COMPLEMENTATION BY
NON-FINITE CLAUSES
CATENATIVE COMPLEMENTS A
A catenative verb is a verb that controls a non-finite complement. ‘Catenative’ means ‘chaining’ and reflects the way that the verb can link successively with other catenatives to form a chain, as in:
We decided to try to rent a house near the sea.
Here there is a chain of three verbs: decide, try and rent, with to try to rent a house near the sea functioning as the catenative complement of decide, and to rent a house near the sea functioning as the catenative complement of try.
We can add further catenative verbs to produce an even longer chain of four catenatives, two of which, persuade and help, have a NG object. The final verb rent is not a catenative: We decided to try to persuade Bill to help us rent a house near the sea.
i Decide to try to persuade Bill to help us rent a house near the sea.
ii Try to persuade Bill to help us rent a house near the sea.
iii Persuade Bill to help us rent a house near the sea.
iv Help us rent a house near the sea.
A special type of catenative construction – as in He failed to appear –. Not all catenatives behave in the same way. Only the complements of a few catenatives such as want, like and prefer can be analyzed as (untypical) objects. Others cannot.
