This section has discussed ways of recognizing apparent cases of verb clusters. Section 7.1.1 started by discussing the fact that sequences of verbs in clause-final position do not only arise as the result of verb clustering in the technical sense of the word, but can also be the result of a process that we referred to as remnant extraposition. In order to distinguish the two cases, we proposed to use the infinitivus-pro-participio effect as a diagnostic. According to this test (i) perception verbs like horen'to hear' in (35a) obligatorily form a cluster with an embedded bare infinitive, (ii) propositional verbs like beweren'to claim' in (35b) cannot form a cluster with an embedded te-infinitive, and (iii) irrealis verbs like proberen'to try' in (35c) optionally form a cluster with an embedded te-infinitive. We also discussed a number of additional facts supporting these conclusions.

Section 7.1.2 continued by showing that we cannot always decide at face value whether past/passive participles and (te-)infinitives are verbal and thus part of the clause-final verb cluster: past/passive participle and te-infinitives may exhibit adjectival behavior, as a result of which they may end up left-adjacent to the verb cluster in their syntactic function as complementive; bare infinitives may be nominalized, as a result of which they may end up left-adjacent to the verb cluster in their syntactic function as direct object. Since complementives and direct objects are not part of verb clusters, we should exclude such cases in our discussion of verb clusters. The merit of taking this decision is that it enables us to account for the word order in verb clusters by means of the three relatively simple generalizations in (36), which are based on Den Besten & Broekhuis (1989) and which will be taken as our point of departure in the investigation of the linearization of verb clusters in Section 7.3.