Book contents
- Data-Intensive Investigations of English
- Studies in English Language
- Data-Intensive Investigations of English
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1Data-Intensive Approaches to English Linguistics
- Chapter 2What Big Data Tells Us about American English Phonetics
- Chapter 3Do You Reckon?
- Chapter 4‘Scots for the Masses’?
- Chapter 5Combining Collocation Measures and Distributional Semantics to Detect Idioms
- Chapter 6Using Data-Intensive Methods for Unlocking Expressiveness in Word Formation
- Chapter 7Modals of Future Time Reference across Native and Non-native Englishes
- Chapter 8Bayesian Multivariate Analysis of Complement Selection
- Chapter 9Statistical Modelling of Syntactic Complexity of English Academic Texts Using Ensemble Machine Learning
- Chapter 10Implications of the Replication Crisis
- Index
- References
Chapter 8 - Bayesian Multivariate Analysis of Complement Selection
Subject-Control Complements of the Verb Fear
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2025
Book contents
- Data-Intensive Investigations of English
- Studies in English Language
- Data-Intensive Investigations of English
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1Data-Intensive Approaches to English Linguistics
- Chapter 2What Big Data Tells Us about American English Phonetics
- Chapter 3Do You Reckon?
- Chapter 4‘Scots for the Masses’?
- Chapter 5Combining Collocation Measures and Distributional Semantics to Detect Idioms
- Chapter 6Using Data-Intensive Methods for Unlocking Expressiveness in Word Formation
- Chapter 7Modals of Future Time Reference across Native and Non-native Englishes
- Chapter 8Bayesian Multivariate Analysis of Complement Selection
- Chapter 9Statistical Modelling of Syntactic Complexity of English Academic Texts Using Ensemble Machine Learning
- Chapter 10Implications of the Replication Crisis
- Index
- References
Summary
This study is a multivariate analysis seeking to identify semantic and syntactic factors influencing the alternation between to-infinitival and bare gerundial clauses in subject-control complements of the verb fear in contemporary American English. It builds on recent qualitative discussions of this alternation and recent multivariate analyses of similar binary alternations involving a prepositionally linked (rather than bare) gerundial option. We draw upon the American component of the Corpus of News on the Web, sampling subject-control complements from a period extending from the beginning of 2010 to the end of 2021. Bayesian mixed-effects logistic regression provides varying degrees of support to numerous manifestations of the Complexity Principle, as well as strong support for the so-called Choice Principle. There is also low-quality evidence for a continuing diachronic decline of the to-infinitive.
Keywords
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- Data-Intensive Investigations of English , pp. 196 - 226Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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