The Relationship Between Nominalization and Complementation

The relationship between complementation and nominalization is a relatively close one. After all, a complementary clause is simply a clause that functions as one of the arguments of the main clause verb in a sentence. This is exactly what nouns do—serve as arguments of verbs. Now, there are generally different complement constructions for different types of verbs. The main three categories of verbs, according to Givón (Syntax 2001), in regards to complementation, are verbs of modality (end, attempt, start, etc.), verbs of manipulation (demand, make, direct, etc.), and perception-cognition-utterance (PCU) verbs (look, shout, think, etc.). All of these different types of verbs can take different types of complementary clause construction. Some languages may have more complementary types, such as a supine form (as is seen in Cariban languages) or forms for different degrees of manipulation (e.g. successful versus attempted) or indicative or subjunctive. The later two examples can be seen in Spanish, with the infinitive in (1)(a) serving as both a complementary clause and a periphrastic nominalization.

(1)(a) Juan quir -e viaj -ar

Juan want 3.SG.PRS.IND travel INF

'Juan wants to travel.'

(b) Juan quir -e que viaj -e

Juan want 3.SG.PRS.IND COMP travel 1.SG.PRS.SBJV

'Juan wants that I would travel.'

Nominalization (of verbs) takes a verb and turns it into a noun. Thus, one can argue that nominalization is a form of complementation, as it takes a verb and makes it the argument of another verb. In fact, for some languages, this is how complementation works. Such is the case for Bodo.

(2) nwŋ [i -khw tháŋ -nai] sebaŋ -khw la

2.SG [3.SG.M OBJ go NMZ] how_much OBJ take

'Take how much you need.' (Lit. 'You take amount you needing.')¹

According to DeLancey, this is how all complement clauses are formed. Assuming that this is true, then the all complementary clauses are just nominalized clauses.

In English, there is the gerundive verb form, which is a nominalized form (as it can take determiners and genitives), that is acting as the complement of main verb. This is a relatively well accepted nominalized complement clause form.

(3) Their gleeful purging of the Jedi Order resulted in the death of tens of thousands.

Slightly less clear as a complementary clause would be lexically derived nouns, such as 'assassination' or 'decimation'. Both of these forms are verbs that have undergone morphological derivation to act as a noun in the clause of another verb, thus, it seems to me that the nominalization has also complementized these verbs, as discussed above, even though we consider them to be full nouns, as they are derived. The last form of nominalized complementation in English would be the periphrastic nominalization, or rather, the infinitive construction. The best example of this is the idiom, 'to err is to be human.' In this, the infinitive 'to err' is acting as the subject of the main verb 'is'. What makes this verb form a nominalization is that it shares the same external distribution within the sentence as a noun phrase. This is the case with all other forms of non-nominalized complement clauses in English—they do not share an internal structure with noun phrases, but rather, they share the same external distribution. For example, in the sentence 'I believe that cats are amazing,' 'cats are amazing' is the complementary clause, introduced with the complementizer 'that'. Again, this shares the same external distribution as a noun phrase. One could easily say, “I believe Yoda.' Alas, with English, the 'that' in the above example is not obligatory, to the chagrin of L2 learners. Thus, while complement clauses may not share the same internal distribution of a noun phrase, they certainly share the same external distribution as a noun phrase in many instances. From this, I argue that complementation is a form of clausal nominalization.

1Example from Scott DeLancey in LING 452 at the University of Oregon during Spring Term of 2018, 11 April 2018.