Symmetric Reciprocal Semantics as a Predictor of Partial Control

1 Introduction

Wilkinson (1971) and Lawler (1972) originally observed the phenomenon of partial control (PC). Descriptively, PC refers to situations in which the reference of PRO must include that of an overt argument in the matrix clause, but is not exhaustively determined by that argument. The effects of PC are best observed in sentences like (1a), which contain an infinitival whose predicate is unambiguously collective (i.e., one that requires, rather than just allows, its subject to denote a plural entity; cf. (1b)).

(1)

a. Claire_j wanted [PRO_j+ to meet at 6:00/PRO_j+ to kiss in the kitchen].

b. The lovers/*Claire met/kissed in the kitchen.

Most of the research on PC has focused on the (semantic) properties of those matrix predicates that license the phenomenon (see, e.g., Landau 2000, White and Grano 2013 for a survey and experimental data, as well as Pearson 2016). One notable exception to this trend is provided by Sheehan (2012, 2014), who observes that PC in European Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, and French displays a selective availability based on what kind of collective predicate appears in the embedded infinitival containing PRO.¹ Specifically, she points out that the descriptive generalization in (2) seems to hold.

(2) PC readings arise in Romance only with those embedded collective predicates that can take an overt comitative argument.

Thus, French se réunir 'meet/gather' can take an overt comitative argument but s'embrasser 'kiss/hug' cannot, and, as a result, only the former can occur in a PC infinitival.²

(3)

(4)

Since the generalization in (2) does not seem to apply to English (see the English glosses in (4)), Sheehan calls examples like (3b) instances of ''fake PC'' and argues that this distinct phenomenon arises indirectly from a silent comitative phrase present in the infinitival complement (as Hornstein (2003) and others have proposed is the case in all languages). Landau (2016a) convincingly shows, however, that Sheehan's analysis of PC in Romance is untenable by pointing out that elements syntactically and/or semantically associated with overt comitatives are systematically unavailable with PC complements. For example, while an adverb like séparément 'separately' can modify an overt comitative (5a), it fails to occur in those PC complements alleged to have a null comitative structure (5b).

(5)

We add to Landau's arguments one of our own, one that is based on the observation, due to Dimitriadis (2004), that the semantics of simple reciprocals enriched with a comitative phrase (also called discontinuous reciprocals) is more specific (or expressive) than that of their corresponding simple reciprocals. Consider in this respect the paradigm in (6).

(6)

As Dimitriadis points out, a sentence like (6a) describes a quarreling event involving Eric, Nadine, and someone else with no specification as to who was in conflict with whom. The interpretation of the discontinuous reciprocal construction in (6b), on the other hand, is more specific in that it expresses a reciprocal relation between pairs consisting of one participant (possibly plural) taken from the denotation of the subject and another participant taken from the denotation of the comitative phrase. Thus, (6b) is either about a disagreement involving Eric and Nadine versus someone else, or about two separate conflicts, one involving Eric versus someone else and another involving Nadine versus that someone else. Consider next the sentence in (7) on the PC reading symbolized by the indices.

(7)

On the assumption that (7) contains a null comitative phrase, we expect the interpretation of that sentence to be akin to that of (6b) in that it should involve pairs whose first member corresponds to the denotation of the controller (i.e., Eric and Nadine) and whose second member corresponds to the denotation of the null comitative. This expectation is not fulfilled, however. Indeed, the PC reading associated with (7) can only be paraphrased as follows: Eric and Nadine remember that there was a quarreling event involving Eric, Nadine, and some other unspecified individual(s) with no specification as to who was in conflict with whom. The fact...