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Non-canonical Control in a Cross-linguistic Perspective
Edited by Anne Mucha, Jutta M. Hartmann and Beata Trawiński
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 270] 2021
► pp. 197–222

Event control

 | University of Stuttgart
 | NTNU Trondheim
In this paper, we argue that a set of small clause adjuncts involves a control relation with the event in the main clause functioning as controller – we call this instance of control event control. First, we clarify the empirical picture by looking at data from German, Norwegian, and English. Second, we show that event control is obligatory control and therefore suggest that it should be syntactically licensed in the same way. Our theoretical account is based on ideas by Whelpton (1995, 2002), Lohndal (2014), Fischer (2018), and Høyem (2018, 2019), and we ultimately propose that event control is syntactically licensed under upward Agree with underspecified PRO as probe and a Davidsonian event argument in the main clause as goal.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Empirical evidence
    • 2.1Scope: Negation, co-occurrence, coordination
    • 2.2Binding effects
    • 2.3Event control is obligatory control
  • 3.Theoretical approach
    • 3.1Basic assumptions of the hybrid theory of control (HTC)
    • 3.2Event control: Technical implementation
      • 3.2.1Licensing of PROe in VP adjuncts (= type B, C, D adjuncts)
      • 3.2.2Licensing of PROe in CP adjuncts (= type A adjuncts)
    • 3.3Multiple agree
    • 3.4On the distinction between standard PRO and PROe
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 17 September 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.270.07fis
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Fischer, Silke & Inghild Flaate Høyem
2022. Adjunct control in German, Norwegian, and English. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 25:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

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