Original scientific paper
Complements of Verbs of Perception in Croatian Church Slavonic
Milan Mihaljević
orcid.org/0000-0003-3702-2388
; Staroslavenski institut, Zagreb
Abstract
Verbs of perception may in Croatian Church Slavonic have nominal and prepositional phrases,
as well as different clausal structures, as complements. In this paper the author describes types
and structure of clausal complements. Finite complements may be either declarative, interrogative
or relative clauses. Declarative clauses are most often introduced by the complementizer êko
[jako], and less frequently by complementizers da and kako. The complementizer kako does
not belong to Church Slavonic, but only to Croatian, while the complementizer da in Croatian
Church Slavonic occurs only with verbs of mental perception. Interrogative complements may
be either yes–no questions, introduced by the complementizer li, by the group eda [jeda] kako,
as well as by the hypothetical complementizers aĉe [a{}e] and ako, or pronominal questions.
The verbs slišati, smotriti and vidêti may also have relative clauses without an antecedent as
complements.
Different kinds of secondary predications can also occur as complements of perception verbs in
Croatian Church Slavonic. Most often, they consists of an NP and a participle which agrees with
it in gender, number and case. Extremely rare examples of secondary predications consisting of
an NP and a non–agreeing form of the participle can be attributed to the influence of vernacular
Croatian. Secondary predications may also consist of an NP and an agreeing adjective. It is
shown that secondary predications are not full sentences, belonging to the categories CP or TP.
It is most likely that they are projections of the category AspP.
Rarely, under Greek and Latin influence, perception verbs in Croatian Church Slavonic
may take infinitival clauses as complements. In active sentences these are always accusatives
with infinitives, and in passive sentences nominatives with infinitives. There are no infinitival
complements with an implicit external argument, which are possible in modern Croatian and
Slovenian. Infinitival complements are also not full sentences, but most probably, like participial
constructions, projections of the category AspP.
As in modern South Slavic languages, an accusative noun phrase followed by a finite clause
may also occur as a complement of verbs of perception. Part of these examples are NPs followed
by relative clauses introduced by the relative pronoun i`e. However, especially interesting are the
cases in which the clause which follows the accusative NP is not introduced by i`e, but by the
complementizer êko. These complements have several interesting characteristics: 1. the subject
of the êko–clause must be coreferential with the preceding accusative NP, 2. the êko–clause is
always in the present tense, 3. the event described in the êko–clause must be contemporaneous
with the event described in the main clause, 4. the subject of the êko–clause is empty and 5.
the accusative NP behaves as a direct object of the perception verb. Such complements express
categorical predication in which one participant is singled out of the perceived event, and the
event, which is expressed by a finite clause, is predicated of that participant.
Keywords
verbs of perception; verb complements; Croatian Church Slavonic language
Hrčak ID:
74646
URI
Publication date:
5.12.2011.
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