The Syntax and Semantics of Wanting in Indonesian

Abstract

The Indonesian verbs mau and ingin ‘want’ look like typical control verbs. When they are followed by a passive predicate however, an additional, unexpected interpretation arises. The sentence Siti mau/ingin di-cium oleh Ali means ‘Siti wants to be kissed by Ali’ but also ‘Ali wants to kiss Siti’. We call the latter interpretation Crossed Control (CC). In CC, the wanter is not the surface subject of ‘want’ but an oblique element in the complement clause and the surface subject is the theme of the embedded predicate and not an argument of ‘want’. For the syntax of CC, we reject clause union and backward control analyses and propose that ‘want’ in this construction is an auxiliary/raising verb that does not assign an external θ-role. We then propose that the control interpretation is encoded in the lexical semantics of the auxiliary. ‘Want’ takes a propositional argument but forces the volitional participant in this event to be construed as an experiencer of wanting. We hypothesize that this approach can be extended to volitional constructions in other languages.