Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

824 Syntax of Dutch: nouns and noun phrases
(412) a. *Jan bewondert hem.
Jan admires him
b. Jan bewondert zijn broer.
Jan admires his brother
c. Zij bewonderen elkaars werk.
they admire each.other’s work
5.2.2.1.5. Other cases
Possessive pronouns also have a demonstrative form: the genitive masculine form
diens. The feminine counterpart of this form is dier, but it seems that this form is
completely obsolete: it is less common and feels extremely formal and artificial. All
occurrences of diens can in principle be replaced by a referential possessive
pronoun, but the inverse is not the case: diens can never refer to a subject regardless
of whether this subject is part of the same clause, some higher clause, or even
another sentence (Postma 1984). Whereas the pronoun zijn can be bound by Jan in
the examples in (413), diens can only be used to refer to some other salient
discourse entity. Coreference is indicated by means of italics.
(413) a. Jan bewondert zijn/*diens broer.
Jan admires his brother
b. Jan weet dat ik zijn/ *? diens broer bewonder.
Jan knows that I his brother admire
c. Jan wilde vertrekken. Zijn/ *? Diens auto wilde echter niet starten.
Jan wanted leave his car would however not start
This difference between the possessive and demonstrative possessive pronoun
accounts for why, despite its highly formal nature, the use of diens is still popular in
writing, since it solves certain ambiguities that may arise when we use the
referential possessive pronoun. This becomes clear from the examples in (414):
whereas the referential pronoun zijn can be interpreted either as coreferential with
the subject de vader van Jan or the proper noun Jan embedded in the subject, the
possessive pronoun diens only has the latter option. Note that the question mark in
(414a′) indicates that this is simply a less prominent reading.
(414) a. De vader van Jan heeft zijn boeken weggegooid.
the father of Jan has his books thrown.away
a′. ? De vader van Jan heeft zijn boeken weggegooid.
b. De vader van Jan heeft diens boeken weggegooid.
the father of Jan has his books thrown.away
b′. *De vader van Jan heeft diens boeken weggegooid.
The examples so far may wrongly suggest that diens behaves like referential noun
phrases in that is cannot have a °c-commanding antecedent. That this is actually
possible is shown by the examples in (415): in (415a) a nominal indirect object
functions as the antecedent of diens embedded in a direct object, in (415b) the direct
object functions as the antecedent of diens embedded in a periphrastic indirect
object, and in (415c) the direct object is the antecedent of diens embedded in an
adverbial phrase. This means that the proper generalization is indeed the one given