In the N position after BE.
E.g. He is a very kind man.
This is Mr. West, the teacher.
That was information of great value.
That is the man in the garden.
That was the road ahead of us.
This is my angel of a wife.
Is this that terrifying mountain of a woman?
This is the difficulty of the task.
* * *
V. Transformations of sentences with V-HAVE. The V-HAVE is also rather unique, it is associated with some rules different from those applied to other V.
In the domain of the nominalising rules V-HAVE in characterised by the ease with which it is deleted.
Sentences with HAVE must be divided into these classes:
(1) Sentences expressing possession
"The man has a son",
"A dog has four legs".
(2) Sentences rendering the same information as the transforms with the introducer 'there:
"The room has three windows,"
"There are three windows in the room,"
"The boy has a book in his hand," "There is a book in the boy's hand."
(3) Sentences that give the same information as sentences with 'contain':
"The cup has tea in it,"
"The cup contains tea."
A. Transformation of sentences expressing possession.
NP1 have (has) NP1 NP1's NP2
NP2 of NP1
Sentences expressing possession can produce two N-transforms rendering the same information.
The procedures used to produce the first transform are deletion of HAVE, introduction of the -'s element between the two NP:
E.g. The man has a stepson the man's stepson
Mary has a brother Mary's brother
To produce the second transform HAVE is deleted, the two NP permutated, and the preposition 'of embedded between them.
E.g. The man has a stepson the stepson of the man
The girl has a brother the brother of the girl
The table has three legs the legs of the table
Both transformations are restricted in the sense that the structure with -'s is applied if the NP, is animate, and the preposition 'of is applied if NP1 is inanimate or there are certain conditions of sequential sentences.
B. NP1 HAVE (HAS) NP2 (D)
E.g. The room has three windows (in it) The room with three windows
The boy has a pencil (in his right hand) The boy with a pencil
The man has a straw hat (on) The man with a straw hat.
There seems to be an intermediate structure with the functions words 'who ' or ' which "
The room which has three windows,"
"The boy who has a pencil in his right hand,"
"The man who has a straw that (on)."
The negative transform of this sentence structure will be nominalised with the preposition 'without':
E.g. The man has no hat on the man without a hat
The room has no windows the (a) room without windows
The procedures used are:
(1) deletion of 'have',
(2) introducing the prepositions 'with' or 'without'.
С NP, HAVE NP2 (in it) (D is restricted here to 'in it', 'in them').
The V HAVE in such sentences can be substituted with the V 'contain’ which makes these sentences a special type:
E.g. The bottle has (contains) milk (in it) a bottle of milk
The cup has (contains) tea a cup of tea
The bowls has (contains) sugar a bowl of sugar
The procedures applied are:
(1) deletion of HAVE.
(2) introduction of the preposition.
The transforms retain the relations of the kernel sentence or the underlying sentence. The change of the determiner shows that the N-transforms are easily generalised.
The origin of these transforms from sentences with HAVE or 'contain' show that they are different from the transforms originated from kernel sentences with BE:
"the bottle is for milk" "the bottle for milk" "the milk bottle."
Both transforms retain the relations and the semantics of the kernel sentences "the bottle is for milk" and "The bottle has (contains) milk in it."
When the meaning of an N-transform is not quite clear, the NP must be traced back to the kernel sentence it is derived from, and the meaning of the N-transform becomes quite clear.
There are some N-constructions that seem to be ambiguous. Thus Robert Lees writes that "John's picture" may be derived from two kernel sentences with HAVE and with BE: "John has a picture (of Mary)" and "The picture was of John."
It is more likely that the kernel sentence here is that with BE only, because there is a series of analogous sentences and their N-transforms that admit of only one understanding:
E.g. The figure was of Samson the figure of Samson
The picture was of everyday life the picture of everyday life
The picture was of a young man the (a) picture of a young man
Two N-transforms may seem to be generated from the same kernel sentence: "the (a) picture of a young man" and "a young man's picture," but they render different information; the second NP does not express possession, but only the kind of picture, corresponding to the Russian nominal phrase with an A: " мужской портрет", "женский портрет", etc.
There is also a special construction corresponding to the sentence "The young man painted the picture," "Rembrandt painted the portrait," that is "a portrait of Rembrandt’s" "a portrait of the young man's."
D. Sentences with HAVE are nominalised when we change the V into V-ing or V-to. This change is done on the morphological level.
NP1 is transformed into a possessive determiner before V-ing or it is preceded by the preposition 'for', if the V is transformed into V-to. NP - a personal pronoun - is changed to the object case. All these transformations are done on the morphological level.
(1) E.g. The man has a son the man's having a son.
The man's having a grown up son surprised her
An artist has a sense of beauty the artist's having a sense of beauty.