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 229<br />
complement predicates in <strong>the</strong> ‘hate to’ construction encode acts of communication<br />
as in (22). One typically hates to say, admit or mention something, and <strong>the</strong>n<br />
proceeds to do just that! The same types of complement predicate are even more<br />
frequent with negated ‘like to’, as in (2 ). The only o<strong>the</strong>r context in which ‘like to’<br />
occurs in Present-day English with a specific complement is in if-suggestions, as<br />
in (24). Negatives and suggestions also account for a third of <strong>the</strong> tokens of specific<br />
‘prefer to’, but in its case we also find affirmative matrix verbs in <strong>the</strong> simple past as<br />
in (23), in <strong>the</strong> present as in (25) and as a participle as in (26).<br />
(24) And if you like to check yours now just okay. (BNC KLW 3 6)<br />
(25) If I have any fur<strong>the</strong>r requests, I prefer to make <strong>the</strong>m to him personally.<br />
(BNC GW2 68)<br />
(26) He refused <strong>the</strong> offer of any sword, preferring to use <strong>the</strong> blade<br />
he had forged with his own hands. (BNC CM 2238)<br />
Note that all <strong>the</strong>se tokens ((2 )–(26)) encode forward-looking predications. In<br />
Section 4 we will see that <strong>the</strong>se constructions were not restricted to specific predication<br />
in <strong>the</strong> projected future in Late Modern English. But before we do so, we<br />
will look at <strong>the</strong> overall incidence of <strong>the</strong> non-modalised to-infinitive constructions<br />
compared to <strong>the</strong>ir modalised and -ing counterparts over <strong>the</strong> last 300 years.<br />
. The historical development of all three construction types<br />
Although <strong>the</strong> topic proper of this paper is <strong>the</strong> use of to-infinitive complement<br />
constructions after non-modalised emotion verbs to encode general and specific<br />
predications, <strong>the</strong> increased tendency to use <strong>the</strong>se constructions to encode <strong>the</strong> former<br />
type of predication must be seen in <strong>the</strong> context of <strong>the</strong> distribution of <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r<br />
two constructions introduced in Section 2. Both of <strong>the</strong>se prototypically encode<br />
specific predications in Present-day English: <strong>the</strong> modalised to-infinitive construction<br />
encodes a specific predication in <strong>the</strong> projected future (‘I’d like to go now’), <strong>the</strong><br />
-ing construction encodes a specific predication in <strong>the</strong> extended present (‘I like<br />
walking around town’). We begin with like. Figure 2 contains data for <strong>the</strong> three like<br />
constructions per 00,000 words in two sub-corpora of <strong>the</strong> Corpus of Late Modern<br />
English Texts ( 7 0–80, 780– 850, see De Smet and Cuyckens 2005), <strong>the</strong><br />
Corpus of Early Twentieth Century Texts (containing some three million words<br />
<strong>from</strong> texts published between 9 and 922, written by authors born in <strong>the</strong> 880s<br />
and compiled especially for this study) and <strong>the</strong> Written Imaginative sub-corpus<br />
of <strong>the</strong> BNC. The reason for compiling <strong>the</strong> CETCT ra<strong>the</strong>r than using CLMET<br />
850– 920 as a source of data for <strong>the</strong> period between 850 and <strong>the</strong> time of <strong>the</strong><br />
BNC was <strong>the</strong> hypo<strong>the</strong>sis, later confirmed, that changes were taking place in <strong>the</strong>