A new angle on infinitival and of -ing complements of afraid, with evidence
from the TIME Corpus
This article argues that an approach based on semantic roles offers a new approach to the variation between to infinitival and of -ing complements of the adjective afraid. While the semantic role of the higher subject does not appear to vary, control theory makes it possible to investigate the semantic role of the lower subject. No absolute rules can be given, but regularities that are of statistical significance can be observed. The study draws on the first three decades of the TIME Corpus for authentic data. The results shed light on the semantic interpretation of to infinitival and -ing complements in subject control constructions and open a new perspective on the relevance of semantic roles to argument selection.
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Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
Duffley, Patrick & Ryan Fisher
2021.
To‐Infinitive and Gerund‐Participle Clauses with the Verbs Dread and Fear.
Studia Linguistica 75:1
► pp. 72 ff.
Ruohonen, Juho & Juhani Rudanko
2019.
Comparing explanatory principles of complement selection statistically: a case study based on Canadian English.
Studia Neophilologica 91:3
► pp. 296 ff.
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