Perception verb complements in Akatek, a Mayan language

1. INTRODUCTION 51
terminology in Akmajian (1977), I refer to nite PVCs as that-PVCs
(7) and to naked in nitive PVCs as NI-PVCs (8).
(7) John saw [that [Jim brought a bottle of wine]].
(8) John saw [him bring a bottle of wine].
That-PVCs consist of a nite clause that is optionally marked by the
complementizer that. NI-PVCs basically consist of an accusatively
marked logical subject followed by the verb in its in nitive form and
an accusative direct object.
To-in nitives, that are embedded by a PV, are in the following
referred to as to-PVCs (9).
(9) I felt [him to possess the necessary quali cations].
Bolinger (1974)
To-PVCs basically consist of an accusative logical subject followed by
the in nitive marker to, the verb in the in nitive form and - if transitive
- an accusative object. As illustrated in (10), to-PVCs are restricted.
Their predicate must either contain a form of be as in (11), or it must
be possible to paraphrase the predicate with a form of be as shown in
(12).
(10) *I saw him to cross the street. Vendler (1968), 66
(11) Isaw them to be obnoxious. Bolinger (1974), 66
(12) The tasters felt it to surpass all the others. (= to be better)
Bolinger (1974), 72
The most diverse group of PVCs are the ing-clauses. I distinguish three
types of ing-clauses. The two PVCtypes listed in Table 1: present participles
and ing-of nominalizations. The third type is a nominalization
that is not a PVC type but is added to the list of complementtypes for
contrastive purposes regarding the ing-of nominalization. The present
participle is traditionally referred to as ACC-ing (13-a). The additional
non-PVC nominalization is the POSS-ing construction (13-b).
The nominalized PVC is called the ing-of (13-c) type.
(13) a. John heard [him singing the Marseillaise].
b. John remembered [his singing the Marseillaise].
c. John heard [his singing of the Marseillaise].
The ACC-ing type in (13-a) is characterized by a logical subject in the
accusative while both POSS-ing (13-b) and ing-of (13-c) complements