Abstract
Noting that the adjective ashamed selects both to infinitive and of -ing complements, this chapter investigates the relevance of the Choice Principle to complement selection in the case of this adjective. The principle was introduced in Chap. 2 to separate to infinitive and gerundial complements, and it is based on a distinction in the semantic interpretation of the two types of sentential complements. The principle is applied to large bodies of data from the Corpus of Historical American English and from the Corpus of Contemporary American English. It is argued that the principle is a factor with a significant impact on the complement selection properties of the adjective ashamed. More broadly, the principle also serves to shed light on the semantic interpretation of to infinitive and gerundial complements in recent English.
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Notes
- 1.
At a symposium on complementation in Tampere, Finland, in October 2015 Mikko Höglund presented a paper on the adjective ashamed, and there is some overlap between the content of that presentation and the present chapter. In spite of the overlap, it is appropriate to note that the present author drafted this chapter in this book quite independently of, and prior to, Dr. Höglund’s work. Further, the focus of the present chapter is more clearly on the Choice Principle than was the case in Dr. Höglund’s presentation.
- 2.
In this connection it is also of interest to note Duffley’s view that a gerund “evokes the event as a whole” (Duffley 2000, 225).
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Rudanko, J. (2017). The Semantics of to Infinitives and of -ing Complements: A Case Study on the Adjective Ashamed . In: Infinitives and Gerunds in Recent English . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46313-1_4
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