Informational nouns: Nominal complementiser clauses and polysemy

• Event: Joint Linguistics-CLASP Seminar
• Presented by: Peter Sutton from Potsdam University
• Date: 02 December 2025
• Time: 13:15-15:00
• Venue: Gothenburg University, Humanisten and online
• Address: Renströmsgatan 6, 412 55 Göteborg
• Room: J309
• Zoom link: https://gu-se.zoom.us/j/67063108947?pwd=kPpjvMLCekxNTBVzq4uYP5gFZ6Y6vd.1
• Slides:

Abstract

This talk is about nouns such as those in (1), namely “informational nouns”, nouns which have at least one sense that denotes informational entities.

(1) allegation, belief, book, fact, information, knowledge, newspaper, report, statement

I address a puzzle that arises for such nouns and their distribution in noun-related complement clause constructions (COMP) such as those in (2).

(2) The propositional noun-related complementiser clause environment (COMP). Examples: a. the allegation/belief/evidence/fact/information/report/statement that Bilbo found the ring b. #the house that Bilbo met Gandalf c. #the event/celebration that Gandalf set off fireworks d. #the book/newspaper that Bilbo found the ring

Although it is generally recognised that noun-related complement clauses in some way relate to the informational contents of the relevant noun, thus accounting for why non-informational nouns such as house, event, and celebration in (2b,c) cannot be used in such constructions, it is far less understood why some informational nouns (e.g., book/newspaper) cannot be used in these constructions.

I report on the results of a corpus study that tests the hypothesis that the range of polysemous senses that a noun has determines whether it is felicitous in a COMP construction. Finally, I outline the implications the findings of this study have on the formal semantics of nominal complementisers.