The analysis of complement clauses in the Turkic language Sakha (Yakut) in Baker (2011) postulates that, in this particular language, there are three distinct constructions that can function as complement clauses: Complementiser phrases, participal clauses and gerundive clauses. The objective is to derive a non-discrete (or rather non-binary) concept of categorial “nominality”. The evidence comes from a test catalogue that shows that the three constructions behave differently with respect to certain syntactic contexts, e.g. that the subjects of CPs and participal clauses appear unmarked, whereas subjects of gerundive clauses receive genitive case marking.

In my bachelor thesis, I attempted to test the assumptions of Baker (2011) by applying its
test catalogue to fresh data from the three languages Khalkha Mongol, Kyrgyz and Tamil.
The results were rather shady: Although the analysis works sufficiently for constructions in the three languages, the amount of systematic problems that arose was astounding. In this talk I will firstly focus on a typological overview of the test results. Following that, I will present one problem, namely the case of subject in complement clauses (which is far from solved). Although, I am excited to discuss any phenomenon that appears disputable to make use of the data that I have.