Limits of complementation: Constituency versus scope and relationality.

This project aims to show that the traditional model of complement constructions as arguments of a predicate, i.e. the constituency analysis as in Noonan (2007: 52), is problematic, starting from the semantic domain of deontic modality. It seeks to develop an alternative model that captures the classic examples of complementation as well as the problematic cases, with relationality (Van Linden 2009) and scope (McGregor 1997) as central notions. The research hypothesis is that complement relations involve the expression of an attitude towards or a perspective on a particular situation, and therefore justify a scoping analysis rather than a constituency analysis. This hypothesis will be investigated in terms of two research topics: (i) patterns of nominal complementation (e.g. the desire that/to...), for which Schmid (2002) has shown that the constituency analysis does not work, and (ii) comparison of complement relations and adverbial relations, for which semantic and formal similarities between these two types show that complement relations have certain properties in common with structures that are traditionally not regarded as consitutency phenomena (cf. Verstraete 2008). This projects aims to investigate both topics language-specifically and typologically, on the basis of Present-day English corpus data and a cross-linguistic sample.

Keywords:Complementation, Scoping, Constituency, Linguistic typology, English, Attitude, Clause combining

Disciplines:Language studies, Literary studies, Theory and methodology of language studies, Theory and methodology of linguistics, Theory and methodology of literary studies, Other languages and literary studies