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  • Mandatives:Lessons on raising/control diagnostics
  • Michael Barrie and Christine Pittman

1. Introduction

At first blush, mandative infinitival constructions (1) in English (Quirk and Greenbaum 1973) take on the appearance of control constructions based on traditional raising/control diagnostics.

(1)

  1. a. Mary ordered John to peel the grapes.

  2. b. John commanded Mary to wash the star fruit.

  3. c. Mary obliged John to slice the papaya.

  4. d. Mary permitted John to core the apple.

There are a number of important differences between mandatives and control predicates. First, unlike most control predicates, mandatives do not allow a partial control reading (Wurmbrand 2001:241, 247).

(2)

  1. a. John ordered Mary to go to the opera (*together).

  2. b. Susan obliged Fred to *meet/*gather/wait in the lobby.

This is surprising since mandatives do not fit neatly in Landau's (2000) class of control verbs that do not allow partial control, namely modals, aspectuals, and implicatives, which take so-called tenseless infinitives.

We employ a variety of traditional diagnostics (mostly derived from Perlmutter and Soames 1978) to show that the mandatives instead pattern with raising-to-object verbs. Crucially for the analysis we lay out, the subject of the embedded clause is not θ-marked by the matrix verb. However, we argue that these predicates have an additional requirement. This usually leads to the interpretation of an implicit (pragmatically determined) goal of mandation (i.e., an orderee). This goal of mandation is often equivalent to the embedded subject (thus the appearance of control) but is not necessarily the embedded subject, as we illustrate below. [End Page 131]

The remainder of the squib is organized as follows. Section 2 argues that mandatives such as order, command, and oblige are raising-to-object predicates. Section 3 presents a suggestion for the argument structure of mandatives. Section 4 is a brief conclusion.

2. Mandatives Are Raising-To-Object Verbs

This section examines the standard diagnostics for raising versus control showing that they give mixed results for mandatives. We argue that the requirement that mandatives have an implicit goal of mandation interferes with some of the standard tests. Once these interfering factors are controlled for, the diagnostics clearly show these predicates to be raising verbs.

2.1 Non-thematic subjects

Mandatives are usually thought to pattern with control verbs and not with raising-to-object verbs in terms of their ability to occur with non-thematic subjects. The following examples show that weather-it is not permitted in control constructions, but is permitted in raising constructions, respectively.

(3)*John persuaded it to snow.

(4) John expected it to snow.

On the surface, mandatives seem to pattern with control (3) and not with raising-to-object (4).

(5)*John ordered/commanded/required/permitted it to snow.

However, non-thematic there shows a different pattern. Again, expletives are not permitted with control constructions but are available in raising constructions.

(6)*John persuaded there to be fruit available at the reception.

(7) John expected there to be fruit available at the reception.

(8) John ordered/required/commanded/permitted there to be fruit available at the reception.

Example (8) shows that the expletive there is available to mandatives. The following examples were found on various websites using Google.1 Similar data can easily be found with other mandative verbs.

(9) There is no known evidence however that Arnold Palmer (the "King") ordered there to be any harm done to him.

(imademymark.blogspot.com/2005/04/tiger-woods-is-god.html)

(10) In the 5th century Bishop Memertus of Vienne ordered there to be processions of prayer on these days . . .

(nottinghamchurches.org/seasons/pentecost.htm)

(11) The local Commissar had ordered there to be no fraternising with the British . . .

(www.war-experience.org/collections/sea/alliedbrit/gsmith/default.asp) [End Page 132]

(12) When President Nixon, in a secret memo later made public by NBC, ordered there to be no federal grand jury into the shootings at Kent State . . .

(www.may4archive.org/plainview.shtml)

(13) . . . and so the local landowner ordered there to be a disputation.

(www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/royte.html)

The question now is why (5) is ungrammatical. The proposal that mandatives contain an obligatory and implicit goal of mandation...

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