The ComPLETE Database of Verbal Complex Predicates


The ComPLETE database was developed as part of the joint French-German research project ComPLETE (Complex Predicates in Languages: Emergence, Typology, and Evolution), funded by the Agence nationale de la recherche (Project No. ANR-21-FRAL-0013) and Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft (Project No. 469131243) from 2022 to 2025. It provides a typological resource to examine and compare verbal complex predicates (VCPs) across a wide range of language families, with the current version focusing primarily on languages from Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and the Americas to a lesser extent. This bottom-up database includes traditional categories such as serial verbs, light verbs, converbs, and auxiliary verbs. Contributors were asked to describe individual VCP constructions by responding to a standardized set of 20 questions, organized under seven parameters.