Re: Raising and Equi-verbs: a birds eye overview

On Tuesday, April 6, 2004, at 11:49 PM, And Rosta wrote:

> Ray:
> [...]
>> I've followed the terms up in Crystal as well. I just want to see if got
>> things straight. If I haven't, I would appreciate correction from the
>> professional linguists on this list.
>
> You have things straight.
Thanks - nice to have that confirmed.

[snip]
>> Therefore, it seems to me, the validity of these terms must be dependent
>> upon the validity of the transformational grammar theory and, in
>> particular, on the validity of GB theory.
>
> A sensible notion, but in fact the terms are used as general descriptive
> labels by all stripes of formal grammar. The groundwork for the formal
> study of syntax was laid in the 1960s by people working in TG, so
> their terminology has stuck around, even though their analyses often
> haven't.
Fair enough.

>  'Raising' and 'Equi' date from the 60s. 'Control' dates
> from (I hazard) the late 70s.
'control' does appear to be related to GB theory, but it's got to a better
term than 'equi'! Would the other alternative 'catenative' be more neutral?

>> The distinction between control-verbs and raising-verbs does not, in any
>> case, seem to me to be so clear cut as one or two have suggested.
[snip]

> The distinction is very clear-cut, but as I have pointed out in
> earlier messages, it is a semantic distinction. In English, and
> perhaps in Latin, the evidence for a purely syntactic distinction
> between them is scanty at best,
The syntactic evidence in Latin seems to even scantier. Both raising &
control verbs seem to have a fondness for the same accusative and
infinitive construction.

> but if you hold, as most syntactic
> theory holds, that it is syntax that builds up the semantic
> structure of the sentence (particularly with regard to matching
> predicates to their arguments, i.e. the syntagmatic dimension
> of semantics), then the distinction is perforce syntactic.
But there's the rub. The evidence for syntactic distinction is, as you say,
  "scanty at best" in English and seems to be almost non-existent in
Classical Latin. Do natlangs in fact provide clear evidence from their
syntagmatic relations for this distinction?

I must refresh myself with the ancient Greek structures. They were not
content with just accusative & infinitive, which they certainly used; they
also had:
- nominative and infinitive;
- accusative and participle;
- nominative and participle.

Perhaps there is some correspondence with raising & control verbs in these
different usages (or maybe their distribution will muddy the waters
further). I will report back (probably _after_ Easter).

Ray
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