ABSTRACT
The term ‘complement’ is used in a variety of ways within different grammatical traditions (cf. Vincent (1994)). In the present chapter we will follow Noonan (1985: 42), who writes: ‘By complementation we mean the syntactic situation that arises when a notional sentence or predication is an argument of a predicate.’ The structural indices of a complement are of three kinds: (a) the form of special grammatical elements – so-called ‘complementizers’ (section 2) – which introduce the complement clause; (b) the form of the verb which is the nucleus of the complement clause; (c) the presence or absence of the subject in the complement clause, and if present, its form (nominative or accusative) and its position (pre- or postverbal). For the purposes of the present chapter we will divide the complement patterns that can be found in the dialects of Italy into three general types, described in turn in sections 3, 4 and 5, after a few words about the category of complementizers.
