
An utterance complement is a complement clause which attributes an utterance to some speaker. In many languages, the class of introducing verbs include <i>say, tell,</i> and the like (Cristofaro 2008). 

<br><br>A ´yes´ value for this property indicates that the complement clause is similar to ordinary main clauses, except that it has some special marking. That is, it could not be pronounced independently of an introducing clause, but contains morphology specific to dependant clauses. 

<br><br>An example comes from Maricopa (Cristofaro 2008). Consider the following sentence:
<br><br>
Nyaa ´i<b>-m</b> [Pam-sh mdiily maa<b>-k</b>] ´i-sh <br>
I say<b>-REAL</b> [Pam-SUB bread eat<b>-LOC</b>] say-PERF <br>
´I said that Pam ate the bread.´<br>
<br>
The verb in the utterance complement bears the locative case marker <i><b>-k</b></i> instead of the usual tense, aspect, and mood marker(s). 


<br><br><b>Note</b>: Many languages have several strategies for introducing utterance complements. For these languages, each property should be valued ´yes´ independent of the other properties. 

<br><br><b>References</b><br>
Cristofaro, Sonia. 2008. Utterance Complement Clauses.
In Haspelmath et al. (2008), chapter 128. Available online at <a href=â€http://wals.info/feature/128â€> http://wals.info/feature/128</a href>. 

