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This paper investigates the contrast between two kinds of clausal complements in the shell noun construction in Portuguese, namely finite clause complements introduced by the conjunction que 'that', as in a ideia de que éramos vigiados 'the idea that we were being watched' and inflected infinitive complements, as in a idéia de tomarem chá 'the idea (for them) to have tea'. The aim is to reveal which factors motivate the choice of either the finite complement or the inflected infinitive construction. Three successively more detailed quantitative corpus analyses were carried out: a collostructional analysis, a distinctive collexeme analysis and a logistic regression analysis. The results show significant differences in the constructional preferences for most nouns, but also reveal 13 nouns that frequently combine with the two complement clause constructions. With these 13 nouns, it was found that a higher degree of complement clause autonomy, complexity and verbality favored the use of the finite clause alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the early variation in what has been called the [prep_que] variable in Spanish nominal complement clauses, i.e. the alternation between de que and que in examples such as en señal (de) que lo estimo, Zulema, este anillo ofrezco (CORDE) ‘as a sign that I appreciate You, Zulema, I offer this ring’. By applying several subsequent quantitative analyses on corpus instances of the sequences N de que and N que, the locus of variation is restricted to such an extent that the variation can largely be accounted for. A collostructional analysis identifies 31 central nouns of the N de que complement clause construction. A diachronic cluster analysis delimits the temporal dimension of the variation to the 16th and 17th centuries. A distinctive collexeme analysis identifies nine nouns which are used in both constructional formats to a comparable degree: causa ‘cause’, duda ‘doubt’, esperanza ‘hope’, fe ‘faith’, opinión ‘opinion’, recelo ‘fear’, señal ‘sign(al)’, sospecha ‘suspicion’, and temor ‘fear’. Detailed contextual analysis of the use of these nine nouns by means of a mixed-effects logistic regression reveals that the use of the nouns with a determiner is correlated with the de que variant, and the use of the nouns as part of complex predicates, as in tener sospecha ‘have suspicion’, is associated with the que variant of the complement clause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]