Practical Grammar 9

Complement Clauses

Next, we come to the exciting topic of complement (= subordinate) clauses. Here are two examples:

(1) Fred thought that Lilly disappeared
(2) Fred enquired whether Lilly disappeared

There is nothing really special about these structures. As with prepositional phrases, we need

1. lexical items for the new verbs
2. lexical items for the two complementizers that and whether
3. two new phrase structure rules.

We make the following assumptions:

1. that and whether belong to the part of speech C (= complementizer).
2. Complementizers head CPs.
3. CPs take two daughers: a C and an IP. The two daughters are co-heads of the CP.
4. You need to add a new VP rule which allows a VP to consist of a V and a CP. The CP bears the GF COMP.
5. Complementizers have no PRED value.

Exercise 9

1. Open Grammar 9
2. Implement the analysis for sentences (1)-(2) as described above.
3. Parse. Your output should look exactly like the output decribed in the document Exercise-9-expected-output.pdf on Olat.

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