Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.17234/Croatica.42.9
Can Nouns Have Complements?
Branimir Belaj
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Osijek, Croatia
Abstract
Using the theoretical framework of Cognitive Grammar, this study addresses modification and complementation as two basic types of syntagmatic relations as manifested in nominals featuring deverbal and relational nouns. Croatian grammars often discuss nouns using the concept complement, even object, however, this is theoretically suspect. Nouns are nonrelational, autonomous components of nominal structures and as such lend themselves to modification, not complementation. Since deverbal and relational nouns are hybrid categories, i.e since they profile things but have a defocused process and relation in their conceptual base, we introduce the terms explicit modification and implicit complementation, and the resulting category of complementational modifiers, which, in our view, best characterize the behavior of syntactic units headed by deverbal and relational nouns.
Keywords
deverbal nouns; modification; complementation; complementational modifiers
Hrčak ID:
206746
URI
Publication date:
30.10.2018.
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