Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-rnpqb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-26T03:05:51.289Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Testing two processing principles with respect to the extraction of elements out of complement clauses in English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2016

GÜNTER ROHDENBURG
GÜNTER ROHDENBURG*
Affiliation:
Department of English and American Studies, University of Paderborn, Warburger Strasse 100, 33098 Paderborn, Germanyrohdenburg@onlinehome.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The present article contrasts two processing principles, the Domain Minimization Principle (e.g. Hawkins 1999, 2004) and the Complexity Principle (e.g. Rohdenburg 1996, 2007b) in structures involving the extraction of postverbal elements out of (competing) complement clauses. The Domain Minimization Principle may be described as a processing tendency which consists in minimizing the size and complexity of various domains including the filler–gap domain in cases like the following: This is a problem (that) they had promised (that) they would tackle. By contrast, the Complexity Principle represents a correlation between processing complexity and grammatical explicitness. It stipulates that more explicit (and typically more bulky) constructional options are favoured in cognitively more complex environments.

This article deals with two sets of rival complements. The behaviour of the first group of clausal alternatives is in line with Hawkins’ prediction, though incompatible with the Complexity Principle. However, there is an even larger group of complement pairs whose distribution inside and outside extraction contexts is predicted by the Complexity Principle but unaccounted for by Domain Minimization. Thus, in extraction contexts, the visible effects of the two antagonistic principles are found with virtually complementary ranges of complement types. The article concludes by attempting to account for the kind of division of labour observed between the two principles under scrutiny. It will be suggested among other things that, in English, the marked infinitive (on its own or with an associated NP) enjoys a privileged or target status in extraction contexts.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 20 , Special Issue 3: Support strategies in language variation and change , November 2016 , pp. 463 - 486
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.)

References

Berlage, Eva. 2014. Noun phrase complexity in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, Arlene. 1973. A constraint on tough-movement. Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) 9, 34–43.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1979. The jingle theory of double -ing . In Allerton, David J., Carney, Edward & Holdcroft, David (eds.), Function and context in linguistic analysis: A festschrift for William Haas, 41–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Culicover, Peter W. 1999. Syntactic nuts: Hard cases, syntactic theory and language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. 2010. English -ing clauses and their problems: The structure of grammatical categories. Linguistics 48 (6), 1153–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. 2012. Spreading patterns: Diffusional change in the English system of complementation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fanego, Teresa. 1990. Finite complement clauses in Shakespeare's English, part 2. Studia Neophilologica 62 (2), 129–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fanego, Teresa. 2007. Drift and the development of sentential complements in British and American English from 1700 to the present day. In Pérez-Guerra, Javier, González-Alvarez, Dolores, Bueno-Alonso, Jorge L. & Rama-Martínez, Esperanca (eds.), ‘Of varying language and opposing creed’: New insights into Late Modern English, 161–235. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Fanego, Teresa. 2010. Variation in sentential complements in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English: A processing-based explanation. In Hickey, Raymond (ed.), Eighteenth-century English: Ideology and change, 200–20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 1999. Processing complexity and filler–gap dependencies across grammars. Language 75, 244–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 2004. Efficiency and complexity in grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horn, Laurence R. 1978. Some aspects of negation. In Greenberg, Joseph (ed.), Universals of Language, vol. IV, 127–210. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Joseph, Brian. 1980. Linguistic universals and syntactic change. Language 56, 345–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kjellmer, Göran. 1980. Accustomed to swim: Accustomed to swimming. On verbal forms after to . In Allwood, Jens & Ljung, Magnus (eds.), ALVAR: A linguistically varied assortment of readings. Studies presented to Alvar Ellegård on the occasion of his 60th birthday (= Stockholm Papers in English Language and Literature 1), 75–99. Stockholm: University of Stockholm.Google Scholar
Kjellmer, Göran. 2009. The revived subjunctive. In Rohdenburg, Günter & Schlüter, Julia (eds.), One language, two grammars? Differences between British and American English, 246–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lohse, Barbara, Hawkins, John A. & Wasow, Thomas. 2004. Processing domains in English verb–particle constructions. Language 80 (2), 238–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacWhinney, Brian, Pléh, Csaba & Bates, Elizabeth. 1985. The development of sentence interpretation in Hungarian. Cognitive Psychology 17, 178–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mair, Christian. 1990. Infinitival complement clauses in English: A study of syntax in discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mair, Christian. 1993. A cross-linguistic functional constraint on believe-type raising in English and selected other European languages. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 28, 5–19.Google Scholar
Mondorf, Britta. 2009. More support for more-support: The role of processing constraints on the choice between synthetic and analytic comparative forms. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pilch, Herbert. 1965. Comparative constructions in English. Language 41 (1), 37–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Postal, Paul. 1974. On raising. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph. 1957. Relative clauses in educated spoken English. English Studies 38, 97–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan. 1972. A grammar of contemporary English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Rissanen, Matti. 1991. On the history of that/zero as object clause links in English. In Aijmer, Karin & Altenberg, Bengt (eds.), English corpus linguistics: Studies in honour of Jan Svartvik, 272–89. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 1995. On the replacement of finite complement clauses by infinitives in English. English Studies 76 (4), 367–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 1996. Cognitive complexity and increased grammatical explicitness in English. Cognitive Linguistics 7 (2), 149–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2002. Processing complexity and the variable use of prepositions in English. In Cuyckens, Hubert & Radden, Günter (eds.), Perspectives on prepositions, 79–100. Tübingen: Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2003. Cognitive complexity and horror aequi as factors determining the use of interrogative clause linkers. In Rohdenburg & Mondorf (eds.), 205–49.Google Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2005. Establishing a clause embedding hierarchy for extractions in English. Paper presented at the University of Hamburg.Google Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2006a. Processing complexity and competing sentential variants in present-day English. In Kürschner, Wilfried & Rapp, Reinhard (eds.), Linguistik International: Festschrift für Heinrich Weber, 51–67. Lengerich: Pabst Science Publishers.Google Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2006b. The role of functional constraints in the evolution of the English complementation system. In Dalton-Puffer, Christiane, Kastovsky, Dieter, Ritt, Nikolaus & Schendl, Herbert (eds.), Syntax, style and grammatical norms: English from 1500-2000, 143–66. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2006c. Discrepancies between the rule formulations advanced by famous linguists and their own written usage. In Kötter, Markus, Traxel, Oliver & Gabel, Stephan (eds.), Investigating and facilitating language learning: Papers in honour of Lienhard Legenhausen, 47–63. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.Google Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2007a. Grammatical variation in English and the formation/confirmation of linguistic hypotheses by means of Internet data. In Hundt, Marianne, Biewer, Carolin & Nesselhauf, Nadja (eds.), Corpus linguistics and the Web, 191–209. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2007b. Functional constraints in syntactic change: The rise and fall of prepositional constructions in Early and Late Modern English. English Studies 88 (2), 217–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2013. The construction cannot help -ing and its rivals in Modern English. In Hasselgård, Hilde, Ebeling, Jarle & Oksefjell Ebeling, Signe (eds.), Corpus perspectives on patterns of lexis, 113–32. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2014. Relative clauses of reason in British and American English. American Speech 89 (3), 288–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2015. The embedded negation constraint and the choice between more or less explicit clausal structures in English. In Höglund, Mikko, Rickman, Paul, Rudanko, Juhani & Havu, Jukka (eds.), Perspectives on complementation: Theory, structure and variation, 101–27. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter & Schlüter, Julia. 2000. Determinanten grammatischer Variation im Früh- und Spätneuenglischen. Sprachwissenschaft 25 (4), 445–96.Google Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter & Mondorf, Britta (eds.). 2003. Determinants of grammatical variation in English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, John Robert. 1967. Constraints on variables in syntax. PhD thesis, MIT.Google Scholar
Ross, John Robert. 1974. Three batons for cognitive psychology. In Weimer, Walter B. & Palermo, David S. (eds.), Cognition and the symbolic processes, 63–124. Hillsdale, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Rudanko, Juhani. 1999. Diachronic studies of English complementation patterns: Eighteenth century evidence in tracing the development of verbs and adjectives selecting complement clauses. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Rudanko, Juhani. 2000. Corpora and complementation: Tracing sentential complements in English in recent centuries. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Rudanko, Juhani. 2010. Tracking and explaining variation and change in the grammar of American English: A case study with evidence from the TIME Corpus. In Lenker, Ursula, Huber, Judith & Mailhammer, Robert (eds.), English historical linguistics 2008, vol. I: The history of verbal and nominal constructions, 29–44. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szamosi, Michael. 1973. On the unity of subject raising. Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) 9, 652–8.Google Scholar
Vosberg, Uwe. 2003a. The role of extractions and horror aequi in the evolution of -ing complements in Modern English. In Rohdenburg & Mondorf (eds.), 305–27.Google Scholar
Vosberg, Uwe. 2003b. Cognitive complexity and the establishment of -ing constructions with retrospective verbs in Modern English. In Dossena, Marina & Jones, Charles (eds.), Insights into Late Modern English, 197–220. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Vosberg, Uwe. 2006. Die Große Komplementverschiebung: Außersemantische Einflüsse auf die Entwicklung satzwertiger Ergänzungen im Neuenglischen. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Warner, Anthony. 1982. Complementation in Middle English and the methodology of historical syntax. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Wasserman, Robert David. 1976. Theories of linguistic variation. PhD thesis, Indiana University.Google Scholar
Zipf, George K. 1935. The psycho-biology of language: An introduction to dynamic philology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar