ccomp: clausal complement
A clausal complement of a verb or adjective is a dependent clause which is a core argument. That is, it functions like an object of the verb, or adjective.
He says that you like to swim
ccomp(says, like)
mark(like, that)
He says you like to swim
ccomp(says, like)
Such clausal complements may be finite or nonfinite. However, if the subject of the clausal complement is controlled (that is, must be the same as the higher subject or object, with no other possible interpretation) the appropriate relation is xcomp.
The boss said to start digging
ccomp(said, start)
mark(start, to)
We started digging
xcomp(started, digging)
The key difference here is that, while it is possible to interpret the first
sentence to mean that the boss will not be doing any digging, in the second
sentence it is clear that the subject of digging can only be we. This is
what distinguishes ccomp and xcomp.
Additionally, ccomp is used with copulas.
The important thing is to keep calm.
ccomp(is, keep)
The problem is that this has never been tried .
ccomp(is, tried)
(In these cases, the copula is treated as a head. This is a somewhat inconsistent and ugly feature of the current UD. An alternative solution was adopted for this case in the Turku TDT. It may be worth considering adopting it in a revision of UD.)
Note: In earlier versions of SD/USD, complement
clauses with nouns like fact or report were also analyzed as ccomp.
However, we now analyze them as acl. Hence, ccomp does not appear in nominals.
This makes sense, since nominals normally do not take core arguments.
ccomp in other languages: [bg] [cs] [de] [el] [en] [es] [eu] [fa] [fi] [fr] [ga] [he] [hu] [it] [ja] [ko] [sv] [u]