Gerundive Complements in English : A Constraint-Based Analysis

Much attention has been paid to English verbal gerunds in generative grammar, but most of the studies dealt with the abstract 'functional' category empty categories, derivational deep structure analyses, and things like that, which all ignored the Lexical Integrity Prniciple in the sense of Pollard and Sag (1994), Sag and Wasow (1999), Bresnan and Mchombo (1995), and Sells (1995). Only recently, Malouf (2000) has presented a nonderivational, constraint-based lexicalist approach to verbal gerunds, in which he has provided a theory of mixed categories, proposing a new lexical category gerund in a multiple inheritance type hierarchy. And yet there are still some big gaps to be filled in the area of verb complementation involving verbal gerunds, what I call verbal complements. This paper is primarily an attempt to fill the gaps, and also an examination of the new category gerund.