231 Force: The complementisers that/if in a sentence such as I didn’t know [that/if he was lying] are said to indicate that the bracketed clauses are declarative/interrogative in force (in the sense that they have the force of a question/a statement). In work on split CP projections by Luigi Rizzi (discussed in §§), complementisers are said to constitute a Force head which can project into a Force Phrase. Formal: In an expression such as formal speech style, the word formal denotes a very careful and stylised form of speech (as opposed to the kind of informal colloquial speech style used.
