英语动词不定式用作补语的语义研究

摘要

The area of English infinitive construction constitutes one of the greatestchallenges to a theory of syntax based on semantic foundations．An enormousamount of work has already been done in that area，much of it by some of theleading scholars in modem linguistics．But the intensive research which has beendone to date cannot really be said tO have been satisfactorily accounted for．Thisbeing SO，we seem to have reached a stage when anybody who wishes seriously toadvance the view that syntax has semantic foundations simply must meet thechallenge of English complementation.The goal of this paper is to find the deepsemantic meaning of the infinitive as complement clause. In this paper，first，I analyze the semantic meaning of infinitive marker T0.Ithink the marker TO can't be perceived as the mere marker，on the contrary，it has itsown meaning in infinitive construction.Then I analyze the semantic meaning of TOinfinitive or Full infinitive．I argue that TO infinitive as complement clause has themeaning of“wanting”．Besides．it indicates the speaker's opinion and emotion.ThenI make systematic comparison and contrast between the bare infinitive TO and fullinfinitive TO in their full range of uses in English．In my paper I also analyze thebare infinitive in passive voice．At last，I try to give semantic analysis of FOR TOstructure．I think the meanings of TO structure and FOR TO structure are different．The difference exists in that FOR TO complements are“habitual”，and less confident．Another obvious difference between TO and FOR is the core：ferential andnoncoreferential subjects of each complement clause．In order to make the analysisclear,I also mention another coreferential structure related to TO，that is OF TOstructure．OF TO is a little different from FOR TO in that OF TO pattem is used inevaluating a person and an act at the same time；while FOR TO pattem is used forevaluating an act，rather than an act and a person.Key words：full infinitive，bare infinitive，FOR TO construction

目录

英文文摘

Acknowledgements

1.Introduction

1.1 Why this paper?

1.2 Layout of the thesis

2.Literature review

2.1 What is language and grammar

2.2 Theories about infinitives as complement clauses

3Semantic analysis of full infinitives as complement clauses

3.1 Infinitive

3.2 Semantic analysis of TO infinitives

4 Semantic analysis of bare infinitives as complement clauses

4.1 The meaning denoted by bare infinitives

4.2 The differences between bare infinitives and full infinitives

5 Semantic analysis of FOR TO as complement clause

5.1 FOR TO in emotion sentences

5.2 FOR TO and confidence

5.3 FOR TO and evaluation

5.4 FOR TO and intellectual judgment

6 Corpus-based study of FOR TO and OF TO

6.1 Word processing and statistical software and techniques used in this thesis

6.2 Results and discussions of FOR TO and OF TO

7 Conclusion

Bibliography