The Role of the Predicate of the Main Clause on Finiteness and the Degree of Abstraction of the Subject in Complement Clauses of the Persian Language, Based on Landau's Minimalist View and Givon's Functionalist Approach

This article examines control constructions and the relationship between the control intensity of the main clause and the finiteness of complement clauses in Persian. Landa considers high control within finite and nonfinite complement as the result of action occurrence in complement clause. The Semantic interpretation of the predicate of the main clause determines the aspect and finiteness of the following clause; and this is realized through finiteness and tense. Givon says control constructions are the result of combining the meaning with syntax. The purpose of this study is to examine finiteness and tense in control constructions and to find its effect on PRO representation and nonfiniteness in the complement clause. Data, which includes 300 sentences, have been collected in a library manner using different kinds of control verbs and complement clauses taken from previous works and analyzed by a descriptive-analytical method. By combining formalism and functionalism approaches, the results show the gradedness of finiteness and PRO. As the control intensity decreases in the complement clause, the mood and finiteness of complementary clause changes from nonfinite subjunctive with PRO subject to finite indicative with overt subject.