This multifactorial corpus-based study focuses on verb-complementation constructions (Marcus started to draw a picture vs. Marcus started drawing a picture) and contrasts 3,119 occurrences of gerundial and to-infinitival constructions across native and non-native (ESL) English varieties. Using logistic regression modeling, I analyze how grammatical contexts constrain the syntactic choices of American and Hong Kong English speakers. The regression model reveals a level of complexity in the uses of gerundial/to-infinitival complements that had so far remained unnoticed. Specifically, speakers make syntactic decisions based on comprehensive grammatical contexts rather than single isolated semantic parameters (as previously reported). Further, for the two types of speakers different grammatical features play an influential role in the association of a given predicate with a particular complement type. This suggests that the two speaker populations do not share the same abstract knowledge of the semantic and morpho-syntactic constraints associated with each of the investigated type of complementation. Ultimately, this study shows that combining cognitively oriented theoretical frameworks with rigorous empirical corpus approaches helps distinguish what motivates native and ESL speakers’ syntactic choices.
Arppe, Antti. 2008. Univariate, Bivariate and Multivariate Methods in Corpus-based Lexicography: A Study of Synonymy. Ph.D. dissertation. Publications of the Department of General Linguistics, University of Helsinki.
Baayen, R. Harald. 2008. Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics Using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Biber, Douglas, Susan Conrad & Randi Reppen. 1998. Corpus Linguistics: Investigating Language Structure and Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad & Edward Finegan. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.
Bolinger, Dwight. 1968. Entailment and the meaning of structures. Glossa 2 (2): 119–127.
Bourke, James Mannes. 2007. Verbal complementation: A pedagogical challenge. Reflections on English Language Teaching 6 (1): 35–50.
Bruthiaux, Paul. 2003. Squaring the circles: Issues in modeling English worldwide. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 13 (2): 159–178.
Burnham, Kenneth P. & David R. Anderson. 2004. Multimodel inference: Understanding AIC and BIC in model selection. Sociological Methods and Research 331: 261–304.
Crawley, Michael J. 2007. The R Book. Chichester, England: Wiley.
Croft, William. 2000. Explaining Language Change: An Evolutionary Approach. Harlow, Essex: Longman.
Declerck, Renaat. 1991. A Comprehensive Descriptive Grammar of English. Tokyo: Kaitakusha.
Deshors, Sandra C. 2012. A multifactorial study of the uses of may and can in French-English interlanguage. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Sussex.
Deshors, Sandra C. 2014b. Constructing meaning in L2 discourse: The case of modal verbs and sequential dependencies. In Subjectivity and Epistemicity: Stance Strategies in Discourse and Narration, Dylan Glynn & Mette Sjölin (eds.). Lund: Lund University Press, 329–348.
Deshors, Sandra C. 2015. A multifactorial approach to linguistic structure in L2 spoken and written registers. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 11 (1): 19–50.
De Smet, Hendrik. 2013. Spreading Patterns: Diffusional Change in the English System of Complementation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Divjak, Dagmar & Antti Arppe. 2013. Extracting prototypes from exemplars: What can corpus data tell us about concept representation?Cognitive Linguistics 24 (2): 221–274.
Ellis, Nick. C. 2008. Phraseology: The periphery and the heart of language. In Phraseology in Learning and Teaching, Fanny Meunier & Sylviane Granger (eds.). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1–13.
Ellis, Nick C. & Nuria Sagarra. 2011. Learned attention in adult language acquisition: A replication and generalization study and meta-analysis.Studies in Second Language Acquisition 33 (4): 589–624.
Field, Andy, Jeremy Miles & Zoë Field. 2012. Discover Statistics Using R. London: Sage.
Goldberg, Adele E. 2003. Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7 (5): 219–224.
Goldberg, Adele E. 2006. Constructions at Work. The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goldberg, Adele E. & Devin Casenhiser. 2006. English constructions. In Handbook of English Linguistics, Bas Aarts & April McMahon (eds.). Oxford: Blackwell, 343–358.
Greenbaum, Sidney. 1996. Comparing English Worldwide: The International Corpus of English. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Gries, Stefan Th. 2003. Multifactorial Analysis in Corpus Linguistics: A Study of Particle Placement. London and New York: Continuum.
Gries, Stefan Th. & Sandra C. Deshors. 2014. Using regressions to explore deviations between corpus data and a standard/target: Two suggestions. Corpora 9 (1): 109–136.
Kachru, Braj B. (ed.). 1982. The Other Tongue: English Across Cultures. University of Illinois Press: Urbana and Chicago.
Kaleta, Agnieszka. 2012. The English gerund vs. the to-infinitive: The case of aspectual constructions. Selected Papers from UK-CLA Meetings 11: 323–341. Available at <[URL]> (last accessed on 26 June 2014).
Langacker, Ronald. 2000. Grammar and Conceptualization. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Li, Eden & Ahmar Mahboob. 2012. English Today: Forms, Functions, and Uses. Hong Kong: Pearson Education.
McCarthy, Michael & Ronald Carter. 2001. Ten criteria for a spoken grammar. In New Perspectives on Grammar Teaching in Second Language Classrooms, Eli Hinkle & Sandra Fotos (eds.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 51–75.
Martinez-Garcia, Maria T. & Stefanie Wulff. 2012. Not wrong, yet not quite right: Spanish ESL students’ use of gerundial and infinitival complementation. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 22 (2): 225–244.
Nam, Christopher, Sach Mukherjee, Marco Schilk & Joybrato Mukherjee. 2013. Statistical analysis of varieties of English. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 1761: 777–793.
Noonan, Michael. 1985. Complementation. In Language Typology and Syntactic Description: Complex Constructions (vol. 21), Timothy Shopen (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 42–110.
R Development Core Team. 2010. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Foundation for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria. Available at <[URL]> (last accessed on 19 December 2014).
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2003. Cognitive complexity and horror aequi as factors determining the use of interrogative clause linkers in English. In Determinants of Grammatical Variation in English, Günter Rohdenburg & Britta Mondorf (eds.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 205–250.
Schilk, Marco, Tobias Bernaisch & Joybrato Mukherjee. 2012. Mapping unity and diversity in South Asian English lexicogrammar. In Mapping Unity and Diversity World-wide: Corpus-based Studies of New Englishes, Marianne Hundt & Ulrike Gut (eds.). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 137–166.
Schilk, Marco, Joybrato Mukherjee, Christopher Nam & Sach Mukherjee. 2013. Complementation of ditransitive verbs in South Asian Englishes: A multifactorial analysis. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 9 (2): 187–225.
Smith, Michael B. & Joyce Escobedo. 2002. The semantics of to-infinitival vs. -ing verb complement constructions in English. In Proceedings from the Main Session in the Chicago Linguistics Society’s Thirty-Seventh Meeting, Mary Andronis, Christopher Ball, Heidi Elston & Sylvain Neuvel (eds.). Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, 549–564.
2023. Corpus-Based Lexical Development of EFL Writing. In Proceedings of the 2022 International Conference on Diversified Education and Social Development (DESD 2022), ► pp. 53 ff.
2021. Substrate Language Influence in Postcolonial Asian Englishes and the Role of Transfer in the Complementation System. English Studies 102:8 ► pp. 1151 ff.
Romasanta, Raquel P.
2023. A morphosyntactic approach to language contact in African varieties of English. Studia Neophilologica 95:1 ► pp. 146 ff.
García‐Castro, Laura
2020. Finite and non‐finite complement clauses in postcolonial Englishes. World Englishes 39:3 ► pp. 411 ff.
Kaunisto, Mark & Juhani Rudanko
2019. Conclusion. In Variation in Non-finite Constructions in English, ► pp. 131 ff.
Kaunisto, Mark & Juhani Rudanko
2019. New Light on -Ing Complements of Prevent, with Recent Data from Large Corpora. In Variation in Non-finite Constructions in English, ► pp. 105 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 august 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.