ingrid-seemed-to-buy-olives-cs.JPG | 500px]] &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
[[File:Ingrid-seemed-to-buy-olives-fs.JPG | 500px]]
 
-->
-->


==Object control: ''persuade''==
''try'' and ''seem'' are subject control (raising verbs), because the controller of the lower subject is the higher '''subject'''. But, objects can control as well. One verb where that is the case is ''persuade''.


<!--
<span style="color: blue>Exercise 9.3 </span>
The data above together with the data from Unit 9 illustrate the following generalizations:


a. The verb ''buy'' tolerates as its SUBJ the word ''Ingrid'' but not the expletives ''it'' and ''there''.<br>
Make all the changes to your current grammar so that it licenses the representations below:
b. The verb ''rain'' tolerates as its SUBJ the expletive ''it'' but not the words ''Ingrid'' and the expletive ''there''.<br>
c. The verb ''arise'' in its existential use tolerates as its SUBJ the expletive ''there'' but not the words ''Ingrid'' and  the expletive ''it''.<br>


(5) Ingrid persuaded Fred to buy olives.


d. The verb ''buy'' can serve as the head of the complement of the control verb ''try'', but the verbs ''rain'' and ''arise'' cannot. In other words, you cannot embed a verb under ''try'' if that verb requires an expletive as its subject.<br>
<!--
e. All three verbs ''buy'', ''rain'' and ''arise'' can serve as the head of the complement of the raising verb ''seem''.
[[File:Ingrid-persuaded-Fred-to-buy-olives.cs.JPG | 1000px]] &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
-->
-->
<font size="2">
 
[[File:Ingrid-persuaded-Fred-to-buy-olives.fs.JPG | 500px]]
 
[[File:Ingrid-persuaded-Fred-to-buy-olives-as.JPG | 500px]]
<br>
<br>
Make sure that your grammar makes the correct predictions for the sentences below:
(2) Ingrid buys olives <br>
(3) *Ingrid persuaded Fred buys olives
<!--
==''expect(Object raising verb)''==
''expect'' is an object raising verb.
<span style="color: blue>Exercise 9.4 </span>
Make all the changes to your current grammar so that it licenses the representations below:
(5) Ingrid expected Fred to buy olives.
[[File:Ingrid-expected-Fred-to-buy-olives-cs.JPG | 1000px]] &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
[[File:Ingrid-expected-Fred-to-buy-olives-fs.JPG | 500px]]
[[File:Ingrid-expected-Fred-to-buy-olives-as.JPG | 500px]]
<br>
<br>
<font size="2">
<!--
Extended Coherence Condition [non-final version] (p. 138)
* All governable functions present in an f-structure must occur in the value of a local PRED feature.
* All functions that have a PRED value must have a theta role.
-->


<br>
<br>
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<!-- [[Practical_Grammar_12|'''Term Paper Project''']] -->
<!--   [[Practical_Grammar_10|'''Week 10''']]  [[Practical_Grammar_11|'''Week 11''']] [[Practical_Grammar_12|'''Term Paper Project''']] -->
 
 
-->

Revision as of 07:56, 14 July 2026

Infinitives

Having dealt with complements in the form of NP, PP, and subordinate clauses, we now turn to infinitives. Here are a few typical examples:

(1) Ingrid tried [to buy olives]
(2) Ingrid pursuaded Fred [to buy olives]
(3) Ingrid promised Fred [to buy olives]

Let us investigate the meaning of these sentences first. 'buy' is a predicate that needs an AGENT and a PATIENT. The patient in each of the sentences above is mentioned directly: olives. But who is the agent? As is shown by the following (not always natural sounding) paraphrases, in (1) and (3), Ingrid is understood to be the one buying olives and in (2) Fred is understood as the intended olive buyer

(1b) Ingrid tried to bring it about that she (= Ingrid) buys olives.
(2b) Ingrid pursuaded Fred that he (= Fred) buys olives.
(3b) Ingrid promised Fred that she (= Ingrid) buys olives.

Interestingly, even though a. there is an understood agent in each case and b. buy assigns the agent role to its subject, this subject cannot be expressed inside the infinitive. An attempt to add one, for instance as a pronoun leads to ungrammaticality:

(1c) * Ingrid tried [she to buy olives]
(2c) * Ingrid pursuaded Fred [he to buy olives]
(3c) * Ingrid promised Fred [she to buy olives]

As the examples above show, the understood subject of the infinitive is not always the same. That naturally raises the question of how the interpretation of the understood subject is determined.

A little thought shows that the understood subject of the infinitive is determined by the (meaning of) the upper verb. When one tries or promises to do something, then one does so for an action that one will perform oneself. On the other hand, when one persuades somebody to do something, it is the pursuaded person that is supposed to perform the action, not the pursuader. The phenomenon that we witness here is called Control. We say that try and promise make their subject control the infinitive, whereas pursuade makes its the object to control the infinitive.

These are the facts that we wish to capture in this unit. As always, we will need lexical entries and annotated phrase structure rules to accomplish that. Here are some guiding ideas to help you do that.

Guiding ideas

1. The infinitive marker to can be assumed to belong to part of speech I (for infinitive marker).
2. The infinitive buy is a new type of verb form for us. So far, all the verb forms that we encountered were tensed forms in the present and past tense, e.g. the third person singular present tense form buys or the non-third person singular present tense form buy, as in I buy olives, you buy olives, etc. Note that even though the non-third person singular tense forms and the infinitives of most verbs are homophonous (= are pronounced the same way), they must be kept distinct. They have different grammatical properteis and for some verbs, they are not homophonous. Note, for instance, I am, you are vs. to be!
3. To separate these finite and infinitival verb forms from each other, we introduce a new feature called VFORM', with the values FIN (= finite = tensed) and INF (= infinitive = non-tensed). There will eventually also be VFORM values for progressive verb forms like buying and participles like bought, but we will not deal with those here.
4. As always, when we introduce a new kind of argument (in this case the infinitive), we need to specify a grammatical function for it. For tensed subordinate clauses we chose the grammatical function COMP (= complement clause). For infinitival complements we postulate the grammatical function XCOMP. The X stands for the unexpressed subject inside the infinitive complement. 4. The most complex task is to encode the control behavior of the different verbs. We need statements to the effect that the subject (or object) of the higher verb controls (= is identical) to the subject of the XCOMP. For that, we need to add special equations to the lexical entries of control verbs, which are of the general form: 

(↑ GF) = (↑ XCOMP SUBJ);

where GF is either SUBJ or OBJ. In the first case we get: 

(↑ SUBJ) = (↑ XCOMP SUBJ);

This means, informally: my subject is identical to my XCOMP's SUBJ. In other words, this encodes subject control. Object control works the same. Remember to use the arrows from the XLFG editor rather than those from your keyboard!







In this unit, we will extend the grammar to license sentences with verbs like 'try' and 'seems' which have interesting properties.

Subject control: try

Notation:

In the exercises of this unit, we will have to implement Control: this means that a GF of the higher verb and the SUBJ of the higher verb's XCOMP are identical.

In XLFG, this is written as follows:

  • (↑SUBJ) = (↑XCOMP SUBJ); means: the SUBJ of the higher verb and the XCOMP's SUBJ are identical.
  • (↑OBJ) = (↑XCOMP SUBJ); means: the OBJ of the higher verb and the XCOMP's SUBJ are identical.

Exercise 9.1

  • Go to https://147.210.117.56.
  • On the basis of pages 102-103 in the textbook, make all the additions to the grammar that are necessary to yield the following outputs for sentence (1):

(1) Ingrid tried to buy olives.


Implement the following grammatical assumptions:

  • 'to' (the infinitive marker): assume that it is marked [IM:+].
  • 'buy': [VFORM:INF]

Make sure that your grammar makes the correct predictions for the sentences below:

(2) Ingrid buys olives
(3) *Ingrid tried buys olives


<__

Exercise 6.1 Infinitives

(4) Ingrid buys olives.
(5) Ingrid tried to buy olives
(6) * Ingrid tried buys olives
(7) Ingrid pursuaded Fred to buy olives
(8) * Ingrid pursuaded Fred bought olives
(9) Ingrid promised Fred to buy olives
(10) * Ingrid promised Fred buys olives
(11) * Ingrid tried she to buy olives
(12) * Ingrid pursuaded Fred he to buy olives
(13) * Ingrid promised Fred she to buy olives

Make sure that the following sentences come out to be ungrammatical:

(14) * Ingrid tried to rain
(15) * Ingrid persuaded Fred to rain
(16) * Ingrid promised Fred to rain

-->


Object control: persuade

try and seem are subject control (raising verbs), because the controller of the lower subject is the higher subject. But, objects can control as well. One verb where that is the case is persuade.

Exercise 9.3

Make all the changes to your current grammar so that it licenses the representations below:

(5) Ingrid persuaded Fred to buy olives.



Make sure that your grammar makes the correct predictions for the sentences below:

(2) Ingrid buys olives
(3) *Ingrid persuaded Fred buys olives





-->

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