Control (linguistics) - Examples

Examples

Standard instances of (obligatory) control are present in the following sentences:

Susan promised us to help.
Fred stopped laughing.
We tried to leave.
Sue asked Bill to stop.
They told you to support the effort.
Someone forced him to do it.

Each of these sentences contains two verbal predicates. Each time the control verb is on the left and the controlled verb on the right. The control verb determines which expression is interpreted as the "subject" of the verb on the right. The first three sentences are examples of subject control, because the subject of the control verb is also the understood subject of the controlled verb. The second three sentences are instances of object control, because the object of the control verb is also the understood subject of the controlled verb. The argument of the matrix predicate that functions as the "subject" of the embedded predicate is the controller. The controllers are in bold in the examples.

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