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3. NOMINAL COMPLEMENTATION AND ARGUMENT STRUCTURE<br />

3.3. Nominal dependents<br />

There exists a wide variety of dependents that nominalizations can take. In the literature<br />

they are usually classified into arguments, argument adjuncts, complements and modifiers,<br />

attending to both syntactic and semantic criteria.<br />

According to Grimshaw (1990: 112), the process of nominalization ‘suppresses’<br />

the external argument of the base verb (usually the subject), which is the most prominent<br />

on both the aspectual and thematic dimensions. Arguments as well as argument adjuncts<br />

are licensed by a suppressed position in the argument structure (cf. Grimshaw 1990), but<br />

they differ in that argument adjuncts do not satisfy argument structure in the way<br />

arguments typically do. Grimshaw (1990) claims that the only nominals having argument<br />

structure are complex event nominals, so this kind of nominal is the one capable of having<br />

argument adjuncts. These adjuncts are possessives (e.g. their destruction of the city) and<br />

by-phrases (e.g. Saskia’s picture by Rembrandt) (see sections 3.3.1.2 and 3.3.2.2 below).<br />

On the other hand, complements and modifiers are not licensed by the argument<br />

structure. As was clarified above, not all nominals require arguments. However, according<br />

to Grimshaw (1990: 91-92), even non-argument-taking nominals are associated with some<br />

satellite phrases. These phrases may be simply modifying the nominal or they may be<br />

related to its lexico-semantic representation. Thus, when the phrase is predicated of the<br />

nominal functioning as the head noun as in John’s dog, it will be considered a modifier,<br />

and when this phrase is connected with the lexical meaning of the head as in John’s<br />

murder, it will be considered a complement. The difference between complements and<br />

adjuncts is that “they correspond directly to argument positions in the lcs [lexical<br />

conceptual structure], even though they are not grammatical arguments regulated by a-<br />

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