The examples throughout this study of adpositional phrases amply illustrate that the core case of complementation of a prepositional phrase involves a noun phrase. The only restriction on nominal complements seems to be of a semantic nature. For example, the use of the spatial preposition binneninside or buitenoutside requires the nominal complement to have dimensional properties compatible with these prepositions. Example (4a) is acceptable because a city can be conceived of as an entity with an inside and an outside. Example (4b) is semantically anomalous because een daka roof is not normally used to divide space in this way: we must impose an exceptional interpretation on this example to make it acceptable. Finally, an example such as (4c) is completely unacceptable because space is not involved at all. It seems that any noun phrase can be used as a complement, as long as the semantic restrictions imposed by the adpositions are met.

Postpositional phrases are also usually complemented with noun phrases. Because such PPs generally have a directional (or extent) reading, the noun phrase mostly refers to a specific location. This is illustrated in (5) with the directional postpositional phrase de stad uitout of town and de weilanden ininto the meadows.

Similar examples for the circumpositional phrase over het weiland heenacross the meadows are given in (6).

The set of prepositions that can take a bare singular noun phrase as their complement is rather limited. Some examples are given in (7): the (a)-examples include the locational prepositions inin and opat and the (b)-examples include the directional prepositions naarto and vanfrom. Example (7c) shows that the reduced phrasal directional preposition richtingin the direction of can also take a bare noun phrase. Example (7d) contains temporal PPs with a bare noun phrase headed by voorbefore and naafter.

To our knowledge, there are no cases of postpositional and circumpositional PPs that take a bare noun phrase as their complement; compare the examples in (8) with example (7c) above.

The interpretation of PPs with a bare nominal complement is often rather special. For example, the PPs op school and op kantoor in the primeless examples in (9) are not spatial in nature, but express that Jan has a certain occupation; the location in these examples is expressed by the adverbial pro-form hierhere. These readings are virtually lost in the primed examples in which a determiner is used; the noun phrases then preferably refer to the actual objects. This means that the PPs op deze school/dit kantoor are used adverbially and refer to the specific places where Jan takes classes/works.

Not only is the number of prepositions we find in this construction limited, there are also some poorly understood restrictions on the nominal complement. For example, given the acceptability of the examples in (9), one might expect that (10a) would also be acceptable with the meaning “Jan is enrolled as a student here”, but this example is severely degraded; the only way to express the intended meaning is to use the definite determiner de before the noun, as in (10b).

In the examples up to this point, the bare singular nominal complements of op and in give rise to interpretations involving occupations, but they can also give rise to event interpretations, which may or may not be idiomatic in nature. Apart from the fact that the use of a definite determiner is excluded, the meaning of (11a) seems fully compositional. Example (11b), on the other hand, has the more specialized interpretation that Jan has gone to sleep (which is lost when the article hetthe is added). Meaning specialization does not always occur: in cases such as (11c), the presence or absence of the definite determiner does not seem to make much difference to the interpretation.

The contrasts between the Dutch and English examples in (12) suggest that bare singular nominal complements are not as common in Dutch as in English; for more English examples, see Quirk et al. (1985/1991: 277-9), from which we have also taken the primed examples.

However, there are also cases where English requires a determiner, while Dutch allows it to be absent. Some examples are given in (13).

The preposition in in (14) often occurs with the verbs zijnto be or brengento bring in more or less fixed collocations, many of which denote mental states.

The examples discussed in this subsection (as well as the contrasts between the Dutch and English examples) strongly suggest that the collocations consisting of a preposition and a bare noun phrase are listed in the mental lexicon. This is certainly true for the Latinate preposition per in (15), which is characterized by the fact that it can only take bare noun phrases.