Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

Pre-determiners 1023
prefer a postnominal modifier or relative clause to be present. There is essentially
no difference in meaning between the constructions with heel and al; example
(232a), for instance, is semantically near-equivalent to al de ellende van de wereld.
(232) a. heel de ellende ? (van de wereld)
all the misery of the world
‘all the misery in the world’
b. ? heel het verdriet dat ik heb meegemaakt
all the sorrow that I have prt.-made
‘all the sorrow that I have been through’
It must be noted, however, that the constructions with al are again much more
frequent than those with heel, which is clear from a Google search performed in July
2008: the string [al de ellende] resulted in over 400 hits, whereas [heel de ellende]
resulted in no more than 18 cases. The contrast was even bigger with [al het
verdriet] and [heel het verdriet], which resulted in, respectively, 10,000 and 2 hits.
In the case of deverbal nouns, the complementarity in distribution again seems
to break down. Table 12 shows that, although heel can at best marginally be
combined with noun phrases headed by a nominal infinitive or GE-nominalization,
heel can be combined with noun phrases headed by a bare stem; see Table 3 in
Section 7.1.2.1 for the corresponding examples with al.
Table 12: Bare heel in noun phrases headed by a deverbal noun
DEFINITE
ARTICLES
DEMONSTRATIVE
PRONOUNS
POSSESSIVE
PRONOUNS
BARE STEM NOMINAL INFINITIVE GE-NOMINALIZATION
heel het werk
all the work
heel dat werk
all that work
heel dit werk
all this work
heel mijn werk
all this work
*?
heel het werken
all the working
*?
heel dat werken
all that working
*heel dit werken
all this working
*heel mijn werken
all this working
*heel het gewerk
all the working
*heel dat gewerk
all that working
*heel dit gewerk
all this working
*heel mijn gewerk
all this working
It must be noted, that, just as in the cases with al, bare stems with heel only give
rise to an acceptable result when they receive an eventive interpretation (and not
when they have a result reading). Consider the contrast between the primeless and
primed examples in (233).
(233) a. *heel de aankomst/aanvang [cf. *al de aankomst/aanvang]
all the arrival/beginning
a′. heel de aankomst van Sinterklaas
all the arrival of Santa Claus
b. *heel het begin/vertrek [cf. *al het begin/vertrek]
all the beginning/departure
b′. heel het begin van de film
all the beginning of the movie