Linguistics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professional linguists and others with an interest in linguistic research and theory. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Here are two NPs:
their incredible story of the trip in space (complement)
the noisy yellow airplanes that scared the children in the yard (post modifier)
Why is it that certain nouns takes modifiers and others complements? In this case what's the difference between the nouns story and airplanes?
Thanks!
When you post a question next time, please mention what theory it is based on. Do not assume that the terms (and implicit assumptions) are necessarily shared and/or easily recognized by everyone. Your OP is a good case in point.
It looks like your question is based on Cognitive Grammar.
In Cognitive Grammar,
a complement is understood as "a conceptually autonomous component structure that elaborates the profile determinant, which is conceptually dependent",
whereas
a modifier is "a conceptually dependent component structure that is elaborated by the profile determinant, which is conceptually autonomous" (Evans and Green 2006: 587).
Note the key word "conceptual," because this is very different from other formal syntax theories.
For instance, from the point of view of generative syntax, in both of your examples, we can see complements.
their incredible story of the trip in space, [of the trip in space] is complement;
the noisy yellow airplanes that scared the children in the yard, [that scared the children in the yard] is a complement clause.
Also, I don't think the term "modifier" is very common in generative syntax and is used as an umbrella term for anything attached to the head, the more common opposition being complement-specifier-adjunct (all of those are different types of modifiers).
In some other syntactic theories, the difference between a complement (sometimes also called an argument) and a modifier is that complements are obligatory (cf. *their incredible story of) whereas modifiers are optional (their incredible story).
Putting theoretical differences aside, I am afraid you didn't quite understand your professor or textbook very well. For instance, you ask us, "Why is it that certain nouns takes modifiers and others complements?"
The thing is that all English nouns can take (select) complements and what you call "modifiers":
their story that scared me a lot (complement clause; your "post-modifier")
their story of the trip in space (complement; your "complement")
their incredible story (specifier; your "modifier")
I don't have a firm grasp of the distinction you're asking about, but I can give you an outline of my understanding of McCawley's account in The Syntactic Phenomena of English. It is based on a relation between the structure of NPs and the structure of sentences, as we can observe it in the process of nominalization. N' (N-bar) in a NP corresponds to V' (V-bar) in nominalization.
An N' is either built from another N', or consists of a N with possible complements, as a V' is either built from another V', or consists of a V with possible complements. One common V complement that we're familiar with is the direct object. The corresponding argument in a NP is the "of"-complement of a N. Occasionally, we can find a direct correspondence between sentential and nominal:
"Henry fathered Louis." (the V' "fathered Louis" has the V complement "Louis")
"Henry is the father of Louis." (the N' "father of Louis" has the N complement "of Louis")
In sentence structure, V' modifiers are adverbs, which correspond in NP structure to adjectives and other N' modifiers.
Henry [V' [V' fathered Louis] enthusiastically].
Henry was [NP the [N' enthusiastic [N' father of Louis] ] ].
Thus, nouns with complements correspond to transitive verbs.
