Which roles may be promoted

We noted that a passive should really be quoted together with the full context in which it might be used. This applies at least as much in the case of promotion-to-subject constructions. Instead of doing this, we rely on the reader’s imagination, on their being able to invest the referent of a non-subject NP with the particular properties that make or mar some instance of an activity, and justify its promotion into subject slot.

For those verbs which exist in both transitive and intransitive forms, with S = O, it can be hard to distinguish between promotion-to-subject of an O NP and a plain intransitive. Consider waken—this can be intransitive, as in Mary wakened at seven o’clock, or transitive, as in John wakened Mary at seven o’clock. A sentence such as Mary wakens easily is ambiguous between (i) a simple intransitive construction, in which the adverb easily implies that Mary is able to waken spontaneously, at any time she sets her mind to; and (ii) a promotion-to-subject construction from a transitive clause with the meaning that she is able to be wakened easily—one only has to whisper ‘It’s seven o’clock’ and Mary is immediately wide awake and ready to get up. For some S = O verbs there is no ambiguity—The dog walks slowly would be taken to be a plain intransitive and not a promotion to-subject version of a causative (such as Mary walks the dog slowly). But many verbs from the DROP, STRETCH and BREAK subtypes, and some such as hurt, bleed and drown from CORPOREAL, show the same sort of syntactic ambiguity as waken. Because of this, we will omit S = O verbs from the brief survey that follows.

It must be noted that promotion to subject is not a very common phenomenon. It applies only for certain kinds of NP filling non-subject relations, for just a handful of verbs from any one type. But it does occur with a fair spread of verbs, from quite a number of semantic types.

The discussion below deals mainly with the promotion to subject of core roles. But, as exemplified above, promotion is also possible for some peripheral roles—instruments like with the Beyer microphone and with Softly or, in very special circumstances, locational descriptions such as in Studio B and in a Hoovermatic.

We will first consider Primary-A types, i.e. those for which every role must be realized by an NP (not by a complement clause).

MOTION and REST. There are some examples of the Moving and Resting roles being promotable to subject, with verbs for which they are not the natural subject. Besides The custard doesn’t pour easily we can have This boomerang throws well, That box lifts easily, The new design of ball catches well, Your case carries easily, The boxes will not transport easily, A good tent puts up in Wve minutes, Evonne’s racket handles well, That pram pushes easily, Your trailer pulls easily, Mushrooms store best in a brown-paper bag.

AFFECT. There are quite a number of examples of Manip and Target being promoted to subject. Examples involving Manip are That knife cuts well, This string won’t tie properly, My new steel-tipped boots kick well. Those with Target promoted are That cheese cuts easily, Stainless-steel pans clean easily, That shape of box doesn’t wrap up very easily, Clothes iron better when damp. We can also get This dirt won’t brush off my coat and That flour cooks well, This oven cooks well.

GIVING. The Gift NP may be promoted to subject, as in Those cars sell quickly, These Mills and Boon novels lend rather rapidly (said by a librarian), Top-floor apartments tend not to rent so easily as ground-floor ones, and Milk won’t keep in hot weather (but it does keep if you put it in a fridge). The Recipient may also be promoted, as in The Kingsland police bribe easily.

CORPOREAL. The Substance role may be promoted to subject with just a few verbs, e.g. These pills swallow easily, This meat chews rather easily, Bean curd digests easily, and, of a honey, forty years old and still eating beautifully (Harris 2003: 61). In 1697 the English explorer William Dampier said of the turtles on the Galapagos Islands: they are extraordinarily large and fat; and so sweet, that no pullet eats more pleasantly (Norris 1994: 51). An instrumental NP is promoted in This straw sucks well.

From the other Primary-A types, we may get This new board game plays well for a COMPETITION verb, That machine operates easily and Those clothes wear well from the USING type, and perhaps That kingdom governs easily from SOCIAL CONTRACT.

In summary, there are some examples of promotion to subject for every role (that is not canonically mapped onto subject) with Primary-A verbs.

We now turn to Primary-B, those types which have one role that may be realized either through a complement clause or through an NP. This role is in transitive subject relation for ANNOYING and in object or a post-object slot for the other Primary-B types.

ATTENTION. The Impression, in O slot, cannot be promoted to subject. Alongside John watched that film and Mary heard thunder it is not possible to say *That film watches well or *Thunder hears easily. (One could instead use the derived adjective watchable, as in That film is very watchable, and the alternative construction with easy, illustrated by example (2) above, i.e. Thunder is easy to hear.)

THINKING. Again the role (here, Thought) in O slot may not be promoted. Alongside John learnt Swahili, Fred remembers the Kennedy years, I believe his story, I believe in God, we cannot say *Swahili learns easily (only Swahili is easy to learn), *The Kennedy years remember well (here one could say The Kennedy years were memorable) or *His story/God believes well (His story is believable is acceptable, but God is believable much less so).

DECIDING. The Course role, in O slot, may not be promoted to subject. Corresponding to Mary chose the Persian kitten we cannot have *The Persian kitten chose easily. However, some verbs of the DECIDING type show a special kind of reflexive construction, with a meaning not dissimilar from promotion to subject with verbs from other types, e.g. That cute little Persian kitten really chose/picked itself (i.e. it was so appealing that I couldn’t help but buy it). That cute little Persian kitten is properly the object of the DECIDING verb but also functions simultaneously as subject, in this unusual kind of reflexive construction. (There are several points of difference between this reflexive and promotion to subject; for instance, the reflexive does not require an adverb, modal or negation.)

SPEAKING. This type has four roles (one with two components). The Speaker is always underlying subject. There are just a few instances of an Addressee being promotable to subject, e.g. She persuades easily (as an alternative to She is easy to persuade) and He insults easily. The Medium role may just occasionally be promotable to subject slot, as in Pica type reads more easily than Elite. The Message role may have two components: Message-Label, which can only be an NP, and Message-Content, which can be an NP or a complement clause. There are some examples of Message-Label (but none of Message-Content) being promoted to subject, e.g. That joke tells well, doesn’t it?, Your new story/book/poem reads well, That sermon, from the old book I found, preaches well.

LIKING. The Stimulus role, which is mapped into O relation, can be a plain NP, or NP plus complement clause, or a complement clause. It may not be promoted to subject. That is, we cannot say *Ballet likes well, *Insincerity hates easily, or even *John pities easily (meaning that people are always pitying him).

ANNOYING. Here the Experiencer, which is in O slot, must be an NP (normally with Human reference). This may be promoted to subject—in the presence of an appropriate marker—with a number of ANNOYIING verbs, e.g. Mary scares/excites/annoys/angers/shocks easily, Granpa tires quickly these days or (heard on the radio) I don’t think this government embarrasses very easily.

COMPARING. The object of compare may be an NP with plural reference, or several coordinated NPs, e.g. The travel agent compared those two countries/Greece and Italy in terms of cuisine. Such an O can be promoted to subject—when there is an adverb or negation etc. present—Those two countries compare favorably in terms of cuisine, Greece and Italy don’t compare in terms of cuisine. Alternatively, we can have an NP as O and post-object constituent introduced by with; the O NP can be promoted to subject and the with phrase remains in post-verbal position, e.g. The travel agent compared Greece with Rome in terms of cuisine, Greece doesn’t compare with Rome in terms of cuisine. Less frequently, the O and the following with constituent for compare can be coordinated ING clauses, e.g. John compared lying in the sun with going to a garden party at the Governor’s. Here the ING clause can be promoted to subject, in the right circumstances, e.g. Lying in the sun compares quite favorably with going to a garden party at the Governor’s. (Other verbs from the COMPARING type, appear not to occur in promotion-to-subject constructions.)

If we leave aside, for the moment, the single verb compare, this survey of which roles may be promoted to subject yields an intriguing generalization:

those non-subject roles that may be realized by an NP or a complement clause are not promotable to subject; but those which must be realized through an NP (not a complement clause) are potentially promotable.

We saw that all non-subject roles with Primary-A verbs may be promoted. For Primary-B types those roles that can be realized by a complement clause may not be promoted—Impression for ATTENTION, Thought for THINKING, Course for DECIDING, Message-Content for SPEAKING and Stimulus for LIKING. But those roles that can only be filled by NPs are promotable—Addressee, Medium and Message-Label for SPEAKING, Experiencer for ANNOYING.

The only serious counter-example is compare, where the ‘object of comparison’, in O relation, may be NPs or ING clauses, and either of these may be promoted to subject. Note that all other roles (mentioned in the last paragraph) which are not open to promotion may involve several different kinds of complement clause. It may be that compare is simply an exception—note that it is the only verb which allows a complement clause (rather than just an NP) to be promoted. Or the generalization should perhaps be amended: roles which may be realized by a complement clause other than ING may not be promoted to subject. (We noted that ING clauses are the closest of all complements to an NP in their syntactic function.)

There is a single, quite minor exception to the generalization: we might expect that Stimulus-Label for LIKING should be promotable, parallel to Message-Label for SPEAKING, but in fact it appears not to be.

The force of this generalization should be emphasized. If a certain role can be realized by a complement clause (other than ING) for some verbs from a type then that role may not be promoted to subject for any verb from the type. We related all ATTENTION verbs to the Perceiver and Impression roles. Impression may be either an NP or a complement clause for some subtypes, e.g. SEE and DISCOVER, but it may only be an NP for some verbs from the LOOK subtype such as scrutinize, survey, explore and visit. The Impression role may not be promoted to subject with LOOK verbs, any more than it can be for SEE and DISCOVER (that is, we cannot say *This document scrutinizes easily, or *That terrain explores easily). This provides justification for the category ‘role’, which is a critical component of my semantically oriented approach to syntactic study. Each role has a certain semantic character, and only those roles which relate to entities, described by NPs (or activities, described by ING clauses)—not those which may relate to THAT or Modal (FOR) TO complements, etc.—can contribute to the success of an activity in such a way that they may be promoted into subject slot.

Secondary verbs take a syntactic complement clause, containing a verb which they modify semantically. The only possible promotion to subject is with BEGINNING, and then only where promotion is possible for an underlying complement clause verb. When this verb is omitted, the promotion may still be possible, now to the subject of the BEGINNING verb. Thus, John read that novel, That novel reads well; John began (reading) that novel, That novel begins well (but not *That novel begins reading well). And Mary told that joke about nuns, That joke about nuns tells well; Mary began (telling) that joke about nuns, That joke about nuns begins well (but not *That joke about nuns begins telling well). (We mentioned that some BEGINNING verbs may occur in an intransitive frame with an activity noun as subject, e.g. The sale began at three o’clock. Such sentences can involve an adverb, e.g. That sale began slowly, but this is not an instance of promotion to subject, parallel to those discussed above.)

There is one circumstance in which a promotion-to-subject construction might be ambiguous. Consider a transitive verb where the object may be omitted (a dual transitivity verb of type S = A). If we get a construction consisting only of SUBJECT, TRANSITIVE VERB, ADVERB, how do we know whether this is the original subject, with the object omitted, or whether this construction involves promotion to subject of the transitive object, with the original subject having been omitted?

There will be no danger of ambiguity if the various roles have different referential possibilities. Only a human can pour, only a liquid can be poured, and only a container can be poured out of. We know that John pours well is a transitive clause with object omitted, but that The custard pours well and The jug pours well involve promotion to subject.

There are verbs for which subject and object can be human, and which do allow the object to be promoted to subject. But these are all strictly transitive, i.e. the object cannot be omitted. If such a verb occurs with just a subject and no stated object, we know that the subject must be a promoted object, e.g. bribe, persuade, and verbs from the ANNOYING type.

There is a verb which can involve ambiguity—translate (and interpret might provide similar examples). This can omit its object, and does also permit promotion of object into subject slot. John translates well, where the O NP is omitted, is an acceptable sentence (the speaker will probably assume that the listener already knows what sort of thing John translates, and between what languages). With a stated object NP we get Many people have translated Shakespeare’s works into Greek and then, with the O promoted into A slot, Shakespeare’s works translate well into Greek. The subject of translate will have human reference, with the object generally referring to some piece of written or spoken language. But a set of literary works is sometimes abbreviated to just the name of the author—instead of Shakespeare’s works people will often say just Shakespeare. With this particular object NP there will be no ambiguity. Shakespeare translates well into Greek will be understood as a promotion-to-subject construction, not as a transitive clause with object omitted, simply because people know that Shakespeare is dead and that he didn’t do any translating. However, if we were talking about some living author (call him Adam Dawkins) whose works do get translated and who also undertakes translation himself, then Adam Dawkins translates well into Greek would be ambiguous. If Dawkins were equally well known for his original works, which are translated into many languages, and for the translations he does, then the unmarked interpretation of this sentence would surely be that it was a transitive construction with the object omitted (that is, Adam Dawkins would be taken as underlying subject, not object, of translate).

This underlies the point we made earlier, that promotion-to-subject is a marked construction, and is only permitted where there is space left by the rest of the grammar.