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2.2.4.The structure of complementive constructions

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The question of what structure must be assigned to examples containing a complementive has given rise to a lengthy, still unsettled debate. According to some, the subject is part of a projection headed by the complementive, which is often referred to as a small clause: it occupies a designated subject position, in which it saturates the thematic role assigned by the predicate, as in (283a). According to others, however, the subject is generated in the regular object position of the verb, the subject-predicate relation being established by other means, which is indicated here by means of subscripts in (283b).

283

.... [VP ... V [SC DP [Pred]]]

.... [VP ... V DPi Predi]

The main difference between the two proposals is that in the former the noun phrase and the complementive form a constituent, whereas in the latter they do not. One argument in favor of the former is that the complementive and its subject do indeed behave like a constituent when it comes to coordination, as is shown in (284a). One argument in favor of the latter is that the noun phrase and the complementive need not be adjacent. Of course, many proposals have been put forth to solve these problems. Proponents of the small clause approach may account for an example such as (284b) by referring to the independently established fact that noun phrases can be scrambled in Dutch, and proponents of the alternative approach may claim that examples such as (284a) involve coordination of a verbal projection smaller than VP.

284

a.		Jan vindt [[SC	Marie aardig]	maar [SC	Els een smeerlap]].
		Jan considers	Marie nice	but	Els an asshole

b.	Jan vindt	Marie waarschijnlijk	niet aardig.
	Jan consider	Marie probably	not nice
	'Probably, Jan wonʼt consider Marie nice.'

Another test that suggests that the noun phrase and the complementive form a constituent is that they can be pronominalized together, as is shown by example (285a). For completeness' sake, note that the noun phrase can, of course, also be pronominalized in isolation and that the same thing holds for complementives in (at least) copular constructions; this is illustrated by (285b&c).

285

a.	Jan vindt [SC	dat boek	erg goed]i	maar	Peter	vindt	dat	niet.
	Jan considers	that book	very good	but	Peter	considers	that	not
	'Jan considers that movie very good but Peter doesnʼt.'

b.		Jan vindt	het	erg goed.
		Jan considers	it	very good

c.		Jan	is erg aardig	maar	Els is dat	ook.
		Jan	is very nice	but	Els is that	too

Another potential argument in favor of the small clause approach is the fact that in copular constructions such as (286) the nominative subject of the clause may follow the object pronoun hem'him'. If we assume that the nominative phrase is base-generated within the small clause as the subject of the adjective bekend this may follow from the fact that nominative subjects are only optionally moved into the subject position of the clause; see Section 13.2 and Section N8.1.4.

286

a.	dat	hem [SC	die problemen	bekend]	zijn.
	that	him	those problems	known	are
	'that heʼs aware of those problems.'

b.		dat	die problemeni	hem [SCti	bekend]	zijn.
		that	those problems	him	known	are

A perhaps even more convincing argument is that the nominative subject may also follow the pronoun ons'us' in example (287a). The fact that the subject may follow this pronoun strongly suggests that it must be generated within the AP, given that the pronoun is selected by the modifier te'too' of the adjective—an example such as *dat ons die auto duur is shows that the pronoun cannot be present if the modifier is dropped; see section A2.2, sub I for extensive discussion.

287

a.	dat	ons	die auto	te duur	is.
	that	us	that car	too expensive	is
	'that that car is too expensive for us.'

b.		dat	die auto	ons ti	te duur	is.
		that	that car	us	too expensive	is

For the reasons discussed above, we will adopt the small clause approach in this work. We want to conclude this section with a bibliographical note. The debate on the two structures in (283) finds its origin in Stowell (1983), who defends the proposal in (283a), and Williams (1980), who defends the proposal in (283b). An influential Dutch advocate of Stowell's proposal is Hoekstra (1984a/1988/2004: part IV). Williams' proposal has been defended by Neeleman (1994b). Proposals that potentially reconcile and at least combine a number of advantages of the two competing ideas can be found in Bowers (1993), Hale & Keyser (1993) and Den Dikken (2006), which postulate some functional head in between the DP and the complementive that expresses the predicative relation between the two. When we call this functional head pred, the structure of a small clause is as follows [PredP DP Pred [XP ... X ...]], where X stands for N, A or P.

References:

Bowers, John1993The syntax of predicationThe Linguistic Review24591-656
Dikken, Marcel den2006Relators and linkers. The syntax of predication, predicate inversion, and copulasCambridge, MA/LondonMIT Press
Hale, Ken & Keyser, Samuel1993On argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relationsHale, Ken & Keyser, Samuel (eds.)The view from Building 20: essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain BrombergerCambridge, MA/LondonMIT Press53-109
Hoekstra, Teun1984Transitivity. Grammatical relations in government-binding theoryDordrecht/CinnaminsonForis Publications
Hoekstra, Teun1988Small clause resultsLingua74101-139
Hoekstra, Teun2004Arguments and structure. Studies on the architecture of the sentenceBerlin/New YorkMouton de Gruyter
Neeleman, Ad1994Complex predicatesUtrechtUniversity of UtrechtThesis
Stowell, Tim1983Subjects across categoriesThe Linguistic Review2285-312
Williams, Edwin1980PredicationLinguistic Inquiry11203-238

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About this article

Author(s): Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver, Riet Vos

Category: Dutch Syntax

Keywords: Complementive Construction

Version: 1.0, January 2016

Version history:

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

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