Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

1006 Syntax of Dutch: nouns and noun phrases
tional heel/half is always the first in sequence, the second being the purely
adjectival form, which is, of course, in full conformity with the fact that postdeterminer
quantifiers precede attributive adjectives in Dutch.
(184) a. Hij at de hele/halve hele taart.
he ate the whole/half whole cake
‘He ate all/half of the cake that was complete.’
b. Hij at de hele/halve halve taart.
he ate the whole/half half cake
‘He ate all/half of the cake that was half.’
7.2.1.2.2. Post-determiner quantificational heel
With adjectival heel properly set apart from the other occurrences of heel, in what
follows we will concentrate on the quantificational readings of post-determiner heel.
Post-determiner quantificational heel can be divided into three subtypes, which
respectively express TOTALITY, DEGREE and POLARITY.
I. Totality
By far the most common quantificational contribution made by post-determiner
inflectible heel is that of “totality”. An example like de stad differs semantically
from de hele stad ‘the whole city’ in the same way that their English translations
“the city” and “the whole/entire city” differ: de hele stad denotes the totality of the
town, the town in its entirety. That heel in its totality sense is quantificational is
evident from the fact that it does not combine with helemaal, as seen in (185).
(185) a. De hele zon is van gas.
the whole sun is of gas
b. De zon is helemaal van gas.
the sun is entirely of gas
c. *De hele zon is helemaal van gas.
the whole sun is entirely of gas
The totality sense of inflectible heel comes close to that of pre-determiner bare
heel discussed in Section 7.2.1.1, which is clear from the fact that it is impossible to
combine the two varieties of heel within a single noun phrase.
(186) a. heel mijn bezit
all my estate
b. mijn hele bezit
my whole estate
c. *heel mijn hele bezit
all my whole estate
But despite the close semantic relationship between pre-determiner bare heel and
post-determiner heel, there is an important difference between the two. Whereas
pre-determiner bare heel forces an exhaustive partitioning of the whole into all of its
relevant subparts, no such partitioning is necessarily implied by post-determiner
heel (though a partitioning reading seems compatible with post-determiner heel in