Some Aspects of Infinitival Complements in English

The present paper is to explore some aspects of infinitival complements in English in terms of investigating syntactic properties of wager-class infinitives, taking into consideration those of believe-class infinitives. We assume that the syntactic propertives of infinitives in English reflect the mental or cognitive process of human brain. Based upon Chomsky's (2000,2001) analysis of the syntactic operation of Agree and the concept of phase, we focus on the syntactic behaviors of the infinitival subjects of these two types of verb-class. We examine the previous studies of wager-class verb and believe-class verb, distinguishing the syntactic difference between these two classes of verb. In the course of our syntactic analysis of them, we mainly refer critically to the argument provided by Boskovic (1997). The difference is associated with different θ-roles which are assigned to matrix subjects. Our syntactic analysis puts forward the fact that believe-class verbs permit lexical NPs in the subject position of its infinitival complement, while wager-class verbs do not. Wager-class verbs are capable of wh-extraction, passive-raising and heavy NP shift out of their infinitival complement. Also the expletive there could be licensed as an infinitival subject in this class of verb. Our analysis came to offer a piece of evidence favoring the Chomsky's suggestions, which enable us to support the existence of the two VP-shells of wager-class infinitivals in contrast to the non-existence of the two VP-shells of believe-class infinitivals