Here are some nominal wh-clauses in Greek

Este trabajo enfoca dos tipos de oraciones completivas de sustantivo, las completivas de verbo finito (el hecho de que vaya) y las de infinitivo (el hecho de ir), con el objetivo de determinar si entre ambos tipos hay "identidad funcional" (cf. Bogard & Company 1989). Analizando dos muestras de 37 y 56 sustantivos que se combinan frecuentemente con ambos tipos de completivas en portugués y español, respectivamente, se observa que hay claras diferencias entre las clases de sustantivos y los contextos de uso de ambos tipos de completivas. Las completivas finitas se usan con sustantivos mentales y lingüísticos (como certeza y noticia), que se asocian, además, con el modo indicativo, mientras que los sustantivos modales (como necesidad ) prefieren las completivas de infinitivo, y estos sustantivos se asocian con el modo subjuntivo. En cambio, los sustantivos de uso factual (e.g. facto/fato y hecho) presentan preferencias variables por uno u otro tipo de completiva. Así, se concluye que las completivas finitas no funcionan de modo idéntico a las completivas de infinitivo. Además, se observa un desplazamiento diacrónico a favor de las completivas finitas, de modo que las completivas de infinitivo son más frecuentes en los primeros siglos analizados (xvi, xvii y xviii), mientras que se detecta una frecuencia creciente de las completivas finitas en los siglos xix y xx. Original recibido: 2016/07/29Dictamen enviado al autor: 2016/10/25Aceptado: 2016/10/25

Independent evidence favors pragmatic characterizations of the distribution of mood in complement clauses in Spanish. Examination of the behavior of different types of complements in two different grammati- cal constructions supports the argument that the differences in behavior are the result of the different prag- matic status of the complement. Empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that complements which repre- sent old information appear in the subjunctive mood. The notion of old information serves to revise standard explanations of the use of mood in some negated complements and to explain some uses of the subjunctive mood that have been rarely discussed in the literature.

Exploring links between language and cognition in autism spectrum disorders: Complement sentences, false belief, and executive functioning

Languages vary in whether evidentials—that is, linguistic markers of information source (Aikhenvald 2004)—can appear in clausal complements. Embedding of evidentials is possible in some languages, such as Turkish (Turkic: Turkey; Şener 2011) (evidence for treating such clauses as instances of genuine embedding is provided in section 3).1In some other languages, such as Cuzco Quechua (Quechuan: Peru; Lefebvre and Muysken 1987), evidentials are banned from clausal complements.The semantic literature often views the variation in embeddability of evidentials as evidence for the semantic heterogeneity of evidentiality as a category (Faller 2002, 2007, Garrett 2001, Matthewson, Davis, and Rullmann 2007, McCready and Ogata 2007, Peterson 2010). Specifically, embeddability, and the contrast between (1) and (2), has been regarded as a diagnostic of the semantic status of respective markers. Embeddable evidentials, such as Turkish miş (Şener 2011), have been treated as epistemic modals. Nonembeddable evidentials, such as Cuzco Quechua mi (Faller 2002), have been analyzed as dealing with speech acts. However, the assumption that nonembeddability of evidentials indicates their speech act status can be challenged on theoretical grounds alone. A growing body of syntactic (Aelbrecht, Haegeman, and Nye 2012, Haegeman 2012, 2014) and semantic (Krifka 2014) literature argues that speech act material is in fact not limited to root clauses, so the behavior of evidentials needs further scrutiny (see Korotkova 2017, Thomas 2014).In this squib, I engage with the very idea of the semantic heterogeneity of evidentials, and the larger question of semantic variation (Bochnak 2013, von Fintel and Matthewson 2008, Matthewson 2001, 2013). I show that even though (non)embeddability is a matter of crosslinguistic variation, it is not a case of genuine semantic variation in evidentiality. This result provides further empirical support for the view that evidentials have a unified semantics across languages (Korotkova 2016, 2019, Matthewson 2011, 2012, Murray 2010, 2017). According to this view, the existing variation in evidentiality is not semantic. Drawing on data from Turkish, where evidentials can appear in tensed but not in nominalized complements, I propose that restrictions on the embedding of evidentials are due to the syntax of clausal complementation. It it has been suggested before that (non)embeddability is due to morphosyntax (Matthewson 2012, Murray 2010, 2016, 2017), but this claim has not been argued for in detail. To this end, I offer the first detailed investigation of syntactic constraints on evidentials in clausal complements and put forth the following generalization: evidentials are embeddable only in those languages that have complements with enough structural space to host them. In Korotkova 2016, I discuss other arguments against the semantic heterogeneity view, such as the fact that the variation is not unidimensional.The next two sections present core data from Turkish. Section 2 provides a brief description of complementation strategies, and section 3 focuses on the distribution of evidentials across those strategies. Section 4 examines a broader crosslinguistic picture.Like any Turkic language, Turkish has a variety of complementation strategies (George and Kornfilt 1981, Kornfilt 1997). The scope of this squib is restricted to tensed and nominalized complements, described in detail below (tensed and nominalized are descriptive labels; see section 3.2 on tense in nominalizations).2 They differ both in morphological makeup and in clausal architecture, and there is no one-to-one mapping between those strategies and the embedding predicate's semantic type.Tensed complements with nominative subjects, exemplified in (3), are the closest counterpart of that-clauses in English. This complementation strategy is available to speech predicates, such as demek 'say' and söylemek 'tell', and to many predicates of mental attitude, such as düşünmek 'think' and unmak 'hope'. In terms of external syntax, the complement, being an object, typically precedes the verb. The internal syntax is the same as in root clauses: (a) verb-final word order, (b) nominative-accusative case alignment, (c) full verbal morphology, including tense and agreement.Although the complement in (3) resembles a root clause, it instantiates genuine subordination. This is evidenced by the interpretation of the in-situ wh-phrase in (4) as a matrix question, which would be ruled out if the bracketed clause were quoted or a parenthetical.Other tests for the subordinate status of such clauses include long-distance licensing of polarity items and the availability of de re construals (Özyıldız 2012, Şener and Şener 2011). Optional with bilmek 'believe' and absent with demek 'say', the complementizer diye, derived from demek (Özyıldız, Major, and Maier to appear), is obligatory with some predicates, such as düşünmek 'think' and duymak 'hear'. Its presence does not affect the syntax of the embedded clause.Tensed complements with accusative subjects, exemplified in (5), are reminiscent of English exceptional case-marking constructions. This complementation strategy is available to a subset of mental attitude predicates that take complements discussed in section 2.1, such as unmak 'hope' and sanmak 'believe'. Speech predicates are excluded. Such complements, ungrammatical at the root level (6), precede the verb and have root temporal morphology, but, in contrast to the construction in (3), have accusative subjects and lack agreement.The type of syntactic domain in such clauses, as well as the structural source of the accusative case, is a matter of debate (Aygen 2002, Kornfilt 1984, 1996, 2007, Zidani-Eroğlu 1997). For my purposes, it is sufficient to say that those are clausal complements with a special syntactic status and, unlike their English counterparts, regular verbal tense.Turkish makes productive use of nominalizations (7), which differ substantially from root clauses in the following respects: they (a) are case-marked by the matrix verb, (b) have genitive, instead of nominative, subjects, and (c) have possessive agreement morphology.Nominalizations are used with a wide range of predicates. For some, such as bulmak 'discover', nominalization is the only available complementation strategy. There are also many predicates that take both nominalized and tensed complements: for example, unmak 'hope', söylemek 'tell', beklemek 'expect'. Some of those predicates (e.g., bilmek 'think/know' and hatırlamak 'remember') trigger what Özyıldız (2017) calls the factivity alternation: the interpretation is nonfactive with tensed complements (8a) and factive with nominalized ones (8b), as evidenced by the fact that nominalizations cannot follow up a contradicting claim.For an analysis of the pattern, see Özyıldız 2017. Of importance here is the fact that nominalizations are inherently epistemically neutral. There are many predicates (e.g., söylemek 'tell' and düşünmek 'think') that do not participate in the alternation and produce no semantic difference between the tensed and the nominalized complement. For example, the factivity inference is absent in the noncontradictory example (9).As is common in the Anatolia-Balkans-Caucasus region, evidentiality in Turkish is part of the tense system and is expressed by perfect morphology (Izvorski 1997). I concentrate on the behavior of miş, an indirect evidential denoting hearsay (10a) or inference (10b).When used as a perfect, but not as an evidential, miş is incompatible with temporal frame adverbials such as 'yesterday' or 'at five o'clock', a typical property of perfects across languages (Klein 1992, Pancheva and von Stechow 2004). In what follows, I will use such adverbials to disambiguate between the aspectual and the evidential interpretation.PaceJohanson 2000, miş can be embedded. In (1) and (12), the adverbial, which modifies the lower—but not the matrix—clause due to its tense, ensures the evidential interpretation.The presence of miş does not affect the syntactic status of the clause ((13), (14)).3 For example, wh-in-situ can be interpreted as a matrix question in nominative-subject complements with miş (13) and without it (4). Likewise, accusative-subject complements are transparent for anaphor binding (Kornfilt 2007), and miş does not affect it (14).However, in contrast with tensed clauses, miş is banned from nominalizations.If the ungrammaticality of (15) were due to a morphological quirk, one would expect no embedding differences between the evidential and the aspectual guise of miş. This expectation is not borne out: miş can appear inside a nominalization as a perfect (16).4To recapitulate, the evidential miş can occur in tensed complements but not in nominalizations. Schenner (2010), the first to notice the ban on miş in nominalizations, advocates a semantic story in the spirit of Hooper and Thompson 1973. Evidentiality is argued to be semantically compatible only with nonfactive attitude predicates, which, according to Schenner, are the ones not taking nominalizations. This view assumes a strict mapping between the verb, complement type, and factivity. As demonstrated in section 2.3, there is no such mapping. The factivity inference with nominalized complements is present with some, but not all, predicates. In particular, düşünmek 'think' does not give rise to it (9). The evidential miş is licensed inside tensed (12) but not nominalized (15) complements of düşünmek. The analysis in Schenner 2010 does not predict the observed contrast.I propose a syntactic explanation of the pattern: nominalizations lack structural space to host evidentiality. To this end, I adopt Borsley and Kornfilt's (2000) view of nominalizations in Turkish and remain agnostic about the exact location of the evidential miş in the clausal spine. It is sufficient to say that evidentiality must be introduced high.Nominalizations across languages are traditionally described as verbal nouns. They are often analyzed as mixed categories headed by a nominal projection whose place in the structure determines the degree of "verbiness" of the entire complex (Kornfilt and Whitman 2011b and references therein). Turkish indicative nominalizations have been argued to be verbal all the way to TP, at which level a D head is introduced (Borsley and Kornfilt 2000, Kornfilt and Whitman 2011a). Arguments for this view are presented below.First of all, the verbal spine cannot be truncated lower than vP, as evidenced by object case and modifiers. Turkish nominalizations, just like regular verbs, assign the accusative case to objects. They also take verbal modifiers, including temporal adverbials, such as dün 'yesterday', and adverbs, such as dikkatlice 'carefully', which cannot modify nouns (cf. dikkatli(*ce) insan 'careful(*ly) person'). On the other hand, there is evidence from agreement and subject case that the nominalizing does not happen higher. Nominalizing morphology, dik (nonfuture) and açak (future), occupies the tense slot. Morphology that is linearly to the right of dik and açak is nominal. Importantly, just like regular nouns, nominalizations use possessive, and not verbal, agreement morphology. Turkish is a language where finiteness, understood as the ability to assign the nominative case, has been linked to agreement and/or mood (Aygen 2002, Kornfilt 2007). The lack of verbal agreement is thus responsible for the genitive, not nominative, subject case in nominalizations. Finally, the overall complex has the distribution of a noun. It can serve as an argument to postpositions, a property that regular tensed clauses do not have, and is case-marked. (17) illustrates these defining characteristics of Turkish nominalizations.The nominalization in (17), formed by the marker dik, exhibits the following verbal properties: (a) object case (ağaça (ACC), not ağaçın (GEN)) and (b) modifiers (dikkatlice (adverb), not dikkatli (adjective)). Its nominal properties are (a) agreement (possessive in, not verbal ) and (b) subject case (Bestenin (GEN), not Beste (NOM)). The nominalization also bears the accusative case assigned by the matrix verb.This discussion of Turkish nominalizations makes the following point: nominalizations have some, but crucially not all, structural layers of root clauses. I argue that this is critical to understanding the distribution of the evidential miş in clausal complements. I propose that the behavior of miş can be explained if its syntactic position is taken into account and that nominalizations lack precisely those layers where miş is introduced.The argument proceeds as follows. First, following Speas (2004, 2010), I assume that evidentiality, and point of view in general (Speas and Tenny 2003, Sundaresan 2018, Zu 2018), is part of the left periphery.5 Second, the analysis of Turkish nominalizations presented above entails that they lack the left periphery because the cutoff of the verbal spine happens lower. I propose that the evidential miş is banned from nominalizations because they lack structural space to host it. The contrast between Turkish nominative-subject complements and nominalizations falls out naturally under this proposal. Only the former have the internal structure for evidentiality. It is expected that miş is licensed in nominalizations in its aspectual guise (16): being below TP, aspect is preserved in nominalizations.The contrast between nominative-subject tensed complements and nominalizations may suggest that the evidential miş is only licensed in finite clauses. Such a claim would be inaccurate. Nonfinite accusative-subject complements also license miş (12b). The correct empirical generalization is that miş is only licensed in tensed complements, both with nominative and with accusative subjects. Leaving an articulated syntactic analysis of evidentiality in Turkish for the future, I draw the following theoretical conclusion: miş is introduced high in the structure, and high layers are only present in tensed complements.Evidence that both types of tensed complement share at least some high projections, absent from nominalizations, comes from epistemic modality. Epistemic but not root (e.g., deontic and ability) modals are often argued to be structurally high (Cinque 1999, Hacquard 2010; though see Rullmann and Matthewson 2018). The Turkish possibility modal ebil can have both a root and an epistemic interpretation. In embedded clauses, the latter is available in tensed complements with nominative (18a) and accusative subjects (18b), but not in nominalizations (19). Both (18a) and (18b) can have an ability interpretation ('Estragon thought that Godot was able to come') and an epistemic one ('Estragon thought that Godot would possibly come'). In nominalizations, only the ability interpretation is available.As with miş (16), this is not a morphological quirk. Ebil can show up as a root but not as an epistemic modal in the same morphosyntactic environment. These facts illustrate that nominalizations lack certain layers that are present in both types of tensed complement. A proper understanding of what those layers are requires more research on the fine-grained structure of the left periphery in Turkish. Below I outline several analytical options.One possibility is that evidentiality in Turkish is introduced at the same layer as speech act information, which would be a syntactic counterpart of Faller's (2002) analysis of evidentials as speech act modifiers. Another possibility is that evidentiality has a designated projection lower than the speech act layer, as Cinque (1999) proposes (see Simeonova and Zareikar 2015 on an implementation for Azeri, Bulgarian, and Persian). Recent research also argues for syntactic encoding of perspective above TP but below speech acts; see, for example, Zu 2018 on egophoric agreement in Newari (Tibeto-Burman: Nepal) and Sundaresan 2018 on perspectival anaphora in Tamil (Dravidian: India). To this end, it may be the case that the syntax of evidentiality is similar to that of other perspectival expressions, as Speas and Tenny (2003) argue (see Irimia 2018 for an implementation of this view for Romanian). Finally, evidentiality and epistemic modality may be structurally bundled together, which is compatible with Şener's (2011) account of Turkish and which would be a syntactic correlate of Izvorski's (1997) analysis of evidentials as epistemic modals.Given that miş can occur in accusative-subject complements, it is unlikely to be introduced at the topmost layer, as such complements do not have the full verbal spine. At the same time, under any of the above options it would not be surprising that miş only appears in complements of speech and doxastic predicates. Such predicates are known to be more permissive in general: many phenomena are more likely to appear in their complements than in the complements of factives, for example; see the implicational hierarchy in Cristofaro 2003, Culy 1994, and Noonan 1985. In the cartographic tradition, this translates into the presence of higher projections in the complements of speech predicates and doxastics but not in the complements of other clause-taking predicates (cf. Deal 2017, Sundaresan 2018, Zu 2018). To establish the structural position of miş, one needs to look at other phenomena with limited distribution in embedded environments. In English, such phenomena include high adverbs (frankly, sincerely) and the so-called root transformations, such as negative inversion and argument fronting (Haegeman 2012). In Turkish, one case of interest would be constraints on indexical shift (Özyıldız, Major, and Maier to appear; see also Major 2019 on the genetically related Uyghur). Crucially, if one were to argue that miş occupies the same projection as speech act modifiers, epistemics, or other perspectival expressions, independent evidence on the syntactic distribution of those high elements would be needed.The data from Turkish offer a new perspective on the crosslinguistic variation in embeddability of evidentials. I argue above that the distribution of the evidential miş in embedded environments is due to the syntax of clausal complementation. In this section, I generalize this proposal to other languages, unrelated genetically and geographically.I propose that embeddability of evidentials in a given language depends on the availability of complements that can host them. For example, it is possible to recast in syntactic terms the nonembeddability of Cuzco Quechua evidentials, long considered to be rooted in their semantics (Faller 2002, 2011). Languages of the Quechuan family only have nominalized complements (Cole and Hermon 2011, Lefebvre and Muysken 1987). Their syntax is similar to the syntax of Turkish nominalizations: Quechua nominalizations do not have the full verbal spine (Cole and Hermon 2011). I conjecture that the ungrammaticality of (2) is explained not by semantics (pace Faller), but along the lines advocated for Turkish in section 3.2: Quechua nominalizations lack layers where evidentials are introduced. The contrast in embeddability of evidentials in Turkish and Cuzco Quechua is then due to the fact that Turkish, but not Cuzco Quechua, has a counterpart of that-clauses.6The following languages, like Turkish, allow evidentials in clausal complements (ALLOW-languages): Bulgarian (South Slavic: Bulgaria; Sauerland and Schenner 2007), Georgian (South Caucasian: Georgia; Boeder 2000, Korotkova 2012), Standard Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman: China and Nepal; Garrett 2001), St'át'imcets (Salish: British Columbia, Canada; Matthewson, Davis, and Rullmann 2007), Tagalog (Austronesian: Philippines; Kierstead 2015, Schwager 2010). All these languages have complements with the morphosyntactic makeup of root clauses. On the other hand, a preliminary investigation of BAN-languages—ones that have been reported to ban evidentials in clausal complements—reveals that complements in such languages have a dedicated morphosyntax. For example, only nominalizations are available in Ecuadorian Siona (Western Tucanoan: Ecuador; Bruil 2014) and Tariana (North Arawak: Brazil; Aikhenvald 2003, 2006). Furthermore, in some BAN-languages complements feature verb forms with dependent mood marking or reduced categorial distinctions—for example, in Abkhaz (Northwest Caucasian: Abkhazia (de facto and partially recognized) / Georgia; Chirikba 2003), West Greenlandic (Eskimo-Aleut: Greenland, Denmark; Fortescue 2003), and Maricopa (Yuman: Western United States; Aikhenvald 2004, Cristofaro 2013). In the Algonquian language Cheyenne (Montana, United States), evidentials in fact occupy the same slot as dependent moods and are thus banned not just from complements, but from all subordinate clauses (Murray 2016).Summing up, the BAN-languages simply lack complements that would have high projections. The contrast between BAN-languages and ALLOW-languages is then best defined as a difference in the inventory of complementation strategies.7 Note that it is not a given that evidentials occupy the same structural position across languages (see Blain and Déchaine 2006, 2007) or even within one language (Speas 2004). Their embeddability would still depend on the availability of suitable embedders. That is, if an evidential is introduced at XP, the language needs to have complements with XP to embed it. In this scheme, X may vary across languages. This is not to say that constraints on evidentials in complement clauses lack semantic underpinnings altogether. For example, evidentials may turn out to be sensitive to the semantics of the matrix predicate (see Anand and Hacquard 2013 on the distribution of epistemics in attitudes). However, for the type of data I discuss, we can get a lot of mileage out of syntactic facts alone.Much empirical research is needed on the crosslinguistic behavior of evidentials in embedded environments. In this squib, I show that the crosslinguistic variation in embeddability of evidentials may be reduced to the variation in the syntax of clausal complementation. By offering a syntactic solution to the puzzle that has often been viewed as semantic, I make a larger point: semantic theories will be ultimately simpler when the variation is attributed to external, independently motivated factors. As a parallel, consider modal stacking in Germanic. Combinations like must can, restricted in English (Collins and Singler 2015, Hasty 2012), are standard in German. The difference is parameterized in the syntax (Wurmbrand 2003), not the semantics, of modality. Showing that there is no need to postulate semantic heterogeneity to explain the embedding facts, this squib argues for a similar division of labor between syntax and semantics in the evidential domain.I would like to thank Natasha Abner, Pranav Anand, Beste Kamali, Hilda Koopman, Deniz Özyıldız, Roumi Pancheva, Yael Sharvit, Vesela Simeonova, Dominique Sportiche, Tim Stowell, Maziar Toosarvandani, Igor Yanovich, and audiences at Carnegie Mellon, ILLC, Konstanz, Stanford, Tübingen, UCLA, and Utrecht for comments and discussion. I am also grateful to the Squibs and Discussion editors and two anonymous reviewers for their feedback. This research was funded in part by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and by the SFB 833, "Construction of Meaning" (Tübingen). All errors are mine.

This study is concerned with embedded sentences in Shona which are not relative clauses. These complements seem to be of two types, namely, those dominated by NP which are referred to as noun phrase complements and those directly dominated by VP which are referred to as verb phrase complements. The case for each type is argued in the first chapter. The second chapter deals with the complementizing morphemes found in Shona (Zezuru dialect), A procedure is adopted by which complementizers are identified. This study also brings out the fact that infinitival complements and derived nominals should be treated differently. Evidence is adduced to show that the former are derived transformationally, but not the latter. Chapter Four discusses the insertion of complementizers into the underlying structure by analyzing first the transformational approach, then its inadequacy, and finally the phrase structure approach. The latter approach is preferred to the former on empirical evidence. The transformational rules which are mentioned in this study are described in the fifth chapter. Although some of the rules are dealt with fairly extensively, for others no more than an outline is given, The main purpose of this chapter was to provide only enough information about how these rules work in order to facilitate understanding of the thesis. The grammatical function of embedded sentences, that is, whether a given complement clause functions as a subject or an object etc, is the concern of Chapter Six. I consider the main contribution of this thesis to be the chapters dealing with (a) the arguments for setting up the two types of sentence complements, (b) procedures for the discovery of complementizers, (c) the arguments showing how complementizers should be inserted into the underlying structure, and (d) the distribution in sentences of embedded clauses.

This corpus-based study investigates the complementation patterns of mental predicates in a cross-linguistic context. More precisely, it examines five equivalent mental verbs from English, German, and Polish and analyzes whether their complements are cognitively construed in different ways in first-person uses of those verbs as opposed to third-person uses. Two types of complementation are considered: we contrast nominal complements with clausal complements. Based on the results of prior studies into Polish

This work deals with root transformations (RTs) such as negative preposing in English and Spanish. I claim that RTs may in principle be compatible with all types of embedded clauses, regardless of whether the selecting predicate is factive/non-asserted or non-factive/asserted. Languages differ in how freely they allow RTs in various types of complements. Adopting an intervention account, according to which the movement of an operator to Spec-CP intervenes with other types of movement, including RTs, I account for the variation in the distribution of English/Spanish negative preposing by certain options made possible as a result of feature inheritance of discourse features. It is well known that the distribution of RTs in English is extremely limited, while in Spanish the same operations are possible in many more constructions. In Spanish, discourse features may be inherited from complementizer (C) to tense (T) such that negative preposing targets Spec-TP, and hence there is no intervention effect. In contrast, discourse features stay at C in English, meaning that negative preposing competes for the target position with the operator movement to CP, and this gives rise to intervention. This hypothesis is explored and validated through an experiment with informants of the two languages. Keywords: negative preposing; intervention; factivity/assertedness; feature inheritance; root transformations

This research aims at describing and analyzing types of complements in bivalent clauses, namely the internal structure of such clauses and the grammatical patterns of combining the constituents in bivalent clauses. The internal structure of the clause is assigned or determined by the verb, which functions as the central element of the clause. Depending on the type of verb and its combinatorial abilities, certain clause structures or patterns are generated. In this paper we will deal with bivalent verbs, namely the types of complements that complement these verbs in order to create the minimal bivalent clause pattern. First, the complements of these verbs will be dealt with in terms of their syntactic category, i.e. the type of phrase that completes the verb valency. Then, we will proceed with the functional analysis of these complements and in some cases also with the semantic analysis, i.e. the semantic roles that these complements play.

abstract: In Serbian, complements of directive and desiderative predicates can be finite clauses headed by da. da-clauses also serve as matrix clauses conveying directives or expressing wishes. Unlike subjunctive complements in Romance, Slovenian, or Hungarian, embedded da-clauses do not show obviation effects, i.e., they allow for coreference between matrix and embedded subject. However, overt embedded pronominal subjects are banned in this case. We argue that this ban is a reflex of obviative modality in a particular complement type and disambiguation towards this type by an overt subject. The obviative construction also underlies the directive or desiderative matrix da-clauses, where obviation surfaces as a restriction on what conversational participants the subject can refer to.

This paper shows that the distribution of (non‑)finiteness in the South Slavic languages reflects an implicational scale along an independently attested semantic complementation hierarchy (e.g., Givón 1980). We suggest that in the South Slavic languages, finiteness is triggered by clausal agreement features associated with different syntactic heads. Building on a complexity approach to the complementation hierarchy, we propose that cross-linguistic variation in finiteness and variation across different types of complements are the result of language-specific differences in the distribution of agreement features. More broadly, we conclude that there is no (universal) semantic correlate of (non‑)finiteness and, contra cartographic approaches, that finiteness is not confined to a particular domain in the clause. Following Adger (2007), we argue that finiteness can be distributed over all clausal domains.

The present paper challenges the long-standing distinction between direct and indirect objects and the status of the latter as a central grammatical category. My points of departure are the frameworks developed by Quirk et al. (1985), Aarts and Aarts (1982) and Huddleston and Pullum (2002 and 2005) where the separation of syntax and semantics is not strict enough to yield a syntactically appropriate notion of objects in English. A new theory of verb complementation referred to as “Passivisable Object Theory” (“PO Theory”) is proposed which stipulates that objects must be passivisable by definition. It is also shown that passivisation itself neither introduces nor eliminates prepositions. Thus both (a) She gave Mary a book and (b) She gave a book to Mary allow for only one passivisation each and consequently nothing but the first NP is classed as object in either structure. A book in (a) will be reclassified as a “complement extension” or CE (a new type of complement) and the PP in (b) as a “predicator complement” or PC (category adapted from Aarts and Aarts). This has far-reaching consequences for the entire system of transitive verbs and will – against Mukherjee (2005) – marginalise ditransitive structures and show that syntax is more independent of semantics than many grammarians would acknowledge. My claims are supported by evidence from BNC Baby and contrasted with examples from Victorian novels.

This paper describes and analyzes the basic structural sentence patterns in the Albanian language. The internal structure of sen-tences is determined by the verb, which serves as its predicator: the type of verb/ verb valence determines the number and type of complements, and consequently determines the minimal structure of the sentence. A verb like vdes “die”, which is monova-lent-intransitive, requires only one complement in the function of the subject to complete the sentence. Unlike vdes “die”, the bivalent verb takoj “meet” requires two complements to convey its meaning: an internal complement in the function of the direct object and an external complement in the function of the subject. Thus, the verb vdes “die” forms one of the basic sentence pat-terns in the Albanian language: S + intransitive verb, whereas the verb takoj “meet” forms another basic pattern, namely the pattern S + monotransitive verb + DO. The minimal sentence structure contains the verb together with its valence complements. Therefore, in order to derive the basic sentence patterns in Albanian, the sentence constituents that function as complements were first distinguished from adjuncts, and then it was proceeded with the classification of the type of complements. The de-scription of the basic sentence patterns is made according to the syntactic function carried by verb complements, supplemented by the description according to the syntactic categories and the semantic roles that complements carry.

The goal of this chapter is first to give an outline of Bengali clause structure and clausal complementation in particular, and then to relate the findings of that investigation to the theory of operator movement that has been developed in the previous chapters.1 Bengali is a strict head final language, but it has one type of finite complement that can only appear in extraposed position. On the other hand, Bengali is a language which, like many head final languages, does not exhibit overt Wh-movement. As such it is similar to Chinese, Japanese and Korean all of which have received much attention in generative linguistics in recent years. Bengali is interesting in its own right, however, because it does not have, in the normal case, a scope marker that indicates the scope of the Wh-element; furthermore it can make use of other strategies for question formation which do look like scope marking and overt movement. Since Bengali allows for clausal complements to appear on either side of the verb, it can serve as an interesting testing ground for our theory. Assuming that a Wh-phrase unmoved in the syntax has to undergo movement to a scope position at the level of LF, our theory predicts that extraposed clausal complements only allow narrow scope readings, while complements in canonically selected position allow wide scope readings as well. Evidence that supports this prediction does not only come from Bengali, but also from various related Indo-Aryan languages. Crucially, we will show that the scope of the Wh-operator is constrained by the orientation of the verb that selects the complement containing the Wh-phrase. This will provide additional and hitherto unexplored evidence in favor of LF as a genuinely syntactic level of representation. The pattern found in Bengali will be shown to be very similar to the one found in German.

The current paper is an attempt at a study of the grammar and meaning of atemporal complement clauses in Assamese from a Cognitive linguistics point of view. Assamese is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Assam, a northeastern province of India. It is the native tongue of the Assamese and is currently spoken by more than twenty million people both as a native tongue and as a link language in the northeastern India.Grammar, in Cognitive linguistics, is not independent of meaning, rather any grammatical form is motivated by its underlying semantics, i.e. how the event or the situation is construed by the speaker. Thus, depending on the construal involved, clausal complementation takes different grammatical forms. One type of clausal complementation is atemporal complementation, traditionally called non-finite complementation. One core dimension that the construal of atemporal complementation is based on is atemporalization, which involves a conceptual shift from the relational concept (as encoded typically by a verb) to a thing or object (as encoded typically by a noun) having an ontological existence, which is often called reification. Thus, the verb in the atemporal complement clause is realized in the non-finite form, i.e. it is left ungrounded in time. This in turn also means that typically the situation expressed by the complement clause involves what is called summary scanning in cognitive linguistics. Atemporal complementization also may involve another dimension of construal, i.e. the principle of Figure and Ground.The present paper identifies the atemporal complementizers in Assamese and their grammar and meaning. Assamese has at least five such complementizers and accordingly the language has at least five different types of atemporal complement clauses with their own semantics. In describing these atemporal complement clauses, the paper also shows that although atemporal they may not fully cancel out sequential scanning. This supports the view that that the distinction between summary and sequential scanning are not mutually exclusive as is claimed in Langacker (2008). The data for this paper has mainly come from the authors themselves who happen to be native speakers of Assamese.  

. This paper identifies a substantial class of verbs that disallow simple Control, ECM, and small clause complementation, perhaps universally. It argues, on the basis of cancellability and an application of tests developed in Vendler (1967) and Asher (1993, 2000), among others that what distinguishes these verbs is s-selection for Possible Fact-denoting clausal complements. Truth indeterminacy – a semantic feature unique to Possible Facts – is then hypothesized to explain why these verbs disallow these types of clausal complements. Specifically, the meaning of Possible Fact-selecting verbs like announce is such that they fail to lexically specify a temporal index for the evaluation of the truth of the complement clause. Given this, a temporal index must be independently established either by partial inflection of the embedded I/T for semantic tense, as is argued to be the case e.g., in English inflected infinitivals, or by full inflection of I/T for that feature, as in, e.g., indicatives. The latter context is, of course, well known to preclude Control, ECM, and small clause complementation, given the Nominative Case properties associated with fully inflected I/T. These proposals hold important implications for current null Case approaches to Control since the empirical base indicates that a simple [+/−tense] semantic feature fails to decisively limit the distribution of PRO. Specifically, the data point instead to licensing of PRO by I/Ts that lack tense and/or phi-features.