Chapter 5 to Chapter 7 discuss constructions in which a verb selects a verbal projection, i.e. a clause or a smaller (extended) projection of some other verb. The present chapter provides the necessary background for these chapters by reviewing a number of issues in this area.

Chapter 5 can be seen as a continuation of the discussion in Chapter 2 on the argument structure of main verbs: it discusses cases in which main verbs select a verbal projection, i.e. a finite or infinitival argument clause. The reason why we did not discuss this type of complementation in Chapter 2 is that it does not affect the syntactic verb classification developed there, since many verbs taking an internal argument also have the option of choosing between a nominal and a clausal complement. This is illustrated in (1) for the transitive verb ziento see and the ditransitive verb vertellento tell.

If a particular verb takes a clausal object but resists a (non-pronominal) nominal object, then pronominalization of the complement clause shows that the verb in question is in principle capable of taking a nominal complement and assigning case to it. For example, the acceptability of pronominalization in (2b) shows that the verb betogento argue is simply a transitive verb and that the infelicity of using the nominal object die stellingthat thesis is a matter of semantics, not syntax; complements of verbs such as betogento argue must have propositional content. This is confirmed by the fact, illustrated in (2c), that there are acceptable cases of nominal complementation with noun phrases such as het tegendeelthe opposite, which are propositional in nature.

The examples in (3) show that clausal complements of PO-verbs can normally also be pronominalized or replaced by a noun phrase. This again illustrates that clausal complements do not substantially affect the syntactic classification of verbs, and that the omission of clausal complements from our discussion of argument structure in Chapter 2 is therefore relatively harmless.

The reason for devoting a separate discussion to clausal/verbal arguments is that such arguments have several special properties and introduce a number of complicating factors that have been studied extensively in the literature. A discussion of these special properties and complicating factors would have seriously interfered with the main line of argumentation in Chapter 2: it is better to discuss these properties in their own right. The present chapter will highlight some of the issues that deserve special attention. After reading this chapter, the reader will be sufficiently equipped to read the next three chapters, which we will briefly review here for convenience.

Chapter 5 begins by showing that main verbs can take a number of different types of clausal/verbal arguments: the examples in (4) show that such argument clauses can be finite or infinitival: finite argument clauses are discussed in Section 5.1, and the different types of infinitival clauses in Section 5.2.

Section 5.3 concludes Chapter 5 by examining whether finite and infinitival clauses can function as complementives in copular and vinden-constructions. Examples such as (5a) seem to point in this direction, but the fact that such examples occur alongside examples such as (5b), in which the finite clause clearly functions as the subject of the construction, shows that this cannot be taken for granted.

Chapter 6 discusses the different types of verbal complements of non-main verbs. Although such complements do not function as arguments in the sense of predicate calculus, they can still be said to be selected by the non-main verbs: the examples in (6) show that perfect auxiliaries such as hebbento have select past participles, while aspectual verbs such as gaanto go select infinitives.

Chapter 7 is devoted to verb clustering, which is a recurring topic in the literature. The notion of verb clustering is used when constructions with embedded non-finite clauses/verbal projections exhibit monoclausal behavior in the sense that the matrix verb (i.e. the verb that selects the clause/verbal projection and thus heads the matrix clause) and the verb heading the non-finite complement cluster in the sense that they form a more or less impermeable sequence of verbs. This can lead to what we will call clause splitting; the infinitival clause becomes discontinuous in the sense that the matrix verb separates the infinitival verb from its dependents (e.g. arguments and modifiers). The phenomenon of verb clustering (often referred to as verb raising in the formal linguistic literature) and the concomitant clause splitting is illustrated in (7a): the verb ziento see selects the infinitival complement Peter dat boek lezen, which appears as a discontinuous phrase due to the clustering of the verbs ziento see and lezento read. Example (7b) has been added to show that verb clustering is often obscured in main clauses because they require the finite verb to be moved into second position; cf. Section 9.2 for discussion.

Constructions with non-main verbs typically exhibit monoclausal behavior; they always involve verb clustering, as shown in (8) by the embedded counterparts of the examples in (6).

The reader should be aware, however, that it is often not clear a priori what counts as a case of verb clustering. This is due to the facts listed in (9), which are established in the indicated sections; we refer the reader to those sections for detailed discussion.

The facts in (9) have not always been taken into account in the existing literature, which has led to confusion and, worse, to an inaccurate and unnecessarily complex empirical description of verb clustering. In order to avoid this here, Chapter 5 also discusses the controversial cases of verb clustering, which we will subsequently eliminate from the discussion, so that Chapter 7 can focus on the true cases of verb clustering and formulate a small number of relatively simple and, in our view, descriptively adequate generalizations.