Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

Numerals and quantifiers 919
like voldoende ‘sufficient’, genoeg ‘enough’ and zat ‘plenty’, which indicate that
some tacitly assumed norm is met.
I. High and low degree quantifiers
This section will discuss some properties of the high and low degree quantifiers veel
and weinig. It must be noted that these quantifiers are not only used as modifiers of
the noun phrase, but can also be used as adverbial phrases. Since it would disturb
our present discussion too much to also discuss this adverbial use here, we will
return to it in a separate section; cf. 6.2.6.
A. Core semantics and the nature of the head noun
The semantic representations in (147) show that degree quantifiers like veel/weinig
‘many/few’ are not only existential but express in addition that the cardinality of the
intersection of the set denoted by the noun jongens and the VP op straat lopen ‘to
walk in the streets’ is higher/lower than a certain contextually determined norm.
Note that this norm is not some absolute number, but may have some lower and
upper bound. In the semantic representations in (147), n and n′ refer to,
respectively, the lower and the upper bound of this range.
(147) • Degree quantifiers with count nouns
a. Er lopen weinig jongens op straat.
there walk few boys in the.street
a′. ∃x (x:boy) (x walk in the street & 1 < |A ∩ B| < n)
b. Er lopen veel jongens op straat.
there walk many boys in the.street
b′. ∃x (x:boy) (x walk in the street & |A ∩ B| > n′)
The degree quantifiers differ from the purely existential ones in that they modify not
only (plural) count nouns like jongens ‘boys’ in (147), but also non-count nouns
like the substance noun water in (148). Of course, the notion of cardinality is not
applicable in the case of non-count nouns; instead, the degree quantifier expresses
that the quantity of the substance denoted by the noun is higher/lower than a certain
contextually determined norm.
(148) • Degree quantifiers with non-count nouns
a. Er zit veel water in de fles.
there is much water in the bottle
b. Er zit weinig water in de fles.
there is little water in the bottle
B. Weak and strong use
In (147) and (148), the noun phrases modified by the degree quantifiers are the
subject of an expletive construction, and are therefore clearly °weak. It is, however,
also possible to use such noun phrases strongly. Examples of strong noun phrases
with degree quantifiers are given in (149). As with the existential quantifier enkele,
the degree modifiers veel and weinig may either quantify over a pre-established set
of entities in domain D, or be more “generic”, that is, quantify over all the relevant
entities in the speaker’s conception of reality. Under the first reading, an example