Talk:Control (linguistics)

GB hard to understand
The GB passage needs to be much clearer. It is pretty much gibberish to a normal person. What are the terms marked here in bold?


 * In GB framework the above-mentioned sentence is analysed as follows:


 * He tried [CP PRO to do that]


 * The existence of PRO (Spec-IP in the embedded clause) is supported by the Extended Projection Principle, which says that all clauses must have a subject. The main characteristic feature of PRO is that it must be ungoverned (The PRO Theorem). In terms of features it is [+anaphor, +pronominal]. That is why such sentences as *I expect [John to meet PRO] are ungrammatical because PRO would be theta-governed by the verb.

--Jirka6 12:28, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree. But "a normal person" is very unlikely ro read an article on control verbs. :)Russky1802 17:54, 31 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I disagree. (1) I am interested in it, but I know mostly HPSG or Dependency Grammar; I know only basics of the GB technology. (2) In many countries, syntax is taught at schools. Say, in my native Czechia, at elementary school, we were taught that her in ''He.nom

(ii) informally it is a pronoun (which formally is captured by saying it is +pronominal). Not really; it has a set of features [+anaphor, +pronominal]. So it behaves like a simple (personal) pronoun (he, they; hence +pronominal) and like a reflexive pronoun (himself, themselves; hence +anaphor). PRO has this set of features because sometimes it must look for an antecedent for its interpretation like anaphors, with which it will be coindexed (as in "Harryi should try PROi to work harder"), sometimes not (like pronominals, as in "PRO to leave now would be impolite"). The existence of PRO is postulated because of the Extended Projection Principle (EPP), which says that all clauses must have a subject.

(iii) it is not phonologically realized. No, it's not. PRO by definition is a null element.

However, this is the traditional GB approach. In 1990s it was reanalyzed in terms of Minimalist Syntax (Chomsky, Lasnik et al. claim that PRO doesn't exist at all). But I recommend you to study GB at first and don't bother about Minimalism at the moment, otherwise you get confused.Russky1802 03:04, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

In my native Russia GB is not popular at all and very few people know it.Russky1802 03:08, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Great, thanks. Could you say something like this in the main article? --Jirka6 04:11, 1 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Or maybe in a separate article about empty category theory in GB (which is needed for passivization, wh-movement, pro-drop, etc.) The stuff about [±a,±p] is already mentioned in Binding (linguistics) (but not applied to the inventory of empty categories). Something that really is missing from this article is a (historical) discussion of "Equi NP deletion". CapnPrep 04:42, 1 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Shouldn't the image have +pst (it is tried)

Oops. you're right. I'll try to change it.Russky1802 18:53, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Move out of GB?
Can I move the expletive test out of GB section into a general discussion? It is not GB specific. The same distinction is made in HPSG and other theories (the only GB specific thing is that a rasing is called ECM). There are other tests as well (passive). --Jirka6 00:09, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

OK. Russky1802 02:32, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Mistake in the examples
I don't have much experience with Wikipedia, but I found a major mistake in this article (at the bottom of the page); could someone please correct it?

       want: a verb taking a CP complement         I wanted [CP John to read the book]

In the above sentence, the NP John is without case, as I[infinite] fails to assign case and V 'wanted' cannot assign case with the CP as a barrier. Here, 'want' has to be an ECM verb, meaning that it takes an IP complement. There you see that it is highly problematical to categorize verbs as 'ECM-verbs', as they sometimes do assign exceptional case, and sometimes they don't, as in 'I wanted [CP PRO to go]' and 'I wanted [IP him to go]', which are both grammatical.

I'd be most thankful if this could be corrected :) Sarah.johanna (talk) 14:30, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Dubious grammar in example
"Susan promised us to help" sounds very strange to me. (I speak BrE.) You can "promise to help", or "promise us that you'll help", but not "promise + PRONOUN + INFINITIVE", surely? I searched in Google Books for "promised us to help" and found only one match, the author being one Anup Pandey; that suggests an Indian writer, and Indian English is rather non-standard. Equinox (talk) 23:46, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Clarifying Control vs. Auxilliary verbs
Showing a bunch of examples where an auxilliary and a control verb both fit grammatically didn't exactly do much to show me that "the two verb types are quite different." I went and did some more reading on sematic selection, and what I think I'm getting is that auxilliaries don't select for the subject as control verbs do, but (assuming I'm understanding that correctly), this article could probably get that across much more easily by showing counter-examples as well. Something like: a. Sam will go. - will is an auxiliary verb. "The bus will return" is also grammatical. b. Sam yearns to go. - yearns is a subject control verb. "The bus yearns to return" is ungrammatical. a. Jim has to do it. - has to is a modal auxiliary verb. "The pasta has to cook" is also grammatical. b. Jim refuses to do it. - refuses is a subject control verb. "The pasta refuses to cook" is ungrammatical. a. Jill would lie and cheat. - would is a modal auxiliary. "The stars would glimmer" is also grammatical. b. Jill attempted to lie and cheat. - attempted is a subject control verb. "The stars attempted to glimmer" is ungrammatical.

I'm a complete amateur in this field, so I'd rather not make that edit until someone more qualified can double-check that it actually makes sense, but I think it would make a nice addition assuming it does. (Addendum: there's probably a better way to format all that for concision, and it might be nice to include examples where animacy isn't seemingly the only category being selected for, but none come to mind.) Renaissance Jack (talk) 23:25, 26 December 2021 (UTC)