0 INTRODUCTION

3. NOMINAL COMPLEMENTATION AND ARGUMENT STRUCTURE
3.3.1.4. Nouns
Although adjectives are the preferred type of premodification in English, Biber et al.
(1999: 589) point out that, in PDE, nouns are nearly as important as adjectives in
premodifying position, accounting for 30% and 40% of all premodifiers in academic
writing and news, respectively. However, earlier stages of the language offer a different
picture. Raumolin-Brunberg (1991: 199-200), in her study on NPs in the early 16 th century,
points out that the preferred type of premodifer, i.e. the attributive adjective, is up to ten
times higher than nouns in modifying position. When nouns are used, they are usually
appositive titles or epithets denoting rank, social status or profession (e.g. king, master and
doctor) and the head-words of the NPs are almost invariably human proper nouns.
However, her data is only based on Thomas More’s writings, so differences with academic
writing may well be expected. Biber and Clark (2002: 53), in their analysis of medical
prose, find out that the use of noun-noun sequences is quite infrequent over the 17 th , 18 th
and 19 th centuries. While premodifying nouns used as titles are rare in all periods, the use
of nouns modifying a common noun has increased dramatically, especially over the last 50
years.
As is the case with adjectives, pre-head noun dependents can be of two kinds:
complements and modifiers. Payne and Huddleston (2002: 439-443) give a series of
syntactic and semantic criteria in order to distinguish between these two classes. Pastor-
Gómez (2011: 47) proposes that complements form an “unbreakable combination” with
the head noun (cf. [68a]), whereas modifiers, or adjuncts as she calls them, combine with
the head noun freely (cf. [68b]). This means that the relation between complements and
their head nouns is tighter than in the case of modifiers.
(68) a. a linguistics student
73