Section 14.10 Chapter Summary
This chapter introduced nominals—structures that fill the argument positions of a sentence. The key points are:
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Form vs. function: A noun is a part of speech (form); a nominal is any structure functioning in a noun-phrase position (function). All nouns in subject or object position are nominals, but not all nominals are nouns.
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Six nominal positions: subject, direct object, indirect object, object of a preposition, subject complement, and object complement. These are the argument slots that the verb requires or the sentence structure provides.
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Five nominal forms: noun phrases, pronouns, present participle phrases (gerund phrases), infinitive phrases, and complement clauses can each fill nominal positions, though some have distributional restrictions.
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Present participle phrases (-ing form, traditionally called gerund phrases when used nominally) can fill subject, direct object, indirect object, object of a preposition, and subject complement positions.
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Infinitive phrases (to + verb) fill subject, direct object, and complement positions—but not object of a preposition.
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Complement clauses are full clauses filling nominal positions. They come in three structural patterns: complementizer + full clause (Pattern 1, e.g., that she is honest); wh-pronoun as embedded subject (Pattern 2, e.g., what happened); wh-word preceding a separate subject (Pattern 3, e.g., what she said). The complementizer that can be omitted in object position but not in subject position.
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Extraposition moves long subject clauses to the end of the sentence, placing it as a placeholder subject—a common pattern in both speech and writing.
