Thank you so much!!! I wonder whether verbs that take bare infinitives can be analyzed and tested in a similar way. For example, do a) John let the sh*t hit the fan and b) John saw the sh*t hit the fan retain the idiomatic meaning? I'm not a native speaker so I am uncertain about my judgement🧐
Unfortunately no, this won't work. They both allow the idiomatic meaning. That's entirely expected though, because neither let nor saw (in this context anyway - I'm only talking about the "saw" that takes a clausal complement, not simple transitive "saw") assign a theme theta role. So "shit" cannot be an underlying argument of either of these matrix verbs, so the idiomatic meaning is allowed.
Thank you so much!!! I wonder whether verbs that take bare infinitives can be analyzed and tested in a similar way. For example, do a) John let the sh*t hit the fan and b) John saw the sh*t hit the fan retain the idiomatic meaning? I'm not a native speaker so I am uncertain about my judgement🧐
Unfortunately no, this won't work. They both allow the idiomatic meaning. That's entirely expected though, because neither let nor saw (in this context anyway - I'm only talking about the "saw" that takes a clausal complement, not simple transitive "saw") assign a theme theta role. So "shit" cannot be an underlying argument of either of these matrix verbs, so the idiomatic meaning is allowed.