[Lingtyp] what is designated by a complement clause

[Randy J. LaPolla]

Hi Christian,
The best discussion I have seen is Halliday’s discussion of what he calls “projection" in his Intro to Functional Grammar (2nd edition, 1994), Ch. 7 (attached).

In terms of your examples (3) and (4), Halliday analyses them as realis and irrealis respectively.

All the best,
Randy

——
Professor Randy J. LaPolla（罗仁地), PhD FAHA 
Center for Language Sciences
Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences
Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai
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> On 8 May 2023, at 4:35 PM, Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote:
> 
> Dear colleagues,
> as a non-specialist in these matters, I have always been struggling with the distinction between what Lyons 1977 (Semantics) 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 that clause in ex. 1 designates a situation, the one of ex. 2 designates a thought (or at any rate, a third-order entity).
> 1) Linda saw that John arrived.
> 2) Linda said that John arrived.
> In some cases, English grammar distinguishes these notions. For instance, the that clause of ex. 1, but not the one of ex. 2, may be replaced by John’s arrival.
> Besides such relatively clear cases, there are less clear ones.
> 3) Linda remembered reading the book.
> 4) Linda remembered to read the book.
> Replacement by perusal 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.
> 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.
> Yours as always,
> Christian
> -- 
> Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
> Rudolfstr. 4
> 99092 Erfurt
> Deutschland
> 
> Tel.:	+49/361/2113417
> E-Post:	christianw_lehmann at arcor.de <mailto:christianw_lehmann at arcor.de>
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