Predicative vs. catenative complements

[nschneid]

While some nonfinite clauses can have resultative or depictive meanings, it seems that they should rarely be treated as PredComps.

For example, past-participial catenative (as opposed to predicative) complements discussed on p. 1245:

I believe raising-to-object verbs like deem, find, order license either a PredComp (AdjP or NP) or catenative Comp (nonfinite Clause).

[nschneid]

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[nschneid]

Confirmed with GKP via email:

I want to make sure I am correctly interpreting CGEL's distinction between predicative and catenative complements for examples like the following:

[1a] The judge ordered the ruling (to be) vacated.
[1b] The documents were found to have been falsified.

[2a] It was declared (to be) null and void.
[2b] The evidence was deemed (to be) inadmissible.
[2c] The defendant was found (to be) innocent.

The [1] examples involve past participle verbs whereas the [2] examples involve adjectives.

I believe LFG would treat these all as XCOMP, reflecting that the matrix subject is semantically shared with the complement clause.

On p. 265 I see declare, deem, and find as licensing PredComps ("complex-transitives with depictive PCs" e.g. "She believed it prudent"). The [2] examples omitting the copula seem to fit here. The verbs are listed with INF, "indicating the possibility of an infinitival complement instead of the PC"—I take it this means the infinitival complement would be a catenative complement?

On p. 1233 declare, deem, and find are given as catenative verbs of type "plain-complex with raised object (I assumed there to be a mistake in the instructions)". Order is discussed as a special case on p. 1235. It is annotated with "PP" because it licenses past-participial complements like [1a] (with resultative meaning).

Is it correct to conclude that an infinitival or past-participial complement of these verbs is always catenative, never predicative?

We might add to the guidelines trees for "We got our car washed" and "The jury found the defendant to be innocent" vs. "The jury found the defendant innocent". Also "I regard the solution as being satisfactory", #144.

[nschneid]

Outside of VPs headed by be, it appears that PredComps are nearly always of category AdjP or NP.

In the data we have an instance of PredComp for a coordination of PP and AdjP: "I had to leave [without a refund and still hungry]". Actually I think this should be a (depictive) modifier, not a complement—this is leave in the sense of 'depart', not in the sense of 'keep unchanged'. "The failed order left me without a refund and still hungry" would be the complement sense.