SEMANTIC AND SYNTACTIC FACTORS IN CONTROL 183(33) a. John built a bed to sleep in.
b. John built the baby a bed to sleep in.
(34) a. John baked a cake to eat for dessert.
b. John baked Mary a cake to eat f or dessert.
(35) a. John bought a mango to eat.
b. John bought Mary a mango to eat.In the first of each pair, there is no transfer of possession. With no specified
recipient, the verb lacks a "transfer" sense, and remains simply a "posses
sion and use" verb. The possession of the item remains with the actor, the
actor creates or obtains the item for him/herself. When no transfer takes
place, the actor, the effector-recipient, is the controller. In the second of
each pair, there is a transfer of possession. As with all other transfer verbs,
the recipient is the controller of the complement subject. In both cases it is
the recipient, the individual who possesses or obtains the item, who will use
that item in the second event, and is thus controller of the subject gap. If
there is only one argument, then it is at once the highest and the lowest
ranking potential actor.
Verbs in this class typically indicate the acquisition of an entity or the
creation of an object. It should be observed that certain verbs of destruc
tion can be employed to convey acquisition of an entity. For example,
obtaining may mean killing or destroying in order to obtain.
(36) a. John killed Mary a turkey to prepare for Thanksgiving.
b. John cut down a tree to burn for firewood.
While the verbs build, cook, buy and bring indicate a transfer of possession
with three syntactically realized arguments, such verbs normally must have
a realized recipient in order to indicate a transfer of possession. These verbs
contrast with provide, send, and give, which always convey transfer of pos
session. (We will see in a later section that this restriction can be overridden
to a certain extent by pragmatic factors.) This suggests that the logical
structure of these verbs may not have a recipient slot. Jolly (1986, this vol
ume) analyzes these constructions as having a recipient added to the logical
structure by the predicative preposition for. For a more thorough discussion
of this point, see Jolly (1986, this volume).
Hence, the variation in controller is explained by the change in the
verb's interpretation. When the verb indicates a "transfer of possession",
the recipient is controller. When the verb indicates "possession" without a