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6.3.3.Conclusion
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The previous sections have discussed non-main verbs taking a te-infinitive as their complement, and has shown that there are reasons for assuming that this option arises with semi-aspectual verbs only. Other constructions that could potentially involve non-main verbs with a te-infinitive were shown to actually involve a main verb and a te-infinitive with some other syntactic function, such as complementive or postnominal modifier. The two types of constructions can be identified by generalizing the first two properties of semi-aspectual (non-main) and main verbs zitten, liggen, staan and hangen in Table (189) to all constructions involving a V + te-V combination.

189
Properties of main and non-main verbs combining with a te-infinitive
  main verb non-main verb
IPP +
Order w.r.t. (other)
clause-final verbs
non-verbal te-infinitive
precedes the clause-final verbs
verbal te-infinitive follows
the clause-final verbs
causativization +

The conclusion that non-main verbs trigger the IPP-effect and require the te-infinitive to precede the clause-final verbs is important given that it will simplify our description of the clause-final verb cluster. We can simply postulate that te-infinitives are obligatorily placed in final position, and we do not have to introduce any complicated argumentation to account for the deviant behavior of the te-infinitives that can be found with the verbs discussed in Section 6.3.2 on "unclear cases"; these te-infinitives do not function as the main verb of the clause and are therefore not part of the verbal complex.

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