The semantics of clausal complementation

Evidence from Polish

Abstract

This paper offers a new approach to post-verbal complement constructions in present-day Polish. The study is couched in the framework of construction grammar theory (cf. Goldberg 1995, 2006; Croft 2001; Diessel 2015). The focus is on four types of complement clauses—the infinitive, gerund, subjunctive, and indicative clauses, which, in keeping with the constructional framework, are taken to represent distinct form-meaning pairings. The main goal of the study is to examine the extent to which these four morphosyntactically different types of complements exhibit differences in meaning and whether there is any semantic patterning in  their distribution in present-day Polish. The study employs the method known as collostructional analysis to determine the sets of predicates with which each of the complement constructions is significantly associated and by which it is repelled. The research findings contribute to the semantically based theories of complementation by revealing systematic correspondences between the form and the function of complement clauses, which are modeled in terms of a radial (prototype-based) network of senses. The study provides empirical evidence in support of the thesis that the distribution of (post-verbal) complement constructions is semantically  motivated rather than random or arbitrary.