The use of an adpositional phrase as a complementive specifies a property of some noun phrase that occurs in the same clause. In example (17a), for instance, the adpositional phrase in het zwembadin the pool is predicated of the noun phrase Jan. Actually, the adposition can be seen as a two-place predicate that denotes a spatial relation between its complement and the argument the adpositional phrase is predicated of. In other words, the semantic interpretation of example (17a) is as given in (17b).

Complementive adpositional phrases can denote either a location or a direction. The examples in (18) are locational adpositional phrases, which are always headed by a preposition. The two examples differ in that in (18a) the PP simply refers to a location, while (18b) refers to a change of location.

Directional adpositional phrases can be headed by either a preposition such as naarto, a postposition such as oponto in (19b), or a circumposition such as over ... heenacross in (19c).

It seems reasonable not to attribute the difference between the location and the change-of-location reading in (18) to the PP in het zwembad itself. The PP is compatible with both readings, and it is the verb that determines which reading is most salient: if the verb is stative, like liggento lie, the location reading emerges; if it denotes an activity or a process, like vallento fall, the change-of-location reading may arise. The directional adpositional phrases in (19), on the other hand, intrinsically express a change of location and therefore cannot be combined with stative verbs, as is shown in (20) for the postpositional phrase het zwembad ininto the pool.

The semantic difference between change-of-location constructions such as (18b) and directional constructions such as (20b) is often not very clear: they seem almost synonymous. However, the principal difference between locational and directional adpositional phrases is that the latter imply the notion of a path, whereas the former do not. The fact that the adpositional phrases in (18b) and (20b) differ in this way can be made clear by the XP met die NP! construction discussed in (10) above. For many (but not all) speakers, the XP must be a directional phrase; if the XP is a locational phrase, the construction gives rise to a marked result. This accounts for the difference in acceptability between (21a') and (21b').

The semantic difference between locational and directional phrases can also be illustrated by the examples in (22). The location construction in (22a) expresses that Jan is involved in a jumping event, as a result of which he reaches a certain position on the stairs. The perfect-tense construction in (22a') therefore implies that Jan is on the stairs after finishing the activity of jumping. Example (22b), on the other hand, expresses that Jan is involved in the eventuality of climbing the stairs, and that his path on the stairs is covered by jumping. The perfect-tense construction in (22b') does not necessarily imply that Jan is situated on the stairs after finishing the activity; this may or may not be the case. That (22b') does not necessarily imply that Jan is on the staircase is clear from the fact that it is possible to add an adverbial phrase such as naar zijn kamerto his room, which refers to the endpoint of the path covered by Jan. With this adverbial phrase added, (22b') asserts that Jan is in his room. Adding this adverbial phrase to (22a'), on the other hand, leads to a contradiction and thus to an unacceptable result.

For completeness’ sake, the number signs in the (a)-examples indicate that they are acceptable with the naar-PP, but only if the PP is interpreted as an attributive modifier of the noun trap (de trap naar zijn kamerthe staircase to his room). It should also be noted that example (22a), but not (22b), can also be interpreted as meaning that Jan occupies a position on the stairs and that he jumps up and down at this position. In this interpretation, we are dealing with an adverbially used PP. For the moment, it suffices to note that in this interpretation the verb springen takes the auxiliary hebbento have in the perfect tense (and not zijnto be as in the primed examples in (22)), and that the PP can be omitted; cf. (23a). We will return to these differences between adverbial and complementive PPs in Subsection B1.

The discussion above suggested that the actual interpretation of spatial adpositional phrases is regulated by the aspectual properties of the verb: stative verbs like those in (24a) are compatible only with PPs denoting a location, whereas activity verbs like springento jump or process verbs like vallento fall require PPs denoting a change of location or a direction (i.e. a change of location along a path). Some verb classes impose even stricter constraints on the interpretation of adpositional complementives. They are compatible with only one of the two interpretations available for springen/vallen: the of change-of-location verbs in (24b), which can be seen as the causative counterparts of the verbs in (24a), impose a change-of-location reading on the adpositional phrase, while the verbs of traversing in (24c) are only compatible with adpositional phrases denoting a direction.

The examples in (25) to (27) illustrate the restrictions on the interpretation of the adpositional complementive imposed by the verb types in (24). The location verb staanto stand in (25) indicates that the car is situated somewhere on the hill; note that the adpositional complementive in this example differs from the adverbial phrase in (23) in that it is obligatorily present.

In example (26a) the car is also located somewhere on the hill, but in addition it is claimed that a change of location is involved: the car ends up on the hill as a result of some activity of Jan. The verb zetten is incompatible with a directional adpositional phrase, as shown in (26b): the prepositional phrase cannot be replaced by the postpositional phrase de heuvel op.

Example (27a) also describes a change of location, but in addition it expresses that the car covers a certain path. That rijden prefers to be accompanied by a directional adpositional phrase is clear from the fact that it is only marginally compatible with the prepositional phrase op de heuvel in (27b) in the intended change-of-location reading.

However, the acceptability of examples such as (27b) also seems to depend on the properties of the referent of the complement of the preposition; if it is a relatively small object, the result improves.

The verb of traversing rijden can be used as a dyadic verb, as in (26) to (28), but also as a monadic unaccusative verb: Jan rijdt de heuvel opJan is driving onto the hill. In that case, it has an intransitive counterpart that functions as a regular activity verb. As in the case of springento jump, the activity verb rijden differs from the traversing verb rijden in selecting the auxiliary hebben instead of zijn and, second, in that the adpositional phrase is optional and functions as an adverbial phrase indicating the location where the activity takes place. This can be seen from the contrast between the perfect tense form of the unaccusative construction in (29a) and the perfect tense form of the intransitive construction in (29b); cf. Section V2.1.2, sub IV, for a number of potential problems concerning auxiliary selection.

Recall that motion verbs like vallento fall and springento jump are not specialized in the way the verbs in (24) are, i.e. they can be combined with either a prepositional or a postpositional phrase; cf. (18b)/(20b) and (22). The same is true for the verbs slaanto hit and gooiento throw in resultative constructions like (30).

The following two subsections briefly discuss some of the basic properties of such complementively used locational and directional adpositional phrases. A more detailed discussion will be given in Section 35.2.

Subsection A has shown that a complementive locational PP specifies a property of some noun phrase in the same clause. For example, the adpositional phrase in het zwembad in (31a) is predicated of the noun phrase Jan. In this respect, (31a) behaves just like the copular construction in (31b), in which the AP aardig is predicated of the noun phrase Jan.

Traditional grammar would not consider examples such as (31a) to be copular constructions; it would analyze the adpositional phrase as an adverbial phrase. One reason for this is that the assumption that (31a) is a copular construction would force us to assume that the set of copular verbs should be considerably extended. It would have to include the location verbs in (24a) and also motion verbs like vallento fall and springento jump, in order to account for the similarity between (31a) on the one hand, and examples like (18) and (22) on the other.

From the perspective of contemporary theoretical linguistics, there is no compelling reason for assuming that there is a principled syntactic distinction between copular verbs and verbs of location and motion. They do of course differ in the semantic contributions they make: copular verbs express mainly aspectual and modal meanings, whereas verbs of location and motion denote states, processes and activities. From a syntactic point of view, however, these verbs can all be assumed to take a complementive adpositional phrase, which in turn takes the subject of the clause as its logical subject; in short, they are all unaccusative verbs. This is precisely what is to be expected, since complementive adjectives can also occur as complements of verbs other than the copulas, such as the verb vallen in (32b) or the verb schoppento kick in the resultative construction in (32c). Treating the locational PPs in the primed examples in (32) not as adverbial phrases but as complementives allows us to analyze them in the same way as the corresponding primeless examples, and thus to provide a natural account of the fact that the predicative relations in the primeless and primed examples are identical: the AP dood and the PP in het zwembad are predicated of the nominative subject of the clause in the (a) and (b)-examples, and of the accusative object in the (c)-examples.

We therefore reject the traditional view that locational PPs always function as adverbial phrases in favor of the more subtle view that locational PPs can be used either adverbially or predicatively, depending on the syntactic context.

Complementives are always predicated of either the nominative or the accusative argument in their clause, as shown in the examples in (32). The following subsections briefly discuss these two cases.

The discussion of example (22) in Subsection A has already made clear that directional adpositional phrases involve the notion of a path. Directional adpositional phrases can be headed by prepositions, postpositions, and circumpositions; cf. the examples in (19). For our present purpose of illustrating the main properties of directional phrases, we will only use examples with postpositional phrases. Directional adpositional phrases typically occur as the complement of motion verbs like vallento fall and duikento dive. They are not possible as complements of stative location verbs like liggen, because the stative reading of these verbs clashes with the path reading inherently expressed by directional phrases.

Like the locational PPs discussed in Subsection B, directional adpositional phrases trigger unaccusative behavior on the verb by which they are selected. This becomes clear in a comparison of the primeless and primed examples in (45). The (b)-examples show that while duiken usually takes hebben in the perfect tense, it takes zijn when a postpositional phrase is present. The (c)-examples show that the attributive use of the past/passive participle also requires the presence of the postpositional phrase. Finally, the (d)-examples show that the use of a postpositional phrase degrades the result of impersonal passivization.

Example (46a) further shows that the postpositional phrase exhibits complementive behavior in the sense that, like other complementive phrases, the postposition must be left-adjacent to the verb in clause-final position. Note, however, that this does not hold for the complete postpositional phrase, since the complement of the postposition (viz. the noun phrase het water) need not be adjacent to the postposition, but can occupy a position further to the left. This is shown in (46b).

Directional adpositional phrases also behave like the locational PPs from Subsection B in that they can be used in resultative constructions. Thus, in addition to (32b') and (43b) with a prepositional phrase, examples like (47) with a postpositional phrase are possible. The fact that the accusative noun phrase de asbak in example (47b) is only possible if the postposition in is also present shows that this noun phrase is introduced into the structure as an argument of the postpositional phrase and not of the verb; cf. the discussion of (43).

Finally, note that directional phrases cannot occur as complements to the causative counterparts of location verbs like liggento lie; the locational PPs in (42) cannot be replaced by directional adpositional phrases. This suggests that the change-of-location verbs in (48) are like location verbs such as liggento lie in (44a) in that they are incompatible with the path reading that is inherently expressed by directional phrases.