Simultaneous Amalgamation - Computational Linguistics and Talking Robots - page 165

8.6.7 Persuade CLASS INFINITIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

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

Object control means that it is the object Mary who sleeps, in contrast to the
examples in 8.5.1, in which it is the subject John.
While Mary is the indirect object in 8.6.5, it is the direct object in 8.6.7. This
leaves the second arg position in the matrix verb to the infinitive. 24

8.6.8 D EFINITION OF persuade CLASS INFINITIVES
noun: δ
fnc: α

⎡
⎣

⎤
⎦

verb: α
arg: γβδ

verb: β
fnc: α
arg: δ X

Mary to sleep persuade (examples of matching contents, for illustration only)
where α {advise, allow, appoint, ask, beg, choose, convince, encourage, expect, forbid, force, invite,
need, permit, persuade, select, teach, tell, urge, want, would like}.
Selectional constellations :[omitted]
As shown by the respective restrictions on the variable

, the number of verbs
in the persuade class is substantially higher than that in the promise class
(8.6.6). 25
The schema matches the elementary signatures N

α

\ V (indirect object) and

V (infinitive). The first noun pattern matches the direct object, e.g., Mary .
Its core value, represented by

\

V

δ , appears in the third arg slot of the matrix verb

α , thus coding object control.

In conclusion let us compare the DBS graph analysis of a persuade and a
promise class infinitive content construction:

and in the first arg slot of the infinitive β

8.6.9 O BJECTCONTROLIN John persuaded Mary to read a book.

(i) semantic relations graph (SRG) (iii) numbered arcs graph (NAG)

persuade

persuade

8

5 4

3

1

read read

6 7

2

John book Mary John book Mary

24 Given that persuade class constructions do not allow replacing the infinitive by a nominal object, it
does not necessarily follow that the infinitive in a persuade class construction must function as the
indirect object of the matrix verb. In German, for example, there are three-place verbs like lehren
(teach) which take two objects in the accusative (which would correspond to two direct objects in
English).
25 Comrie's (1986) claim that subject and object control are also determined by pragmatic factors may
be accommodated by non-disjunct restriction sets on the variable α in various class definitions.