How Do We Put Clauses Inside Other Clauses? Complementizer Phrases

How do sentences fit inside other sentences? Where can we put words like "that", "whether", and "if"? In this week's episode, we take a look at complementizer phrases: what exactly they are, how they account for embedded sentences and questions, and what they can let us do to capture word order in languages like German and Dutch.
This is Topic #86!
This week's tag language: Tok Pisin!
Related videos:
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Last episode:
Building Baby Trees: The Stages of Child Syntax - • How Do Babies Build Se...
Other of our syntax videos:
Just in Case: Case Theory and Where We Can Put Nouns - • How Can We Tell What R...
Mark of Possession: Determiners, Nouns, and the DP Hypothesis - • What Does Possession T...
Desert Island Words: Islands and Where You Can't Move - • What Questions Can't W...
Our website also has extra content about this week's topic, discussing the nuts and bolts of how embedded clauses work, at: www.thelingspac...
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We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally.
Sources:
Most of the information for this episode came from Andrew McIntyre's short online syntax textbook (www.angl.hu-be..., David Adger's Core Syntax (which also talks about German), and Andrew Carnie's Syntax: A Generative Introduction (2nd Edition). There's also a good set of slides on the topic at www1.pu.edu.tw/... .
For the German section, we used this handout by Sten Vikner: www.hum.au.dk/e...
And there are more examples taken from the following:
switchll.net/pa...
gagl.eldoc.ub.r...
www.degruyter....
Looking forward to next time!

[@xopowo1979]

I'm making my master degree in French about the Chinese nouns and its subclasses using the minimalist approach, you are very helpful, and I am learning a lot from you! Chinese is very complicated though I speak it fluently, and I always find hurdles when trying to apply generative grammar onto it! I will be doing the same researches on my berber native language and French Sign Language! I think that Chinese is very helpful as first step before getting into Sign Language!

[@thelingspace]

I'm really glad to be able to help! Thanks for letting us know. And Berber is a fascinating language, as well. It sounds like you're doing very interesting work! We're happy to be part of the process. ^_^

[@Valdagast]

Nice title. I would probably have gone "Clausetrophobia" myself. :o)

[@thelingspace]

Wow, that one is actually quite good, too. Y'know. There are a lot of good clause puns. We should make a list.

[@ehza]

Thanks

[@DanielCathers]

The Expanse!

[@jimnewton4534]

The examples from German are interesting: Jetzt hat Peter das Buch gelehsen. and Das Buch hat Peter gelehsen. But does it explain the strangest one: Gelehsen hat Peter das Buch. ?

[@thelingspace]

Staff Writer Stephan, here. Great question! And the short answer is, it does! There are a couple different ways to do this. One is to say that, just like noun phrases and adverb phrases and the like, verb phrases can become topics in German, too -- with the tensed verb coming in second. After all, in German, you can say things like "Ein Auto geschenkt hat Horst seiner Schwester," meaning "Horst has given a car to his sister," but with the VP "given a car" moved to the front, and the tensed verb "hat" following suit. But this leaves us wondering why the object gets left behind in the example you give; how is it that just the verb can move to the front of the line, leaving the rest of the VP at the back? We could suppose that the whole VP is still moving to the front, but that the object got 'ejected' from the verb phrase before this happened, and so it didn't come along for the ride. This is known as "remnant movement," since the remnants of what's left of the VP after the object is gone then go on to become the topic of the sentence. But this isn't the most intuitive explanation, and this paper (ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001024/current.pdf) actually makes a pretty strong case that it's much more sensible to think of the verb as simply moving by itself. In other words, verbs can become topics in German, much like the other kinds of constituents we talked about in the episode. ^_^ SWS

[@theJellyjoker]

I sometimes drop "Complementizer Phrases" because they sound clunky. For example; "John believed the insurgents had refused to surrender" sounds better to me. I am a native English speaker. I grew up in central Florida, my father and his family are from Indiana and my mother and her family are from Alabama.

[@keegster7167]

I like the complementiser phrases, personally, but when typing it sometimes I leave it out just because it's quicker.

[@protte225]

My high school English teacher advised omitting 'that' in examples like this. 'That' (que) is used in French to introduce clauses expressing belief or desire (subjunctive mood ), and since this is unnecessary in English, it's better to drop the 'that'.

[@Emile.gorgonZola]

@@protte225 that doesnt make sense

[@impCaesarAvg]

Most Germanic languages have V2 word order. But not English. Why not?

[@jimnewton4534]

Sometimes English exhibits this strange german word order. For example: Nor do I believe what he said. (as opposed to: Nor I do believe) And: Do you know what color it is. (as opposed to: do you know what color is it)

[@impCaesarAvg]

Your second example works even without making it into a question: You know what color it is. Either way, it's not the usual English SVO, but it's not quite V2 either. In your first example, if we had said "or", "and", or "but", we'd have followed it with SVO. What's different about "nor"? Language is so easy toddlers can learn it. But when you look closely, it's very puzzling.

[@jimnewton4534]

Yes, indeed what's different about not. I think it's the negative. Because we'd also say: Not only have I read his first book, I've actually read all his books. After "Not only" comes the verb, then the subject. As a matter of fact, there's another example: "After the first comes the second." Another example is: To the left of the sofa was the dead body. Again subject following verb. I think the rule in these later two cases is that intransitive verbs can come before or after the subject without becoming ambiguous, (the only noun n the cause is the subject if the verb is intransitive) while a subject after a transitive verb gets confused with the object.

[@thelingspace]

Staff Writer Stephan, here. Thanks for the question! It's definitely an interesting one. There are lots of different theories about how and why languages change over time, and on how exactly English came to be what it is. But, it's hard to say for certain why V2 word order didn't stick around (have a look here, for a more in-depth discussion: www.voies.uottawa.ca/V2_En.pdf). One thing's for sure, though: English definitely *used* to be a V2 language! All the way up until Late Middle English, in the writings of people like Geoffrey Chaucer, you could find sentences like "Wel koude he rede a lessoun or a storie," meaning "He could read a lesson or a story well." Nowadays, only a few traces of this can be found, as Jim Newton points out. So, you find it in direct questions, like "Where has he seen her?" You also see it with 'negative' expressions like "never in my life" and "under no circumstances," as in "Never in my life have I seen such a mess" and "Under no circumstances will I agree." You find it with phrases containing "only," as in "Only in Brazil have I seen such orchids." And you also see this kind of word order with some prepositional phrases (so-called locative and directive ones), like "In the corner lay a lamp." Finally, you see it at the ends of sentences like "They are proud of their grandson, and so are we." For the full summary, you might enjoy having a look here: www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/syntax-textbook/ch14.html! ^_^ SWS

[@Daruqe]

IT'S ALWAYS THE FRENCH.

[@vladthemagnificent9052]

You look good with that beard!

[@thelingspace]

Thanks! ^_^

[@joshuajeffrey4848]

Hi guys and girls can anyone point me in the direction of the video where Motti uses the sentence "all the workers left"?

[@frankharr9466]

I don't know. For some reason it doesn't work for me. I don't know how to express it, but it seems to require too much. I can buy a compliment phrase, but German sentences all being compliment phrases is just a little off for me.

[@verdakorako4599]

5:29 lucky getting to ssy something no one has said before.

[@thelingspace]

It's actually not as challenging as you'd think to have a sentence that you can feel fairly likely no one's ever said before! Once you get into fairly deep conversation with someone, if you're saying fairly long sentences, it'll probably happen. My friends and I will point out sentences that's likely no one's ever said before when we're talking, and it happens every few days where we feel pretty sure about it. ^_^

[@jimnewton4534]

That Holden has three mothers isn't as crazy as it sounds. This is very understandable in English, but as I understand you can't construct this sentence in French. I've never seen it in French, and all the people I've asked say it's impossible. How can that be? Is it that French has a different recursion depth limit than English?

[@thelingspace]

Stephan, again! Not being a native speaker of French, I can't say for sure how natural it is to have a tensed clause as the subject of a sentence in French, but you can definitely have tenseless ones! For instance, "Parler à peine l'italien après cinq ans d'étude dénote un manque de don pour les langues," meaning something like "To hardly speak Italian after five years of study indicates a lack of a gift for languages." It's certainly possible that there's some restriction against tensed clauses in subject position, and that would definitely be interesting. But, I wouldn't take it to be saying anything about the 'recursive depth' of the language. After all, I'm pretty sure you can easily embed one clause within another within another (e.g., "Je sais qu'il pense que . . . "), just like you can in English. ^_^ SWS

[@jimnewton4534]

Hi Stephen, your example is also interesting. The fact that a tensed clause used as a subject in English needs a "That" but a tenseless one does not, is striking. Asking the right questions leads to getting the right answers. (no _that_ necessary) That he asked the right questions led him to getting the right answers. (_that_ required)

[@jimnewton4534]

BTW Stephan, your example of "Je sais qu'il pense que . . ." shows a use of arbitrary recursion in the object. Is it weird that a language would allow such clauses as object, but not as subjects?

[@thelingspace]

It's definitely an interesting question why complementizers should sometimes be necessary, and sometimes not. We'll have a bit more to say on the subject, once we post the extras for this episode. Notice, though, that even tenseless clauses sometimes need their own complementizer (not "that", but "for"). When the clause in question has a subject, you get something like "For his search to end would be a relief" and not "his search to end would be a relief." Regarding French, I don't think the kind of recursion we're talking about can only be seen at the ends of sentences. My own (admittedly limited) knowledge of the language tells me that you can find analogues to verb phrases inside noun phrases, just like you can in English; so, you can have something like "l'idée qu'il pense que . . . " ("the idea that he thinks that . . . ") in subject position. S