Since the meaning across these clauses remains consistent, one tendency has been to view the ECM-material (i.e., the material in bold in the first four examples) as a type of small clause that is analogous to the full clausal counterpart. On this approach, the object forms a constituent with the infinitive to its right. The primary trait of the ECM-object/subject is that it is "not" a semantic argument of the matrix predicate, which means that it is not semantically selected by the matrix verb. In this area, ECM-constructions should not be confused with control constructions, since control predicates semantically select their object (e.g., "They told us to start").