Raising (linguistics)

In linguistics, raising constructions involve the movement of an argument from an embedded or subordinate clause to a matrix or main clause; in other words, a raising predicate/verb appears with a syntactic argument that is not its semantic argument, but is rather the semantic argument of an embedded predicate. Although English has raising constructions, not all languages do.

The term raising has its origins in the transformational analysis of such constructions; the constituent in question is seen as being "raised" from its initial, deep structure position as the subject of the embedded predicate to its surface structure position in the matrix predicate/verb. Raising predicates/verbs are related to control predicates, although there are important differences between the two predicate/verb types.

There are at least two types of raising predicates/verbs: raising-to-subject verbs and raising-to-object predicates. Raising-to-object predicates overlap to a large extent with so-called ECM-verbs (= exceptional case-marking). These types of raising predicates/verbs are illustrated with the following sentences:

The primary trait of raising predicates/verbs like these is that they are not semantically selecting one of their dependents. The raising-to-subject verbs are not selecting their subject dependent, and the raising-to-object predicates are not selecting their object dependent. These dependents appear to have been raised from the lower predicate.

Raising predicates/verbs can be identified in part by the fact that they alternatively take a full clause dependent and can take part in it-extraposition, e.g.

...
Wikipedia