FrameNet syntax treats certain expression types as combinations of smaller constituents in contrast to some
syntactic theories which treat them as clauses. For example, the sequence Pat leave in a sentence like They
made Pat leave is sometimes analyzed as a ‘small clause,’ but in the FrameNet metalanguage it is treated
simply as an NP followed by a bare stem infinitive VP.
This strategy has been adopted for two reasons. First, it simplifies the lexicographers’ task of annotation,
making it unnecessary to decide in certain cases which combinations of constituents should be treated as
clausal and which should not. Second, it makes the lexical descriptions produced by FrameNet relatively
theory-neutral. While the question of which verbal complements are clausal and which are not is answered
differently in different syntactic theories, the analysis of clauses into their major constituents is uncontroversial
in most cases.
As the reader will notice, there sometimes is no parallel between verb phrase types and clausal phrase
types. This is true, for instance, for phrase types that figure in main clause and embedded questions. The
label Sinterrog (cf. 4.5.3) covers both finite clauses and non-finite verb phrases because there are no predicates
that specifically select either finite wh-clauses or non-finite verb phrases. Another case where there is a lack
of parallelism involves ‘small clauses’. Small clauses that are arguments of a target predicate are divided
up into an NP and a secondary predicate, except for cases tagged as Sing (cf. 4.5.5). By contrast, small
clauses that modify NPs or clauses are assigned to the single category Sabs. (These modifying small clauses
are said to figure in absolutive constructions, hence the name Sabs, and they are typically tagged as the
extra-thematic frame elements Depictive or Event depictive.) Not all kinds of small clauses that can
appear as arguments can also appear in absolutive constructions: compare *[Bill to arrive], John hid the
money and I want [Bill to arrive]. Thus, we lose some formal information by not recording the specific
subtypes of absolutive clauses that occur in the data. However, the form of an absolutive construction is not
lexically selected, in distinction to the kinds of ‘small clause’ that a predicate can take as an argument: I saw
him leave v. *I saw him to leave. From a lexicographic point of view, our treatment is therefore adequate.