Simultaneous Amalgamation - Computational Linguistics and Talking Robots - page 163

Grammatically, accident is a direct object of the matrix verb saw , yet at the
level of content it serves as the subject of the infinitive verb happen -whichin
turn functions as the real object of the matrix verb. As far as the surface order
is concerned, the post-nominative rule for the position of the verb in English
(cf. FoCL'99, Chap. 17), i.e. accident happen(ed) , seems to win over its
other role as the object of the matrix clause, i.e., saw happen .
The resulting discrepancy between the grammatical appearance and the con-
tent construction resembles that of gapping (Sects. 9.5, 9.6): both construc-
tions occur in many natural languages 19 with strong native speaker intuitions,
but are rarely used. 20
Each of the content constructions listed in 8.6.1 may consist of several
classes. In the remainder of this section, we will consider different classes
for infinitives as object. For example, in addition to including the try class
discussed in Sects. 8.4 and 8.5, infinitives as object include the appear class.
It resembles the try class defined in 8.5.2 in that it consists of concepts corre-
sponding to transitive matrix verbs which take an infinitive as object. It differs,
however, in that appear class matrix verbs do not allow nouns as objects. 21

8.6.3 Appear CLASS INFINITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

1. nominal object: * John appeared a cookie.
2. one-place infinitive object: John appeared to sleep.
. . . (as in 8.5.1)

The illustrated properties may be formalized as the following schema:

8.6.4 D EFINITION OF appear CLASS INFINITIVES

verb \ verb
⎡
⎣

⎤
⎦

verb: α
arg: γβ

verb: β
fnc: α
arg: γ X

to sleep appear (examples of matching proplets for illustration only)
where α {agree, appear, be able, seem, tend}
Selectional constellations :[omitted]

19 The English bare infinitive corresponds to the Latin AcI, though with fewer selectional constellations.
20 Thanks to T. Proisl for determining that 0.2% of the sentences in the BNC contain a bare infinitive.
21 Exceptions are illustrated by examples like John appeared five times (frequency) and John ap-
peared on the scene (locality). These nominal and prepositional objects are adverbial in character
and illustrate once more the importance of recording and utilizing selectional constellations for each
content word, based on a large RMD corpus (Reference Monitor corpus with Domain structure; cf.
Sect. 12.2).