Quirk et al is a good grammar but weak, I think, on complex sentences.
What we're looking at in all of these examples is the remains of deceased clauses.
Of the four sentences, two:
- I saw her leave the room
- I heard someone shouting
are examples of special constructions that are limited to sense verbs, one with an infinitive and the other with a gerund. Note that you can swap infinitive and gerund here, with no particular difference in meaning:
- I saw her leaving the room
- I heard someone shout
All of these sentences have two meaningful verbs: see + leave and hear + shout. That means there are two clauses; every non-auxiliary verb is a clause. In this case the clauses are, logically:
SEE
(I, LEAVE
(she, room))
HEAR
(I, SHOUT
(someone))
In other words, the second clause is the direct object of the main clause that contains the sense verb -- they are Object Complement clauses.
Sense verbs are unusual, and have a number of syntactic peculiarities with their complement clauses:
- they can take all four kinds of complement clause
(that-clause, embedded wh-question, gerund, infinitive)
- their infinitive complements mostly lack the to infinitive complementizer
- subjects of untensed (gerund, infinitive) complement clauses may or may not be present
- untensed complement subjects of sense verbs may undergo B-Equi, or B-Raising, or neither
So, the middle two sentences are simple complement clauses, enhanced by being complements of sense verbs, which have quasi-superpowers (only Operators like Modals, Quantifiers, and Negatives have actual superpowers)
Of the other two sentences, one:
is, once again, an object complement clause (be a spy is a predicate noun -- SPY
(he))
Know can take a that-complement (with optional that, as usual):
- We knew (that) he was a spy
or an infinitive complement with B-Raising, and a normal to complementizer this time:
There's little perceptible meaning in this distinction; only different syntax. The Raised subject in an infinitive clause can be passivized, for instance, but the subject in a that-clause can't:
- He was known to be a spy
- *He was known (that) was a spy.
And the final sentence:
is an idiomatic construction with get
(one of many such constructions; get has a number of meanings and uses in Modern English).
This is a causative get + Past Participle
construction. There are two clauses, but their relationship is not obvious. The logical structure is something like:
CAUSE
(I, COME ABOUT
(repair (indef
, watch)))
or, in English:
- I brought it about (i.e, I caused it to come about) that
Indef
repaired the watch
That's rather a mouthful, and that's where get constructions come in.
One of get's meanings is the inchoative 'come to be' (get tired, get sick, get lost, get fixed),
and, like most English inchoatives, it can also be used as a causative 'cause X
to come to be'
(get him tired, get yourself sick, get her lost, get it fixed). And that's what this one is.
Best Answer
I think there was a mistake in choosing the segment to boldface.
"Your fate to be required to bear" is not itself a constituent. It's just a part of a constituent.
The smallest constituent that contains this string -- and it still needs quite a lot of untangling, because it's been done plenty of things to -- is
the direct object of the higher bear.
This construction is an embedded question complement clause. The introductory what gets "moved" by Question Formation from (i.e, it appears somewhere other than) its normal position in the clause, which would be after the lower bear as its direct object. (in the dissection that follows, I mark items that are moved or deleted as
code
)what
That, in turn, has been Extraposed from
for you
to be required to bearwhat
is your fateThat is, the subject of is your fate is an infinitive clause:
for you
to be required to bearwhat
You is the subject of the infinitive verb be required.
This clause, too, has been done things to. It's a Passive clause, so
you
has been "moved" by Passive from its position as the object of require. (What was the subject? Who knows? That's whatindef
means.)for indef
to requireyou
to bearwhat
with another
you
as the object (or requiree) of the requirement.And we're not done yet. There's still another infinitive, the lower bear, which is intended to be in parallel with the upper bear, and to reinforce the message.
for you
to bearwhat
It has a subject
you
, in fact the sameyou
that got "moved" by B-Raising to be the objectyou
in the require clause above.This whole process is what I meant in this handout by "unwinding" syntactic rules, constructions, or alternations.
Now I have to go wash my hands.