Epistemic complementizers: a cross-linguistic survey

Kasper Boye; Eva van Lier; Eva Theilgaard Brink

Epistemic complementizers: a cross-linguistic survey

Kasper Boye, Eva van Lier, Eva Theilgaard Brink

Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper presents a cross-linguistic survey of epistemic complementizers: complementizers that indicate degree of certainty about and/or type of information source of the proposition expressed by the complement clause. Based on data from a genetically stratified sample of 89 languages, the paper has two main objectives:. 1. It presents a typological survey of patterns pertaining to epistemic complementizers, including their cross-linguistic frequency, the meanings they express, and the ways in which they combine into systems involving multiple markers.2. It shows that a systematic treatment of the semantics of (epistemic and other) complementizers provides an explanatory framework for their relative morpho-syntactic markedness, for conditions on their omission, and for their combinability with other means of epistemic marking in the complement clause.

Original language	English
Journal	Language Sciences
Volume	51
Pages (from-to)	1-17
ISSN	0388-0001
Publication status	Published - 1 Sept 2015

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AB - This paper presents a cross-linguistic survey of epistemic complementizers: complementizers that indicate degree of certainty about and/or type of information source of the proposition expressed by the complement clause. Based on data from a genetically stratified sample of 89 languages, the paper has two main objectives:. 1. It presents a typological survey of patterns pertaining to epistemic complementizers, including their cross-linguistic frequency, the meanings they express, and the ways in which they combine into systems involving multiple markers.2. It shows that a systematic treatment of the semantics of (epistemic and other) complementizers provides an explanatory framework for their relative morpho-syntactic markedness, for conditions on their omission, and for their combinability with other means of epistemic marking in the complement clause.

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VL - 51

SP - 1

EP - 17

JO - Language Sciences

JF - Language Sciences

ER -

Epistemic complementizers: a cross-linguistic survey

Abstract

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