Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

782 Syntax of Dutch: nouns and noun phrases
Furthermore, corpus research by Audring (2009) has shown that, at least in
colloquial speech, pronouns are used as indicated in (295). This shows that the
system in which pronoun and their antecedents must exhibit syntactic agreement is
gradually replaced by a system, in which the gender of the pronoun is determined
by certain semantic properties of the antecedent.
(295) • Semantic restrictions on the use of singular pronouns in speech
a. Feminine pronouns: female persons and animals.
b. Masculine pronouns: male persons, all animals (including animals of female
sex), countable, bounded objects and specific abstract entities.
c. Neuter pronouns: mass nouns and uncountable, unbounded object, unspecific
abstract entities.
The plural third person pronoun is normally used when it refers back to a plural
noun phrase. However, when a singular noun phrase is headed by a collective noun
referring to a set, as with mass nouns like politie or collective nouns like groep
‘group’, it is also common to use the plural pronoun. This shows, again, that the
syntactic agreement system is gradually replaced by a more semantically based
system
(296) a. De politie is daar binnengevallen en ze hebben vijf mensen gearresteerd.
the police is there prt.-entered and they have five people arrested
‘The police have entered there and they arrested five people.’
b. Er komt een groep demonstranten aan. Ze scanderen leuzen.
there comes a group [of] protesters prt. they chant slogans
‘A group of protesters is approaching. They are chanting slogans.’
5.2.1.1.4. Subject and object forms
In Standard Dutch, case distinctions are only visible on the referential personal and
possessive pronouns: the subject and object forms can be considered to represent,
respectively, the nominative and the accusative/dative form of the referential
personal pronouns. The possessive pronouns in Table 10 in Section 5.2.2 represent
the genitive forms.
(297) a. Ik kuste Peter. [nominative]
I kissed Peter
b. Peter kuste mij. [accusative]
Peter kissed me
c. Peter gaf mij een kus. [dative]
Peter gave me a kiss
d. mijn kus [genitive]
my kiss
The examples in (297b&c) show that accusative and dative forms are normally not
distinguished in Dutch. The only exceptions are the strong third person plural
pronouns, where an artificial distinction was introduced in the 17 th century between
a dative form hun ‘them’ and an accusative form hen ‘them’. This distinction is still
made by some, especially in writing, although most speakers use the two object