Taalportaal - the digital language portal

Dutch
Frisian
Saterfrisian
Afrikaans

Show all

Introduction

quickinfo

Chapter 5 to Chapter 7 will discuss constructions in which a verb select a verbal projection, that is, a clause or some smaller (extended) projection of some other verb. The present chapter provides the necessary background for these chapters by providing a review of a number of issues in this domain. In a sense, Chapter 5 can be seen as a continuation of the discussion in Chapter 2 on argument structure: it discusses cases in which main verbs select a verbal projection, that is, a finite or infinitival argument clause. The reason why we did not discuss this type of complementation in Chapter 2 is that in essence it does not alter the syntactic verb classification that was developed there: for example, many verbs taking an internal argument have the option of choosing between a nominal and a clausal complement. This is illustrated in (1) for the transitive verb zien'to see' and the ditransitive verb vertellen'to tell'.

a.		Jan zag	het schilderij.
		Jan saw	the painting

a'.		Jan zag	[dat	het	regende].
		Jan saw	that	it	rained

b.		Peter vertelde	Marie een leuk verhaal.
		Peter told	Marie a nice story

b'.	Peter vertelde	Marie	[dat	Jan ziek	was].
	Peter told	Marie	that	Jan ill	was
	'Peter told Marie that Jan was ill.'

If a specific verb resists a nominal object, pronominalization of the clausal complement shows that the verb in question is in principle able to take a nominal complement and to assign case to it. The acceptability of pronominalization in (2b), for instance, shows that the verb betogen'to argue' is simply a transitive verb and that the infelicitousness of the use of the nominal object die stelling'that thesis' is a matter of semantics, not syntax; complements of verbs like betogen must simply have propositional content. This is confirmed by the fact illustrated in (2c) that there are acceptable cases of nominal complementation with noun phrases like het tegendeel'the opposite', which are propositional in nature.

a.	Jan betoogt	[dat	dit boek	een mislukking	is].
	Jan argues	that	this book	a failure	is
	'Jan argues that this book is a failure.'

b.		Jan betoogt	dat/$die stelling.
		Jan argues	that/that thesis

c.	Els zegt	[dat dit boek een meesterwerk	is]	maar	Jan betoogt	het tegendeel.
	Els says	that this book a masterpiece	is	but	Jan argues	the opposite
	'Els says that this book is a masterpiece but Jan argues the opposite.'

The examples in (3) show that clausal complements of PO-verbs can normally also be pronominalized or be replaced by a noun phrase. This illustrates again that clausal complements do not essentially affect the syntactic classification of verbs, and that the omission of clausal complements from our discussion of argument structure in Chapter 2 is therefore relatively innocuous.

a.	Jan twijfelt	(erover)	[of	hij	de juiste beslissing	genomen	heeft].
	Jan doubts	about.it	whether	he	the right decision	taken	has
	'Jan isnʼt sure (about it) whether he has taken the right decision.'

b.	Jan twijfelt	daarover/over zijn beslissing.
	Jan doubts	about.it/about his decision
	'Jan isnʼt sure about that/about his decision.'

The reason for devoting a separate discussion to clausal/verbal arguments is that these arguments exhibit various special properties and introduce a number of complicating factors that have been investigated extensively in the literature. A discussion of these special properties and complicating factors would seriously interfere with the main line of argumentation in Chapter 2: it is better to discuss these properties in their own right. The present chapter will point at some of the topics that need special attention.
After having read the general discussion in this chapter, the reader will be sufficiently equipped to read the next three chapters, which we briefly review here for convenience. Chapter 5 starts by showing that main verbs can take a number of different types of clausal/verbal arguments: the examples in (4) show that such argument clauses may be finite or infinitival: finite argument clauses are discussed in Section 5.1 and the various types of infinitival clauses in Section 5.2.

a.	Jan vertelde	me	dat	Marie	in Utrecht	woont.	finite
	Jan told	me	that	Marie	in Utrecht	lives
	'Jan told me that Marie lives in Utrecht.'

b.	Jan verzocht	me om	naar Amsterdam	te komen.	infinitival
	Jan asked	me comp	to Amsterdam	to come
	'Jan asked me to come to Amsterdam.'

Section 5.3 concludes Chapter 5 by investigating whether finite and infinitival clauses can function as complementives in copular and vinden-constructions. Examples such as (5a) seem to point in this direction but the fact that such examples occur alongside examples such as (5b), in which the finite clause clearly functions as the subject of the construction, shows that this cannot be taken for granted.

a.	Een feit	is	[dat	hij	te lui	is].
	a fact	is	that	he	too lazy	is
	'A fact is that heʼs too lazy.'

b.	Het	is een feit	[dat	hij	te lui	is].
	it	is a fact	that	he	too lazy	is
	'It is a fact that heʼs too lazy.'

Chapter 6 discusses the various types of verbal complements of non-main verbs. Although such complements do not function as arguments in the sense of predicate calculus, they can still be said to be selected by the non-main verbs: the examples in (6) show that perfect auxiliaries like hebben'to have' select past participles, whereas aspectual verbs like gaan'to go' select infinitives.

a.	Jan heeft	dat boek	gelezen.
	Jan has	that book	read
	'Jan has read that book.'

b.	Jan gaat	dat boek	lezen.
	Jan goes	that book	read
	'Jan is going to read that book.'

Constructions with embedded non-finite clauses/verbal projections may exhibit monoclausal behavior in the sense that the matrix verb (that is, the verb that selects the clause/verbal projection and thus heads the matrix clause) and the verb heading the non-finite complement form a verb cluster, that is, a more or less impermeable sequence of verbs. This may give rise to what we will refer to as clause splitting; the infinitival clause becomes discontinuous in the sense that the matrix verb separates the infinitival verb from its dependents (like arguments and modifiers). The phenomenon of verb clustering (which is often referred to as verb raising in the formal linguistic literature) and concomitant clause splitting is illustrated in (7a): the verb zien'to see' selects the infinitival complement Peter dat boek lezen, which surfaces as a discontinuous phrase due to clustering of the verbs zien'to see' and lezen'to read'. Example (7b) has been added to show that verb clustering is often obscured in main clauses because they require movement of the finite verb into second position; see Section 9.2 for discussion.

a.	dat	Jan Peter	dat boek	ziet	lezen.
	that	Jan Peter	that book	sees	read
	'that Jan sees Peter read that book.'

b.	Jan ziet	Peter	dat boek	lezen.
	Jan sees	Peter	that book	read
	'Jan sees Peter read that book.'

Constructions with non-main verbs typically exhibit monoclausal behavior; they always involve verb clustering, as shown in (8) by the embedded counterparts of the examples in (6).

a.	dat	Jan dat boek	heeft	gelezen.
	that	Jan that book	has	read
	'that Jan has read that book.'

b.	dat	Jan dat boek	gaat	lezen.
	that	Jan that book	goes	read
	'that Jan is going to read that book.'

Chapter 7 is devoted especially to verb clustering given that this is a recurring topic in the literature. The reader must be aware, however, that it is often not a priori clear what counts as a case of verb clustering. This is due to the facts listed in (9), which are established in the sections indicated; we refer the reader to these sections for detailed discussion.

Projections headed by a participle are not only used as verbal complements of auxiliaries but can also be used as adjectival complementives; see A9.Projections headed by a participle are not only used as verbal complements of auxiliaries but can also be used as adjectival complementives; see A9.

Projections headed by an infinitive are not only used as infinitival clauses, but can also be used as (i) adjectival complementives (this holds especially for te-infinitives; see A9) or (ii) nominalizations (this holds especially for bare infinitives; see N1.3.1.2 and N2.2.3.2).Projections headed by an infinitive are not only used as infinitival clauses, but can also be used as (i) adjectival complementives (this holds especially for te-infinitives; see A9) or (ii) nominalizations (this holds especially for bare infinitives; see N1.3.1.2 and N2.2.3.2).

The facts in (9) appear not always to have been taken into account in the existing literature, which has led to confusion and, what is worse, an inaccurate and unnecessarily complex empirical description of verb clustering. In order to avoid this here, Chapter 5 will also discuss the disputable cases of verb clustering, which we will subsequently eliminate these from the discussion, so that Chapter 7 can focus on the true cases of verb clustering and formulate a small number of relatively simple and, in our view, descriptively adequate generalizations.

References:

⇑ Back to top

About this article

Author(s): Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver

Category: Dutch Syntax

Keywords: VerbVerb Cluster

Version: 1.0, January 2016

Version history:

version	editor(s)	date	remarks
1.0	Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver	January 2016

report errorprintcite

Jump to:

introduction
references
related articles