oa De beschrijving van kale predicaatsnomina

The description of bare predicate nouns: a plea for Construction Grammar

Bare nominals in predicate position like artiest in Jan is artiest ‘lit. Jan is artist’ have a capacity meaning, the capacity in this case being a profession. These nominals differ from non-bare nominals (with the indefinite article een) like een artiest in Jan is een artiest ‘Jan is an artist’, which can receive two interpretations: a capacity interpretation and a more figurative one, meaning ‘Jan is an artistic person’. This difference can be accounted for by specifying the constructions in which the nominals appear. The capacity meaning is only available if the bare predicate nominal contains a count noun. There is nevertheless a relation with a corresponding non-count mass noun. While the capacity meaning is always objective, the figurative interpretation of non-bare nominals (with een) is subjective. For this interpretation the article een is a prerequisite. I argue that Construction Grammar offers the best means to describe these facts and is preferable to a generative approach which divides the nouns in the lexicon in capacity and kind nouns and uses type shifting rules and operators to derive the bare and non-bare nominals.