Complex clauses (1) :

Finite and non-finite clauses

Clause combining strategies

Group 7
Annisa Prasetyawati Paundrianagari (2180111029)
Ni Putu Anggi Apsari (2180111030)
A.A Sagung Dewi Prabasari K. (2180111032)
 FINITENESS AND AUXILIARIES

Independent clauses

Independent Clause must contain a Finite Verb that can show the tense information. To test whether the verb is
finite, we can try changing the sentence so that we can see the tense (and agreement) suffixes. We can define if a
verb is finite only by looking at the verb alone, hence we need to put it into sentence.

Finiteness

A verb that is finite is allowed to be the only verb in independent clause with just one verb in it. Finite verbs are
those that expressing tense, often indicated by other grammatical categories associated with verb, such as
agreement for person and/or number. Most independent clause has finite verbs. But some languages allow
independent clauses consisting of a subject and a predicate that is non-verbal.

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 Main Verbs and Verbal Auxiliaries
In English, only one element in a phrase can be finite, but that element can be either an MAIN VERB or an AUXILIARY,
sometimes referred as a 'helping' verb; a main verb has far more semantic content than an auxiliary. As a result, linguists
refer to main verbs as LEXICAL verbs.
- Modal Auxiliaries
MODAL AUXILIARIES are a group of independent English words that express concepts such as permission, necessity, or
ability. Verbal inflections in some languages reflect comparable types of meaning. MODALS in English differ from other
auxiliaries and from main verbs in two ways: first, they only appear in a finite form, and second, they do not accept the third
person singular -s inflection in the present tense.
Have and be: Main Verbs and Aspectual Auxiliaries
The elements have and be in English have two distinct uses: they can be either main verbs or auxiliaries. Aspects is a
grammatical category of verbs which expresses such information as whether the action of the verb is completed or unfinished,
Perfect aspect in English requires auxiliary have plus a special form of the main verb known as the PAST PARTICIPLE.

Main verbs have and be can also co-occur with auxiliary, the auxiliary forms are underlined, and the main verb forms are in
bold type. These examples also show that in English, the main verb always comes after any sequence of auxiliaries.
 Ways to Express the Grammatical Categories for Verbs

Auxiliaries are words in all languages that communicate the tense, aspect, mood, voice, or polarity[= negative
or affirmative features] of the verb with which they are associated: i.e. the same categorizations of the verb as may
be stated by affixes. This means that in some languages, any of the morphosyntactic characteristics connected with
verbs can also be conveyed by an auxiliary. As we saw before, in English, morphosyntactic information about
finiteness can be represented on a main verb or an auxiliary, but not both within the same phrase. In certain
languages, a verb and an auxiliary in the same phrase contain the same grammatical information, such as by being
marked for tense.
 Non-Finite Verbs

Non-finite verbs in English are not marked for tense, person or number agreement or any of
the other grammatical categories associated with finite verbs, such as aspect or mood. Non-
finite verbs are divided into two main types, such as Infinitives and participles

a. Infinitives

English infinitives can be identified instead by their distribution. Modal auxiliaries in

english require a following infinitive, as in Kim must __ (that). An Infinitive also
occurs after to in environments such as I had to __ then, for you to __ now would be
good. This to is an infinitival marker. In order to know that a sentece contain an
infinitive, the subject has to be the third person singular. For example.

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 a) Mel made the boy leave/*leaves home early
b) I saw him blink/*blink!
c) Let Kim sing/*sings in the choir? Never.
In the Welsh, the clause in brackets has only an infinitival form of the verb ennil, ‘win’.
On the other hand, in english has a finite clause here, such as Mair had won the prize,
where the finite element is auxiliary.

b. Participles
Particle is generally used to refer to the types of non-finite verbs which primarily co-occur with
a finite auxiliary. Cross-linguistically, participles are considered to be verb forms that can also be
used in positions normally filled by adjectives or nouns. For example.
 The words in bold are known as ‘present participles’, though derived from verbs, they behave
exactly like adjectives in modifying a noun. and taking the same gender agreement suffixes that
adjectives normally take. So, in the example above, glaubend takes the masculine ending -er,
agreeing with a masculine noun. There are two distinct participial forms in English, such as the -ing
form and the -ed/en form.

The –ing participle

The ‘present participle’ is the -ing form of the verb which, together with auxiliary be, gives
progressive aspect. For instance. Kim was laughing laudly; Kim kept on laughing; Laughing
loudly; Kim rushed into the room; I found Kim laughing in the corner.

not all words with an -ing suffix are participles. For instance boring in this very boring film is an
adjective. whereas a very sleeping child, the sleeping is participial.
 The Past Principle

The past participle of most verbs has the -ed/-en ending. such as played, shown, seen,
forgotten. These examples are included as irregular verbs. While regular verbs also have
participles which are identical to their ‘Past Tense’, such as worked, left, decided.

Co-cordinate of clauses

Complex sentences are sentences that consists of more than one clause. One way that
complex sentences are formed is by co-ordination. These are the examples of independent
clauses, these simple clauses can be co-ordinated.
1. Kim arrived early (21)
2. Lee was half an hour late
3. Ceri didn’t even show up
4. Kim arrived early and Lee was half an hour, but ceri didn’t even show up (22)
In clausal co-ordination, each clause could stand alone as an Independent clause, and there are
no syntactic restrictions on the order of the clauses, though there may be pragmatic
restrictionsThe words in bold are co-ordinating conjuctions (e.g or in english) used to conjoin
(join together) strings of simple sentences
 Coordinate vs Subordination

There are 2 basic ways that one clause can be embedded within another, they are
called as Coordination vs Subordination

In Coordinate structure, two constituent are combined to form another

constituents of that category. Such structure usually is considered as double headed
because both of the conjoined elements are functions as the heads of larger unit.
 In coordinate sentence, two or more S constituents appears as daughters and co-
heads of a higher S. Each of these daughters has the internal structure of an
independent sentence and neither is embedded in the others. Coordinate sentence in
English usually linked by conjunctions such as and, but, and or. Like in the
following sentences.

Meanwhile, a subordinate clause is one which functions as a dependent, rather

than a co-head. There are types of subordinate clause, such as Complement, Adjust
or Adverbial Clauses, and Relative Clause.
Complement Clauses

There are many verbs that also allow or require a clausal complement. For
instance in examples (4-7), show some verbs, either an NP or a complement clause
may arise in the same position. The complement clause may be either Finite (i.e
tense-bearing) as in ex (4b) and (5b) or nonfinited as in (6b) and (7b).

The complement clause are often introduced by a particle that is refers to as a

complementizer. In English, The choice of verb form is usually related to the choice
of complementizer. For example, That is used to introduce a finite complement (4b)
and (5b).
 The infinitival complements take for if they have an overt subject (6b). The
complementizer is not used when there is no an overt subject as in (7b).

Complement clauses frequently occur in the same position as NP object. In

languages, where direct object precede the verb, complement clauses also often
precede the verb. For instance.

The basic word order in Amele is SOV as in (8a), complement clauses in Amele
normally precede the verb as in (8b).
In normal spoken style, complement clauses is usually more natural to rephrase such
sentences using a dummy subject which this constructions are refers to as
extraposition, For example.
The complementizer and the clause which it introduces always stay together in the
extraposition examples (11-13) says that there are two elements form a constituent
in the phrase structure, such as in the following statement.

This constituent is usually labeled as S’ or S-bar. It has two daughters, such as

compelementizer (COMP) and S (The complement itself). The example is in the following
tree diagram.
 Beside compelemnt clause can arise in the position as NP complements, a complement
clause may also bear the same gramatical Relations as the NP which it replaces as in (16).
The tree diagram can be seen as follows.

The form of a complement clause is often determined by the specific verb that occurs in the
matrix clause. Verbs that belong to the same general semantic class often take the same type
of complement.
 Complement Clauses

Each of these examples has two clauses: a matrix clause, which is the entire
sentence, and a subordinate clause embedded within the matrix clause.
 
Subordinate clauses are an argument of the verb in the matrix clause that must
be included. These verbs (claim, wonder, and want) need a certain type of
syntactic phrase to complete their meaning. Complement clauses are
subordinate clauses that are chosen by a verb in this manner.
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A second feature of subordinate clauses is their finiteness. As we've seen,
independent clauses in English must be finite. The verb in the highest matrix
clause, known as the root clause, in complex sentences must also be finite.
However, many subordinate clauses only have a non-finite verb form.

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These subordinate clauses are known as clausal subjects or sentential subjects since they are
clauses but also fulfill the need for matrix verbs to have a subject.
 
Subordination is not usually limited to the depth of a single embedded clause. In fact, there is no
theoretical limit to the number of subordinate clauses in a complex sentence in most languages
(though probably not all).
 

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Looking at the complementary clauses in more detail, we can see
that each complement clause in the example is based on the
'upstair' matrix clause and is included, or embedded, within that
sentence. Each matrix verb selects the dependent clause that
follows as its complement.
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Direct vs Indirect speech

In many languages, including english, speakers have two different ways of reporting the
words of another person, such as A direct quote and Indirect quote

Direct quote includes the exact words spoken by a speaker, embedded in simple clause, such
as “John said,...”. Meanwhile, Indirect Quote contains the information of what was said, but
not the exact same things spoken by the speaker. The examples can be seen as follows.
Indirect Quotation

There are many changes, such as the pronouns (the first person replaced by the the third
person and the second person replaced by first person), The verbs (from present becomes
past tense), and the other deictic elements (This changes to that, here to there).

Direct Quotation
A direct quotation is a separate discourse and may contain any amount of linguistic material
from a single word to an entire story. According to Haiman (1992) “it has been widely noted that
quoted material is grammatically independent” of the matric clause. For example, although the quote
formula in English often contains the transitive verb ‘say’, the quote itself does not behave like a
normal direct object.
 The object of ‘say’ has been fronted with subject – Aux inversion, but this construction
is impossible with a direct quote. Haiman uses the examples in (25) to explain that quoted
are ‘mentioned’ rather than ‘used.

The first person pronoun which appears as the direct object in (25a) is used in the normal way, to
refer to the speaker. Since, it is co-referential with the subject of its clause, a reflexive form (myself)
must be used. The quoted pronoun ‘I’ in (25b) does not appear in the reflexive or even accusative
(me), because it is not being used as pronoun. It refers to as a word (I) rather than a person. When we
use a direct quote we are reporting the linguistic expression used by a speaker, rather than the
message which the speaker expressed.
Adjunct or adverbial clauses

Adjuncts are elements which are not subcategorized by the verb, yet, are added to the sentence
to provide various kinds of information. There are several different types of expression may function
as adjuncts. The most common types are presented as follows.

Some embedded clauses are not chosen by a verb and are

instead optional modifiers rather than arguments
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 The three types of adjuncts can be used to deliver similar kinds of information, such as time,
place, manner, reasons, etc. Many of these used in English to introduce PP adjuncts can also be used
to introduce adjunct clauses, both finite and non-finite. These prepositions sometimes are identified
as subordinating conjunctions.
Identifying subordinate clauses

The example above all contained subordinate clauses; sometimes

one, sometimes more than one. Example above has a verbal
predicate for each sentences, some of which are finites and the
other are infinites.

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Special properties of root clauses

In a complex sentence, Root Clause also known as the Main Clause,

is the highest matrix clause in the hierarchical structure: it is not
contained within any other clause. A root clause may include words
in a different sequence from those found in embedded clauses, or
vice versa.
- Only root clauses in English have subject/auxiliary inversion
- Only root clauses in English can have a tag questions.

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Some Cross-Linguistic variation
in Subordination

In (50), the subordinate clause is finite, as we can tell from the past
tense marker on the verb, and in (51), the subordinate clause is
infinitival.

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RELATIVE CLAUSES
• Relative clause is a clause that modifies the head noun within a noun phrase. A relative
clause is one kind of dependent clause. It has a subject and verb, but can’t stand alone
as a sentence.
[The woman [that I love] s’]NP is moving to Argentina
• 3 basic parts of a relative clause construction: the head noun (woman), the modifying
clause (I love), and the RELATIVIZER (that) which links the modifying clause to the head.
• The modifying clause incomplete because it is lacking a direct object. This example is
acceptable because the head noun is understood to be the object.
• The head noun has two different roles in this example: as the subject of the main clause,
and as the object of the modifying clause.
 Restrictive vs non-restrictive relative clauses

[The woman [that I love] s’]NP is moving to Argentina

• the head (woman) could refer to any one of a few billion individuals. The
function of the modifying clause is to identify which particular woman the
speaker is referring to. This is an example of a restrictive relative clause.
• A non-restrictive relative clause is one in which the referent of the head
noun can be identified independently, and the clausal modifier simply
presents additional information about that referent. “That” cannot be used as
a relative pronoun in a non-restrictive relative clause. Commas are always
used at the beginning and end of this type of relative clause.
I’m planning to grow roses, which I find quite beautiful.
•Example (36)
a. restrictive:
The police are looking for [the man who escaped from prison yesterday].
b. non-restrictive:
The police are looking for [Al Capone, who escaped from prison yesterday].

•In (36a) the head is a common noun which identifies the class of men in general. The
modifying clause serves to identify which particular man the speaker is talking about.
In (36b) the head is a proper name.
•In restrictive relative clauses, (36a), the modifying clause contains old or
presupposed information while the identity of the referent is new information. In non-
restrictive relative clauses, (36b), the identity of the referent is old information while
the modifying clause contains new information
Word Order and morphology
Externally headed relative clauses
• In English, the modifying clause follows the head noun. But, a large number of
languages have the opposite order, with the modifying clause preceding the head
noun. These are examples of externally headed relative clauses.
• Verb-initial almost always have postnominal relative clauses, with the modifying
clause following the head noun. A large number of verb-final languages have
prenominal relative clauses with the modifying clause preceding the head noun
• (42) • (43)

• Across languages, postnominal relatives are more common than prenominal, and
prenominal relatives are the preferred option
• In English relative clauses, the modifying clause contains a normal finite verb
form, fully inflected for tense and agreement.
• In Turkish (42) the verb inside the modifying clause must be nominalized.
Because of this change, the subject of the modifying clause is marked for genitive
case, rather than the expected nominative.
• Another common pattern is for the verb inside the modifying clause to appear as a
participle. German has two kinds of relative clauses: a prenominal relative
containing a participial form of the verb (43a); and a postnominal relative
containing a normal finite verb form (43b).
 Internally headed relative clauses and related constructions

• Few languages have internally headed relative clauses, in which the head noun
appears inside the modifying clause
(44)

• The head noun (‘woman’ in 44a, ‘man’ in 44b) lies inside the modifying clause.
The two sentences are identical, except for the form of the verb in the modifying
clause (‘insult’), which indicates whether the head noun is the subject (as in 44b)
or a non-subject element (as in 44a).
Relative pronoun vs. relativizer
• A relativizer is a special type of complementizer marks the
modifying clause in a relative clause construction.
• An English Wh- word used to introduce the modifying clause is
called a relative pronoun.
• A relative pronoun is a special type of pronoun, i.e. an anaphoric NP,
while a relativizer is not. The clearest evidence for the anaphoric
nature of the relative pronoun is agreement, i.e. a change in the form
of the relative pronoun depending on some features of the head
noun. A relative pronoun is often inflected for case, which is a
property of NPs.
• A relativizer is normally an invariant particle.

• The German demonstrative pronouns (der, die, das ‘that

one’) function as relative pronouns.
• A relative pronoun agrees with the head noun for gender
and number, while its case marking indicates the
Grammatical Relation which the head noun is understood
to bear within the modifying clause.
• The examples in (48) illustrate agreement with the
grammatical gender of the head noun, while (49)
illustrates the change in case marking.
 Relativization strategies
3 basic strategies languages use to indicate the relativized function within a relative clause:
• gaps
signaling the identity of the relativized function.
• relative pronouns
• pronoun retention
the relativized function is represented by a pronominal “copy” of the head noun – a regular personal
pronoun which occurs inside the modifying clause and agrees with the head noun in gender and number.
This pronominal copy is often called a RESUMPTIVE PRONOUN.
Headless relatives and free relatives
• NPs like (52b, 53b) referred to as headless relative clauses. They take the
normal NP markers (case, determiners, etc.) and contain a modifying clause,
which may be preceded by a relative pronoun or relativizer if these are present
in normal relative clauses; but lack a head noun.

• The English translations of these examples include a pronominal element one

as head of the NP, since English does not allow true headless relative clauses.
The interpretation of a headless relative clause will depend on context.

• There is no real headless relative construction in English. The closest

approximation is the “free relative” construction.

• The free relative construction is basically an NP that looks like a content

question; an example is given in (54a). A free relative can easily be mistaken
for an interrogative complement clause (54b), i.e. an indirect question,
because both of them begin with a question word.

• The difference is that the free relative is an NP and typically refers to a thing,
as in (54a); an interrogative complement clause typically refers to a
proposition as in (54b).
 Nominalization

Nominalization means making something in a noun. specifically the process of turning a verb
into a noun. That noun, plus any modifiers it has, then occurs in typical noun phrase
positions, such as the object or subject position in a sentence, English, in fact has such a
strategy, like in the following examples.
.

As we can see, the noun losing is a nominalized form of the verb lose. The word losing is a
noun because of the possessive marker –‘s in Lee’s, which only occurs in a noun phrase.
Moreover, in (56a), the bracketed phrase is the object of hated, and in (56b) The subject of
surprised is the bracketed phrase. The nominal -ing constructions are known as Gerunds in
english.
If we compare it with Kambera example, the nominalized clause will be seen as
follows

The english meaning which is ‘I didn’t expect it, your arrival’ is not very natural
english, however, the kambera is prefectly natural. It can be seen from the verb
meaning of ‘arrive’ which is clearly nominalized because it appears with a
determiner, na ‘the’ which is a property of nouns.
.
These nominalizations are still the examples of subordination because the
nominalized clause is dependent on a matrix verb.
Serial Verbs
• Serial verbs are verbs that occur together in a single verb phrase without a marker of
coordination or subordination. A serial verb construction (SVC) is one that contains two or
more verbs, neither of which is an auxiliary. It usually referring to a single complex event.

(Nupe, a language in Nigeria)

Musa bé lá èbi.
Musa came took knife
‘Musa came to take the knife’

• This example shows two finite verbs following one after the other. In the English translation,
there’s a matrix clause with a finite verb, Musa came, and an embedded clause with an
infinitival verb, to take the knife, but in the Nupe serial construction the two verbs form a
single predicate: there is no subordinate clause.
Properties of Serial Verb Construction
• First, it’s very common across languages with serialization that no elements are allowed to
intervene between the two serial verbs if they are closely tied together in a single predicate. But in
some languages, if the first of the two serial verbs is transitive, an object noun phrase can occur
between them.
(Yoruba)
Ó mú ìwé wá
He tookbook came
‘He brought the book’
the object of the transitive verb mú ‘took’ (ìwé ‘book’) intervenes between the serial verbs mú and
wá ‘came’
• Second, the meanings of the two serial verbs together often make up a single complex event. The
meaning literally seen as ‘He took the book and came’, but we denote with bring – means to get
something and take it to your destination.
• Third, the two finite verbs in a serialization must have the same subject
Properties of Serial Verb Construction
• Fourth, there is only one marker of negation for the whole serial verb construction.
(Bare)
hena nihiwawaka nu-tsereka nu-yakau abi
NEG 1SG-go 1sg-SPEAK 1SG-parent-F with
‘I am not going to talk to my mother’
The two serial verbs, nihiwawaka and nutšereka, both share the negative marker hena
• Fifth, the serial verbs can’t be marked independently for such grammatical categories as tense,
aspect or mood, but must share the same tense etc. This is either marked on each verb, or else
occurs just once but is shared by both verbs.
(Chinese)
Ta la-kai le men.
He pull-open PERF door
‘He pulled the door open’
Chinese perfect aspect marker le only occurs once for the whole serial construction