160137 SE Seminar aus Grammatiktheorie und kognitiver Sprachwissenschaft (2017S)

In this seminar, we investigate the syntactic and semantic distribution of verb — complement clauses from a comparative perspective. The leading observation is that there is a cross-linguistically stable split of embedded clauses (both finite and non-finite) into three types of complements (propositional attitude, future, and tenseless complements) which display different degrees of complexity, as observable through morphological, syntactic, semantic, and processing differences. Among the phenomena discussed are: tense and aspect restrictions, the interpretation and distribution of embedded subjects, shifted indexicals, transparency effects, ECM, the A/A'-distinction, syntactic domains/phases, and the distribution and relevance of (non-)finiteness. The starting hypothesis we will pursue is that there is a scale of clausehood observable in all languages, which reflects an implicational hierarchy of minimal clause size as determined by an interplay of syntactic and semantic properties of embedding configurations. One of the goals which we will work towards collaboratively is an empirical broadening of the knowledge base of cross-linguistic patterns of complementation by combining semantic and syntactic research to arrive at a general cognitive theory of complementation.