This study addresses both the practical question of what forms of complementation
are found with verbs expressing the notion of choice in English and the
theoretical question of explaining the control and temporal effects found with
these verbs. The explanation proposed is based on an approach in which syntax is
taken to be driven by semantics. Semantics is defined in terms of the
meaning-content associated with the linguistic forms occurring in the
constructions examined, namely the to-infinitive, the
gerund-participle, and the lexical content of the different verbs of choice
themselves, together with the semantic value of the complement’s function
with respect to the main verb. Although it does not utilize a corpus in the
strict sense of the word, nor employ statistical argumentation, the study is
based mainly on an examination of attested usage in Canadian English as
reflected by Canadian websites accessed in the fall of 2006.