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Surprise

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Language and Cognition

Part of the book series: Cognition and Language: A Series in Psycholinguistics ((CALS))

Abstract

The company that a word keeps can often reveal unexpected nuances of meaning. What appears to be some kind of strange syntactic restriction turns out to be a reflection of the word’s content. The verb surprise would seem to be usable with any thing or event that causes surprise, and yet there is a restriction that looks, at first glance, to be purely syntactic. What one is surprised at can be easily embodied in a that clause or a have infinitive, but plain infinitives may cause trouble

  1. (1)

    I was surprised that I fell.

  2. (2)

    I was surprised to have fallen.

  3. (3)

    ?I was surprised to fall.

  4. (4)

    We were surprised that we agreed with him.

  5. (5)

    We were surprised to have agreed with him.

  6. (6)

    ?We were surprised to agree with him.

  7. (7)

    It surprised me that I broke the vase.

  8. (8)

    It surprised me to have broken the vase.

  9. (9)

    ?It surprised me to break the vase

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Notes

  1. The category of ‘mental construct’ has other uses. So-called existential there, for example, is used to ‘present to the mind’ (Bolinger, 1977, pp. 90-123).

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References

  • Bolinger, D. Meaning and form. London and New York: Longman, 1977.

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  • Larkin, D. Complement form in Tamil and the subordinate parenthetical clause problem. Unpublished manuscript, 1977. (Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. 20057.).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, USA

    Dwight Bolinger (Professor Emeritus)

  2. Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, USA

    Dwight Bolinger (Professor Emeritus)

Authors
  1. Dwight Bolinger
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Herbert H. Lehman College, The City University of New York, New York, New York, USA

    Lawrence J. Raphael

  2. Queensborough Community College, The City University of New York, New York, New York, USA

    Carolyn B. Raphael

  3. Townley and Updike, Attorneys-at-Law, New York, New York, USA

    Miriam R. Valdovinos

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© 1984 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Bolinger, D. (1984). Surprise. In: Raphael, L.J., Raphael, C.B., Valdovinos, M.R. (eds) Language and Cognition. Cognition and Language: A Series in Psycholinguistics. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0381-5_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0381-5_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-0383-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-0381-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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