Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

1036 Syntax of Dutch: nouns and noun phrases
(264) a. enige/sommige ( # hele) appels a′. veel/weinig ( # hele) appels
some whole apples many/few whole apples
b. *enige/sommige (hele) ellende b′. veel/weinig (*hele) ellende
some whole misery much/little whole misery
Of course, three of the four examples in (264) are excluded for independent reasons:
the (a)-examples are excluded because quantificational heel normally cannot be
used in plural noun phrases, and (264b) is excluded because enige and sommige
must be followed by a count noun. This leaves (264b′) as evidence for the claim that
quantificational heel cannot be combined with other quantifiers. However, this
claim is also supported by the fact that the syntactically singular noun phrases in
(265) give rise to a degraded result on the intended reading: these examples are only
acceptable with a purely adjectival interpretation of heel.
(265) a. elke/iedere ( # hele) appel
every whole apple
b. elk/ieder ( # heel) huis
every whole house
c. elke/iedere ( # hele) stad
every whole town
Quantificational post-determiner heel is not compatible with attributively used
quantifiers either; example (266a), in which heel occurs to the right of the
quantifiers in question, is only acceptable on the adjectival reading of heel; the noun
lijden in (266b) does not readily allow the adjectival reading, and its unacceptability
therefore shows that a totality reading is unavailable in such cases. The examples in
(267) show that a negative polarity reading for heel is also impossible in this
context. For completeness’ sake, note that (266b) and (267a) do allow an
interpretation in which hele vele is construed as a phrase meaning “very
much/many”.
(266) a. die vele/weinige/twee appels
those whole many/few/two apples
b. *het vele/weinige lijden dat zij gedragen heeft
the whole much/little suffering that she borne has
(267) a. *Ik ken die vele/weinige/twee mensen niet.
I know those whole many/few/two people not
b. *Ik ken die ene vent niet.
I know that whole one guy not
D. Personal pronouns and proper nouns
Like bare heel, inflectible heel is unable to combine with pronouns, regardless of
whether it is placed to their left or their right; Example (268) only illustrates this for
the former case. Apparent exceptions are cases like mijn hele ik ‘my whole self’
where the proper noun ik ‘I’ is used as a common noun.