English Goal Infinitives

Abstract

Apparent restrictions on the kinds of phrases to which goal infinitives can adjoin, as well as the identification of the referents of unexpressed arguments, follow from what it means to be a particular type of goal, and therefore need not be stipulated. Knowledge of goal relations is part of the encyclopedic knowledge that language users acquire through observation of situations. Given that the grammar represents a speaker's knowledge of a language, an analysis in which constraints on modified phrases and interpretations of implicit arguments are not stipulated, but rather follow from independently necessary information, is preferable to one that stipulates those constraints. If the grammar can account for the distribution and interpretation of goal infinitives without constraints specific to the construction, then it is possible to assume that speakers' representation of their language is that much simpler, and presumably that much easier to acquire.