Subordinate clauses

Subordinate clauses containing a VP headed by a finite verb are of type sbar (the name sbar stems from X-bar grammar, where clauses introduced by a complementizer are (barred) projections of S). As finite subordinate clauses are always introduced by a complementizer, we assume that this complementizer is the head of the clause and that it subcategorises for a subject NP and a (finite) VP. The lexical entry for the complementizer dat (that), for instance, is:

The complementizer unifies the NP on its SC with the subject of the VP. This implies that the NP is interpreted as subject of the VP. Furthermore, the complementizer has no independent semantics, but simply passes on the semantics of the VP. Since dat clauses cannot be modifiers, its MOD feature is empty. Other complementizers such as omdat (because) will have a non-empty value for this attribute to indicate that subordinate sentences headed by such complementizers can occur as modifier.

The rule constructing subordinate clauses is defined as follows:²

$$\small\begin{minipage}[t]{.9\textwidth}\begin{avm} \begin{dis... ...sh & $\langle\rangle$\ \end{displaymath}\end{avm}\end{minipage}$$ (23)

A sample derivation is given in figure 8.

Figure 8: dat Mark-Jan naar Amsterdam gaat (that Mark-Jan is going to Amsterdam)