The goal of this thesis is three-fold: to examine complementation in Balinese from typological, syntactic, and cognitive perspectives. This thesis contributes to typological studies of complementation by providing a descriptive account of the distinguishing syntactic properties of four types of Balinese clausal complements: sentence-like (s-like), Subject Control (SC), Object Control (OC), and Raising complements. The data presented in this thesis demonstrate the clausal complement in Balinese can be differentiated through the kinds of elements that can be admitted within the complements: the type of complementizer, aspectual auxiliaries, modals, temporal specifications, and overt subjects.
The theoretical aspect of this thesis is the application of Minimalist theory to account for the syntactic structure of Balinese monoclausal and biclausal constructions. This thesis also addresses a theoretical problem related to the syntactic structure of complementation within Generative syntax: finiteness. The presence of modals, aspectual auxiliaries, and the temporal specification of the complement do not signify finiteness in Balinese. Instead, finiteness in Balinese is marked by the licensing of overt subjects in the clausal complement, following the argument made by Kurniawan & Davies (2015), based on the evidence provided through the comparison of control complements and their subjunctive sentence-like complement counterparts.
The cognitive processing of Balinese complementation is investigated through two sentence processing experiments with the goals of understanding how ambiguous Crossed Control Construction (CCC) sentences are processed in comparison to the processing of unambiguous Subject Control (SC) sentences and Raising sentences. The self-paced reading experiment focuses on the comparison of reading times for the verbs in these three types of sentences when the animacy of the subject is manipulated (i.e. animate or inanimate clause-initial DP). The results suggest that CCC sentences are processed differently than the SC and Raising sentences. The second experiment aims at investigating the effect of discourse context on the interpretation of the ambiguous CCC sentences. The results show the influence of context that primes subject control interpretation on the processing of Balinese SC and CC sentences.