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<Paper uid="W98-0601">
  <Title>The representation of syntactically unexpressed com to nouns</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="intro">
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2 Data
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    <Paragraph position="0"> Most predicative nouns (i.e., those having complements) may or may not have their complemerits present in the sentence. 1 In other words most complements to nouns are optional (in an appropriate context): 2  (1) a. Avui he vist el pare del  Today have(l-s) seen the father of-the</Paragraph>
    <Section position="1" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="sub_section">
      <SectionTitle>
Joan
Joan
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      <Paragraph position="0"> b. Hi ha dos pares que no han There are two fathers that not have(3-s) vingut a buscar el nen come to fetch the child  (2) a. Comprar6 dos fulls de catrolina Will-buy(I-s) two sheets of card b. Escriu-ho en un full Write-it on a sheet (3) a.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="1"> b.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="2">  Aquesta tarda un grup de nens This afternoon a group of children jugavaa la plata played on the square E1 grup 1' ha acceptat molt The group him/her has accepted very b@ well Of course optionality of complements is not limited to nominal complements: it is pervasive among verbal complements as well. Even within the context of verbal complements the discussions in the literature show that the distinctions between classes of complements are far from obvious. At the simplest level a twofold distinction 1Here and throughout this paper we use the term &amp;quot;predicative noun&amp;quot; to refer to nouns that can have complements, thus including deverbal and adjectival nominalisatioas and relational nouns. 2In the following a-examples the complements of nouns that are omitted in the b-examples are written in bold face. Note that the contexts usually have to be different.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="3"> may be proposed between (obligatory) complements and (optional) adjuncts. This however does not comply with the facts since it groups together very different classes of optionality: grammatically induced elision (4), optionality with semantic implications (5), as a pure ad- null junct (6)... 3 (4) a. Avui s' ha comentat la novel-la Today ReflPr has commented the novel b. Avui els estudiants hail Today the students have(3-p) comentat la novel-la commented the novel (5) a. Menja sempre en tornar de 1' Eats always when come from the escola school b. Menja sempre pa amb xocolata Eats always bread and chocolate en tornar de 1' escola when come from the school (6) a. Avui he estat pintant al  Today have(l-s) been painting at-the parc park b. Avui he estat pintant Today have(I-s) been painting These very simple examples show that the presence or absence of complements to predicative heads is not uniform from a semantic point of view. There are complements which are semantically external to the predication, whereas there are others that are internal (that is to say, that contribute some entity to the relation denoted by the predication). And complements may or may not be present according to their semantic relation to the head. Most external complements (i.e., adjuncts) are always optional: they may be present or absent irrespective of their particular relation. 4 But there are many internal complements that can be optional and some cannot be present except under very specific circumstances; these are the complements described as default- and shadow-arguments respectively in Pustejovsky (1995:63f):  to say that there are obligatory adjuncts, as for example in: this suit washes easily.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="4"> (7) a. D-Arg: John built the house out of bricks b. S-Arg: Mary buttered her toast with an expensive butter When dealing with a purely syntactic grammar (or lexical representation) all these aspects boil down to determine the degree of optionality of the complement and to deal with the variation in syntactic behaviour accordingly. That is to say in many implementations of syntax some optionalities are dealt with by general rules or principles (this is clearly the case of the optionality of the logical subject, which is either accounted for by a passivisation/impersonalisation rule of the grammar or by a lexical operation) and some are accounted for by listing them as different entries (or just as subentries of the same entry). But except for the cases where a grammatical relation clearly exists that applies to most lexical items of a particular class (as passivisation to transitives), the optionality of complements is dealt with by listing all the options in the dictionary. Furthermore such a treatment does not include some of the complements that are allowed only under certain very specific circumstances (e.g. D-Arg, S-Arg) since these can only be spelt out in semantic terms.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="5"> Not surprisingly the application of these notions of obligatory and optional complements (developed for VPs and Ss) to NPs has not been successful: too many arguments in the NP are optional and there is too little grammatical control (such as the one we find in passivisation) for general, syntactically based treatments to be successful. Note that even the simple distinction between objective and subjective complements cannot be made operative on syntactic terms in Catalan and other languages (i.e., without taking into account their semantics): (8) a. l' estudi de les plantes the study of the plants b. la soluci6 dels estudiants the solution of-the students c. 1' avaluaci6 dels inspectors the evaluation of-the inspectors But in addition there are strong reasons to consider that a semantic approach has to be taken to predicate-complement representation if we consider discourse factors, such as coherence, anaphora and the recovering of implications. Consider the following examples: (9) a. La decoraci5 del pont The decoration(f-s) of-the bridge(m-s) ens ha portat molt de temps, perb ha us has taken much of time, but has quedat molt ben acabada! resulted very vell finished(f-s)! b. La traducci6 d' aquest pamflet m' The translation of this pamphlet me ha costat molt, perb al final has costed a-lot, but at-the end crec que m' ha quedat molt beleive(1-s) that me has resulted very natural natural c. Traduir aquest pamflet m' ha To-translate this pamphlet me has costat molt, pero al final crec costed a-lot, but at-the end beleive(1-s) que m' ha quedat molt natural that me has resulted very natural d. Ha vingut una mare aquest matf.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="6"> Has come a mother this morning.</Paragraph>
      <Paragraph position="7"> Venia a dir que el seu fill no Came(3-s) to tell that the her son not podr~ venir a l' excursi6 will-can come to the excursion e. Hem amanit l' enciam i l' Have(l-p) dressed the salad and it(ac) hem hagut de llenqar perque have(l-p) hat to throw-away because l' oli era ranci the oil was rancid These examples show that complements not explicitly present in the NP or VP can be referred to or implied in discourse. Of course the subject of acabada (9a) and natural (9b and 9c) is only recoverable as the result of the decorating and translating act respectively; and the use of definite specifiers el seu and I in (9d) and (9e) is allowed by the &amp;quot;hidden&amp;quot; complement of mare and amanir.</Paragraph>
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