First consider the following contrast:
(359) a. * He suggested to take the children to the zoo.
b. He suggested taking the children to the zoo.
(359) represents the judgment of probably most (but, as we will see shortly, certainly not all) native speakers of English. One might conjecture that (359) could be given a reading on which the matrix proposition is contrasted with its negation and the complement receives a noncontrastive interpretation, characteristic of infinitival complements. This is, incidentally, probably the
reading many Hungarian learners of English tend to associate with suggest -sentences, and therefore even advanced students complement suggest with an infinitival clause in hundreds of instances, as any teacher of English in Hungary can testify. If it is an error, which it probably is, it does not seem to be the kind which is only committed occasionally by the innocent learner of English as a foreign language but one that is prone to interfere also with the language of educated (even professional) native speakers and writers of English such as James Joyce, as the reader can verify from the quotation in (360) below.
(360) Uncle Charles smoked such black twist that at last his nephew suggested to him to enjoy his morning smoke in a little outhouse at the end of the garden. (James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1916, p. 60.)
The same is also documented in Chierchia (1984:300), where, unfor-tunately, it is not clear whether these are his own examples (and errors), in which case what we see is another instance of overgeneralization by an exceptionally competent user of English as a second language (since Chierchia, although his English is often impressively eloquent in style, does not probably qualify as a native speaker), or he cites authentic material.
(361) a. John suggested to Bill to decide to leave together.
b. John suggested to Bill to signal to leave together. (Cf.
Chierchia 1984:300)
The following admittedly deviant but authentic anacoluthon with suggest complemented by an infinitival clause is attested by Mair (1990:143).
(362) Hilary Torrance suggested that a letter from the parents to be sent to County Hall putting forward the views regarding the cuts of 2 weeks and enrolment week for the 1984/85 session.
It is particularly interesting because, as he explains, a “lengthy and discontinuous” embedded subject “causes the writer to switch to a construction that is normal with frequently used and semantically related verbs of wishing such as expect or want” (Mair 1990:143).
Bolinger’s collection of what he calls “instances of hole-filling”
(1961b:376) contains the following, said by a ten-year-old native speaker:
(363) Mother suggested me to write.
Now consider the following examples, with symbols representing the acceptability judgments of twenty-two native speakers of American English:8
(364) a. * He suggested to take a nap.
b. *? He suggested to her to take a nap.
c. ?? He suggested a letter to be sent to the parents.
d. ? He suggested for a letter to be sent to the parents.
The data are arranged in reverse order of acceptability, (364a) being the most unacceptable and (364d) the least unacceptable. It is perhaps interesting to note that only three of the informants rejected all four sentences as ungrammatical and ten of them found (364b) perfectly acceptable. Most interesting of all, however, are the data supplied by two of them, who sent back the following contrasts in addition to their responses to (364a–d):
(365) a. He suggested to take a nap if you feel tired.
b. ? He suggested taking a nap if you feel tired.
(366) a. He suggested to take a nap if you want to get rid of that cold.
b. * He suggested taking a nap if you want to get rid of that cold.
(367) a. ?* He suggested to take a nap as the best way to get rid of your cold.
b. He suggested taking a nap as the best way to get rid of your cold.
(368) a. * He suggested to take a nap as the best way of getting rid of a cold.
b. He suggested taking a nap as the best way of getting rid of a cold.
8 I am most grateful to Anna Szabolcsi at UCLA for supplying me with these data.
First consider (365) and (366). On the most natural reading, the suggest-clause is contrastive, asserting that if the condition expressed in the if-clause obtains, then the action expressed in the complement is indeed recommended. Choice among alternatives comparable to the action in the complement is not implied. What is implied is the contrast between performing and not performing the action in the complement—two options, representing each other’s opposites, the recommendation of the first of which is asserted in the matrix proposition. As expected, the infinitival complement is preferred, at least in the language of those speakers of English who are sensitive to this subtle difference in meaning, which these two speakers certainly are.
Now consider (367) and (368). The as-phrase in all four sentences clearly indicates that the action expressed in the complement is viewed as one of several alternatives. This is precisely the interpretation associated with gerundive complements. Therefore, as our hypothesis predicts, the gerundive complement occurs (cf. (367b) and (368b)), and it receives a contrastive interpretation. The data require no further comment.
I find it exciting that the theory of implicit contrasts developed in the present work offers a principled explanation even for the apparent irregularities discussed in this section and section 4.8