A constructional account of English small and nonfinite clauses

• Published in: Linguistic research Vol. 37; no. 3; pp. 389 - 438
• Main Authors: Kim, Jong-Bok, Chaves, Rui P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Seoul Kyung Hee Institute for the Study of Language and Information 01.12.2020; 언어정보연구소
• Subjects: English language; Families & family life; Grammar; Head-driven phrase structure grammar; Noun phrases; Small clauses; Syntactic structures; Syntax; 언어학
• ISSN: 1229-1374
• DOI: 10.17250/khisli.37.3.202012.002

The proper treatment of so-called Small Clauses (SQ including nonfinite clauses has been rather controversial in theories of English grammar. There are arguments for - as well as arguments against - the postulation of SCs, and multiple analytical alternatives thereof. Drawing from Pollard and Sag (1994) and Culicover and Jackendoff (2005), we argue that only a small set of English verbs allow SC complements, and that there is a large family of constructions where [NP Predicate] sequences form a constituent. We depart from the latter, however, in including in this set of constructions gerundive phrases, absolute constructions, and - most notably - subject-auxiliary inversion constructions and SCs. We formalize a general account of these families of constructions in HPSG (Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar).