Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

594 Syntax of Dutch: nouns and noun phrases
‘pig-sty’, the head of the compound is not the quantifier noun boel but a noun
denoting collections of things that need not necessarily belong together. Similarly,
the meaning of the second member of compounds like studentenaantal ‘number of
students’ is not related to the quantificational interpretation of aantal, but to its
referential interpretation; cf. the discussion of example (4).
IV. Conclusion
The findings in Subsections I to III, summarized in Table 2, have shown that we
must make a distinction between N1s that are purely quantificational and N1s that
are more referential in nature. Quantifier nouns belong to the first kind; container,
part and collective nouns all belong to the second type; and measure nouns are
ambiguous between the first and the second type.
Table 2: Morphological properties of N1s
QUANTIFICATIONAL MIXED REFERENTIAL
QN MN CONN PARTN COLN
PLURAL — +/— + + +
DIMINUTIVE — +/— + + +
COMPOUNDING — +/— + + +
REFERENTIAL — +/— + + +
The pattern in Table 2 corresponds nicely with our findings in Table 1: that
quantifier nouns are purely quantificational is in accordance with the fact that they
cannot trigger agreement on the finite verb or a demonstrative; that measure nouns
are ambiguous between a purely quantificational and a referential, package unit
reading is in accordance with the fact that either they or N2 may trigger agreement;
that container, part and collective nouns are referential is consistent with the fact
that they block agreement between N2 and the finite verb or the demonstrative. The
fact that all N1s have some quantificational force is consistent with the fact that in
all cases, N2 can be interpreted as the semantic head of the construction.
4.1.1.3.2. Syntactic properties: determiners and prenominal modifiers
Section 4.1.1.3.1 has shown that the classification in (38) into quantificational,
referential and hybrid N1s is reflected by the morphological behavior of these
nouns. This section will show that the classification is also reflected by their
syntactic properties, especially in the type of determiners and (quantificational)
modifiers they may have; the purely quantificational nouns are more restricted in
this respect than the referential ones. For example, given that a definite article is
used to identify a specific entity that is part of the denotation of the noun, we expect
that they can only combine with referential nouns, which have such a denotation,
and not with purely quantificational nouns, which lack such a denotation.
I. Articles
Example (50) illustrates again that all N1s can be preceded by the indefinite article
een. When we are dealing with a quantifier noun, however, the definite article
cannot be substituted for the indefinite one. With measure nouns this is possible,