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<p class="MsoNormal">Dear Christian – May I recommend the following heuristic procedure:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Complements of cognitive attitude predicates (believe, doubt, etc.) ought to express propositions.<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Complements of phasal predicates (begin, end) and ‘psych action’ predicates (attempt, failure) ought to describe events (but express event
<i>types</i>). <o:p></o:p></li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This should give you two diagnostic contexts. If complements in these two environments are structurally different in the language in question, I would adopt the working hypothesis that the construction that occurs in the first type of context
expresses propositions and the one that occurs in the second expresses event types.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If there’s a finiteness contrast between the two in the language in question, I would predict complements that occur in the first type of context to be finite and complements that occur in the second to be nonfinite. The semantic motivation
underlying this putative finiteness contrast is that propositions are typically (though not necessarily, as in habitual and generic propositions) about individual events, whereas complements that occur in the second type of environment express event types,
which are kinds (Parsons 1990). <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I would not, however, use finiteness as a diagnostic property itself, since it’s a morphosyntactic phenomenon, even if it is semantically motivated. In this sense, finiteness is at most a weak heuristic.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Something similar goes for negation: propositional complements ought to be negatable, whereas eventive complements may or may not be negatable, and negating them may be more awkward, whatever that means.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I would be interested in hearing from people who are aware of languages in which this heuristic procedure yields problematic results. A problematic result would *<b>not</b>* be a language using a single uniform complement type in the two
contexts or lacking syntactic complements altogether, but rather a language that does have multiple types of syntactic complements, but their distribution cuts across the proposed diagnostic context or weak heuristic correlates (finiteness, negation) are mismatched
vis-à-vis the predictions.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Best – Juergen<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Parsons, T. (1990). Events in the semantics of English. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black">Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)<br>
Professor, Department of Linguistics<br>
University at Buffalo <br>
<br>
Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus<br>
Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260 <br>
Phone: (716) 645 0127 <br>
Fax: (716) 645 3825<br>
Email: </span><a href="mailto:jb77@buffalo.edu" title="mailto:jb77@buffalo.edu"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:#0078D4">jb77@buffalo.edu</span></a><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><br>
Web: </span><a href="http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/" title="http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:#0563C1">http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/</span></a><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"> <br>
<br>
</span><span style="color:black">Office hours Tu/Th 3:30-4:30pm in 642 Baldy or via Zoom (Meeting ID 585 520 2411; Passcode Hoorheh) </span><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black"><br>
<br>
There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In <br>
(Leonard Cohen) </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">-- <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="DE"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">From:
</span></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann@uni-erfurt.de><br>
<b>Date: </b>Monday, May 8, 2023 at 4:37 AM<br>
<b>To: </b>lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>
<b>Subject: </b>[Lingtyp] what is designated by a complement clause<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p style="margin-bottom:0in">Dear colleagues,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">as a non-specialist in these matters, I have always been struggling with the distinction between what Lyons 1977 (<i>Semantics</i>) calls second-order and third-order entities. They are also called situations (a.k.a. events or states
of affairs) and thoughts (or propositions), resp. A complement clause may designate one or the other. For instance, the
<i>that</i> clause in ex. 1 designates a situation, the one of ex. 2 designates a thought (or at any rate, a third-order entity).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">1) Linda saw that John arrived.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">2) Linda said that John arrived.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">In some cases, English grammar distinguishes these notions. For instance, the
<i>that</i> clause of ex. 1, but not the one of ex. 2, may be replaced by <i>John’s arrival</i>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">Besides such relatively clear cases, there are less clear ones.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">3) Linda remembered reading the book.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">4) Linda remembered to read the book.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">Replacement by <i>perusal</i> seems to show (unless my English fails me) that the complement clause of ex. 3 designates a situation while the one of ex. 4 designates a thought. If so, the superordinate predicate would not always
determine the type of dependent clause.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">Here is my question: Does anyone know of a generally applicable criterion or even a language-independent test frame which enables me to determine whether a given dependent clause designates a second-order or a third-order entity?
Or are there contexts which are indeterminate in principle or where the distinction does not apply? I would be very grateful for advice.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">Yours as always,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0in">Christian<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">-- <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span style="font-size:10.0pt;line-height:115%">Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann<br>
Rudolfstr. 4<br>
99092 Erfurt<br>
<span style="font-variant:small-caps">Deutschland</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt">Tel.:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt">+49/361/2113417<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt">E-Post:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt"><a href="mailto:christianw_lehmann@arcor.de">christianw_lehmann@arcor.de</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt">Web:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt"><a href="https://www.christianlehmann.eu/">https://www.christianlehmann.eu</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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