Complex Predicate Structures in Institutional Digital Discourse: A Morphosyntactic Analysis

This study investigates the use of complex predicate structures in institutional digital discourse, with particular attention to official Facebook pages. Communication on Facebook creates a hybrid space where formal administrative language is often adjusted to fit the more flexible, semi-formal nature of a digitally mediated platform. The study aimed to identify the types of complex predicates in the corpus, describe the morphosyntactic features that govern their formation, and examine how these structures influence sentence meaning and overall syntax. It used a qualitative descriptive, corpus-based design, with some quantitative analysis to support the findings. Official Facebook posts were collected and compiled into a corpus, then manually examined using established linguistic criteria. Each complex predicate was morphologically tagged and classified, and frequencies and percentages were computed to show how often each type occurred. A total of 60 complex predicate constructions were identified in the data. Passive constructions appeared most frequently, followed by modal auxiliary and copular predicates. In contrast, perfect aspect and light verb constructions were used only to a limited extent. These findings suggest that institutional Facebook discourse relies mainly on auxiliary-based morphosyntax, where auxiliaries encode grammatical meanings such as tense, aspect, mood, and voice, while lexical verbs provide the main semantic content of the clause. The findings also show that complex predicate structures influence sentence meaning in important ways. Passive constructions tend to highlight institutional actions rather than individual actors, while modal predicates are commonly used to express future plans and institutional commitments. Copular predicates, on the other hand, allow institutions to convey evaluation and stance in a relatively straightforward way. At the same time, these structures help keep sentences clear and concise by compressing several grammatical meanings into a single predicate. Overall, the findings suggest that complex predicates serve as effective grammatical resources in institutional Facebook communication, showing that patterns of formal language use remain largely stable even in digital and online settings.