Switched control and other 'uncontrolled' cases of obligatory control

Abstract

The paper presents an analysis of control switch in German and Norwegian, as exemplified in the German pair Ich verspreche ihm zu kommen 'I promise him to come' vs. Ich verspreche ihm kommen zu dürfen 'I promise him to be allowed to come'. The phenomenon is induced by deontic modals in the context of suasive verbs of communication. The analysis is cast both in LFG and HPSG framework, in both cases deploying a pronounced feature-based semantic component. Our core assumption is that a normative agent is computed on top of control relations.