Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

Determiners: articles and pronouns 793
unacceptable, unless some presuppositional constituent is present; cf. (324a) and
(329a).
(332) a. Wie is/zijn *(er) vertrokken?
b. Wat ligt *(er) in de la?
The examples in (333) show that the pronouns wie and wat can be modified by
elements like dan ook or om het even. However, this results in the loss of their
interrogative force: the meaning of these phrases comes close to English formations
with any. Perhaps this is not so surprising for wat, given that we will see in the next
section that this pronoun can also be used as a quantificational personal pronoun,
but it is for wie, which lacks this option.
(333) a. Dit kan door wie dan ook/om het even wie gedaan zijn.
this can by anyone/anyone done be
‘This could be done by anyone.’
b. Je kan hem om het even wat geven.
you can him anything give
Interrogative personal pronouns do not readily allow other forms of modification.
The examples in (334) involving postmodification, for example, are marginal at
best.
(334) a. ?? Wie bij de deur is jouw vader?
who near the door is your father
a′. ?? Wie daar is je vader?
who there is your father
b. ?? Wie die hier gisteren was is vandaag naar Rome vertrokken?
who that here yesterday was is today to Rome left
‘Who that was here yesterday has left for Rome today?’
5.2.1.3. Quantificational personal pronouns
The quantificational personal pronouns can also be divided into [+HUMAN] and
[-HUMAN] forms. The former consist of the existential quantifier iemand ‘someone’
and the universally quantified pronoun iedereen (in writing, the formal forms
(een)ieder and elkeen can also be found, the latter of which is generally considered
archaic). The [-HUMAN] counterparts of these pronouns are iets ‘something’, or its
more colloquial alternate wat, and alles ‘all’. Both the [+HUMAN] and [-HUMAN]
existential quantifiers have negative counterparts, which are, respectively, niemand
‘nobody’ and niets or its more colloquial alternate, niks ‘nothing’.
Table 7: Quantificational personal pronouns
[+HUMAN] [-HUMAN]
EXISTENTIAL POSITIVE iemand ‘someone’ iets/wat ‘something’
NEGATIVE niemand ‘nobody’ niets/niks ‘something’
UNIVERSAL iedereen ‘everybody’ alles ‘everything’
Below, we will discuss some properties of the quantificational nouns shown in
Table 7. Before we do this we want to note that in traditional grammar, forms like