Clause Types (and Clausal Complementation) in Germanic

Abstract

Clauses can fulfill various functions in discourse; in most cases, the form of the clause is indicative of its discourse function. The discourse functions (such as making statements or asking questions) are referred to as speech acts, while the grammatical counterparts are referred to as clause types (such as declarative or interrogative). Declarative clauses are canonical (that is, they are syntactically more basic than non-canonical ones): they are by default used to express statements, and they represent the most unmarked word order configuration(s) in a language. Other clause types, such as interrogatives, can be distinguished by various means, including changes in the intonation pattern, different (non-canonical) word orders, the use of morphosyntactic markers (such as interrogative words), as well as combinations of these, as can be observed across Germanic. The explicit marking of clause types is referred to as clause typing, and it affects both the syntactic component of the grammar and its interfaces. Apart from main clauses, which can correspond to complete utterances, there are also embedded clauses, which are contained within another clause, referred to as the matrix clause: matrix clauses can be either main clauses or embedded clauses. Embedded clauses may be argument clauses, in which case they are selected by a matrix element (such as a verb), but they can also be adjunct clauses, which modify some element in the matrix clause (or the entire matrix clause). Embedded clauses fall into various clause types. Some of these can also be main clauses, such as declarative clauses or interrogative clauses. Other embedded clause types do not occur as main clauses, as is the case for relative clauses or comparative clauses. Clause typing in embedded clauses has two major aspects: embedded clauses are distinguished from matrix clauses and from other embedded clause types. Main clauses can be typed in various—syntactic and non-syntactic—ways, but Germanic languages type embedded clauses by morphosyntactic means intonation plays little, if any, role. These morphosyntactic markers fall into various categories according to what roles they fulfill in the clause. Germanic languages show considerable variation in morphosyntactic markers, depending on the clause type and the variety, and in many cases, such markers can also co-occur, resulting in complex left peripheries.