Nominal arguments and nominal predicates

In English It is generally assumed that whereas referential nominal phrases are at least of DP size, predicative nominal phrases are structurally smaller. However, this paper argues that at least in Scandinavian, predicative nominal phrases as well as referential nominal phrases can be bigger than, equal to, or smaller than DP. Hence, the only consistent difference between nominal arguments and nominal predicates appears to be a semantic one: predicates but not arguments get a purely intensional interpretation. Some nominal phrases are only good as arguments because their lexical content makes a purely intensional reading hard to get. It is however difficult, if not impossible, to connect the semantic difference between nominal predicates and nominal arguments to any systematic difference in syntactic structure.