A complement clause is a clause that can fill a core argument slot in place of an NP (see Dixon 1995 and Noonan 1985, for a typological overview). In Tariana, the choice of a clause type and other techniques – termed complementation strategies – for marking a clausal argument depend on the verb class. Some of these issues were considered in Chapter 12. In §20.2 we saw that deverbal nominalisations can also be employed as complementation strategies. Nominalisations can appear in S or O function, while complement clauses only appear in O function. Both nominalisations and complement clauses differ from other Os in that they cannot be targets of passives.

Complement clauses marked with the subordinator -ka are discussed in §24.1. There we also show how this type of complement clause is different from other clause types. Then, in §24.2 we consider complement clauses marked with purposive. In §24.3 we look at different complementation strategies used with various semantic groups of verbs. Complement clauses containing interrogatives are analysed in §24.4.

Complement clauses marked with -ka ‘subordinator’

Complement clauses marked with the subordinator -ka are used to fill in the O slot for verbs of perception and for the secondary verb wade ‘be probable, capable’. Like all non-main clauses they can take the case-marker -nuku if topical; they cannot take other cases (unlike the -ka sequential clauses discussed in §22.2).