Our paper concerns two Finnish cognitive verbs, ajatella ‘think’, and tietää ‘know’. We show that both verbs are most likely to occur in the first person singular form but behave differently with respect to polarity: tietää occurs most commonly in the negated form (56%), while ajatella is only rarely negated (less than 4%). The verbs also differ with respect to their sequential emergence and complementation, with tietää ‘to know’ occurring nearly half of the time in responsive position and without complements. Each of the most common formats of the verbs builds or projects a specific social action. The patterns of clause combining, in this case, complementation or lack of it, are closely connected to the locally contingent employment of action.