Chapter 2. Clause structure

This chapter describes the structure of clauses. The most crucial element in a clause is its predicate. Each predicate requires a certain number of arguments. The type of the predicate may also determine the order of the constituents in the clause. The arguments of a predicate have grammatical functions in a clause such as subject, direct object, and indirect object etc. The types of predicates, the realization of their arguments, and the identification of grammatical functions of arguments are described in [Syntax - 2.1] and [Syntax - 2.2]. The rest of the chapter covers the syntactic phenomena that involve the arguments of predicates: word order, null (unpronounced) arguments, ellipsis of certain constituents within the clause, and copying of subject pronouns.