Edited by Katerina Stathi, Elke Gehweiler and Ekkehard König
[Studies in Language Companion Series 119] 2010
► pp. 241–272
The notion of an implicit infinitive subject for non-finite clauses has increasingly shifted from the focus of syntactic research to that of semantics. The present study addresses some examples from Colloquial Singaporean English (CSE) in which subject control relations appear to be absent. It is questioned how a grammaticalisation account can explain the relation of subject control with subject selection in the complement, and further hypothesised that the controlled subject must be selected by the complement verb. Subject selection properties of the complement verb are thus determined by the level of grammaticalisation of the main verb. It is also found that topic-prominent information structure removes the need for semantic relations holding between the verb and subject for speakers of that dialect.