Noun phrases with prepositional complements in German and their equivalents in Croatian

Sažetak: This paper analyses the structure and volume of noun phrases with prepositional complements, the realization of the syntactic and semantic functions of the German indefinite and definite articles in their Croatian equivalents, as well as the head noun valency and semantic functions of prepositional complements. The analysis is based on a corpus of examples excerpted from literary works of German and Croatian authors. The existence of grammatical articles in German, their non-existence in Croatian and the differently developed case-systems are basic distinctive marks in the noun and prepositional phrase of the two languages. The Croatian equivalent of the German prepositional complement is a prepositionnal or, less frequently, a noun prhase. The prepositional equivalent shows in most cases difference in preposition and case.