The Syntactic and Semantic Structures of the English Causative to-infinitives

Abstract

This paper focuses on the Accusative with to-infinitive Constructions in English that denote causative meaning, exemplified by She persuaded me to go to the hospital. Based on the five diagnostics, the syntactic structures of such constructions are clarified, and on the basis of two semantic perspectives, the semantic structures of the causative verbs occurring therein are defined. Finally, the issue of how the syntactic structures are derived from the semantic structures is addressed by way of the Lexical Conceptual Structures and the Qualia Structures of four types of causative to-infinitive verbs.