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6.3.3.Conclusion
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This section has discussed non-main verbs taking a te-infinitive as their complement, and has argued that there are reasons to think that this option arises only with semi-aspectual verbs. Other constructions that could potentially involve non-main verbs with a te-infinitive have been shown to actually involve a main verb and a te-infinitive with some other syntactic function, e.g. complementive or postnominal modifier. The two types of constructions can be identified by generalizing the first two properties of the main and semi-aspectual (i.e. non-main) verbs zitten, liggen, staan, and hangen in Table (200) to all constructions involving a V + te-V combination.

200 Properties of main and non-main verbs combining with a te-infinitive
main verb non-main verb
IPP +
Order w.r.t. (other)
clause-final verbs
nonverbal te-infinitive
precedes the clause-final verbs
verbal te-infinitive follows
the clause-final verbs
causativization +

The conclusion that non-main verbs trigger the IPP-effect and require the te-infinitive to precede the clause-final verbs is important because it will greatly simplify our description of the clause-final verb cluster. We can simply assume that te-infinitives are obligatorily placed in the final position of the verb cluster, and we do not need to introduce special provisos to account for the deviant behavior of the te-infinitives discussed in Section 6.3.2 on “unclear cases”; these te-infinitives do not function as main verbs of the clause and are therefore not part of the verbal complex.

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