Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

Determiners: articles and pronouns 763
There are also many pluralia tantum that cannot be preceded by geen, like
tropen or Verenigde Staten in (246a&b). The reason for this lies in the fact that
tropen and Verenigde Staten are always definite expressions, with which geen
cannot be combined. When the plurale tantum can be indefinite, like
hersens/hersenen in (246c&c′), geen is possible.
(246) a. *geen tropen [cf. de/*∅ tropen]
no tropics
b. *geen Verenigde Staten [cf. de/*∅ Verenigde Staten]
no United States
c. Planten hebben geen hersenen.
plants have no brains
c′. Heb jij geen hersens of zo?!
have you no brains or so
‘Don’t you have brains, or what?!’
The acceptability of using geen with non-count nouns extends to the cases of
bare-stem and GE-nominalizations in (247).
(247) a. geen werk [bare-stem nominalization]
no work
b. geen gewerk [GE-nominalization]
no work
INF-nominalization like (248a) are generally awkward, although (248b&c) show
that there are idiomatic examples involving INF-nominalizations.
(248) a. ?? geen werken [INF-nominalization]
no work
b. Dat is geen doen.
that is no do
‘That is impossible, unbearable.’
c. Er is geen houden meer aan.
there is no hold anymore PRT
‘It cannot be controlled/stopped anymore.’
When we now take a bird’s eye view of the noun phrase types with which geen
can be construed, we find that only a subset can occur with the indefinite article een
in neutral contexts; een does not combine with plurals or non-count nouns (except
in the special contexts discussed in Section 5.1.4.2). An approach to geen that
would hold that it is the result of the fusion of niet and the indefinite article een
would hence fail to cover the entire spectrum of possibilities in the distribution of
geen. A particularly tough nut to crack for such an analysis of geen would be the
case in (249), where geen combines with an element that does not seem to qualify
as nominal at all.
(249) Het was geen buitenspel.
it was no off.side