Arbitrary Control
Arbitrary control occurs when the controller is understood to be anybody in general, e.g.
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- Reading the Dead Sea Scrolls is fun.
- Seeing is believing.
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- Having to do something repeatedly is boring.
The understood subject of the gerunds in these sentence is non-discriminate; any generic person will do. In such cases, control is said to be "arbitrary". Any time the understood subject of a given predicate is not present in the linguistic or situational context, a generic subject (e.g. 'one') is understood.
Read more about this topic: Control (linguistics)
Famous quotes containing the words arbitrary and/or control:
“It is not an arbitrary “decree of God,” but in the nature of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow; for the soul will not have us read any other cipher than that of cause and effect. By this veil, which curtains events, it instructs the children of men to live in to-day.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Just as men must give up economic control when their wives share the responsibility for the family’s financial well-being, women must give up exclusive parental control when their husbands assume more responsibility for child care.”
—Augustus Y. Napier (20th century)