complements of perception verbs

[Claudia Wegener]

Dear all,

In the language I'm working on (Savosavo, Papuan, Solomon Islands), the 
complex clause used to talk about perceiving an event consists of an 
independent (main) clause encoding the percept (i.e. the event that is 
perceived), and a dependent clause encoding the 'act of perception'. 
Judging from the literature I've read so far (grammars as well as 
typological literature), this seems to be a bit unusual - the percept 
seems to be usually encoded in the dependent clause (as in English "I 
saw that he left").

I'd be grateful
1. if any of you'd know of other languages that put perception verbs 
such as 'see' and 'hear' in a dependent clause, and the percept in the 
main clause, or
2. if you could point me to any typological or theoretical literature 
mentioning this that I might have missed!

Thanks in advance,
Claudia Wegener

-- 
Claudia Wegener
Insitut für Sprachwissenschaft
Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz
Merangasse 70
8010 Graz
Austria

Tel.: +43-316-380-2423
Fax: +43-316-380-9780
Email: wegener at ling.uni-graz.at