Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

676 Syntax of Dutch: nouns and noun phrases
some languages, like Italian or Greek, do not exhibit the complementary
distribution of the Dutch articles and possessive/demonstrative pronouns; cf., e.g.,
Alexiadou et al. (2007: 93).
Personal pronouns are also included in this chapter because there are various
reasons to consider them determiners as well. From a semantic point of view they
resemble the determiners in having primarily a referring function: their descriptive
content is limited and certainly does not exceed that of the possessive pronouns.
Furthermore, when it is assumed that personal pronouns are within the NP-domain,
it cannot readily be accounted for that they cannot be preceded by an article or a
demonstrative/possessive pronoun, whereas this follows immediately when they
occupy the D-position; see, e.g., Longobardi (1994) and Alexiadou et al. (2007:
211/9) for more empirical support from Italian and Serbo-Croatian in favor of the
claim that personal pronouns are determiners.
Before we begin discussing the articles in 5.1, we want to make some general
comments on the structure of the noun phrase in (1). The NP in this structure can be
said to determine the denotation of the noun phrase: it acts like a predicate, and can
therefore be represented as a set of entities which have in common that they satisfy
the description provided by the NP; the NP blauwe auto ‘blue car’ denotes the set of
entities that have the properties of being a car and being blue; cf. Section A1.3.
Determiners, on the other hand, are normally used to determine the reference of the
noun phrase. A definite determiner like de in de blauwe auto ‘the blue car’, for
example, expresses that the denotation set of the NP blauwe auto ‘blue car’ contains
exactly one entity and that it is this entity that the speaker refers to. The fact that a
definite determiner has this meaning leads us to the relation between language and
reality.
The relation between language and reality has given rise to ardent debates, and
we will certainly not try to resolve here all the issues that have been brought up. We
want to point out, however, that many of the problems that have been discussed in
these debates find their origin in the assumption that language is directly related to
reality. Consider example (3). Given the generally accepted idea that a singular
noun phrase containing a definite determiner like de refers to a unique entity, this
example is problematic because the noun phrase de Nederlandse president ‘the
Dutch president’ does not refer to an entity in the real world, which means that at
first sight this example cannot be assigned a truth value.
(3) De Nederlandse president is een begaafde man.
the Dutch president is a gifted man
Another problem is that it seems beyond the powers of the language user to
determine what reality actually is; if we want to make objective statements about
reality, we have to go beyond our personal experience and enter the domain of
science. The language user therefore does not refer to reality directly, but to his
internalized CONCEPTION of reality, which is invoked in his speech acts. For
example, a sentence like (3) can be seriously uttered by anyone who has the
erroneous belief that the Dutch prime minister is the president of the Netherlands,
and, consequently, the speaker will also assign a truth value to this sentence. In
other words, by assuming that a noun phrase does not refer to entities in the material