Abstract
The present chapter discusses the occurrence of covert NP objects in object control structures with the matrix verb warn. The existence of such structures is at odds with Bach’s Generalization, which effectively states that the NP object in an object control structure may not be omitted. Evidence from COHA and the Hansard Corpus is introduced and discussed, to shed new light on the apparent exceptions to the Generalization. The frequency of the construction is tracked over the course of the past two centuries in both American and British English, and the nature of the covert NP object is also examined. The question is examined on the basis of corpus data, and the question is also raised as to whether the interpretation of the understood NP might shed light on the use of the covert pattern, understood as a construction in American and British English.
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Notes
- 1.
Landau (2013, 178–179) is among the studies that question the status of Bach’s Generalization. In support of her position, Landau notes that while the verbs convince, persuade, and urge do not permit the controller of PRO to be omitted—or to be implicit—in object control constructions, which is in accordance with Bach’s Generalization , these verbs do not permit the direct object to be implicit in non-control constructions either, since for instance *We urged to a moral life is ill-formed, alongside of the well-formed We urged him to a moral life. She takes this to mean that the lack of omissibility of direct objects is a “lexical property of the verbs […] independent of control” (2013, 178–179). An appeal to lexical properties is possible, but Bach’s Generalization still seems useful for a number of reasons. First, it sheds light on the behavior of verbs of the type of lead, as was noted in the text. Second, while verbs such as urge subcategorize for sentential complements with object control and for relevant non-sentential complements of the type pointed out by Landau , with the direct object not omissible in either type, there are other verbs, including teach and instruct, which also subcategorize for sentential complements with object control, but do not easily permit relevant non-sentential complements. (It may be worth noting that the verb teach is used by Bresnan (1982, 418) to illustrate Bach’s Generalization .) For instance, while Jonas had taught her to play chess… (COCA , 2010, FIC) is good, a non-sentential complement of the type *Jonas had taught her to chess is not. Nevertheless, the omission of the object is disallowed in the object control construction: *Jonas had taught to play chess. This is explained by Bach’s Generalization. More broadly, Bach’s Generalization is useful because it privileges the task of comparing control and non-control constructions and their implicit objects and invites further work on the nature of such implicit objects.
- 2.
The searches for COHA were conducted in May 2012. The limitation to nine words to the right arises because this is the maximum context range permitted in COHA.
- 3.
While almost all the relevant tokens were retrieved using the primary search string, the secondary search string did uncover two additional tokens.
- 4.
Again almost all tokens were retrieved using the primary search string, and the secondary search string retrieved only four additional tokens.
- 5.
Under the same heading “Unexpressed human object” Huddleston and Pullum also refer to a class of verbs, including please, that “appear more readily in intransitives when the situation is habitual or unactualized,” noting a contrast between He never fails to please and ?His behavior at lunch pleased (Huddleston and Pullum 2002, 303 ). Warn is not in the please class, and the focus here is on the nature of the understood object with warn, but a comment may be inserted on the concepts proposed for that class. A habitual situation may be seen as contrasting with a one-off situation or event and an unactualized event may be contrasted with an actualized situation or event. The actualized versus unactualized contrast and the role it may play in the case of warn may be related to a distinction under the label of “mode,” as outlined in Hopper and Thompson (1980, 252) in their discussion of transitivity:
Mode: This refers to the distinction between “realis” and “irrealis” encoding of events. An action which either did not occur, or which is presented as occurring in a non-real (contingent) world, is obviously less effective than one whose occurrence is actually asserted as corresponding directly with a real event.
The relevant sense of warn is “to give (a person) cautionary notice or advice with regard to actions or conduct; to caution against neglect of duty or against wrong or mistaken action or belief” (OED , warn, v.1, sense 4.a; constructions with against under 4.b), and it follows from this meaning that the content of the lower clause may often be unactualized. However, in the construction with warn the omission of the object, while a feature of reduced transitivity, is in the higher clause, and for this reason it may be inappropriate to link it to the reduced transitivity of the lower clause.
As for the contrast between habitual and one-off situations or events, consider sentence (i).
(i)
The Health Department sent out 0,000 [sic] placards yesterday warning against spitting, to be displayed in cars, public buildings, and other places where all may read.
(COHA, 1920, NEWS)
The warning in (i) should be understood as a warning not only against a habit of spitting but even against a single act of spitting. The -ing form has sometimes been associated—in other constructions in English grammar—with “regular activity” (Allerton 1988, 21), a term which seems akin to the notion of habitual action or activity, but sentence (i) shows that in the covert object control construction it also permits a one-off interpretation. Similar one-off interpretations often appear to be possible in other tokens of covert control, as in (11a–b) in the text.
- 6.
The possibility of less general and more specific interpretations of covert objects in the covert control construction with warn was also illustrated in Rudanko (2001). One of the illustrations in that source is the following, from the Washington Post:
(i)
They thought that they, rather than reform-minded administrators, ought to be the judge of what best inspired their students. Many critics warn against adhering too closely to any formula.
(Washington Post, April 3, 1994, cited in Rudanko 2001, 137–138)
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Rickman, P., Rudanko, J. (2018). Null Objects and Sentential Complements, with Evidence from the Corpus of Historical American English and Hansard. In: Corpus-Based Studies on Non-Finite Complements in Recent English. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72989-3_5
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