Sentential complements

Abstract

Not only transitive verbs can take a sentential complement. The lexical category of adjectives contains a limited number of items that can take a sentential complement. Also certain nouns, such as kinship terms, make sense only with some other notion in the background, and there are two ways in which this is expressed: by a genitive-possessive construction or by a nominal compound with a sentential complement. The third section shows that adjectives, nouns, and adverbs expressing an epistemic modality take their sentential complements in a similar way. An alternative is found in existential constructions with an infinitival complement in the dative. This pattern is common to predicates expressing a deontic modality as well. Postpositional sentential complements are treated in the final sections.