Download as a PDF

point and counterpoint
The sequencing of
verbal-complement structures
Walter Petrovitz
In this section we present contrasting views on a topic of current interest.
The first article is one that has been reviewed by the editorial panel and
acccepted for publication; the second is a commissioned response, to
which the author of the original article is invited to make a brief reply.
Reactions from readers are particularly sought, either in the form of a
letter to the Editor, or as a brief article (no more than 1,250 words), which
will be considered for publication in the normal way.
Gerunds and infinitives are among the most diªcult topics to teach, and a
continuing source of errors even among advanced learners. Treated as merely
structural variants, these forms are usually grouped into a single grammar unit
filled with di¤ering syntactic specifications and long lists of verbs grouped
according to their complement type. Significant grammatical distinctions
between gerunds and infinitives, as well as pedagogical considerations, suggest
that they should be separated and taught at di¤erent points in a grammar
syllabus. This article presents a concise review of the linguistic evidence
concerning important di¤erences between gerunds and infinitives, and makes
recommendations on the sequencing of these topics within a course of
instruction.
Introduction
There are a number of reasons for the diªculties students encounter
with regard to gerunds and infinitives. First, these forms seem to
contradict what they have learnt about English verb morphology. The
formal presentation of gerunds and infinitives is normally begun once
students have some degree of familiarity with the comparatively more
principled system of finite verbs. Suddenly their attention is drawn to
participles without auxiliaries, and to verb forms inflected neither for the
person and number of their subjects nor consistently for the temporal
context. Second, infinitive and gerund constructions possess, to varying
degrees, some of the characteristics of clauses, making their relationship
to the larger sentence sometimes diªcult to comprehend. Third, the
choice of either gerund or infinitive is presented as a largely arbitrary
matter.
172
ELT Journal Volume 55/2 April 2001 © Oxford University Press
articles
welcome
The common practice in ELT is to introduce infinitives and gerunds at
the same time in a single unit of instruction, as reflected in most
grammar texts (see, for example, Azar 1989, Eastwood 1994, Murphy
1994). Although certain general properties of these forms will be
discussed, the present study will focus on the heart of the diªculty with
this topic, and the most frequent source of student error: the use of the
simple gerund (i.e. lacking an expressed independent subject) and
infinitive complements of verbs. The claim will be made here that
gerunds and infinitives di¤er significantly enough to deserve distinct
pedagogical treatment. Certain similarities between modals and
infinitive-complement verbs will be considered, and an alternative
sequence of presentation suggested.
‘I’ve got a little list!’
In more ways than one, an instructor teaching gerunds and infinitives
may feel like Gilbert and Sullivan’s Lord High Executioner, and students
justifiably yearn to be set ‘from scholastic trammels free’ upon seeing in
their grammar texts the disheartening pages of verbs, all organized on
the basis of whether they are followed by a gerund or an infinitive.
Memorization, even if possible, would be of little value for spontaneous
language use, and these enumerations are not entirely satisfactory even
as reference material, since, despite its length, the list of gerundcomplement verbs is never really complete. It is doubtful, for example,
that any summary of such verbs has ever contained any of the main verbs
found in 1:
1 a The coach criticized drinking beer before the game.
b The law encourages conserving natural resources.
c We can’t defend building such a monstrosity.
The demands made by such a large amount of material would be bad
enough, but defensible if the forms in question represented a uniform
grammatical phenomenon. There is ample reason to believe, however,
that this is not the case.
Di¤erences between
gerunds and
infinitives
Although they are usually grouped together in textbooks because of the
grammatical functions they purportedly share, infinitives and gerunds
di¤er considerably even here. For example, infinitives are relatively rare
in subject position and cannot serve as the objects of prepositions, while
gerunds are commonly found in these syntactic environments. (For a
detailed discussion of these and other distinctions, see Emonds 1972,
Quirk et al. 1972, and Horn 1975.) More important, however, than the
syntactic di¤erences, at least with regard to the sequencing of these
structures within the syllabus, are the lexical and semantic distinctions,
which will be discussed in the following sections.
Productivity
As illustrated in 1, gerund complements can easily be found with verbs
that are not on any of the standard lists, which are deceiving in the way
they are presented. While it would appear from grammar texts that verbs
taking gerund complements are approximately equal in number to those
taking infinitive complements, the former are far more numerous, and
have never been exhaustively tallied. Even the lengthy, and supposedly
comprehensive, gerund-complement verb list in Householder (1964) is
The sequencing of verbal-complement structures
articles
173
welcome
incomplete. The reason for this is that gerunds possess the distributional
properties of noun phrases, and may therefore be used with any
semantically compatible transitive verbs, except those which are reserved
exclusively for the infinitive. In contrast, the infinitive-complement
structure is no longer productive in English because it is associated with
a fixed set of verbs to which none may be added.
Thus, aside from being a dull and time-consuming task, marching
students through various lists of verbs may cause them to form incorrect
hypotheses about the grammar of English: either that once the lists are
mastered, every occurrence of infinitive and gerund complements will be
accounted for, or that for every verb they encounter they will have to learn
the complement type. Clearly, a more reasonable approach would be to
adopt the same strategy followed with other non-productive forms, such
as irregular verbs, namely to focus attention on them, and simply
indicate that the productive forms are to be used elsewhere.
Aspect
The analysis presented in Bolinger (1968) broadly associates gerunds
and infinitives with a perfect, and a hypothetical or future aspect
respectively (Bolinger uses the terms reification vs. hypothesis or
potentiality). This di¤erence is most tangible with those verbs that may
take either complement:
2 a Bill should remember closing the window.
b Bill should remember to close the window.
Of course, the aspect is relative to the tense of the main verb: whenever
the remembering occurs, the closing is anterior in the case of the gerund,
and posterior in the case of the infinitive. While not every verb taking
either complement evidences such a clear-cut distinction (e.g. start and
try), it is never the case that the anterior meaning is associated with the
simple infinitive. See Bolinger for a more complete discussion.
Although gerunds and infinitives both have perfective forms, CelceMurcia and Larsen-Freeman (1983) note that these forms are not
semantically equivalent. The perfective forms of infinitives are
consistently distinct in aspect from their non-perfective counterparts, as
illustrated in 3:
3 a *He claims to work for a bank before taking his present job.
b He claims to have worked for a bank before taking his present job.
There is, however, no consistent corresponding di¤erence between simple
and perfective forms of gerunds, as shown by the synonymy of 4a and 4b:
4 a He doesn’t remember working for a bank before taking his
present job.
b He doesn’t remember having worked for a bank before taking his
present job.
Here again, presenting the perfective forms of gerunds and infinitives
together gives the impression that these forms are equivalent. Placing
infinitives earlier in the syllabus, on the other hand, and more closely
following the presentation of perfective finite verbs, would gain from the
advantage of having the basic concepts fresh in the students’ minds.
174
Walter Petrovitz
articles
welcome
Postponing gerunds to a place in the syllabus closer to dependent finite
clauses would also make greater sense, since here as well, aspectual
distinctions are sometimes erased, as shown in the synonymy of 5a and 5b:
5 a We should wait until the police arrive.
b We should wait until the police have arrived.
Understood subjects
Another area in which infinitives di¤er from gerunds involves the
understood subjects of these verbs. Horn (1975) noted that the
unexpressed subjects of gerund complements need not be same as the
subject of the sentence. Thus, in 6a, the subject of the gerund is
interpreted to be the same as the subject of the main verb, but in 6b there
is no such identity of reference:
6 a Robin tried soliciting money from the students.
b Robin denounced soliciting money from the students.
In contrast, the understood subject of a bare infinitive complement must
be the same as that of the main verb:
7 Robin tried/decided/threatened to solicit money from the students.
Once again, placing gerunds and infinitives within the same unit implies
a semantic parallelism that is simply not there.
The comparison with We see, then, that there are essential di¤erences between gerunds and
modal auxiliaries
infinitives in terms both of their syntactic distribution and their semantic
interpretation. This should be suªcient for them to be treated as
independent topics in the grammar syllabus. In addition, despite obvious
grammatical di¤erences (involving inflection, question formation, and
negation), infinitive-complement verbs are much more similar to modal
auxiliaries with regard to the distinctions discussed above than they are
to gerund-complement verbs. These similarities have implications both
for the sequencing of gerunds and infinitives within the grammar
syllabus, and the methods used to teach these structures.
Productivity
Like modals, infinitive-complement verbs belong to a closed, although
admittedly larger, lexical class. Since they comprise a fixed set, they could
be grouped semantically, much the way modals are often presented.
Verbs with similar meanings, such as attempt, endeavour, try, and
undertake, would thus be practiced together, rather than merely
appearing scattered throughout a list. Low-frequency verbs which would
be unfamiliar to most students could be introduced with other
semantically similar verbs, as an aid to remembering both their meaning
and their structural properties. Thus, verbs such as long and yearn could
be presented together with want and desire.
Modals are similar to some other non-productive lexical classes (such as
irregular verbs) in that they are very high-frequency, and thus usually
introduced early, while infinitives and gerunds are placed in a later part
of the syllabus. However, research on the frequency of these structures
reported in Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1983), shows a much
higher occurrence of infinitive complements than of gerund
complements. This would also suggest that the teaching of infinitive
The sequencing of verbal-complement structures
articles
175
welcome
complements should be placed at a much earlier position in the
grammar syllabus, closely following the presentation of modals (an
approach taken in Thomson and Martinet 1986).
Aspect
Hofmann (1966) noted that as with infinitive complements, the
perfective forms of the verbs which may follow certain modals mark true
aspectual distinctions, as shown in 8:
8 a *She must leave before we got there.
b She must have left before we got there.
Since the perfective forms in both constructions are similar in both form
and meaning, the introduction of infinitive complements closely
following modals would benefit from the students’ familiarity with these
forms. Contextualized exercises using stories or pictures can be used to
practise the two structures and review the forms involved, as illustrated
in 9:
9 a Could John have visited his sister?
b No. He claims … (to have been sick/working/delayed)
Understood subjects
The referential properties of the understood subjects are also the same
for both modals and verbs that take the bare infinitive: the subject of the
modal must be the same as that of the following verb. This allows the
progression from constructions with modals to those with infinitivecomplement verbs (perhaps through the intermediate step of
periphrastic modals) to proceed under a single conceptual framework
regarding the agency of the complement verb. Again, contextualized
activities can be used to practice both structures. These can include
pronoun-reference exercises (an often neglected topic in grammar texts,
although interestingly a more prominent feature of the new
computerized TOEFL ), which would be especially useful when passive
complements are being practiced.
This leaves the question of overt subjects of infinitive complements. Up
to this point, we have been considering only subjectless forms, but there
are, of course, infinitives with independent subjects, such as those in 10:
10 a We urged her to take the job.
b I warned you not to go.
Although this may seem to be in contradiction to the claims made
concerning the examples in 7, there are good reasons to regard the
structures in 10 as suªciently di¤erent in nature to relegate them to a
separate portion of the syllabus. First, there is only a small overlap
between verbs taking simple infinite complements, and those taking
infinitive complements with independent subjects. Presenting them
together simply invites confusion. Second, in the latter category the full
range of thematic roles are realized within the constituent. They are thus
much more like noun clauses, and could be introduced at a point in the
syllabus closer to this topic. Substitution exercises, as shown in 11, can be
used to give students a better feel for the full range of clausal
complements.
176
Walter Petrovitz
articles
welcome
11 a We told her to take the job.
b We said that … (she should take the job)
Conclusion
The presentation of grammar in ELT can be greatly enriched by the
findings of syntactic research. Such evidence should especially be taken
into account with regard to areas which have traditionally been
problematic. While certain grammatical topics present inherent and
unavoidable diªculties, problems may also be caused by a
misapprehension of the nature of the structures involved. This has been
the case with the teaching of gerunds and infinitives, with a large amount
of disparate material forced into a single teaching unit. A principled
redistribution would allow for a more natural and comprehensible
presentation.
Received January 2000
References
Azar, B. 1989. Understanding and Using English
Grammar. (2nd edn.). Englewood Cli¤s, New
Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Bolinger, D. 1968. ‘Entailment and the meaning of
structures’. Glossa 2/2: 119–27.
Celce-Murcia, M. and D. Larsen-Freeman. 1983.
The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher’s Course.
Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury.
Eastwood, J. 1994. Oxford Guide to English
Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Emonds, J. 1972. ‘A reformulation of certain
syntactic transformations’ in S. Peters (ed.).
Hofmann, T. 1966. ‘Past tense replacement and
the English modal system’. Harvard
Computational Laboratory, NSF Report 17.
Horn, G. 1975. ‘On the nonsentential nature of the
POSS-ING construction’. Linguistic Analysis 1:
333–87.
Householder, F. 1964. Some Classes of Verbs in
English. Bloomington: Indiana University
Linguistics Club.
Murphy, R. 1994. English Grammar in Use (2nd
edn.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Peters, S. (ed.). 1972. Goals of Linguistic Theory.
Englewood Cli¤s, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech, and J. Svartvik.
1972. A Grammar of Contemporary English.
London: Longman.
Thomson, A. and A. Martinet. 1986. A Practical
English Grammar. (4th edn.). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
The author
Walter Petrovitz is Associate Professor ESL at St.
John’s University in New York City. He completed
his doctoral work in linguistics at the City
University of New York. His publications include
work in both theoretical linguistics and secondlanguage pedagogy. His current research interests
focus on the ways in which semantics and
discourse analysis can be used in the teaching of
grammar.
Email: [email protected]
The sequencing of verbal-complement structures
articles
177
welcome