SEMANTIC AND SYNTACTIC FACTORS IN CONTROL 193way. The affected participant is not the undergoer, but rather, the actor
who does the thinking or considering. In such cases, the undergoer controls
the complement clause. With verbs such as strike and impress, on the other
hand, the affected participant is the undergoer, the one who is struck or
impressed. In such cases, the actor controls the linked core. From this it
appears that the affected participant, or the experiencer, cannot be the con
troller of a descriptive predicate complement.
In example (58a) above, regard is a perception or cognition verb; John
perceives Mary in a particular way. In example (58b) above, Mary does
something, volitional or not, which causes John to perceive Mary in a par
ticular way. Strike therefore has an underlying causative structure as in:
(59) Mary causes [John regard Mary as friendly].
The prediction that causative verbs have undergoer control holds for the
infinitival complements of activity and accomplishment verbs. However,
for stative and achievement complement-taking predicates, the control
facts are reversed. Verbs such as strike and impress take actor control. Per
ception and cognition verbs, such as regard, take undergoer control. This
can be seen to follow naturally from the semantics of the verb. Perception
and cognition verbs involve perceiving or thinking about a situation in
which the perceiver/cognizer need not be involved. Hence, there is no actor
control. With strike and impress, the causer in structures such as (59) is also
the undergoer of the perception verb regard', hence it is controller. Thus,
with both regard and strike, the controller is the same argument in the logi
cal structure, the undergoer of the perception verb, the one considered or
thought of in a particular way.
The present analysis will also briefly consider state predicates such as:
(60) a. John will serve the fish raw.
b. John will serve the fish nude.
John will paint the model nude.
In these cases, it is the semantics of the state predicate, along with pragma
tic factors, which determine the possible controllers. In (60a), raw refers to
or is controlled by the fish, the undergoer, because being raw is a property
belonging to fish as undergoers, not to people as actors. In (60b), nude is
controlled by the actor John, because nude, the state of being undressed, is
a property associated with humans and not fish. (60c) is ambiguous, as to
who the nude party is. Because nude is a property associated with humans,