Control in Grammar and Pragmatics: A Cross-Linguistic Study (review)

This monograph is the culmination of the author’s research on issues of control in infinitival complement clauses, a study begun nearly two decades ago (Rudolph Růžička, ‘Remarks on control’, Linguistic inquiry 14.309–24, 1983). R states that he intends the book in part as a complement to the articles in the volume Control and grammar (ed. by Richard K. Larson, Sabine Iatridou, Utpal Lahiri, and James Higginbotham, Dordrecht, Boston & London: Kluwer, 1992). Working within the framework of generative grammar, R seeks to clarify the factors that determine if a complement can be controlled. He provides a formal account of the syntactic and semantic properties of the clause that determine the choice of controller. His approach is similar to previous studies by other authors in that it places the issue within the context of lexical semantics (cf. Bernard Comrie, ‘Reflections on subject and object control’, Journal of Semantics 4.47–65, 1985); but it goes a step further in attempting to establish unifying constraints ‘shaped into conjunctions of feature specification values’ (1). R’s data come mainly from English, German, Russian, and Czech, and to a lesser extent from Italian, Polish, French, Dutch, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, and Spanish—languages displaying some notable differences in their expression of control in infinitival clause complements. The book is thus a comparative and typological study as well as an inquiry into a somewhat vexed facet of universal grammar.

The book contains eleven chapters. A brief introduction (Ch. 1) lays out the problem and lists the conclusions that will be reached by the end of the investigation. Ch. 2 discusses past studies upon which the present one builds, notably Manzini’s configurational theory (Maria R. Manzini, ‘On control and control theory’, Linguistic Inquiry 14.421–46, 1983) and Kayne’s binding approach (Richard S. Kayne, Connectedness and binary branching, Dordrecht: Foris, 1984). Ch. 3, ‘The theory outlined’, assembles semantic, pragmatic, and syntactic factors relevant in establishing a single principled basis for distinguishing between subject and object control verbs in typologically diverse languages. Ch. 4 analyzes the persuade subclass of main clause verbs; Ch. 5, the promise subclass. Ch. 6 discusses sentences such as John likes to praise/to be praised, where only a single possible controller is represented syntactically. Ch. 7 investigates reflexive clitic impersonal clauses in Slavic languages. Ch. 8 discusses control with verb and adjectival predicates of evaluational or attitudinal character. Ch. 9 discusses reciprocal constructions such as John and Mary persuaded each other to leave with regard to the ‘grain problem’. Ch. 10 provides a summary and conclusion, leaving open the final categorization of pro (the controlled element). Ch. 11, titled ‘Turning to the minimalist program’, explores how the facts presented might be accommodated in terms of a pro-less control theory. The book closes with a chapter-by-chapter list of endnotes, a bibliography, and a subject index.

This data-rich study should be of interest to both typologists and generative grammarians.