Documentation

Linglib.Phenomena.Complementation.Studies.Deal2026

Deal (2026): Clausal complementation as relativization, revisited #

@cite{deal-2026}

Paper's central claims #

In Nez Perce, some but not all notional complement clauses show the characteristic morphology of relativization. @cite{deal-2026} argues that the relative-like notional complement clauses ("relative embeddings", REs) are CPs — not DPs/PPs — containing an internal Ā-dependency from a high functional projection above TP. Three primary conclusions:

  1. Not all clausal complementation is relativization (refuting @cite{kayne-2008}, @cite{kayne-2014}, @cite{arsenijevic-2009}).
  2. Relative-like notional complement clauses vary across languages in nominal superstructure (@cite{deal-2026} Table 79: V CP / V D N CP / V P D CP) and in factive inferences (Tables 80–81).
  3. Factivity, RE-syntax, and nominalization are three orthogonal axes — no one entails another.

What this file contributes #

What this file does NOT contribute #

Disagreements documented but not formalised #

@cite{kayne-2008}, @cite{kayne-2014}, @cite{arsenijevic-2009}: universalist position (all complementation = relativization). Deal 2026 §7 refutes by exhibiting barePropositionalCP cells.

@cite{decuba-2017}: opposing position — complement clauses are never relatives. Compatible with Deal 2026 for English simplex; incompatible with Deal for Adyghe/Bulgarian/Nez Perce REs.

@cite{hanink-bochnak-2017}, @cite{bochnak-hanink-2021}: Washo factive complementation as nominalization (V D CP). Deal 2026 §7 accepts this for Washo but refutes the universal extension to all factives — Nez Perce REs are factive without nominal superstructure.

@cite{moulton-2015}: CPs are predicates (type ⟨e, t⟩), not propositions (type t), composing with attitude verbs via predicate modification. This analysis is orthogonal to Deal 2026's typology — it concerns the semantic type of the embedded CP, not its external syntactic shell. The two analyses intersect on barePropositionalCP cells (Moulton's CP-predicate semantics applies most directly there) but Deal's nominalization cells (V D N CP, V P D CP) shift composition into the nominal layer where Moulton's predicate-modification mechanism may not directly apply.

The full Deal-2026 description of a notional complement clause: internal spine + external shell + presence of internal Ā-dependency. Bundled here rather than in substrate to keep the per-axis primitives reusable (ClauseSpine, CPShellInventory, AbarDep) for non-Deal accounts.

The three axes are independent in @cite{deal-2026} Table 79: each cell in the 4×2 cross-classification (CP-superstructure × ±Ā) is filled or explicitly noted as predicted-but-unattested.

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      The two Nez Perce shapes from @cite{deal-2026} §3 vs §6.

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        The Adyghe RE shape from @cite{caponigro-polinsky-2011}, exhibited at @cite{deal-2026} §4 (43): V D N CP with internal Ā.

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          The Bulgarian RE shape from @cite{krapova-2010}, exhibited at @cite{deal-2026} §4 (49): V P D CP with internal Ā.

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            The Ndebele simplex shape from @cite{pietraszko-2019}, exhibited at @cite{deal-2026} §7 (78): V P D CP with no Ā-dependency.

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              The Washo factive shape from @cite{bochnak-hanink-2021}, @cite{hanink-bochnak-2017}: V D CP (D wraps CP, no intervening N). @cite{deal-2026} footnote 33 explicitly notes this cell as attested "for example, for Washo (Bochnak & Hanink 2021)" but absent from the main Table 79 because no example language combines V D CP with an internal Ā-dependency. We include the no-Ā version.

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                An entry in @cite{deal-2026} Table 79: a language × construction with its NotionalComplementShape.

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                    The seven attested Table-79 cells (Deal 2026 main Table 79 + Washo cell from footnote 33 per @cite{bochnak-hanink-2021}).

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                      theorem Phenomena.Complementation.Studies.Deal2026.table79_membership :
                      List.map (fun (c : Table79Cell) => (c.language, c.construction)) table79 = [("Nez Perce", "RE"), ("Nez Perce", "simplex"), ("English", "think-complement"), ("Adyghe", "RE"), ("Bulgarian", "RE"), ("Ndebele", "embedding"), ("Washo", "factive")]

                      Drift sentry: table79 covers exactly the seven (language, construction) pairs Deal lists in §7 main Table 79 plus the Washo cell from footnote 33.

                      Project a NotionalComplementShape onto the theory-neutral ComplementClauseStructure enum from Typology/Complementation.lean. The mapping is determined by the internal Ā-flag and the external shell: bare CP + Ā = abarInternalCP; bare CP without Ā = barePropositionalCP; any non-bare external shell = nominalization (subsumes V D CP, V D N CP, V P D CP — they differ only in the depth of the nominal/prepositional wrapper, not in the surface phenomenon being a nominalization).

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                        The Kayne-Arsenij'evi'c universalist hypothesis — that all clausal complementation is relativization — is decidable on the Table 79 sample as ∀ c ∈ table79, c.surfacePattern = .abarInternalCP. Deal 2026 refutes it: only one of six cells (Nez Perce REs) projects as abarInternalCP.

                        Deal 2026's positive contribution: at least one cell projects as abarInternalCP (so REs are real); at least one cell projects as barePropositionalCP (so not all complementation is relativization); at least one cell projects as nominalization (consistent with prior nominalization analyses for some languages).

                        Greek pu-complement shape per @cite{angelopoulos-2026}: bare CP with no internal Ā-dependency — projects as barePropositionalCP, not nominalization (Greek lacks a silent situation noun, so pu cannot nominalize per paper §5). The categorial [n]-feature on C is checked structurally (light noun in Spec) rather than by a nominal shell.

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                          Greek pu-complement projects as barePropositionalCP — a bare-CP cell consistent with Deal's typology, witnessing that the (factive, bare-CP) combination is attested.

                          Headline orthogonality (Deal 2026 Tables 80–81) #

                          The central typological discovery: factivity does not predict RE-structure in either direction.

                          All four cells are attested: factivity neither necessitates nor precludes RE-syntax. The factive flag is per @cite{deal-2026} §3 projection-test diagnoses. The Adyghe non-factive RE judgement is attributed to @cite{caponigro-polinsky-2011} via @cite{deal-2026} §7 Table 80.

                          The fourth cell (non-factive + RE) #

                          Documented by @cite{deal-2026} §7 (Table 80) as instantiated by Adyghe per @cite{caponigro-polinsky-2011}. Absent a formalised Adyghe Fragment, this is recorded as an unproven Lean claim: in linglib Adyghe is not yet present at Fragment level.

                          TODO(adyghe-fragment): once Fragments/Adyghe/ClausalEmbedding.lean lands, replace this prose with a theorem adyghe_re_nonfactive.

                          Deal 2026 Table 81 #

                          Observable-driven derivation (Pattern B architecture) #

                          The Fragment carries a single morphological observable (requiresYoxKeEdge : Bool) per @cite{deal-2026} §3 (28). Deal's two analytical commitments — the embedding-strategy classification and the selectional-feature stack — are derived from this observable, not stipulated alongside it. The derivation is the theory; the observable is the data.

                          This pattern lets alternative theories provide alternative derivation functions over the same Fragment observable, making cross-theory divergence theorems expressible (currently only Deal's derivation is supplied; an Adyghe-style or Krapova-style derivation would be a straightforward sibling Studies file).

                          The two embedding strategies @cite{deal-2026} distinguishes.

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                              Deal 2026's per-verb embedding-strategy classification, derived from the Fragment-level observable requiresYoxKeEdge. The interpretation is Deal's: morphological obligation of yox̂ ke on the complement edge ↔ syntactic Ā-dependency above TP. The bi-conditional is strategy_iff_yoxKe below — was previously trivially rfl over a list-membership check, now expresses the genuine theory commitment.

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                                Deal's selectional commitment for a Nez Perce embedder: the verb c-selects a CP, and (for RE-takers) requires that CP to contain an internal Ā-dependency above TP.

                                Note that Deal's analysis is not standard c-selection: c-selection only sees the outer category of the complement, and both RE-takers and simplex-takers c-select uniformly for .C (a CP). The RE-vs-simplex distinction is in the internal structure of the selected CP — whether its head bears the [+Ā] feature triggering operator movement above TP. We separate the two by storing both the c-selectional outer category and a Boolean flag for the internal-Ā requirement.

                                • outerCat : Minimalist.Cat

                                  Outer category the verb c-selects for (always .C for embedders).

                                • requiresInternalAbar : Bool

                                  Whether the selected CP must contain an internal Ā-dependency. Maps to Deal's [+Ā] feature on the C head of the embedded clause.

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                                      Deal 2026's selectional analysis: derived entirely from the Fragment observable requiresYoxKeEdge. The verb uniformly c-selects for a CP; only the internal-Ā requirement varies between RE-takers and simplex-takers.

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                                        The headline derivation theorem: a Nez Perce embedder is RE-canonical in Deal's analysis iff its complement obligatorily carries the yox̂ ke edge morphology. Replaces what was previously a trivial rfl over membership in a hand-curated list.

                                        Deal's selectional analysis: an embedder selects for a CP with internal Ā-dependency iff it requires yox̂ ke edge marking.

                                        Every Nez Perce embedder uniformly c-selects for .C. The RE-vs-simplex contrast is not a c-selectional difference — it lives in the internal structure of the selected CP.

                                        Per-verb selectional sanity. liloy selects a CP requiring internal Ā; neki selects a bare CP.

                                        Bridge to @cite{tonhauser-beaver-roberts-simons-2013} taxonomy #

                                        The Tonhauser et al. classes are formalised in Phenomena/Presupposition/ProjectiveContent.lean (ProjectiveClass.classAclassD). Factive predicates project as Class C (SCF=no, OLE=yes — the same class as English know). The Class C trigger know_complement is one of the listed examples (see ProjectiveTrigger.know_complement).

                                        Non-factive predicates introduce no projective content and so map to none.

                                        Project a Nez Perce embedder onto the Tonhauser projective-content taxonomy. Factive predicates map to Class C (the know-class); non-factives have no projective content.

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                                          All RE-canonical predicates project as Tonhauser Class C. This bridges Deal's empirical Nez Perce data to the typed @cite{tonhauser-beaver-roberts-simons-2013} taxonomy.

                                          cuukwe 'know' projects as Class C — same projective class as Deal-RE-canonical predicates, despite cuukwe being simplex-canonical. Confirms factivity ⊥ RE-structure at the Tonhauser-substrate level.

                                          Bridges between four substrate layers #

                                          The Studies file integrates four independent substrate layers:

                                          The bridge theorems below derive load-bearing predictions across these layers rather than stipulating them.

                                          All three Table-79 RE cells (Nez Perce, Adyghe, Bulgarian) carry an internal Ā-dependency. The shared hasInternalAbar = true is the universal property of REs that survives Deal's typological dissolution.

                                          All three Table-79 simplex/embedding cells (Nez Perce simplex, English think, Ndebele, Washo factive) lack internal Ā.

                                          Table-79 cells partition into ±Ā: every cell either has it or lacks it (a tautology over Bool, but documents the bipartition exhaustiveness of the hasInternalAbar dimension).

                                          The four-cell cross-classification of Tables 80–81 is exhaustively populated: every combination of (factive, hasInternalAbar) is attested by at least one (verb, shape) pair. The fourth cell (non-factive + Ā) is documented from @cite{caponigro-polinsky-2011}'s Adyghe REs as cited by Deal — Adyghe REs combine adygheREShape (hasInternalAbar=true) with predicates that are not factive in Caponigro & Polinsky's analysis (Deal §7 p. 53).

                                          What Tonhauser substrate alone CANNOT see #

                                          The headline cross-classification's fourth cell (factive + simplex, Nez Perce cuukwe) and first cell (factive + RE, Nez Perce liloy) both project to Tonhauser Class C. The Tonhauser substrate alone cannot distinguish them — the distinction lives at the EmbeddingStrategy / NotionalComplementShape layer, not at the projective-content layer.

                                          This is informative: it shows that Deal's typology is strictly finer- grained than Tonhauser's, and motivates the need for substrate at the Probe / ClauseSpine layer (where the Ā-dep distinction is visible).

                                          ke as a φ-probe on C (@cite{deal-2015a-nels}) #

                                          @cite{deal-2026} §2 argues ke is a C-head with a φ-probe rather than a relative pronoun. The argument: ke's φ-features track the embedded subject (sometimes plus object), starting from the highest argument and proceeding down — exactly the @cite{deal-2015a-nels} interaction-satisfaction algorithm probing into c-command domain.

                                          The C-probe is satisfied either by feature-match (yielding overt person agreement) or by encountering the TP boundary (yielding null surface agreement). We model this with @cite{deal-2024}'s SatisfactionCond.disjunctive.

                                          Caveat: the existing Agree.lean featuresMatch uses sameType matching (see Agree.lean:234), which collapses 1st/2nd/3rd person into a single "person feature type." A finer-grained valueMatch substrate would be needed to formalise Deal's 1st vs 3rd person split. The disjunctive shape here is faithful to the framework but currently distinguishes only "person-feature-present" vs "no-feature-encountered-T."

                                          ke's satisfaction condition: matched by any φ-feature (collapsed by sameType regardless of person value), or by encountering the TP head.

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                                            ke is satisfied by encountering the TP boundary even with no φ-features on the goal — the disjunctive escape that yields null surface agreement.

                                            The head-encounter satisfaction copies no features (default null surface agreement when subject lacks φ).

                                            REs contain a high Ā-dependency (@cite{deal-2026} §5) #

                                            Deal §5 argues the relative operator originates above TP — a high functional projection — based on absence of low-position cyclic effects and the always-nominative form of the relative pronoun. We attach the existing keineĀDep (Ā-probe on C, fValue 6) as the substrate witness; the alternative low analysis (Aboh's Gungbe lexical-Ā) is documented but not formalised.

                                            @[reducible, inline]

                                            A Nez Perce RE's internal Ā-dependency is — in Probe-substrate terms — Minimalist.keineĀDep (the substrate witness defined in Probe.lean §4b). Deal's "high functional projection above TP" claim falls out of Minimalist.keineĀDep_isHigh without re-stipulation here.

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                                              The Nez Perce RE Ā-dependency is "high" in Deal's sense: above TP. Inherited directly from the substrate theorem, no re-proof.

                                              Silent divergence with HPSG #

                                              Theories/Syntax/HPSG/Core/RelativeClauses.lean:87-93 hard-codes RC = modifier (isMod = true, theorem relClause_is_modifier). @cite{deal-2026}'s analysis of Nez Perce REs as complement CPs (not modifier RCs) sits incompatibly with this Minimalist-only framing: HPSG would either need to recognise REs as a third structural type (not modifier, not bare complementation), or accept that the RE-vs-RC distinction is a Minimalist-internal one with no HPSG analogue. The bridge theorem HPSG.isMod ↔ ¬ Minimalist.cp_complementation_via_re is filed as future work — promoted from "implicit assumption" to a substrate question.

                                              Healthy convergence with Cacchioli 2025 #

                                              Phenomena/Complementation/Studies/Cacchioli2025.lean independently establishes that Tigrinya distinguishes kemzi (factive complementizer) from zi (relativizer/general subordinator) without syncretism. This is a language-internal counterargument to the universalist "complementation = relativization" claim, parallel to @cite{deal-2026}'s Nez Perce-internal contrast between simplex (no yox̂ ke) and RE (with yox̂ ke) embeddings. The two papers reinforce each other across distinct language families.

                                              Convergence with Caponigro & Polinsky 2011 #

                                              @cite{caponigro-polinsky-2011}'s Adyghe analysis shares Deal's "high Ā origin" claim while diverging on the V D N CP shell shape. Deal 2026 §5 explicitly cites Caponigro & Polinsky as theoretical kin.

                                              §6 indexical shift / SoT formalisation deferred #

                                              @cite{deal-2026} §6 establishes that REs block shifty pronouns and require matching tense (vs. simplex embeddings where shift and relative-tense are both available). The semantic substrate for these claims is @cite{deal-2020}'s A Theory of Indexical Shift book; that substrate is not yet implemented in linglib (no Theories/Semantics/IndexicalShift/ directory exists; existing Theories/Semantics/Reference/{ShiftedIndexicals, Monsters,Kaplan}.lean cover Kaplanian framing but not Deal's Σ-monsters specifically).

                                              Until the substrate lands, the §6 contrasts can only be documented in prose. Decide-checking a shiftedReading? : Sentence → Bool = false predicate would be the "encoding conclusions as definitions" anti-pattern.

                                              Future work: import deal-2020 substrate (when implemented) and prove re_blocks_shift : ∀ p ∈ reCanonical, p.allowsShift = false against actual indexical-shift semantics.