A Selectional Theory of Adjunct Control

by Idan Landau

Overview

A novel, systematic theory of adjunct control, explaining how and why adjuncts shift between obligatory and nonobligatory control.

Control in adjuncts involves a complex interaction of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, which so far has resisted systematic analysis. In this book, Idan Landau offers the first comprehensive account of adjunct control. Extending the framework developed in his earlier book, A Two-Tiered Theory of Control, Landau analyzes ten different types of adjuncts and shows that they fall into two categories: those displaying strict obligatory control (OC) and those alternating between OC and nonobligatory control (NOC). He explains how and why adjuncts shift between OC and NOC, unifying their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties.

Landau shows that the split between the two types of adjuncts reflects a fundamental distinction in the semantic type of the adjunct: property (OC) or proposition (NOC), a distinction independently detectable by the adjunct's tolerance to a lexical subject. After presenting a fully compositional account of controlled adjuncts, Landau tests and confirms the specific configurational predictions for each type of adjunct. He describes the interplay between OC and NOC in terms of general principles of competition—both within the grammar and outside of it, in the pragmatics and in the processing module—shedding new light on classical puzzles in the acquisition of adjunct control by children. Along the way, he addresses a range of empirical phenomena, including implicit arguments, event control, logophoricity, and topicality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262542852
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	10/19/2021
Series:	Linguistic Inquiry Monographs
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

Idan Landau is Professor of Linguistics at Ben Gurion University and the author of A Two-Tiered Theory of Control (MIT Press).

Table of Contents

Series Foreword vii
Preface ix
1 Introduction 1
2 Capturing the Fundamental Cut: Predicative vs. Propositional Adjuncts 15
3 OC vs. NOC 21
4 Strict OC Adjuncts 31
5 OC/NOC Adjuncts 39
6 A Compositional Analysis 53
7 Hierarchical Consequences for VP-Targeting Tests 71
8 A Strict NOC Adjunct? 85
9 Summary: Meeting the Empirical Challenges 89
10 Against Binary Configurational Alternatives 93
11 Ever-Growing NOC 105
12 Revisiting the Acquisition Data 135
13 Deriving the Default Status of Predicative Control 159
14 Broader Implications and Open Questions 173
15 Conclusion 205
Notes 209
References 227
Index 245

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“An extremely valuable contribution to our current understanding of control into adjunct clauses in English, with clear implications for future cross-linguistic research in this area.” 
—Lisa A. Reed, Professor of French and Linguistics, The Pennsylvania State University
 
“This book is a welcome contribution to a topic that is important to theories of syntax and semantics but has received scant attention: adjunct control. And while the topic is specific, the scope and scholarship are broad. This will be a useful and impressive book.”
—Alexander Williams, Professor in the Departments of Linguistics and Philosophy, University of Maryland
 
“This monograph provides us with a much-needed comprehensive overview of the complex phenomenon of control into adjunct clauses. Its contribution is therefore both invaluable and without competitors.”
—Marc Authier, Professor of French and Linguistics, The Pennsylvania State University