Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

588 Syntax of Dutch: nouns and noun phrases
expressions, and, as is shown in (36b&c), pronouns can be used to refer back to
either of these expressions: het ‘it’ in (36b) refers back to the neuter noun glas
‘glass’ and ze in (36c) refers back to the feminine substance noun melk ‘milk’.
(36) a. Jan houdt een glasi melkj vast.
Jan holds a glass [of] milk prt.
b. Heti is mooi versierd.
it is beautifully decorated
c. Zej is zuur.
it is sour
In (37a), on the other hand, N1 has a quantificational reading, and (37b) shows that
in this case using the pronoun het to refer back to the QC gives rise to a
semantically anomalous result; only the pronoun ze ‘she’, corresponding to the N2
melk ‘milk’, can be used to refer to the QC, as in (37c). This indicates that N1 is
here not referential but purely quantificational.
(37) a. Jan drinkt een glasi melkj.
Jan drinks a glass [of] milk
b. $ Heti is mooi versierd.
it is beautifully decorated
c. Zej is zuur.
it is sour
4.1.1.2.4. Summary
This section has shown that there are different types of QCs, depending on which
noun acts as the syntactic or the semantic head of the construction. The noun that
triggers agreement on the finite verb or on a demonstrative is the syntactic head of
the construction, whereas the noun that satisfies the selection restrictions imposed
by the main verb is the semantic head. The results are summarized in Table 1,
although it must be noted that this table provides an idealized picture of the actual
facts since we have seen earlier that various N1s seem to be shifting in the direction
of the quantifier noun.
Table 1: Types of binominal quantificational construction
QN MN CONN PARTN COLN
N1 N2 N1 N2 N1 N2 N1 N2 N1 N2
syntactic head — + + + + — + — + —
semantic head — + + + + + + + + +
Table 1 suggests that there are three types of N1. The first type is comprises the
quantifier nouns, which are purely quantificational and require that N2 be both the
syntactic and the semantic head of the QC. The second type are the container,
collective and part nouns: they are always referential and may function both as the
syntactic and the semantic head of the QC; the descriptive content of these nouns
can, however, be backgrounded in favor of a more quantification reading, and in
that case N2 will be construed as the semantic head of the QC. The third type