This section concludes the discussion of nominal complementives with a look at copular constructions such as (133), which have led to a debate about whether the neuter pronoun het/dat/dit or the noun phrase aardige jongens functions as the subject of the construction. In our discussion below we will use examples headed by the copula zijnto be, but such constructions also occur with other copulas like wordenbecome or blijvento stay.

Bos (1961), following De Groot (1949:153), argued that it is the noun phrase that functions as the subject and the pronoun that functions as the predicate. One reason is that the finite verb in the examples in (133) agrees in number with the plural noun phrase, not with the singular pronoun; the examples in (134) confirm that plural agreement is not normally possible when the pronoun het/dit/dat functions as the subject of an adjectival or prepositional copular construction.

Another reason for assuming that the pronouns function as predicates is that the noun phrase appears in its nominative form when it is replaced by a pronoun; this cannot be shown for the second-person plural pronoun, of course, given that the subject and object forms are identical.

The claim that the pronouns in (133) function as predicates of the copular constructions was challenged by Merckens (1961), who argued that these examples are actually ambiguous. This is illustrated by the examples in (136), the meanings of which will be clear from the English translations. The function of the left-dislocated constituents in these and the following examples is to impose the intended subject/predicate reading on the pronoun dat.

The same ambiguity is also apparent in embedded clauses such as those in (137), given that subject pronouns are usually right-adjacent to the complementizer and predicates are usually left-adjacent to the verbs in clause-final position; cf. Ik vind dat dat mooi isI think that that is beautiful versus *Ik vind dat mooi dat is. This means that dat functions as a subject in (137a) and as a predicate in (137b), which is also supported by the interpretation of these examples. The (b)-examples show that the pronoun and the noun phrase cannot be inverted in these constructions.

A similar contrast can be found in yes-no questions, in which the subject pronoun usually appears right-adjacent to the sentence-initial verb: Is dat mooi?Is that beautiful? versus *Is mooi dat? This implies that dat functions as a subject in (138a) and as a predicate in (138b), which is again confirmed by the interpretation of these examples. The (b)-examples show that the pronoun and the noun phrase cannot be inverted.

A piece of indirect evidence, not mentioned by Merckens, for the claim that we are dealing with ambiguous structures is provided by the vinden-constructions in (139). Given that the complementive always follows its logical subject in the middle field of the clause, the fact that both orders are possible in (139) shows that dat can function either as the subject or as the complementive of the construction; again, the interpretations of these examples support these readings.

A final piece of evidence concerns pronominalization. Consider the discourse chunk in (140), in which participant B is backing up participant A’s assertion that Jan and Piet are nice boys. In B’s response, the noun phrase aardige jongens is replaced not by the referential personal pronoun zij, as would be expected if this noun phrase were the subject of the sentence, but by dat, as would normally be the case when we are dealing with a predicate. Note that the copula is plural in this case, even though the pronouns het and dat are normally both syntactically singular.

The discussion above has conclusively shown that Bos’ claim that the neuter pronouns in the copular constructions in (133) can only be analyzed as the predicate of the construction cannot be maintained; the structures are syntactically ambiguous in the sense that the pronoun can function either as the subject or as the predicate of the copular construction. In fact, there is reason to assume that the pronoun hetit in Het is een aardige jongenIt is a nice boy (cf. (133a)) must be interpreted as the subject of the copular construction because of its sentence-initial position. First, recall that the object pronoun het cannot be topicalized, as can be seen from the acceptability contrast between Hij zag hetHe saw it and *Het zag hij. Now, the (b)-examples in (141) show that the same prohibition on topicalization also applies to het when it functions as a complementive; while the primeless example is unacceptable with het, the corresponding primed example without topicalization is perfectly acceptable (though perhaps less so than its counterpart with dat, which is indicated here by a question mark).

The remainder of this section will point out some special properties of the copular construction under discussion. We have already seen in (133) and (134) that the predicate must be nominal; adjectival and prepositional complementives are excluded. The contrast between the primeless and primed examples in (142) shows, however, that it is not the case that any nominal predicate can be used: the predicate can either contain an article or be bare if the subject is a noun phrase or a “regular” pronoun, whereas the pronouns het, dat, and dit require the presence of an article.

The examples in (133) and (134) have also shown that although the pronouns het, dit and dat are syntactically singular, they can also be used to refer to sets of entities in the copular construction discussed here. We illustrate this again with the left-dislocation constructions in (143).

Something similar holds for gender: although the pronouns het, dit, and dat are syntactically neuter, they can be used to refer to non-neuter antecedents. This is immediately obvious in example (143a), but even more so in examples such as (144a), where the predicate agrees in gender with the antecedent of the pronoun dat. For completeness’ sake, (144b) provides an example in which the antecedent differs from the pronoun dat in both number and gender.

In the above examples, the antecedent of the neuter pronoun is referential in the sense that it denotes a (possibly singleton) set of entities. The examples in (145) show that the antecedent can also be generic, although it seems that the indefinite generic noun phrase in (145c) is somewhat marked.

The markedness of (145c) may be related to the fact that examples in which the antecedent of the neuter pronoun is quantified are also marked; whereas the generic example in (146a) is perfectly acceptable, the corresponding quantificational construction in (146b) is degraded.