Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

1016 Syntax of Dutch: nouns and noun phrases
(213) a. % Ik denk niet dat het hele mens Peter ooit gezien heeft.
I think not that the whole person Peter ever seen has
‘I do not think that the person/woman has ever seen Peter.’
b. % Ik denk niet dat het hele mens ook maar iemand gezien heeft.
I think not that the whole person OOK MAAR someone seen has
‘I do not think that the person/woman has seen anybody.’
The contrast between example (213b) above and (214a) below shows that the
phrase het hele mens must c-command the negative polarity item that licenses it.
Example (214b) shows something similar for a negative polar heel phrase that
functions as a direct object. In the latter case, this c-command restriction may of
course follow from the D-linking requirement, which forces scrambling, but this
requirement has nothing to say about the contrast between (213b) and (214a); cf.
Section 7.2.1.2.2, sub III. We refer the reader to Den Dikken (2002) and Hoeksema
(2007) for a more detailed discussion and alternative approaches to this c-command
restriction.
(214) a. *Ik denk niet dat ook maar iemand het hele mens gezien heeft.
I think not that OOK MAAR someone the whole person seen has
‘I do not think that anybody has seen the person/woman.’
b. Ik denk niet dat ik < % het hele mens> ooit gezien heb.
I think not that I the whole person ever seen has
A final difference between the licensing restrictions on ordinary negative
polarity items and negative polar heel is that the latter can be licensed by implicitly
negative verbs like vergeten ‘to forget/to not know anymore’, whereas the former
cannot (although there are more negative polarity items that resemble heel in this
respect; cf. Klooster 1993).
(215) a. *Ik was ook maar iemand vergeten.
I was OOK MAAR someone forgotten
b. Ik was die hele Bert Mulder allang weer vergeten.
I was that whole Bert Mulder already.long again forgotten
‘I had long forgotten about this Bert Mulder.’
Note that the relevance of implicit negation for licensing can also be seen by
comparing the examples in (216): while the verb passeren ‘to pass’ plausibly
features implicit negation in its lexical semantics (“to not be behind anymore”), this
is certainly not the case with the verbs in (216b).
(216) a. Ik was die hele Bert Mulder allang gepasseerd/voorbijgereden.
I was that whole Bert Mulder already.long passed/driven.past
‘I had long passed this Bert Mulder.’
b. *Ik had die hele Bert Mulder allang gezien/ontmoet/begroet.
I had that whole Bert Mulder already.long seen/met/greeted
Now that we have discussed the differences between run-of-the-mill negative
polarity items like ook maar iemand ‘anybody’ and negative polar heel phrases, we
can discuss the syntactic functions the latter can perform. In (207a&b), negative polar