I'd be interested to hear your view on this, Jasper - or Nik, our other
resident lexical semanticist. It seems to call out for an explanation in
terms of force dynamics (or something similar) to explain why PROMISE has
control by the subject while PERSUADE has control by the object. It's not
just arbitrary - it would be strange if it was the other way round, given
what's involved in promising and persuading - i.e. who takes responsibility
for the target action. Does the literature contain any attempts to give
such an explanation?
         Dick

At 13:58 26/07/2004, you wrote:
>Chierchia, in the MIT encyclopedia of the cognitive sciences, notes the
>following contrast:
>
>1. John[i] promised  Bill[j] to wash him[j]/himself[i]
>2. John[i] persuaded Bill[j] to wash him[i]/himself[j]
>
>I think I know what I would say about it, but would any body else care to
>comment on where the difference lies?
>
>I didn't have time to discover what lessons Chierchia learns from all this.
>
>Jasp


Dick (Richard) Hudson, FBA
Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics,
University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
020 7679 3152; fax 020 7383 4108; www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm