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!
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Our website also has extra content about this week's topic, discussing the nuts and bolts of how embedded clauses work, at: www.thelingspace.com/episode-86/
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Sources:
Most of the information for this episode came from Andrew McIntyre's short online syntax textbook (www.angl.hu-berlin.de/department/staff/1685901/unt…, 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/~jason/UMS_i(DPs,%20CPs,%20NegPs%20… .
For the German section, we used this handout by Sten Vikner: www.hum.au.dk/engelsk/engsv/handouts/vikner-ho-201…
And there are more examples taken from the following:
switchll.net/papers/2013AFLAhandout.pdf
gagl.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES/root/1999-43/03/GAGL-43…
www.degruyter.com/view/product/19650
Looking forward to next time!
The Ling Space