7.464, Sum: "MUST"
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LINGUIST List: Vol-7-464. Tue Mar 26 1996. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 368
Subject: 7.464, Sum: "MUST"
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1)
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1996 15:00:40 CST
From: edith at csd.uwm.edu (Edith A Moravcsik)
Subject: "MUST"
---------------------------------Messages------------------------------------
1)
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1996 15:00:40 CST
From: edith at csd.uwm.edu (Edith A Moravcsik)
Subject: "MUST"
On February 6, l996, I posted the following query on LINGUIST:
*** Of the three sentences below, why is 1. ungrammatical but 2.
and 3. grammatical?
l. *The books sell well (in order) to raise money.
2. The books must sell well (in order) to raise money.
3. It is necessary that the books sell well (in order) to
raise money. ***
Sentence 1. was taken from an exercise in Liliane Haegeman's
textbook _Introduction to government and binding theory_ (1994
(second edition), Blackwell's, page 79). The fact that 2. was
grammatical in spite of its minimal difference from 1. had been
pointed out to me by William Bellin.
Many thanks to the following 32 persons who responded:
David Baxter
Bill Bennett
Ginny Brennan
Wayles Brown
Annabel Cormack
Peter Daniels
Suzette Haden Elgin
Joseph Foster
Frank Gladney
Ted Harding
Michael Hegarty
Richard Ingham
Roumyana Izvorski
Graham Katz
Marion Kee
Luuk Lagerwerf
Donna Lillian
Waruno Mahdi
Mark Mandel
Kate McCreight
Michael Niv
Ellen Prince
David Powers
Diego Quesada
J. Reinhardt
Larry Rosenwald
Marilyn Silva
Wilbert Spooren (through Luuk Lagerwerf)
Jack Wiedrick
Debbie Ziegeler
Magdalena Zoeppritz
and a linguist who wished to remain anonymous.
Below is a brief summary of the responses, structured as
follows:
l. Well-formedness judgments
2. Proposed explanations
3. Additional data with comments
4. Literature
l. WELL-FORMEDNESS JUDGMENTS
The well-formedness judgments that I submitted were as follows:
(numbers refer to sentence numbers):
*1. 2. 3.
The following comments and alternative judgments were reported:
a/ 1. 2. 3. (by a speaker of Ozark English who is also
fluent in American Midwestern English; however,
for another Ozark speaker, 1. was ill-formed)
b/ ?1. 2. 3. (this speaker said she could get a reading for
1. where an implicit animate agent was present)
c/ *1. 2. 3. (if 2. contains no "in order") but
*1. *2. 3. (if 2. does contain "in order")
d/ *1. 2. 3. (if 2. has the epistemic "must") but
*1. *2. 3. (if 2. has the non-epistemic "must")
e/ *1. ?2. *3. (2. is better if "for us" and "enough (money)"
are added)
f/ *1. *2. *3. (by a speaker of Canadian (Southern Ontario)
English and by a speaker of American English who
said several others also agreed with him)
2. PROPOSED EXPLANATIONS
The general consensus was that 1. was ill-formed not for
syntactic but for semantic reasons. Two alternative semantic
conflicts were proposed as the cause:
a/ One of the conditions under which an infinitival purpose
clause can occur in a well-formed sentence is if the main
clause contains a goal-directed action verb and, as a
consequence, an intentional agent which is then understood as
the subject of the purposive infinitive. In 1., this condition
is not met: the main clause is about a non-goal-directed action
("sell" in its middle use) and an unintentional agent ("the
books").
b/ Another possible function of an infinitival purpose
clause is to restrict a modal operator, such as "must", saying
something like 'If the books are to raise money, they must sell
well.' But in 1. there is no modal operator for the purpose
clause to restrict.
2. in turn is well-formed (even though it differs from 1. only
by the added "must") for the following alternative reasons:
A/ The "must" of 2. implies intention: it implies an
assessment of the situation on behalf of the speaker and it
presupposes that the speaker (or the hearer) is responsible for
the selling of the books. Putting it differently; "must"
is associated with an implicit external argument; by
introducing the perspective of the speaker it suggests the
meaning 'I find it very important that these books sell well if
they are to raise money.' Thus, with "must", the sentence
fulfils the condition mentioned in a/ above.
B/ 2. is well-formed because there is a modal which the
purpose clause can serve to restrict. 2. therefore fulfils
the second condition, mentioned in b/ above.
C/ The "must"-containing main clause in 2. expresses a
precondition for the event referred to in the purpose clause.
Thus, 2. means something like 'If the books sell well, money
will be raised.'.
3. ADDITIONAL DATA WITH COMMENTS
4. *This car drives smoothly (in order) to increase
sales/prevent accidents/ prevent mechanical damage...
Ill-formed for the same reason as 1.
5. a/ ?Max wounds easily (in order) to come across as a
sensitive guy.
b/ *Max wounds easily (in order) to help him make stronger.
5.a/ is OK if Max "is the orchestrator of a series of public
events where he is seen to be easily wounded" since in this
case there is an intentional agent and goal-directed
activity. 5.b/ is ill-formed because the agent of the
purpose clause is different from Max.
6. a/ *John must be a murderer (in order) to explain these
facts.
b/ John must be a murderer (in order) to ensure that Brenda
gets away. /said in a context where a plan is being
hatched to kill somebody/
c/ John must register before tomorrow (in order) to take
classes this semester.
d/ *Rock conducts heat (in order) to maintain its chemical
structure.
e/ John runs fast (in order) to increase his heart rate.
These sentences illustrate that regularly occurring events
(as in 1.) as well as deductions (6.a/) and natural laws
(6.d/) fall outside the domain of intentionality.
7. a/ Eggs are broken (in order) to make omelettes.
b/ The ship was sold to collect insurance.
c/ The books were sold (in order) to raise money.
These sentences are well-formed even though they are very
similar to ill-formed 1. The reason is that the passive
verbs in the main clause imply an intentional agent, which
then is interpreted as the subject of the infinitival
purpose clause. A middle verb in the main clause (as in 1.)
does not similarly imply an intentional agent. The general
point is that control is determined by thematic relations
and not by grammatical relations.
8. The covers must be attractive (in order) for the book to
sell well.
This sentence shows that "must" does not (always) supply an
animate agent for the purpose clause; in this instance it
does not since the purpose clause has an explicit non-
animate subject!
9. a/ The staff work well (in order) to raise money.
b/ The engine runs hot (in order) to save fuel.
9.a/ is well-formed even though it is similar to 1. because
the main clause includes an intentional agent. 9.b/ is also
well-formed because it is implied that the engine was
designed by somebody to run hot and this person is
understood as the subject of the purpose infinitive. It is
possible to design a car to run hot but less possible to
design books to sell well.
10. a/ *The books were sold without reading them.
b/ The books can be sold without reading them.
c/ *The books might have been sold without reading them.
d/ ?The books might sell well in order to raise money.
e/ *The books may sell well in order to raise money,
Non-epistemic modals other than "must" can also save a
sentence like 10.a/ from ill-formedness. 10.a/ is ill-formed
since, because of the attachment site of the adjunct, the
external argument of the passive cannot be a controller of
the PRO of the infinitive. 10.c/, d/, and e/ are ill-formed
because the modals are epistemic.
11. a/ *The boat sank in order to raise money.
b/ The boat must sink in order to raise money.
c/ It is necessary that the boat sink in order to raise
money.
d/ *The rock rolled down the hill in order to raise money.
e/ The rock must roll down the hill in order to raise money.
11.a/ and 11.d/ show that not only middle verbs but other
kinds of semantically non-agentive predicates exhibit the same
pattern.
12. The Dutch translations of sentences 1.-3. are associated with
the same well-formedness judgments as their English
equivalents:
a/ *Deze boeken verkopen goed om geld op te brengen.
b/ Deze boeken moeten goed verkopen om geld op to brengen.
c/ Het is noodzakelijk dat deze boeken goed verkopen om
geld op to brengen.
13. a/ The girl works hard (in order) to raise money.
b/ *The girl works well (in order) to raise money.
c/ *The girl functions well (in order) to raise money.
d/ *The solution works well (in order) to raise money.
e/ The girl is diligent (in order) to raise money.
These sentences show that the subject of the main clause has
to be something that may carry motivation and that engages
in a goal-directed activity.
14. The animals sell well (in order) to raise money.
This sentence is ill-formed in isolation since animals
cannot intend to raise money. But in an appropriate context,
where animals can be construed as having intentions, the
sentence becomes well-formed. Suppose a pet store owner is
complaining about the indifference of the people in town
and their unwillingness to buy pets. The animals in the
store overhear this and make a point of acting cute and
frisky in order to attract passsers-by. In this context, one
can say "The animals were selling well to raise money for
the owner."
15. a/ *The book is a best-seller to raise money.
b/ These bagels cut easily to allow for quick buttering.
c/ The sleeves are long to show the cuffs under a jacket.
d/ The boat was sunk to collect the insurance.
e/ *The boat got sunk to collect the insurance.
All of these sentences show if an agent is inferrable in the
main clause, the purpose clause is appropriately added and
the whole sentence is well-formed.
16. Our subway doors close slowly (in order) to minimize the
chances of injury. /said by company representative in sales
pitch to city officials/
This is syntactically like 1. but it is well-formed since it
is possible for the listener to find a sentient agent
involved whose presence justifies the purpose clause.
17. a/ The books are being sold to raise money.
b/ The books must be sold to raise (the/some/enough...)
money.
c/ ?It is necessary that the books be sold to raise money.
These are true-passive variants of 1.-3. Once again, true
passives involve an implied agent which makes them
well-formed.
4. LITERATURE /given as cited in the responses; only a few
additional data have been supplied by me)
Carlson, 1989.
Fox, Denny. /a paper on passives and on the _by_- phrase/
Gross, Derek. /unpublished CLS paper/
Hale, Kenneth and Samuel J. Kayser. 1993. "On argument
structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations".
In: K. Hale and S. J. Kayser, ed., _The view from building 20_,
53-109. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Hegarty, Michael. l989 or later. WECOL 2.
Jones, Charles. l985. /dissertation on syntax/ University of
Massachusetts.
Kehler. l995. _Interpreting cohesive forms in the context of
discourse inference._ Harvard University Dissertation.
Kratzer, Angelica. 1986.
Kratzer, Angelica. 1991. "Modality". In A. von Stechow, D.
Wunderlich (ed.), _Semantics: an international handbook of
contemporary research_. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Lagerwerf, Luuk. 1995. "The implication of Dutch 'hoevel'
(although)" _Proceedings of the Third ISSA Conference on
Argumentation_, volume 3.
Lascarides and Asher. 1991. "Discourse relations and
defeasable knowledge". _Proceedings of the Association of
Computational Linguistics_.
Minkoff, Seth. /MIT dissertation from a couple of years ago/
MIT WPL.
Mishigauchi. l994. /article/ _Language_.
Sanders, Jose. 1994. _Perspectives in narrative discourse_.
Tilburg University Dissertation.
Schlesinger, I.M. 1988. "The origin of relational
categories." In Y. Levy, I.M. Schlesinger, and M.D.S. Braine
(ed.), _Categories and processes in language acquisition_.
121-178. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
Williams, E. 1985. "PRO and Subject of NP" _Natural Language
and Linguistic Theory_, 3.
Williams, E. 1987. "Implicit arguments, the Binding Theory,
and Control". _Natural Language and Linguistic Theory_, 5.
************************************************************************
Edith A. Moravcsik
Department of Linguistics
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
USA
E-mail: edith at csd.uwm.edu
Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
(414) 332-0141 /home/
Fax: (414) 229-6258
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