530 ROBERT D. VAN VALIN, JR. & DAVID P. WILKINS
While much of the current paper stands as a promisory note for future
development in the area of predicting aspects of syntactic structure on the
basis of semantic structure, this study demonstrates the spirit, the direction
and the feasibility of the intended program, as well as presenting in con
crete terms the formal architecture that RRG provides for such a task.
Notes
We would like to thank David Nash, Fritz Newmeyer, Anna Wierzbicka, and
Cathy Wildermuth for comments on earlier drafts. Special thanks go to the Yipir-
nya School Council, who supervise Wilkins' research on Mparntwe Arrernte. The
first draft of this paper was written while the authors were at the University of
California, Davis, and this research was supported in part by UC Davis Faculty
Research Grants. Abbreviations: A "transitive subject", ABL "ablative", ACC
"accusative", ALL "allative", CONT "continuative", DAT "dative", dl "dual",
DS "different subject", ERG "ergative", FOC "focus", INCH "inchoative", IP
"immediate past", LIG "ligature", LS "logical structure", NMZ "nominalizer",
NPC "non-past completive", NPP "non-past progressive", "transitive object",
PC "past completive", POSS "possessive", PURP "purposive", QUOT "quota-
tive", RH "remote habitual", S "intransitive subject", SS "same subject".
English and MpA forms are in italics; primitives are in boldface.
There are two forms of core cosubordination in English: to + infinitive, as in John
tried to leave, 0 + participle, as in John sat playing the guitar (see FVV:261-2).
Within English non-subordinate core junctures, the contrast between to and 0 is
meaningful; this can be seen most clearly in the following minimal pair.
(i) a. John helped Bill to build his new house.
b. John helped Bill 0 build his new house.
As noted in Quirk et al. (1972), the primary semantic contrast revolves around
whether the actor of help actually participates in the action in the dependent pred
ication. In (a) John need not actually participate in the building of the house; he
could have simply loaned Bill some money or tools. In (b), on the other hand, Bill
must be actively involved in the building of the house. Thus the constrast between
0 and to is that between simultaneous action (0) and non-simultaneous action
(overt complementizer, in this case to). Because psych-action predicates code the
actor's intention to perform a possible but unrealized action, the state of affairs
signalled by the psych-action predicate cannot be simulataneous with the state of
affairs expressed by the complement predicate, and therefore the 0 simultaneous
action form of the dependent core cannot be used. Moreover,since the intention
is necessarity with reference to a possible future act, the interpretation must be as
sequential. Thus the to + infinitive form must be used with core cosubordinate
psych-action constructions.