508 ROBERT D. VAN VALIN, JR. & DAVID P. WILKINS
Finally, Wierzbicka (1988) undertakes a detailed semantic investiga
tion of "the four main complementizers of the English language: ING,
THAT, TO, and FOR TO" (1988: 162), with the aim of demonstrating that
all the contrasts between them can be accounted for in terms of meaning.
By providing detailed decompositions for complementizers and predicates
she attempts to show explicitly the semantic basis for the patterns of cooc
currence between predicates and complement types. This demonstration,
however, is done in the absence of any syntactic theory that accounts for
the language-specific morphological and structural properties involved in
associating main clauses with complement clauses. However, it is worth
while to briefly present some of Wierzbicka's conclusions concerning the
semantics of English complement types since, similar semantic claims are
pursued in this paper. To begin with, she observes that there are two differ
ent kind of ING complement, temporal and non-temporal. The non-tem
poral ING (as in "I disapprove of eating between meals") refers to facts or
possibilities, while the temporal ING has a simultaneous orientation, and
thus refers to "something happening at the same time as something else"
(e.g. She sat talking to him; 1988: 162). In contrast to the simultaneous
orientation of "temporal ING", Wierzbicka (1988: 166) claims that "TO
complements are generally characterized not only by a personal, first-per
son mode ("I want"; "I know"; "I think") but also by a future component
of some sort." As far as THAT complements are concerned, their factive
nature is explained by claiming that the complementizer contains an "intel
lectual component" which can be explicated as "one can know" (i.e. I say/
I don't say : "one can know this": [proposition of complement clause]).
Lastly, Wierzbicka suggests FOR TO complements have an element of
uncertaintly or lack of confidence built into them, and that this corresponds
to the use of the components "I don't say" and "I imagine this" in their
semantic decomposition.2. The English verb remember
As stated in section 0, the goal of this paper is to demonstrate how the syn
tactic properties of a predicate can be predicted from its semantics; in par
ticular we plan to show that the types and form of the complements that the
complement-taking predicate remember in English and its equivalents in
Mparntwe Arrernte (henceforth MpA) select can be predicted from the