Infinitival and Gerund-Participial Catenative Complement Constructions in English World-Wide
Previous research on non-finite catenative complementation (for example, <i>start</i> V<i>ing</i>/<i>to</i> V; <i>force</i> NP <i>into</i> V<i>ing</i>/<i>to</i> V) has largely been restricted to BrE and/or AmE. The p...
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2025-06-01
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| description | Previous research on non-finite catenative complementation (for example, <i>start</i> V<i>ing</i>/<i>to</i> V; <i>force</i> NP <i>into</i> V<i>ing</i>/<i>to</i> V) has largely been restricted to BrE and/or AmE. The present study seeks to expand the regional coverage of such research by analysing a set of catenative constructions in two large web-derived corpora, GloWbE and NOW, both of which comprise 20 subcorpora representing different national varieties of English. The implications of the findings for such diachronically relevant phenomena as colloquialisation and grammaticalisation are considered. For example, the dominance of bare infinitivals over <i>to</i> infinitivals with catenative <i>help</i> is suggestive of auxiliarisation, an interpretation supported by the semantically bleached sense of generalised causation associated with <i>help</i>, and historical evidence of support for the bare-infinitival variant in colloquial registers. Notable findings include American English epicentrality—and possibly hypercentrality—in many of the results, with Canadian English and Philippine English in particular sharing the American aversion to <i>from</i>-less “prevent NP Ving” and “help to V”; the occasional conservative tendency of the Outer Circle varieties to resist diachronic trends associated with the reference varieties (such as the rise of “fear Ving” at the expense of “fear to V”); and high scores for the African Englishes, suggested to be attributable to the popularity of “serial verb” constructions in a number of African languages. |
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| spelling | doaj-art-fe20ed62955b407e8b143e72a9d1d7fa2025-08-20T02:21:10ZengMDPI AGLanguages2226-471X2025-06-0110613410.3390/languages10060134Infinitival and Gerund-Participial Catenative Complement Constructions in English World-WidePeter Craig Collins0School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, AustraliaPrevious research on non-finite catenative complementation (for example, <i>start</i> V<i>ing</i>/<i>to</i> V; <i>force</i> NP <i>into</i> V<i>ing</i>/<i>to</i> V) has largely been restricted to BrE and/or AmE. The present study seeks to expand the regional coverage of such research by analysing a set of catenative constructions in two large web-derived corpora, GloWbE and NOW, both of which comprise 20 subcorpora representing different national varieties of English. The implications of the findings for such diachronically relevant phenomena as colloquialisation and grammaticalisation are considered. For example, the dominance of bare infinitivals over <i>to</i> infinitivals with catenative <i>help</i> is suggestive of auxiliarisation, an interpretation supported by the semantically bleached sense of generalised causation associated with <i>help</i>, and historical evidence of support for the bare-infinitival variant in colloquial registers. Notable findings include American English epicentrality—and possibly hypercentrality—in many of the results, with Canadian English and Philippine English in particular sharing the American aversion to <i>from</i>-less “prevent NP Ving” and “help to V”; the occasional conservative tendency of the Outer Circle varieties to resist diachronic trends associated with the reference varieties (such as the rise of “fear Ving” at the expense of “fear to V”); and high scores for the African Englishes, suggested to be attributable to the popularity of “serial verb” constructions in a number of African languages.https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/10/6/134catenative verbcomplementationnon-finite clausecorpus-basedWorld Englishes |
| spellingShingle | Peter Craig Collins Infinitival and Gerund-Participial Catenative Complement Constructions in English World-Wide Languages catenative verb complementation non-finite clause corpus-based World Englishes |
| title | Infinitival and Gerund-Participial Catenative Complement Constructions in English World-Wide |
| title_full | Infinitival and Gerund-Participial Catenative Complement Constructions in English World-Wide |
| title_fullStr | Infinitival and Gerund-Participial Catenative Complement Constructions in English World-Wide |
| title_full_unstemmed | Infinitival and Gerund-Participial Catenative Complement Constructions in English World-Wide |
| title_short | Infinitival and Gerund-Participial Catenative Complement Constructions in English World-Wide |
| title_sort | infinitival and gerund participial catenative complement constructions in english world wide |
| topic | catenative verb complementation non-finite clause corpus-based World Englishes |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/10/6/134 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT petercraigcollins infinitivalandgerundparticipialcatenativecomplementconstructionsinenglishworldwide |