• Dutch
  • Frisian
  • Saterfrisian
  • Afrikaans
Show all
The complementiser dat that as a marker of indirect speech
quickinfo

Unintegrated embedded clauses featuring a complementiser and V2 (UCV2s) represent indirect speech.

readmore

Embedded clauses featuring a complementiser and V2 (UCV2s) cannot be used for representing direct speech, as the following pair of sentences illustrates:

1
a. Hy sei dat hy hie it net witten
he said that he had it not known
He said that he had not known it
b. *Hy sei dat ik haw it net witten
he said that I have it not known
He said that he had not known it

It is hard to find instances of UCV2s following verbs of saying and attitude in the Frisian Language Corpus while they are more easily found following clauses of degree. This difference in frequency may reflect historical changes in the acceptability of such sentences, provided that one accepts that frequency considerations may (ultimately) affect grammaticality judgments, which is controversial. Following verbs of saying and attitude, a V2 clause without a complementiser (see verb-second in embedded clauses without a complementiser (NCV2s)) is much more common than the UCV2.

References
    printreport errorcite