Some predicates take a typed proposition as their argument. These are typically speech-act verbs, but also verbs of cognition and perception. These take different subsets of the clause types; the details depend on the particular verb. In some languages, the basic verb of communication takes a complement of any clause type, as in .

.a.Ela disse que recebeu pedidos.
PortugueseShe said she received requests.
b.Ela não disse se recebeu pedidos.
She did not say whether she received requests.
c.Ela disse-lhe que vá já.
She told him to go at once.

Even a verb of perception may take a complement clause of any clause type. German sehen ‘see’ () straightforwardly takes takes a declarative and an interrogative complement (#a and #b), but even takes a jussive complement, as in #c (although this shows a slightly different sense of sehen.

.a.Wir sahen, dass wir zurückfielen.
GermanWe saw that we were falling behind.
b.Wir konnten nicht sehen, ob wir zurückfielen.
We could not see whether we were falling behind.
c.Wir müssen sehen, dass wir nicht zurückfallen.
We must see to it that we do not fall behind.

English hear takes a declarative and an interrogative complement, as in .

.a.The witness heard that the defendant braked before the collision.
b.The witness heard whether the defendant braked before the collision.

The same goes for some predicates of cognitive attitudes, including nouns like problem.

On the other hand, the predicate of the superordinate proposition may constrain the basic illocution of the dependent proposition to just one. For instance, English order only takes a jussive complement. The point of the above demonstration is that the basic illocution of the subordinate proposition is not principally an automatic consequence of the choice of the superordinate predicate.