Chapter 8. The verbal complex

One of the interesting characteristics of Germanic OV-languages is the verbal complex, a row of verbs in sentence-final position that cannot be interrupted by nonverbal elements. This paper studies the verbal complex in Frisian. Based on facts of nominalization and other morpho-lexical processes, we defend here a lexical analysis for the verbal complex, i.e. base-generation of the verbal complex as a complex verb. In addition, we discuss several properties of the Frisian verbal complex: morphological restrictions between the verbs of the verbal complex, positional characteristics of its constituent parts, and the Infinitivus-Pro-Participio Effect.