The denotation of syncategorematic nouns, unlike that of categorematic nouns, is ontologically dependent. It is argued here that all syncategorematic nouns, may they be concrete or abstract nouns, do not have the same degree of syntactic and semantic dependency. On the one hand, the syncategorematic nouns which have a complement structure do or do not need it to be contextually specified to be able to denote anything (e.g. bord 'edge', augmentation 'increase' vs. auteur 'author', manifestation 'demonstration'). On the other hand, some syncategorematic nouns do not have any complement structure (e.g. jardinage 'gardening', athlétisme 'athletics'). So there is no equivalence between the ontological dependency of the denotation and the syntactic and semantic dependency of the corresponding nouns. There is no relation either between the predicative meaning of nouns and the abstractness of their denotation.
Noms syncatégorématiques et degrés de dépendance syntactico-sémantique