This paper examines the distribution of infinitive and sentential
complements of "will-extending" verbs (Brecht 1974) in Russian and
Upper Sorbian. Such verbs can be divided into two categories: performative
(e.g., Russian [po]prosit' 'ask, request') and causative (Upper Sorbian
nućić 'force').
The distribution of infinitive and sentential complements of will-extending
verbs in Russian appears to be relatively fixed: sentential complements introduced
by the complementizer čtoby generally occur with performatives,
while infinitive complements generally occur with causatives. Common to
Slavic infinitive and sentential complements is the feature [-tense].
Nevertheless, it has become a commonplace of Slavic linguistics that the West
Slavic languages somehow "prefer" sentential complements in a number
of syntactic environments where Russian exhibits infinitives, cf.:
Ru. Posle obeda stali my ugovarivat' xozjaina prometat' nam bank.
USo. Po wobjedźe počachmy hosćićela namołwjeć,
zo by nam
banku dźerža1.
'After dinner we began [trying] to persuade
our host to
keep the bank for us.'
The West Slavic languages, moreover, appear more prone to vacillate between
the two types of complements, even when governed by the same will-extending
verb. While little has been written about these syntactic phenomena in Upper
Sorbian (cf. Šewc-Schuster 1976), several reasons have been adduced to explain
similar phenomena in Czech. These include:
(a) passive/active voice ambiguity of infinitives -
Cz. Nemohu nechat lidi střílet. =
Nemohu připustit, aby lidé
stříleli.
'I cannot have people shooting.'
Nemohu připustit, aby lidé
byli stříleni. (Koenitz 1973)
'I cannot have people (being)
shot.'
(b) need to avoid clitic-object clustering, particularly when the object
of the matrix verb and that of the infinitive are in the same case
-
Cz. *Dovolil jsem mu jí zavolat. ->
Dovolil jsem mu, aby jí zavolal.
(Toops 1992)
'I allowed him to call her.'
(c) variable determination of "clitic-second" position -
Cz. Včera jsem se s vámi byl ochoten domluvit.
~
Včera jsem byl ochoten
se s vámi domluvit. ~
Včera jsem byl ochoten domluvit
se s vámi. (Uhlír^ová 1987)
'Yesterday I was willing to come
to an agreement with you.'
Using parallel Russian texts and their Upper Sorbian translations, the proposed
paper will explore to what extent these and similar factors influence the distribution
of sentential and infinitive complements in Upper Sorbian. Anticipated
findings include evidence that, under German influence, sentential complements
in Upper Sorbian are increasingly likely to be expressed as infinitives; and
to the extent that sentential complements do occur, they are increasingly likely
to be expressed in the present indicative rather than the subjunctive mood.
References:
Brecht, R. D. 1974. "Tense and infinitive complements in Russian,
Latin and English." In Slavic Transformational Syntax.
Ann Arbor.
Koenitz, B. 1973. "Genus verbi in Infinitivkonstruktionen der
tschechischen Sprache der Gegenwart," Zeitschrift für Slawistik
17 (1973):5, 636-46.
Šewc-Schuster, H. 1976. Gramatika hornjoserbskeje rěče.
2: Syntaksa. Budyšin.
Toops, G. H. 1992. "Causativity in Czech: The verbs dá(va)t
and nech(áv)at," Canadian Slavonic Papers 34 (1992):1-2,
39-56.
Uhlířová, L. 1987. Knížka o slovosledu. Praha.