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. A complementizer combines with a following S to form another S.
3. The lower S is the head of the upper S.
4. You need to add a new VP rule which allows a VP to consist of a V and an S. The S bears the GF COMP.
5. Complementizers have no PRED value.

Exercise 9

1. Open Grammar Grammar 9 - 2026-02-04
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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