Aspect of Naked Infinitives of English Perceptual Reports

지각동사 원형부정사 보문의 상의 분석과 학습 도모

This paper is to provide an analysis of the aspectual nature of naked infinitives(NIs) of English perceptual reports. Higginbotham(1983) proposes that only ‘active’ or ‘transient’ verbs can be used as NIs of English perceptual reports, but ‘state’ verbs cannot. This is called “confinement to the active or transient”. But there will be one problem when NIs of English perceptual reports are negatives. This is why the meaning of negative NIs of English perceptual reports may be static, which isn't in line with “confinement to the active or transient”. There are similar problems with ‘state’ NIs of English perceptual reports. In this paper some of these problems can be solved with the “Event Structure” of Pustejovsky(1991). According to Pustejovsky(1991), ‘process’ and ‘transition’ verbs have sub-eventual individuation units, but state verbs have no such units. It is the units that make it possible for ‘process’ and ‘transition’ to be perceived. As a result ‘process’ and ‘transition’ verbs are suitable for NIs of English perceptual reports. Nevertheless, there are still some problems unsolved. Moreover some state verbs are grammatically used as NIs of English perceptual reports. This paper proposes that these state verbs have “potentiality of transition”, and the potentiality comes from only the combination of the two parts of the complement - the subject and the naked infinitive. And the potentiality causes the “Event Structure” of Pustejovsky(1991) to be modified. And this modification makes it possible for us to explain aspect of NIs of English Perceptual Reports. It is concluded with some implication for Korean learners of English as a Foreign Language.