The Syntax of Serbian How-Complements

This paper discusses a special type of complement of perception verbs in Serbian, introduced by kako (‘how’). Via a parallel corpus analysis, I compare the distribution of Serbian kako-clauses and English -ing forms. I show that two types of non-interrogative kako-clauses can be used in translations of English -ing forms, distinguished based on their formal and interpretive properties: ‘eventive’ and propositional kako-clauses. Eventive clauses focus on directly perceived events and cannot be negated or combined with epistemic verbs, while propositional clauses express beliefs or judgments and have a truth value. At a formal level, eventive clauses feature a null subject, while propositional clauses feature an overt nominative subject. I argue that this distinction is captured syntactically through the notion of phasehood, with only propositional clauses merging a full CP domain. Adopting the Form-Copy operation, I propose that eventive clauses lack a phase boundary, allowing for the deletion of a lower subject copy and yielding the observed case alternation and null embedded subject. This analysis offers a unified syntactic account of kako-complements and contributes to the typology of perception-based clause embedding.