of Romance Sentential Complementation

This dissertation is a study of different semantic and syntactic aspects of sentential complementation in the Romance languages. A general theory of sentential complementation is developed to account both for the numerous syntactic differences found among the different types of sentential complements and for the selectional properties of the semantic classes of main predicates that select these complements. In chapter 1, a semantic classification of main predicates is ii,lroduced. Three main classes of predicates are distinguished: effective, emotive and propositional predicates. The major leading hypothesis of this dissertation is also introduced in that chapter. It is argued that the three semantic classes of predicates s-select distinct semantic types of sentential complements which also correspond to distinct structural types of complements. Chapter 2 is a study of the complements to effective verbs. It is argue