Perception verb complements in Akatek, a Mayan language

4. PERCEPTION VERB COMPLEMENTS 39
Table 4. Distribution of complementizers
Proposition denoting PVCs Event denoting PVCs Language
+ COMP + COMP Russian
+ COMP { COMP Cambodian
{ COMP { COMP Cayuga
{ COMP + COMP n.a.
The last combination in Table 4, { COMP + COMP, has to my
knowledge not been attested, so that I can posit the rst implicative
correlation:
(24) Correlation 1:
If the event denoting PVC has a complementizer, then the
proposition denoting PVC also has a complementizer.
Correlation 1 excludes a situation in which the event denoting PVC
has a complementizer while the proposition denoting PVC lacks one.
The form of the predicate of the complement has been the central
criterion for the identi cation of di erent complement types. One
typological approach to the study of PVCs suggested the distinction
between nite and non- nite complements (Horie, 1993). Under this
approach non- niteness is de ned in that the complement is less likely
to show tense, aspect and modality marking than a nite complement,
which in turn exhibits marking for tense, aspect, and mood. Horie
(1993) makes the following cross-linguistic observations regarding the
encoding of event vs. proposition denoting PVCs:
(25) Correlation 2.1 (Horie, 1993):
a. If a nite PVC denotes events, then a nite PVC also
denotes propositions.
b. If a non- nite PVC denotes propositions, then a non- nite
PVC also denotes events.
That the nite vs. non- nite distinction `turns out to be of limited
cross-linguistic applicability' for the de nition of structural types
has recently been pointed out by Cristofaro (1998). First of all,
languages di er with respect to the number and type of parameters
that might be relevant for de ning nite vs. non- nite. Therefore, it
is impossible to de ne a fundamental set of morphological parameters
to de ne the notion of niteness. Secondly, distribution is problematic
in that verb forms lacking a number of verbal categories, e.g. imperatives,
can only occur in independent clauses while there are verb forms