This paper investigates what with constructions in Early Modern English by employing EEBO, which is a database collecting texts in the period. The investigation reveals that gerunds, especially verbal gerunds without lexical subjects, were selected as complements by what with as early as Early Modern English. It is argued that they began to be attested in its complement due to analogy with with PRO -ing, which was adjoined to main clauses in the same way as what with constructions.

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英日機械翻訳システムによる翻訳に対して感じる不自然さの原因の一つとして, 動詞的意味を含む英語の名詞句がそのまま日本語でも名詞句として訳されているということがある. この不自然さを解消するために本稿では, 動詞的意味を含む名詞句を文に近い形式に書き換える自動前編集方法を示す. 動詞的意味を含む名詞句のうち, 属格名詞とof前置詞句の両方を修飾句として持つ名詞句を主な対象として実験を行なった. 提案方法によって書き換えた名詞句を含む文を我々のシステムPower E/Jで処理し, 書き換えを行なわない場合の翻訳と比較したところ, 67.3%の文においてより自然な翻訳が得られた. 従来, この不自然さの問題に対しては, システム内部の変換過程で対処されることが多かった. 従来の方法に比べて, 前編集による方法の利点は, 特定のシステムへの依存性が低く, 実践上の適用範囲が広いことである. 実験を通じて, 市販されている幾つかのシステムにおいても, 書き換えによってより自然な翻訳が得られることを確認した.

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The variety of cases in which the gerund and/or the infinitive are used as object of a verb is so vast that the choice between the two verbal forms presents a difficulty to native as well as non-native speakers of English. With this in mind the writer of this article tried to discovery some of the basic differences by which the choice is made. To clear the ground the writer has drawn out from the semantic difference between I like getting up early (in general) and I like to get up early (in this particular case) the following three points: 1) The logical subject of "getting up" (gerund) need not be the same as the subject of the main verb while that of "to get up" (infinitive) is identical with the subject of the main verb. 2) The gerund-construction has practically nothing to do with the happening of the thing which it denotes, but the infinitive-construction is primarily concerned with the happening of the activity. 3) The gerund has no time reference, but the infinitive refers to future. As an example of the first point we can cite the contrast: He allows smoking/He allows to smoke* (cf. He allows us to smoke). This applies to such verbs as permit, advise, advocate, encourage, provoke, urge, etc., all of which represent actions commonly done by the agent to affect other people or things. He tried writing in pencil versus He tried to write in pencil is another example, and to the latter type belong such verbs as aim, endeavour, strive, contrive, and seek. A few retroactive gerundial constructions, e.g. Your work needs correcting (to be corrected), also illustrate this point. The gerund is active in form, because it represents an activity apart from the agent. The second point is exemplified in the idiomatic preference of I intend to go to I intend going. The infinitive is preferred here because, being concerned as it is with the happening of the activity, it is more determinative than the gerund. This may be the reason why verbs like want, hope, care, long, yearn, decide, resolve, and make up one's mind are always found with the infinitive to the exclusion of the gerund. The gerund is used with verbs like avoid, delay, defer, escape, evade, miss, postpone, put off, shirk, resist, etc., which are all negative in meaning to the realization of the activity. The third point is closely allied with the second in that the infinitive refers to the future. It is probably for this reason that the gerund, which is in itself non-distinctive of time, refers to the past. Typical examples are I remember posting your letter versus Please remember to post this letter and I shall never forget hearing you sing versus I forgot to answer your question. Reference of the gerund to the past can also be seen when it is used after such verbs as acknowlege, admit, deny, doubt, mention, and report. It is worth noticing, however, that the above three points do not cover the whole of the distinction between the two constructions. That is to say, with some of the main verbs of the sentences we must take into account the affinity of the -ing of the gerund with that of the present participle as used in progressive form. We stopped talking and We began talking are cases in point. So are the sentences containing commence, start, continue, go on, finish, or cease. We must also consider that unless we have a clear view of the close connection between the mark "to" of an infinitive and a mere preposition "to", we cannot possibly come to a proper understanding of "to talk" in We stopped to talk. To conclude the article, the writer adds that in making a study of this kind he himself is quite aware of the danger he will quite probably fall into-hasty generalization. Indeed a complete list of the verbs taking the gerund and/or the infinitive is necessary before we can make any general remark on this question, but this article, the writer believes, may have some claim to be a stepping-stone for further research.

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This paper discusses a historical change in the grammar of English Noun Phrases with a special focus on the cooccurrence restricti on of Determiners and possessive Noun Phrases.
It is known that (early)Modern English allowed a collocation like, “this your picture”, which is ungrammatical in Present-day English. If this fact is to be explained in structural terms only, the grammar requires a major change of the specifier system of English Noun Phrases between these two adjacent periods, which suggests that the language experienced a shift from a multispecifier language to a uni-specifier language.
The main a rgument of this paper is that there occurred no significant structural change in English Noun Phrases between the periods discussed. An analysis, using the Determiner Phrase hypothesis in Government-Binding framework, reveals that a historical change of one indexing rule, which is concerned with the Empty Category Principle, has created a deceptive contrast regarding the structure of English Noun Phrases in the two periods discussed. The final portion of the paper provides some independent motivation for the proposal.

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自然言語では技術の発展、文明の進化、異文化交流が原因で名詞の数が増加し、動詞もそれと平行していくはずである。トルコ語は名詞や形容詞などから動詞を派生させる接辞が豊富にあるのに対して、新たに生まれた又は借用された名詞に対する動詞の生産は比較的少ないと思われる。しかし、外国語から名詞のみが借用されるわけではなく、かなりの数の動詞もトルコ語に借用されている。ただし、借用されているそれらの動詞は様々な原因でまず名詞の形でトルコ語にコピーされ、トルコ語の中でとして表れる。アラビア語やペルシア語のような周囲の言語とフランス語や英語などのような文化・経済交流の深い国々から受け入れられたが動詞化される場合は、トルコ語の動詞化接辞が十分な役割を果たすことはできないと考えられる。もともと語源がトルコ語である名詞を動詞化する派生接辞は、借用されたに付加できるがその数は制限されている。さらに、コピーされた動詞や名詞はコピー元の言語においても一つ以上の意味をもつため、借用された形のみからはに包含されている全ての意義は解釈されにくくなる。そのため、を再び動詞化する際に多くの場合、動詞への派生接辞ではなく実質的な意味が希薄で文法的役割が強いet-,yap-,ol-,kil-,eyle-のような機能動詞を頼りにする。文法的役割が強いこれらの機能動詞は一般的に軽動詞と呼ばれている。ある動詞に機能動詞としての用法があるかどうかは典型的な機能動詞である,et-,yap-,kil-,eyle-,ol-を除けばその動詞のみを見て判断しにくいと思われる。et-,yap-,kil-,eyle-,ol-の場合はこれらの機能動詞と結合しているの数の多さと、が不在である場合に機能動詞のみで意味的に解釈不可能な状況が発生するという点で判断しやすいと思われる。したがって、現在にいたるまでこれらの軽動詞以外は機能動詞と呼ばれていない。本研究では、軽動詞も含め、現代トルコ語に存在している他の多数の機能動詞を分類するために様々な言語テストを行う。機能動詞は、例えば軽動詞のように多数のまたは名詞と結合できる動詞であったり、または一つの名詞としか結合できないものであったりするが、基本的に、構文の中で述語名詞抜きで語彙的な意味を持った動詞としての解釈ができない。そしてMuraki [1991]の「実質的な意味を名詞にあずけて、みずからはもっぱら文法的な機能をはたす動詞」という考えに基づき、トルコ語における機能動詞の表れ方を求め、下記に詳細を示した言語テストによる分析を行うことによって、機能動詞の分類を試みる。

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