Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

848 Syntax of Dutch: nouns and noun phrases
clear from the fact that it can be paraphrased as “a woman like that”. Another way
to express this would be to say that a noun phrase like een vrouw refers to a TOKEN,
whereas zo’n vrouw refers to a TYPE. Since DPs headed by the demonstratives zo’n
and zulke are not referring expressions in the same sense as DPs headed by an
indefinite article, using the notion of indefiniteness may be confusing. For this
reason, we will introduce two new notions here: DPs headed by demonstratives like
deze/die and dit/dat will be said to be D-LINKED (linked to the discourse), whereas
DPs headed by demonstratives like zo’n and zulke will be said to be NON-D-LINKED
(not linked to the discourse).
Although the non-D-linked demonstrative modifiers zo’n ‘such a’ and zulk(e)
‘such’ are considered determiners in traditional grammar, it must be noted that zo’n
is a contracted form of zo een. Therefore, it could also be claimed that we are
dealing here with the indefinite article een ‘a’, which is premodified by the adverb
zo ‘so’.
A. D-linked demonstratives
The demonstrative pronouns are typically used deictically, that is, they refer to a
referent that is physically present in the situation in which the utterance is made.
The proximate and distal demonstratives indicate different relative distances
between the referent of the noun phrase and the speaker; the proximate ones
indicate that the referent is close to the speaker, whereas the distal ones indicate that
the referent is more remote from the speaker. The notion of distance can be
interpreted literally and metaphorically; cf. Alexiadou (2007: 100/1) and references
cited there. In examples like (473), involving literal distance, the relevance of
relative distance can be stressed by modifying the noun phrase by means of the
locational pro-forms hier and daar. The former is more readily used with the
proximate demonstratives, whereas the latter is preferably used with the distal ones.
(473) a. Dit boek over WO II hier/ *? daar is erg indrukwekkend.
this book about WW II here/there is very impressive
b. Dat boek over WO II daar/ *? hier is erg indrukwekkend.
that book about WW II there/here is very impressive
Note that the pro-forms normally are at the right edge of the noun phrase, and given
that they are related to the reference of the noun phrase, it seems plausible that they
are directly modifying the demonstrative. In this context it might be interesting to
note that Afrikaans has the demonstratives hierdie ‘this’ and daardie ‘that’, which
are apparently formed by combining the Standard Dutch demonstrative die and the
locational pro-forms; see Alexiadou (2007: 117) for similar observations in
Swedish, and examples like This here dog is a good hunter and That there cat has
been with me fifteen years in certain Southern U.S. dialects (Carole Boster, p.c.).
The notion of distance can also be interpreted temporally. For example, the
noun phrase deze week ‘this week’ in (474a) will normally include the speech time,
which is clear from the fact that the past tense gives rise to an infelicitous result,
whereas the noun phrase die week will normally be contextually determined. So in a
report on the flood in Zeeland in 1954 the noun phrase die week will refer to the