Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

Pre-determiners 1043
7.2.3.3. Distribution as adjuncts
Both pre-determiner bare heel and post-determiner inflectible heel show up in noun
phrases that function as adverbial phrases. In (284a&b), heel and hele contribute
their core quantificational semantics of exhaustivity/totality. In (284c), by contrast,
the semantics of hele is that of (very) high degree; she was crying for a very long
time. This difference between (284a&b) and (284c) is confirmed by the different
intonation patterns they exhibit; cf. the discussion in Section 7.2.1.2.2.
(284) a. Heel de dag/tijd zat ze te huilen. a′. [HEEL de dag]/*[heel de DAG]
all the day/time sat she to cry
b. De hele dag/tijd zat ze te huilen. b′. [de HEle dag]/*[de hele DAG]
the whole day/time sat she to cry
‘She was crying all day/all the time.’
c. Hele dagen zat ze te huilen. c′. [hele DAgen]/*[HEle dagen]
whole days sat she to cry
‘She was crying for days.’
The unacceptable intonation pattern of (284c) is not categorically impossible for
hele dagen, however. The minimal pair in (285a&b) is illustrative in this connection.
While in the (a)-example the adjunct hele dagen specifies the extent of the
entire duration of her working on her dissertation, in the (b)-example hele dagen
says that she worked on her dissertation for an unspecified number of whole days
(that is, it specifies the amount of time per day that she worked on her dissertation).
In its stressed form hele is adjectival, as is clear from the fact that hele dagen
alternates with halve dagen, as is shown in (285c).
(285) a. Ze werkte hele DAgen aan haar proefschrift.
she worked whole days on her dissertation
‘She was working on her dissertation for days (at a stretch).’
b. Ze werkte HEle dagen aan haar proefschrift.
she worked whole days on her dissertation
‘She worked full-time (whole days) on her dissertation.’
c. Ik werk HEle dagen, maar hij werkt HALve dagen.
I work whole days but he works half days
‘I work full-time, but he works part-time.’
In (284a&b), the adjunct reading of the heel phrases is available for both pre-
and post-determiner heel. In these examples, the syntax of the overall construction
makes adjunct construal the only possibility for the heel phrases. In examples of the
type in (286), however, the noun phrase following the verb in principle has two
construal possibilities; it can be interpreted either as the object of the verb, in which
case the verb fluiten means “to play the flute”, or as an adjunct, in which case
fluiten means “whistle”; see Section 8.3 for more discussion. It may be the case that
adjunct construal is not equally felicitous in the two examples in (286); some (but
not all) speakers find that the object reading is strongly preferred in the case of
(286a), while (286b) is ambiguous. This suggests that, at least for a subset of
speakers, the adverbial reading of heel phrases with pre-determiner bare heel is
restricted.