Grammatical analysis of embedded clauses has been a central theme of modern theoretical linguistics since Chomsky (1957) used data from complex clauses to gain deeper insight into the formal properties of natural language. Recently, researchers have gained new insight into complementation through close examination of syntactic and semantic properties across a wide range of languages (Aboh 2005; Arsenijević 2009; Bogal-Albritten 2016; Elliott 2017; Jayaseelan 2014; Kastner 2015; Kratzer 2006; Moulton 2015; and others). Our primary empirical interest in this paper is embedding in the Teiwa language (Klamer 2010a). Understanding embedding in Teiwa is of general interest because Teiwa was claimed to lack complementation entirely and to instead use juxtaposition under a single intonational contour (Klamer 2010a). (1) is a Teiwa example of this type of juxtaposition from our own fieldwork:

Example (1) contains both the verb walas ‘tell’ and following it, the verb wa ‘say’. However, in the English translation we provide, the speech report expressed by (1) requires only one verb of speech, told. In other words, the Teiwa (1) seems to correspond to the English sentence Natan told me that he said that … with double embedding, but this interpretation is actually very marginal in Teiwa. Therefore an analysis of (1) as embedding seems initially implausible. Since at the same time, several substrings of (1) can form independent sentences as shown in (2), it seems plausible that (1) consists of more than one sentence. An analysis as a sequence of the two independent sentences (2a) and (2b) is the alternative proposed by Klamer to which we refer in this paper as the bisentential analysis.

We argue here that (1) must be analyzed as a single sentence where the sequence a wa acts as a complementizer agreeing with the matrix clause subject. We refer to our proposal as the monosentential analysis. As far as we know, the way speech and attitude reports are expressed in Teiwa is unique among living languages. The complementizers are related to the verb say in many languages, e.g., Malayalam (Jayaseelan 2014), Matses (Munro et al. 2012), or Usan and other Papuan languages (Reesink 1993), but only a handful of languages link speech complements with the fully inflected verb say. One such language is Nanti, where the complementizer (glossed as QUOT) agrees with the matrix subject (see (12) below). Agreeing complementizers are reported for a number of Bantu languages (Kawasha 2007; Diercks 2013) several Mande languages of West Africa (Idiatov 2010; van Koppen 2017), and in Nilotic (Diercks & Rao 2019). Idiatov (2010) argues that such agreeing complementizers, at least in Mande, appear to be always related to quotative predicators and ultimately verbs, sometimes still present in the same form. As an example, we will discuss Lubukusu (Section 3 below). In Teiwa, the verb say linking speech and attitude reports requires a subject pronoun.2 The language most similar to Teiwa that we are aware of is the extinct Akkadian (Deutscher 2000), a parallel to which we return in Section 3.

The main goal of our paper is to propose a monosentential analysis of Teiwa examples like (1). Under our analysis a wa essentially fulfils the role of a complementizer. We first present background on the relevant aspects of Teiwa in Section 2. In Section 3, we discuss a number of languages with complementizer agreement. In Section 4.1, we address the status of the utterance initial a wa, as in (2b), where a wa does not follow another propositional attitude verb. We argue that in such cases, wa is an independent full verb taking a clausal complement following it. In Section 4.2, we then consider examples like (1), in which a wa is non-initial and prosodically integrated with the preceding propositional attitude verb; we argue that a wa in such occurrences is a complementizer. We present three arguments in favor of the monosentential analysis and argue for an agreement relation between the speech verb (agreement controller) and the complementizer wa (agreement target). Our conclusion is that, despite initial appearances to the contrary, the monosentential analysis is correct based on evidence we present from prosody, syntax, and semantics. We return to the parallel between languages discussed in Section 3 and Teiwa in Section 5 where we state the implications of the Teiwa embedding on our understanding of the evolution of complementizers and complementation.

In 2.1 we provide information about the Teiwa language and its speakers. The treatment of Teiwa complex sentences in Klamer (2010a) is presented in 2.2.

Research on several other languages has described the use of forms related to the verb say to express propositional attitudes. There is ample evidence that complementizers commonly originate in a general verb of speech (Heine & Kuteva 2002; Güldemann 2008). More specifically this has been demonstrated for some Austronesian languages (Klamer 2000), Creoles like Bislama (Crowley 2004: 182), Chadic (Frajzyngier 1996), Dravidian (Jayaseelan 2014), Ewe (Lord 1993), and some Papuan languages (Reesink 1993). In difference to Klamer’s analysis, such uses have often been described as Complementizer forms of the verb say. In this section, we show that Teiwa represents a uniquely interesting case to understand when a verbal form should be analyzed as a complementizer.

For the following, we introduce a descriptive terminology: We write that the verb say occurs (or occurred) as Independent Occurrence expressing the verb of speech if no other propositional attitude verb occurs nearby that say might be construed with. In the Teiwa data we have seen up to now, (2b) and (6) contain such independent occurrences of wa. Furthermore, a form related to the same verb say can also occur as Integrated Occurence where it is construed with another propositional attitude verb. Of the Teiwa examples up to now, (1), (10a), and (10b) contain integrated occurrences of wa. The form of wa used in independent and integrated occurrences is actually identical in Teiwa,5 but more frequently it seems that integrated forms of the verb say are reduced.

We focus on languages where the integrated uses of say exhibit agreement with the subject of the other attitude verb they are construed with. In European languages, complementizers either do not agree at all (as in English) or agree with the subject of the embedded clause, as in some dialects of German and Dutch (Zwart 1997: 137–141). However, the Germanic complementizer agreement is never controlled by the subject of the matrix clause. Complementizer agreement with matrix subjects has been observed only in Nanti (Michael 2008) and in a number of Bantu languages (Kawasha 2007; Diercks 2013), several Mande languages of West Africa (Idiatov 2010; van Koppen 2017), and in Nilotic (Diercks & Rao 2019). One such language is Lubukusu (Bantu, Kenya). Diercks (2013) introduces the notion complementizer agreement using Lubukusu examples such as (11).6 The subject of the speech verb babolela ‘say’ in (11) is babandu ‘people’, a class 2 noun. It is the controller of the subject agreement prefix ba- attached to both the verb and the complementizer li. In (11b), the agreement controller is a class 1 noun Alfredi.

Diercks (2013) shows that the complementizer agreement in Lubukusu is productive: various noun classes control agreement on the complementizer (p. 364–365) and the agreement is not affected by negation (p. 366). Lubukusu has a number of complementizers, among which AGR-li appears to be restricted to verbs of speech/manner of speech, knowledge/belief, and desire; it is incompatible with verbs that presuppose the truth of their complement (Diercks 2013: 397–398). We do not know whether the complementizer li of Lubukusu is related to a verb of saying.

Complementizer agreement is also reported for Nanti (Arawakan, Peru). In Nanti, we find both independent occurrences of kaNt ‘say’ and integrated occurrences thereof as ka, but Michael’s analysis is different from Klamer’s analysis of Teiwa. Michael (2008: 111) analyzes the Nanti ka in (12) as a marker of quotative embedded clauses (a complementizer in our terms) that agrees with the matrix subject. Specifically, ka occurs with first person agreement in (12a) and with third person masculine agreement in (12b). Michael (2008) identifies the verb kaNt ‘say’, shown in (12b), as the diachronic source of the marker ka and reports that similar morphemes are also attested in other Campa languages (Michael 2008: 111–112).

The closest parallel to Teiwa is presented by Akkadian (Semitic, Ancient Mesopotamia), whose long written record captured the development of a general complementizer (Deutscher 2000). Akkadian is the earliest known Semitic language, which was used in writing from around 2500 BC until the beginning of the current epoch in a great variety of genres. Akkadian letters are available from the earliest period and reflect well the development of the colloquial language because they were dictated by illiterate clients to scribes to be read out to the recipient, a property which makes the letters well suited for the investigation of grammaticalization (Deutscher 2000: 23).

As shown in Table 1, Old Akkadian is characterized by (Deutscher 2000) as a language without embedding where enma S(-ma) and later umma S(-ma) encode an independent clause paratactically joined with a speech report attributed to the speker (marked as S here). From Early Old Babylonian umma S-ma is attested with other speech verbs and the S marking disappears in the Middle Babylonian period. During the Neo-Babylonian period, umma appears as a complementizer with verbs such as ‘fear’ or ‘hear’, as shown in Table 1.

In Early Old Babylonian umma may form an independent clause as in (13).7 The subject pronoun anaku ‘I’ combines with the particle ma and has to follow umma. Deutscher (2000: 70) describes ma as a particle used for emphasis and coordination.

Several examples of integrated uses of Early Old Babylonian umma with speech verbs are given in (14). Deutscher (2000: 72) states that the speech verb and umma are in paratactic relation. Note that the subject pronoun following umma ‘say’ is first person singular in (13a) and (13b) but third person plural in (13c). The subject of umma is the same as the subject of the speech verb, resembling the Lubukusu and Nanti agreement pattern.

As the translations given in (14) indicate, Deutscher (2000) does not consider the Early Old Babylonian data to be instances of embedding, but of two independent paratactically joined sentences (see also Deutscher 2005), i.e. a similar analysis to the one Klamer (2010a) adopts for Teiwa examples like (6). In sum, the previous literature suggests that structures with integrated occurrences of say (or an agreeing complementizer) receive different analysis across languages: a monosentential, complementation structure when the integrated form of say is morphologically distinct from the independent forms as in Nanti and all languages without agreement on integrated say, but a bisentential, paratactic structure when the integrated and independent forms of say are identical as in Early Old Babylonian and Teiwa. Teiwa is the only living language of the latter type as far as we know, and therefore it is important to apply further diagnostics for complementation to it including prosodic and semantic tests. We present our results in the following section.

This section presents new evidence concerning both independent and integrated occurrences of Teiwa wa. In Section 4.1, we argue that independent occurrences of wa are full lexical verbs taking a speech report as the object, and in Section 4.2 we show that integrated occurrences of wa are complementizers that follow another speech verb and agree with its subject in person and number. Both uses are distinguished by a number of features summarized in Table 2 and will be discussed in the remainder of this section.

In our discussion we frequently refer to a number of experiments conducted with the assistance of several young Teiwa men, to whom we refer with their first names as Ben, Bimbo, Lorens, Natan and Orias. All of them are friends and live in the village of Madar. In several experiments they acted out scenarios which included reporting each other’s speech, thoughts, and intentions.

We established a contrast between the speech verb wa and complementizer occurrences of wa following other speech verbs: the speech verb wa can be combined directly with a finite clause complement, as in (57a). Other speech verbs can also embed finite clauses, but Teiwa speakers prefer them to be linked with the agreeing complementizer wa, as in (57b). In both cases, wa is prosodically integrated with the rest of the sentence, but only the complementizer wa may undergo phonological reduction for some speakers. Unlike the speech verb wa, the complementizer is not compatible with aspect or negation and must agree with the subject of the main verb.

Semantic integration of the complement clause was demonstrated using a number of tests, including (i) the scope of negation, (ii) the scope of constituent questions, (iii) the scope of prohibitives, and (iv) the scope of polar question markers. The traditional analysis of speech and attitude reports assumes that a speech verb V and a finite clause CP stand in verb-complement relation in the syntax and in predicate-argument relation in the semantics (Hintikka 1962, and others). More recent proposals suggest neither a syntactic verb-complement relation nor a semantic predicate-argument relation have been obtained between V and CP (Aboh 2005; Arsenijević 2009; Kastner 2015; Moulton 2015; Elliott 2017).

Our conclusion is that complementation can exist independently of complementizer morphemes (see also Kastner et al. 2014). Finally, our paper has implications for the discussion of complementizers and complementation in historical linguistics. In Section 3 we compared Teiwa with languages such as Old Babylonian, Nanti, and Lukubusu, and argued that wa may be in an early stage of complementizer development, but complementation precedes this development in Teiwa.

The presence of embedding in the Teiwa cases opens a new perspective on the discussion of structures in Akkadian and also Pirahã (Everett 2005) where parataxis has been proposed. For Akkadian, the types of evidence we discussed in Section 4.2 are likely to never be available (clearly so for prosodic evidence). For Pirahã, Sauerland (2017; 2018) shows using a similar experimental designs that Pirahã speakers treat speech reports as semantically integrated with the speech verb and subordinated. Sauerland (2017) shows that Pirahã clause linker sai shows pitch differentiation of its conditional and nominalizing usage. Pirahã like Mohawk (Mithun 2009) represents a type of sentence integration detectable only at the semantic and prosodic level, which has to precede all subsequent stages of grammaticalization.15

Semantic (SEM) and prosodic (PROS) integration is the necessary condition that allows for other grammatical signals of integration to develop. During the grammaticalization polysemy and marking of subjects (i.e. subject agreement, AGR) gradually disappears. Table 4 schematically represents the attested stages of this process.

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