The prototypical construction with a complementive is the regular copular construction, some examples of which are given in (198). In all these examples, the referent set of the subject de jongensthe boys is said to be a subset of the set denoted by the complementive adjective; cf. Section A23.3.2.1 for a discussion of the set-theoretic treatment of copular constructions. The traditionally distinguished copular verbs may add to the core meaning. The added meaning is often aspectual in nature: zijnto be is neutral in this respect, expressing a pure “NPnom is A” relation, while wordento become adds an inchoative aspect and blijvento stay indicates that some state remains the same.

Other meaning aspects are also possible, as can be seen from the fact that the traditional class of copular verbs also includes the modal verbs lijkento appear and schijnento seem in (199a), which indicate that the assertion is based on the speaker’s subjective perception; the modal verb blijkento turn out in (199b) also belongs to this class and indicates that there is independent or objective evidence for the truth of the assertion.

Again, the complementive need not be an AP, but can belong to a different syntactic category; (200) gives examples with a noun phrase, a PP, a verbal particle, and an adjectival past/present participle. These examples show that the “N is A” relation can be generalized to an “N is PRED” relation.

Pronouns are also occasionally used as predicates in copular constructions, when they express (lack of) identity. Case marking of predicative pronouns is complicated. In examples such as (201a), it seems that the use of the nominative is much preferred; the object form is considered unacceptable by most speakers. In examples such as (201b), on the other hand, the object form is preferred, although the nominative form jij is regularly used on the internet (hence the percentage sign).

The predicative use of first-person pronouns is quite restricted, as can be seen from the examples in (202), in which the demonstrative is used as a resumptive pronoun referring to the left-dislocated noun phrase die jongen op de fotothat boy in the picture. The two (a)-examples show that the nominative pronoun must precede the resumptive pronoun in the middle field of the clause, from which we can conclude that the former functions as subject and the latter as predicate. The (b)-example with an object pronoun is accepted by some speakers, but judged by others to be marked compared to example (202a); note, incidentally, that the difference in subjecthood is also reflected in the form of the verb.

Second-person pronouns like jij/jouyouSubject/youObject’ show the same behavior as the first-person pronouns in (202), but the judgments on third-person pronouns are different: example (203b) is perfectly acceptable if the pronoun refers to a previously mentioned person, e.g. the one identified by the speaker as the person in the picture. The difference seems to be related to the fact that first/second-person pronouns cannot refer to persons in the discourse domain who are not fully identified.

Besides regular copular constructions we have the constructions in (204) in which the adjective is predicated of the direct object of the clause. Examples like these are called semi-copular constructions, because hebbento have, krijgento get and houdento keep stand in a similar aspectual opposition as the copulas zijnto be, wordento become and blijvento remain; hebben expresses the pure “NPacc is A” relation, while krijgen adds an inchoative aspect and houden indicates that the state remains the same.

Semi-copular constructions also occur with adpositional predicates; examples such as (205b) are seem to be common, perhaps because the verb krijgen competes with verbs like doento do or zettento put in this context: cf. Ik doe/zet het raam op een kier. A more common example would be Ik krijg de draad niet in de naaldI do not get the thread into the needle.

We refer the reader to Section A28.2.3, sub IV, for further discussion of the semi-copular construction.

A third type of complementive construction, in which the adjective is again predicated of an accusative object, is the vinden-construction in (206): the verbs used in this construction are vindento consider, achtento consider and noemento call. The constructions in (206a&b) express that the subject Marie has a subjective opinion about the accusative object, in that she thinks that the proposition “Jan is unfit for that job” is true. The example in (206c) asserts that Marie has expressed this opinion.

That these verbs take a proposition as their complement is very clear in the case of the verb vinden; for instance, example (206a) can be paraphrased as in (207a), in which the noun phrase Jan and the adjective are part of a subordinate clause. This paraphrase also shows that the noun phrase Jan is thematically dependent on the adjective, not on the verb vinden. However, the examples in (207b&c) show that similar paraphrases are not available for achten and noemen.

This shows that not all verbs that occur in the vinden-construction can take a propositional object. Similarly, it is not the case that all verbs that take a finite propositional object can occur in the vinden-construction. Verbs of saying like zeggento say and bewerento claim are excluded from this construction, as shown in (208).

Unlike the resultative construction discussed in 2.2.3 below, vinden-constructions require two arguments to be present in the structure. But what they have in common is that the accusative argument, i.e. the logical subject of the complementive, can take the form of either a complex or a simplex reflexive. This is illustrated in (209) for vinden-constructions; note that the reflexive can easily be replaced by a regular referential noun phrase, as shown in example (206a&b).