Clauses may represent one of three types of information packaging. The most common is topic--comment (referent--predication) packaging, assumed in Chapters 6–9. The topic may be the most central participant (the ‘subject’; see Chapter 6), or there may be multiple participants high in topicality. A variety of strategies is used when the most topical participant is not the most central one, or is not a participant at all. Thetic packaging does not divide a clause into topic and comment. Thetic packaging is associated with certain situation types (including weather), and discourse functions such as presentation and background description. Identificational packaging divides the information into a focus and a presupposed open proposition (POP). A number of contexts are typically construed as identificational, including questions and answers and different types of contrast. Thetic and identificational strategies include distinct prosody and word order, and/or distinct morphosyntax. Most thetic strategies involve making the subject argument phrase look less like a subject, and/or making the predicate look less like a predicate. Identificational strategies include clefts and ellipsis.

Stative complex predicates consist of a stative concept combined with an eventive concept. Stative complex predicates may be participant-oriented (resultative and depictive) or event-oriented (manner). All three types of stative complex predicate constructions share strategies, indicating that they belong in a single conceptual space. Strategies for stative complex predicates are recruited from complex sentence constructions, modification constructions, and even referring phrase constructions. A finer-grained functional analysis indicates that stative complex predicates are part of a modification--predication continuum. The function of ‘manner’ ranges from a stative construal of manner to a more dynamic construal of manner of how an event unfolds. The range of ‘manner’ includes expression as ideophones and how event ‘manner’ is expressed in combination with a form expressing the ‘result’ of an event.

Many types of event do not conform to the exemplar for transitivity -- namely, an agentive change of state event -- or the prototype of an argument structure construction, expressing an event with an acyclic (linear) causal chain. Reciprocal and reflexive events involve participants both acting on and being acted upon. Constructions for such events tend to recruit the prototypical transitive construction and evolve to an intransitive construction. Less prototypical bivalent events include motion, contact, and application/removal events. These events vary as to which non-agent participant is construed as core, and can be ranked on a hierarchy of transitivity. Experiential events involve an experiencer attending to a stimulus which in turn affects the experiencer; arguments of experiential events are expressed highly variably across languages. Ditransitive constructions are defined by the exemplar of the transfer event of giving. Ditransitive constructions differ as to the alignment of their nonsubject argument phrases with respect to the transitive construction, including the not infrequent neutral strategy in which both theme and recipient are encoded like transitive objects.

Prototypically, the central participants of the event are packaged as the core arguments of the predicate. The information packaging of participants in events need not follow this pattern. The prototypical packaging represents the basic voice construction; nonprototypical packagings represent different types of nonbasic voice constructions. The basic and nonbasic voice constructions involve a system of strategies: nonbasic voice constructions are differentiated from basic voice construction to different degrees, ranging from just word order differences to differences in the type of argument phrase a participant is encoded in. Passive--inverse constructions are used for a P (patient-like) participant that is more salient than the A (agent-like) participant; differential object (and subject) marking are similar in function. Antipassive constructions are used for a P participant that is even less salient than a prototypical P participant, and that is expressed by an oblique argument phrase or an incorporated noun (if it is expressed at all).

Semantic classes other than events may be predicated of a referent; this is nonprototypical predication. The primary nonprototypical predication types are object predication, property predication, predicational location, and predicational possession. In addition, clauses may express different information packaging than topic--comment (= referent--predication) packaging. The two main types of nonpredicational information packaging with nonprototypical predication are equational -- a subtype of identificational and found with object concepts -- and presentational -- a subtype of thetic and found especially with location and possession clauses. Strategies for all types of predication are recruited from action predication, predicational location, and possibly equational clause constructions; however, predicational possession has not been surveyed crosslinguistically. Presentational location and possession constructions employ a range of strategies ranging from recruitment of a verb form to expressing the location or possession itself as a verbal form.

Several kinds of relations between events often have distinct complex sentence constructions, in particular those involving degree, causation, factivity (epistemic stance), or a combination of these. Comparative and equative constructions compare degrees of a property predicated of two different referents. The strategy chosen depends on the strategy used for temporal complex sentences, at least for comparative constructions. Conditional constructions express a causal relation (content, epistemic, or speech act), but, unlike causal relations, also express a nonfactive (neutral or negative) epistemic stance toward the events. Past tense constructions are often recruited to express nonfactivity. Concessive constructions presuppose a causal relation that is unexpectedly violated; concessive conditional constructions are the nonfactive counterparts. Strategies use conjunctions recruited from conditionals or expressions of obstinacy, focus marking, and remarkable co-occurrence. Concessive conditionals use a scalar, alternative, or universal strategy to conceptualize the concessive conditional relation. Other relations, such as the comparative conditional, may also be conventionalized.

Relative clause constructions express an event that functions as a modifier of a referent. As such, relative clause constructions share a participant with the matrix clause -- namely, the referent that they modify. Like other complex sentence constructions, relative clause constructions may be balanced or deranked. The primary differences in strategy involve the expression of the shared participant. The most common strategy is the externally headed strategy: the referent is expressed as a common noun phrase in the matrix clause, and in reduced or zero form in the relative clause. A small minority of languages use strategies that appear to form a continuum from internally headed to correlative to adjoined constructions. Events that function to modify a referent that is a very peripheral participant in the relative clause events form noun-modifying clause constructions; these constructions sometimes use a relative clause strategy. Relative clause construction strategies also systematically vary with respect to the semantic role of the referents in the relative clause event, which are ranked by the Accessibility Hierarchy. Relative clauses may have an anaphoric or indefinite head.

A predication prototypically predicates an event. Events have multiple participants in their semantic frame. Some participants are more central than others. The information packaging of event participants construes certain participants as core arguments and others as oblique arguments. Transitivity constructions are defined in terms of the prototypical expression of central participants as core argument phrases. ‘Subject’ and ‘object’ are defined crosslinguistically in terms of degree of topicality (salience) and force dynamics (subject acting on object). Basic argument encoding strategies are flagging, indexation, and word order. An exemplar approach to defining transitive constructions is taken, using the agentive change of state event of breaking as the exemplar event, following Haspelmath. Subject generally precedes verb and object in word order. Variation in alignment is based on the system of transitive and intransitive constructions, in terms of which core argument of the transitive construction the intransitive argument aligns with, including the rare case where the core arguments of intransitive constructions are split between transitive subject and object.

Speech act constructions bear a close functional relationship to modality and polarity, and also to the information packaging of clauses (Chapters 10–11). Declaratives are associated with the modal category of polarity: declaratives assert or deny the truth of a proposition. Interrogatives (questions, and also responses) are associated with identificational packaging: the information asked about is the focus. They are also associated with epistemic modality: they involve degrees of (un)certainty about an event. Imperative--hortative speech acts are associated with deontic modality: both express a future event that is being at least considered by an agent. Exclamations are associated with the mirative (expression of surprise), which in turn is associated with thetic information packaging. These functional relations between speech act, modality, and clausal information packaging are manifested in the sharing of morphosyntactic strategies between the related categories.

Complement clause constructions express an event that functions as a participant in another event -- expressed as the complement and the complement-taking predicate (CTP), respectively. Complement clause constructions often differ depending on the type of CTP, and sometimes by the factivity (epistemic stance) of the complement event. Semantic types of CTPs form a hierarchy, the Binding Hierarchy, in terms of whether their complement will be expressed by a balanced or deranked dependent clause construction. Balanced complement clause constructions may originate in independent clauses, particularly direct speech complements, and spread down the Binding Hierarchy; some deranked complement clauses originate in purpose adverbial clause constructions. Complement clauses may share participants with the CTP event; this is inherent to CTP meaning at the lower end of the Binding Hierarchy, which includes TAMP forms. The argument structure constructions associated with complement clause constructions may reflect sharing of participants through partially or fully merged argument structure strategies, or via logophoric constructions.