Subjunctive and Complementizers

Abstract

AbstractThe chapter discusses the questions in our language groups that have been left unanswered in the previous chapter. In particular we focus on emotive factive predicates and on their embedded clauses. We argue that (1) language variation boils down to lexico-syntactic differences and that (2) given the right focus of our lens of analysis, the so-called problematic cases disappear. In order to do this, we propose a refining of the complementizer/subjunctive marker system in Modern Greek, which is transposable to other Balkan languages. We show how this system is compatible with the Romance complementizer system, and how it can also be transposed to Hungarian. In essence, we argue that different (non-) veridical predicates select different complementizers, which may lexicalize a smaller or bigger portion of a functional sequence (fseq), composed of presuppositional features of different sorts. We also argue that the emotive feature may be encoded either on the predicate or be part of the set of features of the complementizer. This approach accounts for the differences between languages in terms of variation in the lexicalization of the fseq.