Topics in the Syntax and Semantics of Infinitives and Gerunds

This title, first published in 1988, is an inquiry into the nature of predication in natural language. The study is based on the hypothesis that infinitives and gerunds are not clausal or propositional constructions and attempts to provide support for such a hypothesis, whilst also drawing from analysis of various anaphoric phenomena. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.

Gennaro Chierchia is Haas Foundations Professor of Linguistics at Harvard. He is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow. His work and study focus on areas including semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, and language pathology.

1. Theories of Properties and Natural Language Semantics 2. Locally Configurational Grammar 3. Distributional Properties of Predicative Expressions and the Semantics of Nominalization 4. Control and Semantic Structure