Syntactic embedding or parataxis? Corpus-based typology of complementation in language use

Abstract

This study presents a corpus-based typological analysis of complementation. Complementation is typically used to frame an utterance, thought, desire, or immediate perception. However, many alternative constructions are available to express similar meanings, such as nominalization, adverbial clauses, the verbal complex, and parataxis. This study examines multilingual corpora of 14 languages, and explores how frequently languages use complementation vis-à-vis alternative strategies. We show that half the languages investigated prefer complementation, while others favor parataxis or adverbial clauses over complementation. These results suggest that languages can be classified in terms of the extent to which they favor hierarchical or paratactic structures to frame propositions, and that this correlates with the stylistic features of the given languages.