Null Complements: Licensed by Syntax or by Semantics- Pragmatics?
نویسندگان
چکیده
We argue that the semantics of a null complement spot in such sentences is given by a free variable, which may either occur free (so that the null complement is interpreted like a deictic) or bound (so that the reading of the whole utterance is quantificational). We also propose that the syntax is what one sees on the surface: there aren't empty categories which are complements to the verbs, and there isn't unpronounced ordinary syntactic material either. So, though the semantics is “as of” a free variable, we suggest that there is no “item” in the syntax which does this job. In this paper we focus on a different issue about null complements, namely what licenses them. The issue of licensing arises because not all verbs can take null complements: e.g., Joan locked, I consider and He vacated are quite bad. Indeed, not all verbs which allow null complements do so on every sense of the verb in question. Thus (1e) is okay in the sense of applied for a job, but not in the sense of applied the bandage; and (1f) is fine when know takes a proposition, but it's ungrammatical when it is knowing a person that is at issue. (If one finds homophony here – i.e., two different verbs that sound the same– one would put the point as follows: there can be two verbs which sound the same, and yet, even where those verbs have related meanings, the two may
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