Jaume Solà i Pujols - Departament de Filologia Catalana ...

(36) Diu que es casen
Says that they get married
'They say that they are getting married' or rather 'I heard that they are getting married'
In 0, diu que is a fixed expression (it can only be present tense, and it differs from
standard 3rd plural arbitrary constructions in that it is singular). In fact, this fixed expression does
not mean 'someone/people say(s) that', but it rather has the meaning of a speaker-oriented adverb
expressing the novelty or surprise the speaker feels about the fact expressed by the embedded
sentence. So, it is another case or merely adjunct predicate and, probably for this reason, it
cannot be pronominalized or dislocated:
(37) *Ho diu (, que es casen)
Cf. with:
It-ACC says (, that they get married)
Ho diuen (, que es casen)
It-ACC they-say (, that they get married)
It is not clear why the purely adjunct, epistemic/ speaker-oriented interpretation for
predicate should give the result that their complement CP, when I-subject, cannot be dropped in
NSLs or pronominalized and dislocated in general: the idea would roughly be that the CP is 'too
interpretatively central' a part of the sentence for it to be dropped or dislocated.
1
Summing up, here are the main characteristics of the two verbs semblar: