This section has discussed ways to recognize cases of verb clustering. Section 7.1.1 began by discussing the fact that sequences of clause-final verbs are not only the result of verb clustering in the technical sense of the word, but can also be the result of remnant extraposition. In order to distinguish between the two cases, we proposed to use the infinitivus-pro-participio effect as a diagnostic. According to this test, (i) perception verbs such as horento hear in (36a) obligatorily form a cluster with an embedded bare infinitive, (ii) propositional verbs such as bewerento claim in (36b) cannot form a cluster with an embedded te-infinitive, and (iii) irrealis verbs such as proberento try in (36c) optionally form a cluster with an embedded te-infinitive. We have also given some additional reasons for 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 participles 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 complementives; 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 objects. Since complementives and direct objects are not part of verb clusters, we should exclude such cases from our discussion of verb clusters. The advantage of this decision is that it allows us to account for word order in verb clusters by the three relatively simple generalizations in (37), which are based on Den Besten & Broekhuis (1989) and which will be our starting point for examining the linearization of verb clusters in Section 7.3.