The Choice Principle and the matrix verb fear in recent New Zealand English

Abstract

The present study investigates aspects of the non-finite complementation of the subject control verb fear using recent data from the New Zealand section of the NOW corpus. The matrix verb fear selects both infinitival and gerundial complements and a first objective of this article is to inquire into their incidence in the corpus selected. Another, more theoretical objective, is to test the applicability of the Choice Principle to a new set of data and a pair of competing complements not previously analysed from this angle. In earlier work, the Principle has been shown to be applicable to contexts of prepositional gerunds, and this article indicates that its scope can also be extended to contexts of bare gerunds. The article also places an emphasis on examining constructions containing a complement other than the one predicted by the Choice Principle, and the authors argue that in many such cases the principle affords a useful window for examining the difference in meaning between the two constructions.