The syntax of content

Between analytical mood and clause-initial particles – on the diagnostics of subordination for (emergent) complementizers

The article addresses empirical and methodological issues that are of central concern for an assessment of uninflected function words doing services in clause-combining and/or in indicating the speaker's stance toward illocutionary force or propositional content. Such units have been variably treated: either just as 'particles', as subordinating conjunctions or complementizers, or as auxiliaries of 'analytic moods' (marking directive or optative illocutionary force). Whatever they are called, all these units scope over clauses and manipulate their reality status. A discrimination of these types of units is difficult or hardly possible, first of all, because core notions (especially '(analytic) mood' and 'complementizer') are ill-defined and their consequent cross-linguistic application suggests an almost arbitrary exchangeability: since the notional contrasts behind them are basically identical, clear criteria based on form and paradigmatic organization are warranted. Jointly, one needs to specify the format of the relevant units in terms of clines between morphemes and words, and between words and constructions, first of all for North Slavic by and South Slavic da. Concomitantly, the delimitation of discourse coherence from syntactic subordination poses notorious problems. First, embedding is a property on a gradient, mainly because symptomatic shifts of egocentricals need not (and often do not) occur simultaneously. Second, there is an enormous grey zone of clausal complements vs adjuncts leaving ample space for indeterminacy. Both intensional and extensional approaches to determining clausal complements have their inherent and empirical weaknesses, and one wonders whether these might be recompensated by combining both types of approaches. The article gives a complex account of general theoretical and empirical pitfalls, with illustrations from a comprehensive body of data across Slavic on a typological

Knyazev, M. 2014. Structural licensing of sentential complements: Evidence from Russian noun-complement constructions. In: Alexandra Cornilescu and Larisa Avram (eds.) Bucharest working papers in linguistics, vol. XVI, no. 2., 2014

In this paper I discuss restrictions on the realization of sentential complements of nouns on the basis of the distribution of čto-clauses in Russian. I propose an account for these restrictions in which sentential complements of nouns are introduced by a silent preposition necessitated by the structural Case requirement of sentential complements. The observed restrictions follow from the licensing conditions on predication imposed by the silent preposition, which, as I argue, is interpreted as a relation of possession (of propositional content). These licensing conditions are satisfied only in those environments where the complement-taking noun projects a (logophorically controlled) implicit argument, which can serve as the subject for predication. If the proposed account is correct, it provides evidence for the θ-theoretic (Visibility) approach to the Case Filter, which entails that sentential arguments require structural Case licensing.

Clausal complements of certain nominalizations in Bulgarian: Relevant parameters. In B. Wiemer, B. Sonnenhauser (eds.). Complementation in South Slavic. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 160-210., 2021

In this paper, the distribution of complement clauses with some nominalizations (deverbal and deadjectival nouns) in Bulgarian is considered. The central question is which factors influence the (in)ability of the derived noun to host a complement clause with which the base verb was compatible. Although the behavior of complement clauses is predicted by some semantic parameters, their distribution cannot be reduced to syntactic or actional classes, as in Grimshaw's (1990) account. In fact, the distribution of complement clauses with nouns in Bulgarian is regulated by several features: (i) real (non-prospective) vs. irreal (prospective) semantics of the embedded clause; (ii) the modifier / argument status of the 'complement' clause; (iii) semantic role characteristics; (iv) the opposition of generalized names of situations (generic situations) vs. names of single occurrences; (v) Grimshaw's nominalization types (actional classes). The main parameter seems to be the opposition of generic situation vs. occurrence, which takes into account both actional classes and semantic roles. I also consider two other parameters that can also be relevant for the (im)possibility of complement clauses but are not elaborated on in detail, since their relevance is questionable: namely, (vi) the syntactic position of the complement clause and (vii) the opposition of the complementizers da vs. če. An additional problem considered in the article is the distribution of the indefinite vs. definite forms of head nouns in constructions with complement clauses. The general conclusion is that the distribution of noun complement clauses is highly affected by semantic and lexical factors and that it cannot be accounted for by a single factor.

The paper discusses the organization of the left periphery in Bulgarian and argues that it has a rich articulation guided by the general syntactic principles as established on a wide cross-linguistic basis. Bulgarian shows several points of dissociation with respect to the original theoretical template established by Rizzi's 1997 seminal work. The paper discusses these points and brings new empirical evidence about the hierarchical ordering of complementizers in Bulgarian. The evidence shows that the declarative complementizer is merged in a low position within the left periphery and may optionally raise to the position related to the illocutionary force of the embedded clause, while the interrogative complementizers dispose of different and higher dedicated positions, as inferred from their relative order with respect to different types of contrastively focussed phrase. The paper also discusses the controversial modal particle da and argues that it does not occupy a position within the left periphery but given the independently established left peripheral positions, a mechanism is proposed about how its modal and finiteness features are related to selection and to veridicality as the guiding principle behind the organization of the left periphery of Bulgarian.

Lingua, 2010

The paper offers an analysis of Bulgarian relative clauses introduced by the invariant complementizer deto 'that', whose distribution also extends to factive contexts. Using reconstruction as primary evidence for movement, I review the basic facts for its presence (amount readings, idiom interpretation, binding and scope) and absence (Principle C) and argue that both a raising and a matching analysis must be available for the derivation of deto-relatives. I also discuss the distribution and structural properties of resumptive clitics which are shown to block reconstruction in all types of contexts and hence to be compatible with a matching derivation only. Given the structural ambiguity in the derivation of Bulgarian complementizer relatives and in search of a unified treatment of their potentially ambivalent behavior, the paper applies analysis of relative clauses, which postulates two identical copies of the relativized Head (internal and external) and exploits different movement options to account for the raising and the matching derivations. It is then argued that such a proposal, which also exploits distinct CP positions, can successfully accommodate all of the observed reconstruction effects (or lack thereof), including the option of resumption. The paper also offers a discussion of factive clauses introduced by the same complementizer and proposes that they are best treated as hidden relatives embedded under a more complex structure involving a PP projection and a silent D head. #

Semantic functions of complementizers in European languages, 2016

The paper is structured as follows. For all languages under analysis, first, a general overview of the complementizer system is made. In what follows, complementation strategies are described, beginning from the basic complementizer like čto in Russian, to 'process' complementizers like kak, then indirect question markers (li and dali), complement uses of adverbial clause markers, irreal complementizers and so on. Apart from that, some more general issues are considered: for instance, ordering of the matrix clause and the embedded one, the status of constructions without an overt complementizer, stylictic restrictions and semantic contrasts in the complementizer system.

Состав науки: Сборник статей к юбилею Веры Исааковны Подлесской / Ред. Н. А. Коротаев, Н. Р. Сумбатова. — М.: Буки Веди, 2024. — 594 с. — ISBN 978-5-4465-4009-9., 2024

This article focuses on the special use of Russian complement clauses. In this use, clauses with complementizers and infinitive clauses are used as information structure markers-topicalizers. The fact that the clause is marked by the subordination marker serves to point to its status as a topic that is not a part of the main assertion. I show that in the topicalized use, the main complement clauses types lose their main property: the tight link to the matrix predicate and combinational restrictions on the matrix predicate class. The second-syntactically main-part of the sentence often either does not contain a matrix verb or contains a verb incompatible with the given type of complement. The emergence of the topicalized uses is explicable but not reducible to the properties of complement clauses. In fact, the topic position is not characteristic of complement clauses. However, the subordinate clause is topicalized due to the fact that complement clausesjust as topics-usually do not constitute the main assertion. I consider three complement clause types: with infinitive, the markers to and toby-and show that the particularities of each complement clause type are reflected in its behavior as a topicalizer.

2016

2017

The focus of the present paper is on complementizer doubling constructions in subordinate clauses in Slovenian. The main goal is to show that complementizer doubling in Slovenian is a syntactic phenomenon comparable to complementizer doubling in other, mainly dialectal variants of Romance languages (e.g. Paoli 2003; Ledgeway 2005; Dagnac 2012; Villa-Garcia 2012; González i Planas 2014; Munaro 2016). The Slovenian complementizer doubling data strongly suggests that the syntactic analysis of such constructions is possible only under the assumption that the complementizer field is split into several functional projections, as was first proposed by Rizzi (1997). Since it seems that the doubling complementizer in Slovenian is always the closing element of the complementizer system, it is reasonable to assume that at least in Slovenian, this element occupies the head of finiteness projection, while the first complementizer in complementizer doubling constructions, which functions as the c...