Control (linguistics) - Arbitrary Control

Arbitrary Control

Arbitrary control occurs when the controller is understood to be anybody in general, e.g.

Reading the Dead Sea Scrolls is fun.
Seeing is believing.
Having to do something repeatedly is boring.

The understood subject of the gerunds in these sentence is non-discriminate; any generic person will do. In such cases, control is said to be "arbitrary". Any time the understood subject of a given predicate is not present in the linguistic or situational context, a generic subject (e.g. 'one') is understood.

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Famous quotes containing the words arbitrary and/or control:

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