A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

94 Chapter 5 Nouns and noun phrases

criticism is related to criticise, the complement of the noun that corresponds to the

object of the verb has the form of a PP:

[31) VERB + OBJECT

a. I criticised her decision.

ii a. He abandoned his ship.

iii a. Sandy married Pat.

NOUN + pp COMPLEMENT

b. my criticism of her decision

b. his abandonment of his ship

b. Sandy's marriage to Pat

The preposition is usually of, as in lib] and [iib], but with certain nouns other prepo­

sitions are selected, as in [iiib].

Complements in NP structure are therefore virtually restricted to PPs and subor­

dinate clauses.

pp complements

Dependents with the form of PPs qualify as complements when they are licensed

by the particular head noun. The clearest cases have one or more of the following

properties.

(a) They correspond to object or subject NPs in clause structure. The object case

has been illustrated in [31), while correspondence with a subject is seen in [32]:

[32) SUBJECT + VERB

a. The warriors returned.

ii a. The premier attacked.

NOUN + pp COMPLEMENT

b. the return of the warriors

b. an attack by the premier

This type of PP complement can combine with one corresponding to the object in
a clause, as in the removal of the files by the secretary -cf. The secretary removed
the files. (For the construction with a genitive NP, as in the warriors' return or the
premier's attack, see §9.l.)
(b) The choice of preposition is specified by the head noun. Many nouns take
complements headed by a particular preposition:

[33) their belief in God, its effe ct on the audience, fa miliarity with the data,

the introduction to the book, a request Jm:. more staff, secession from the

alliance

(c) The PP is obligatory because the noun makes little sense without it.

[34) the advent of the steam engine, the abandonment of sensible budgetary

policies, a dearth of new ideas, the fe asibility of the proposal, a paucity gJ

reliable data

The nouns in [34] almost always occur with a PP headed by of, and even if someone
did say something like What's the fe asibility?, we would have to understand them
as having asked about the feasibility of some particular planned action that they had
left to be understood from the context.