Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

1022 Syntax of Dutch: nouns and noun phrases
Table 11: Bare heel in noun phrases headed by a non-count noun
SUBSTANCE NOUNS [±NEUTER] MASS NOUNS
DEFINITE ARTICLES *heel de wijn/het water
all the wine/the water
DEMONSTRATIVE *heel die wijn/dat water
PRONOUNS
all that wine/that water
*heel deze wijn/dit water
all this wine/this water
POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS *heel mijn wijn/water
all my wine/water
*?
heel het vee
all the cattle
*?
heel dat vee
all that cattle
*?
heel dit vee
all this cattle
*?
heel mijn vee
all my cattle
Table 11 shows that, unlike pre-determiner al, heel normally cannot occur in noun
phrases headed by substance nouns. Examples like heel de wijn/het water become
marginally acceptable, however, in contexts in which wijn and water are conceived
of as countable bodies/units of liquid. An example like (230a) is marginally
acceptable with an interpretation of rode wijn as a fixed quantity of red wine, for
example, a collection of bottles in the cellar. Similarly, example (230b), found on
the internet, refers to a contextually determined body of water, which is apparently
divided into a number of subparts, that each hosts a number of the people referred to
by the pronoun we. The fact that the examples in (230) trigger an interpretation that
involves structured units follows naturally from the semantic characterization of the
quantificational semantics of pre-determiner bare heel given in 7.2.1.1, sub I.
(230) a. ?? Heel de rode wijn is op.
all the red wine is up
‘All the red wine is finished.’
b. We vissen [...] verspreid over heel het water.
we fish scattered over all the water
‘We are fishing scattered across the water.’
With noun phrases headed by a mass noun, the complementarity in distribution
between heel and al also seems to hold; the examples in (231a&b) are at best
marginally possible. In (231c), al and heel seem to be equally acceptable, although
a Google search revealed that the string [al het verkeer] occurs more than a hundred
times as often as the string [heel het verkeer].
(231) a. Al/ *? Heel het vee van boer Harms leed aan BSE.
all the cattle of farmer Harms suffered from BSE
b. Al/ *? Heel het fruit in de krat was beschimmeld.
all the fruit in the crate was moldy
c. Al/Heel het verkeer stond vast.
all the traffic stood fast
‘All the traffic was jammed.’
The complementary distribution between heel and al also seems to break down
in noun phrases headed by abstract non-count nouns; both al and heel seem to be
possible in this case, with heel preceding noun phrases headed by a neuter noun
being somewhat marked. As in the case of al, the constructions in (232) seem to