The Stylistics of Syntactic Complements: Grammar and Seeing in Flannery O'Connor's Fiction - Critical Essay

Style, Spring, 2000 by Donald E. Hardy, David Durian

2. The Form and Semantics of Syntactic Integration of Verb Complements

First, we will explore some intuitional data to establish some formal distinctions in types of complements to the verb see. There are three types of nonfinite (nontensed) complements to the verb see. The asterisk in (1b), (2b), and (3b) indicates an ungrammatical sentence.

BARE STEM

(1) a. John saw Mary leave.

b. *Mary leave.

PRESENT PARTICIPIAL

(2) a. John saw Mary leaving.

b. *Mary leaving.

PAST PARTICIPIAL

(3) a. John saw Mary stopped for a traffic violation.

b. *Mary [semantic PATIENT] stopped for a traffic violation.

The italicized complement in (1a) is known as the bare-stem complement since it has no added morphology such as tense or aspect. The complement in (2a) is the present participial. And the complement in (3a) is the past participial. One obvious sign of the syntactic integration (see Givon) of these verb complements with the matrix clause is that they may not stand grammatically by themselves, as is illustrated in the (b) examples in (1)-(3).

As the following examples demonstrate, finite (i.e., tensed complements to the verb see) are structured very differently:

(4) a. John saw that Mary left.

b. Mary left.

(5) a. John saw that Mary was leaving.

b. Mary was leaving.

(6) a. John saw that Mary was stopped for a traffic violation.

b. Mary was stopped for a traffic violation.

Compare (4), (5), and (6) with (1), (2), and (3), respectively. Through the simple deletion of the subordinator, each of the complements in (4)-(6) can occur as a grammatical sentence. The difference, besides the subordinator, between (1)(3) and (4)-(6) is the presence of finite tense in (4)-(6). A finite complement, because it contains tense, is more syntactically and semantically independent of the main clause than nonfinite complements. Figure 1 illustrates the relationship between complement type and syntactic integration.

Second, we will explore some intuitional data to establish some semantic distinctions in types of complements to the verb see. Notice that the nonfinite complements, here represented categorically by the present participial, generally indicate a direct physical observation of the action of the complement (7a) while the finite complement may be understood either as a direct physical observation (8a) or as an indirect cognition (8b) (for further detail on a "physical" versus a "cognitive" interpretation, see Givon; Kirsner and Thompson). The question mark preceding the sentence in (7b) indicates a semantically ill-formed sentence.

(7) a John saw Mary leaving and said goodbye.

b. ?John saw Mary leaving from the fact that her car was packed.

(8) a. John saw that Mary was leaving and said goodbye.

b. John saw that Mary was leaving from the fact that her car was packed.

Example (7b) is semantically ill-formed because the italicized participial complement signals direct observation while the prepositional phrase, "from the fact that her car was parked," signals that the observation was indirect. Kirsner and Thompson point out that non-finite complements to see "communicate basic physical perception while [finite complements to see] involve interpretation as well" (206). One of the issues important to us in this paper is the nature of the interpretation involved in an example like (8a). It is possible to interpret the complement in (8a) as encoding direct perception or indirect cognition or some mixture of the two. Kirsner and Thompson argue further, "The contrast between direct perception and deductions from something perceived is, like other linguistic contrasts, a matter of degree" (206). We will argue that these degrees of difference are vital to defining O'Connor's style.