Complement Clauses and Expletives

Complement clauses in Dutch may appear in either extraposed or fronted position. An extraposed clause may cooccur with an expletive element het (it), but this element is never present if the complement clause is fronted. In this paperwe investigate howwemay account for this asymmetry in a nontransformational framework such as HPSG. In Dutch subordinate clauses, complement clauses always appear in clause-final (or ‘extraposed’) position, following the finite verb (1a). If the complement is an object, the positionwhere object complements normally appear (i.e. before the finite verb) may be occupied by the expletive NP het (it) (1b). The occurrence of an expletive is determined by the governing verb. There are many verbs (such as beweren) which select an object clause, but do not allow the expletive (1c), there are many verbs (such as betreuren) which optionally allow an expletive (1b,d), and there are some verbs (such as haten) for which the presence of an expletive is almost obligatory (1e,f) (Bennis, 1986, p. 103 ff.).