Noun complements are not [not complements]

Bibliographic Data

ID24226868
AuthorsJohn Whitman (0009-0008-4413-2511, Cornell University)
Year2026
Pages459-486
Publication date2026-01-15
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueLinguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/la.290.18whi
OpenAlexW7124305868
ISBN9789027232120
LanguageEN
References cited19

This chapter examines “General Noun-Modifying Clause Constructions” (GNMCCs) and the thesis that verbs and nouns combine with clauses in significantly different ways, with verb phrases embedding either clausal arguments or clausal adjuncts, and nominal phrases embedding only clausal modifiers. Such a claim has been disputed in Huang (2016) with a broad range of arguments from Chinese. The current paper adds much further support for Huang’s line of argumentation with patterns from other languages with head-final NPs, building on Whitman ( 2013 , 2015 ), and Bugaeva and Whitman (2015) . The chapter also considers the proposal, maintained in Arsenjević (2009) , Haegeman (2010) , and Cinque and Krapova (2016) that noun complements may in fact be relative clauses. The chapter shows that shows that noun ‘complement’ CPs are in fact more tightly linked to the nominal head than are relative clauses in the languages under consideration, supporting a different analysis of the position of nominal heads within DPs in (many) head-initial and head-final languages.

Chinese · noun complements · relative clauses · Categorization, perception, and language · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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