This paper investigates the variation between to‐infinitive and gerund‐participle complements with the verbs dread and fear. Specifically, it aims to explain the reasons underlying complement selection with these two verbs as well as a number of semantic effects which arise with these complement clause constructions. The approach taken here argues that an explanation of these constructions must be predicated upon an analysis of the semantic content of the items of which each one is composed. Three factors are proposed as being relevant to explaining the issues: (1) the meaning and function of the gerund‐participle, (2) the meaning and function of the to‐infinitive, and (3) the meaning of the main predicate. The findings of this study are in line with those of previous studies which have applied the same approach. This paper is intended as a small contribution to ongoing efforts to crack the complementation issue in English.

This paper looks at the variation in Canadian English between to-infinitive and of + gerund-participle complements with six adjectives that have as part of their semantic makeup a notion of fear. Using data from the Strathy Corpus of Canadian English and the Canadian component of the Global Web-Based Corpus of English, it aims to explain the reasons underlying complement selection with these adjectives as well as temporal relations between the emotion expressed by the adjective and that expressed by the complement. The complementation patterns examined in this study are shown to be connected to certain of the conceptual metaphors that previous studies have observed to be utilized to conceptualize the emotion of fear.