Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang
Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang
Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang
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Emotion verbs with to-infinitive complements 227<br />
( 4) When we are hungry we love to eat bread. (BNC HS7 263)<br />
( 5) Jannie instinctively hid her cigarette behind her back when <strong>the</strong><br />
kitchen door opened; John hated to see her smoking while she<br />
cooked. (BNC G 2 2)<br />
( 6) I like to wake up to a cup of Assam, a very robust tea, or a<br />
strong blend of African and Indian teas of <strong>the</strong> type that makes a<br />
good English breakfast blend; in <strong>the</strong> evening I prefer to drink<br />
Keemun or Lapsang Souchong. (BNC ABB 727)<br />
In examples ( 3)–( 6) <strong>the</strong> likely occasions of realisation are all encoded explicitly.<br />
There are also many cases in which <strong>the</strong> times when <strong>the</strong> actions encoded by <strong>the</strong><br />
to-infinitives are likely to be realised are implicit. In such cases our rule of thumb<br />
as language users, our working hypo<strong>the</strong>sis, is that <strong>the</strong>y are likely to be realised, or<br />
in <strong>the</strong> case of hate not realised, on appropriate occasions. We must make use of <strong>the</strong><br />
context or of our world knowledge to identify <strong>the</strong> sort of occasion that is meant in<br />
any particular instance. ( 7)–(20) are cases in point.<br />
( 7) Relatives hated to see a sheet over <strong>the</strong> faces of <strong>the</strong>ir loved<br />
ones. (BNC JYB 472)<br />
( 8) There is very little connection now between our people and<br />
you Europeans. We prefer to take our husbands <strong>from</strong> among<br />
each o<strong>the</strong>r. (BNC CJD 94)<br />
( 9) Harry loves to talk about his gardening exploits. (BNC ACY 85 )<br />
(20) And nowadays coaches had lavatories and armchairs and dear<br />
little hostesses whom Laura liked to induce to tell her <strong>the</strong>ir life<br />
stories. (BNC CMJ 00 )<br />
Our interpretation of what constitutes suitable occasions is naturally informed by<br />
our encyclopaedic knowledge of <strong>the</strong> event types in question. Even without access<br />
to <strong>the</strong> context, we know that <strong>the</strong> situation in ( 7) is likely to take place in a mortuary,<br />
<strong>the</strong> situation in ( 8) on <strong>the</strong> occasion of choosing a marriage partner, and <strong>the</strong><br />
situations in ( 9)–(20) whenever <strong>the</strong> subjects in question can find a willing ear.<br />
The point is that, unlike <strong>the</strong> construction with gerund complements exemplified<br />
in (5)–(8), none of <strong>the</strong>se tokens encode <strong>the</strong> actual realisation of <strong>the</strong> complement<br />
situations. Ra<strong>the</strong>r, <strong>the</strong>y all encode a higher order predication of <strong>the</strong> likelihood of<br />
<strong>the</strong>ir being realised in <strong>the</strong> appropriate circumstances.<br />
There is no doubt that non-modalised emotion matrix verbs with to-infinitive<br />
complements in Present-day English typically encode general predications (see<br />
Figure and Duffley 2006: 77). However, <strong>the</strong>y do not invariably do so, or at least<br />
three of <strong>the</strong>m, <strong>the</strong> exception being love, do not always do so. (2 )–(23) exemplify<br />
some exceptions.