Who Knows Whether Emotive Doxastics Take whether-Complements?
Matthew Czuba, Mia Teixeira
March 2021
 

At least since Grimshaw (1979), theories of complementation have pursued the notion of S(emantic) selection, whereby the embeddability of a complement is taken to be a matter of compositionality. On this view of selection, whether a complement may be embedded under a given predicate is determined (either in whole or in part) by the (i) lexical semantics of the embedding predicate and (ii) the semantics of the complement clause. Thus arises the prediction that predicates sporting a similar meaning will display a correlation in the kinds of their permissible subordinates. This paper evaluates the promise of such a methodology for understanding the embedding behavior obtaining of hope, fear, and question complements. We find that minimal adjustments to existing theories on the market fall short of producing desirable results and suggest avenues for further study.
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Reference: lingbuzz/007173
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keywords: clause embedding, selection, interrogative, preferential, semantics
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