108 ROBERT D. VAN VALIN, JR.There is considerable syntactic evidence that the infinitival construction in
sentences like John wanted to open the door is not an instance of subordina
tion; that is, these infinitives are not complements akin to ¿/-clauses and
gerunds, e.g. they do not cleft like that-clauses and gerunds, and if they
occur with a verb which can passivize, gerunds and that-clauses can occur as
subject of the passive but the infinitive cannot. See FVV:247-8 for detailed
discussion.
(103) a. It was to open the door that John wanted.
a'. It was a new car that John wanted.
b. What John wanted was to open the door.
b'. What John wanted was a new car.
*To open the door was wanted by Bill.
c\ ΊΑ new car was wanted by Bill.
Nuclear junctures are illustrated in (104).
(104) a. John painted the table red. English
b. Je ferai manger les gâteaux ά Jean. French
lsG make.FUT eat the cakes to John
"I will make John eat the cakes."
Tä qiäo pò le yí ge fànwàn. Mandarin Chinese
3sG hit break PFV one CL ricebowl
"He broke (by hitting) a ricebowl."
d. Fu fase fi isoe. Barai
3sG letter sit write
"He sat writing a letter."
e. X-in-y-a' mak-a'naj t-aw-et. Jacaltec
PAST-lSG.ABS-3ERG-CaUSe hit-INF 3SG AUG-2sG.ERG-tO
"He made you hit me."
In a nuclear juncture, two or more nuclei combine to form a single, com
plex nucleus with a single set of core arguments. This is clearest in the
French and Jacaltec (Craig 1977) examples in (104), in which the actor and
undergoer contributed by different verbs, and the agent of the dependent
verb, the causee, is coded as the "indirect object" of the complex nucleus.
Note also the different positioning of the undergoer in the French, Barai
(Olson 1981), and Mandarin (Hansell, this volume) examples; in the core
junctures, the argument which is the undergoer of the first verb and the