This section discusses two special categories of nouns, the so-called picture and story nouns. The examples in (463) show that these nouns can be either deverbal or non-derived. Note that it is not always easy to decide whether a given noun is derived or non-derived: for example, many speakers will consider the noun verhaalstory to be non-derived, although it could actually be derived by zero derivation from the obsolete verb verhalento tell/parrot; cf. etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/verhaal.

Picture and story nouns take complements, just like the relational and derived nouns discussed in Sections 16.2.2-16.2.4, but they differ from them in several semantic and syntactic respects. We will first look at the form and position of the arguments of these nouns (Section 16.2.5.1), then address the question of whether these arguments need to be realized overtly (Section 16.2.5.2), and finally attempt a tentative definition of the classes of picture and story nouns (Section 16.2.5.3). This will provide sufficient background information for a more detailed discussion of the complementation of picture and story nouns in Sections 16.2.5.4 to 16.2.5.6. To simplify the discussion, we need to discuss the two types in separate subsections, even though they behave similarly in many respects; this will inevitably lead to some redundancy.