Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:22:22.571Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Effects of discourse on control1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2016

VIKKI JANKE  and
LAURA R. BAILEY
VIKKI JANKE*
Affiliation:
University of Kent
LAURA R. BAILEY*
Affiliation:
University of Kent
*
Author’s address: Department of English Language and Linguistics, Rutherford College, School of European Culture and Languages, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NX, UKv.janke@kent.ac.uk
Author’s address: l.r.bailey@kent.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examined discourse effects on obligatory and non-obligatory control interpretations. Seventy participants undertook three online forced-choice surveys, which monitored preferred interpretations in complement control, verbal gerund subject control, long-distance control and sentence-final temporal adjunct control. Survey 1 ascertained their baseline interpretations of the empty category in these constructions. Survey 2 primed the critical sentences used in survey 1 with a weakly established topic of discourse and survey 3 primed them with a strongly established one. Reference assignment in complement control remained consistent across all three conditions, illustrating that pragmatics does not infiltrate this structurally regulated and syntactically unambiguous construction. Changes in interpretation were found in the remaining three constructions. An accessibility-motivated scale of influence, combining three independent discourse factors (topichood, competition and linear distance) was created to model reference determination in verbal gerund subject control and long-distance control. The results for temporal adjunct control are novel. They revealed a much stronger susceptibility to pragmatic interference than that reported in the literature yet the construction behaved differently from non-obligatory control under discourse pressure. We propose a structural account for sentence-final temporal adjunct control, which permits the evident interpretation shift while still excluding arbitrary and sentence-external interpretations.

Keywords

controldiscourseEnglishreference assignmentsyntax
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , 01 August 2017 , pp. 533 - 565
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[1]

We are particularly indebted to the 70 participants who were patient enough to fill in three questionnaires. For generous comments on a first draft, we thank Marco Tamburelli and are also grateful for subsequent comments from or conversations with Annabel Cormack, Cécile De Cat, Anders Holmberg, Ad Neeleman, Michelle Sheehan and Neil Smith. We also profited from Christina Kim’s and Tamara Rathcke’s stats advice. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the constructive and detailed comments from three anonymous Journal of Linguistics referees.

References

Adler, Alison. 2006 Syntax and discourse in the acquisition of adjunct control. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Ariel, Mira. 1988. Referring and accessibility. Journal of Linguistics 24, 65–87.Google Scholar
Ariel, Mira. 2001. Accessibility theory: An overview. In Sanders, Ted, Schliperoord, Joost & Spooren, Wilbert (eds.), Text representation (Human Cognitive Processing Series), 29–87. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Ariel, Mira. 2004. Accessibility marking: Discourse functions, discourse profiles and processing cues. Discourse Processes 37, 91–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bader, Markus & Häussler, Jana. 2010. Toward a model of grammaticality judgements. Journal of Linguistics 46, 273–330.Google Scholar
Bailey, Laura R. 2011. Null subjects in spoken North-East English. Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics 17, 23–45.Google Scholar
Bhatt, Rajesh & Izvorski, Roumyana. 1998. Genericity, implicit arguments and control. Presented at SCIL (Student Conference in Linguistics) VII. Available at ftp://ling.upenn.edu/studentpapers/bhatt/PROarb.ps (accessed 19 August 2016).Google Scholar
Bhatt, Rajesh & Pancheva, Roumyana. 2006. Implicit arguments. In Everaert, Martin & van Riemsdijk, Henk (eds.), Blackwell companion to syntax, vol. II, 554–584. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan. 1982. Control and complementation. Linguistic Inquiry 13, 343–434.Google Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle & Corrigan, Karen. 2011. How to make intuitions succeed: Testing methods for analyzing syntactic microvariation. In Maguire, Warren & McMahon, April (eds.), Analysing variation in English, 30–48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen Sherman, Janet & Lust, Barbara. 1993. Children are in control. Cognition 43, 1–51.Google Scholar
D’Elia, Samuel. 2016. The spray-load and dative alternation: Aligning VP structure and contextual effects. Ph.D. thesis, University of Kent.Google Scholar
Duffley, Patrick. 2014. Reclaiming control as a semantic and pragmatic phenomenon. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Erteschik-Shir, Nomi. 1993. The dynamics of focus structure. Ms., Ben Gurion University of the Negev.Google Scholar
Gibson, Edward. 2000. The dependency locality theory: A distance-based theory of linguistic complexity. In Miyashita, Yasushi, Marantz, Alec & O’Neil, Wayne (eds.), Image, language, brain, 95–126. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Givón, T.(ed.). 1983. Topic continuity in discourse: A quantitative cross-language study (Typological Studies in Language 3). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodluck, Helen. 1981. Children’s grammar of complement–subject interpretation. In Tavakolian, Susan L. (ed.), Language acquisition and linguistic theory, 139–166. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Guasti, Maria. 2004. Language acquisition: The growth of grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hornstein, Norbert. 2001. Move! A minimalist theory of construal. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Huettner, Alison K.1989. Adjunct infinitives in English. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Janke, Vikki. 2007. Control without PRO. Ph.D. thesis, University College London.Google Scholar
Janke, Vikki. 2008. Control without a subject. Lingua 118, 82–118.Google Scholar
Janke, Vikki. 2013. The distribution of non-obligatory control and its + human interpretation. In Kolokonte, Marina & Janke, Vikki (eds.), Interfaces in language 3, 121–157. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Janke, Vikki. Forthcoming. Pragmatic leads and null subjects: When children consult leads and when they do not. In Jennifer Scott & Deborah Waughtal (eds.), BUCLD 40: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Janke, Vikki & Neeleman, Ad. 2012. Ascending and descending VPs in English. Linguistic Inquiry 43, 151–190.Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1996. Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus and the mental representations of discourse referents (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 71). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Landau, Idan. 2000. Elements of control: Structure and meaning in infinitival constructions. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landau, Idan. 2013. Control in generative grammar: A research companion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Larson, Richard K. 1991. Promise and the theory of control. Linguistic Inquiry 22.1, 103–139.Google Scholar
Larson, Richard K. 2004. Sentence-final adverbs and ‘scope’. In Wolf, Matthew & Moulton, Keir (eds.), Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth North-Eastern Linguistic Society (NELS 34), 23–43. University of Massachusetts, Amherst: GLSA.Google Scholar
Lewis, Richard & Vasishth, Shravan. 2005. An activation-based model of sentence processing as skilled memory retrieval. Cognitive Science 29, 375–419.Google Scholar
Lust, Barbara, Solan, Larry, Flynn, Suzanne, Cross, Catherine & Schuetz, Elaine. 1986. A comparison of null and pronoun anaphora in first language acquisition. In Lust (ed.), 245–277.Google Scholar
Lust, Barbara(ed.). 1986. Studies in the acquisition of anaphora, vol. 1: Defining the constraints. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Manzini, Rita. 1983. On control and control theory. Linguistic Inquiry 14, 421–446.Google Scholar
Manzini, Rita & Roussou, Anna. 2000. A minimalist theory of A-movement and control. Lingua 110, 409–447.Google Scholar
Martin, Roger. 1996. A minimalist theory of PRO and control. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut.Google Scholar
Neeleman, Ad, Titov, Elena, van de Koot, Hans & Vermeulen, Reiko. 2009. A syntactic typology of topic, focus and contrast. In van Craenenbroeck, Jeroen (ed.), Alternatives to cartography (Studies in Generative Grammar), 15–52. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Petter, Marga. 1998. Getting PRO under control (LOT International Series 8). The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.Google Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya. 1981. Pragmatics and linguistics: An analysis of sentence topics. Philosophica 27, 53–94.Google Scholar
Samek-Lodovici, Vieri. 1996. Constraints on subjects: An optimality theoretic analysis. Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University.Google Scholar
Strawson, Peter F. 1964. Identifying reference and truth values. Theoria 30, 96–118.Google Scholar
Vallduví, Enric. 1992. The informational component. New York & London: Garland.Google Scholar
Williams, Edwin. 1980. Predication. Linguistic Inquiry 11, 203–238.Google Scholar
Williams, Edwin. 1994. Thematic structure in syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar