Complementizer

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A complementizer, as used in linguistics (especially generative grammar), is a syntactic category (part of speech) roughly equivalent to the term subordinating conjunction in traditional grammar. For example, the word that is generally called a complementizer in English sentences like Mary believes that it is raining. The term "complementiser" was apparently first used by Rosenbaum (1967).

The standard abbreviation for complementizer is C. The complementizer is widely held to be the syntactic head of a full clause, which is therefore often represented by the abbreviation CP (for complementizer phrase). Evidence that the complementizer functions as the head of its clause includes the fact that it is commonly the last element in a clause in languages like Korean or Japanese, in which other heads follow their complements, and always first in "head-initial" languages such as English.

It is common for the complementizers of a language to develop historically from other syntactic categories (a process known as grammaticalization). Across the languages of the world, it is especially common for determiners to be used as complementizers (e.g. English that). Another frequent source of complementizers is the class of interrogative words. It is especially common for a form that otherwise means what to be borrowed as a complementizer, but other interrogative words are often used as well; e.g. colloquial English I read in the paper how it's going to be cold today, with unstressed how roughly equivalent to that). English for in sentences like I would prefer for there to be a table in the corner shows a preposition that has developed into a complementizer. (The sequence for there in this sentence is clearly not a prepositional phrase.) In many languages of West Africa, the form of the complementizer can be related to the verb say.

[edit] Empty Complementizers

In some grammars, the possibility of invisible or "empty" complementizers is introduced. An empty complementizer is a hypothetical phonologically null category with a function parallel to that of visible complementizers such as that and for. Its existence in English has been proposed based on the following type of alternation:

He hopes you go ahead with the speech

He hopes that you go ahead with the speech

Because that can be inserted between the verb and the embedded clause, the original sentence without a visible complementizer would be reanalyzed as

He hopes øC you go ahead with the speech

This suggests another interpretation of the earlier "how" sentence:

I read in the paper <how> øC [it's going to be cold today]

where "how" serves as a specifier to the empty complementizer. This allows for a consistent analysis of another troublesome alternation:

The man <who> øC [I saw yesterday] ate my lunch!

The man <OP> øC [I saw yesterday] ate my lunch!

The man <OP> that [I saw yesterday] ate my lunch!

where "OP" represents an invisible interrogative known as an operator.

In a more general sense, the proposed empty complementizer parallels the suggestion of near-universal empty determiners.