Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

Syntactic uses of noun phrases 1059
cannot be used at all, which is due to the fact that it is always pronounced in its
weak form (cf. Section 5.2.1.1.5); instead, the neuter demonstrative dit ‘this’ or dat
‘that’ is normally used.
(17) Clause-initial object pronouns
SINGULAR PLURAL
1 ST PERSON Mij/*Me heeft Peter niet gezien.
‘Peter didn’t see ME.’
2 ND PERSON Jou/*Je heeft Peter niet gezien.
‘Peter didn’t see YOU.’
3 MASCULINE Hem/*’m heeft Peter niet gezien.
‘Peter didn’t see HIM.’
FEMININE Haar/*’r heeft Peter niet gezien.
‘Peter didn’t see HER.’
RD
PERSON
NEUTER Dit/*’t heeft Peter niet gezien.
‘Peter didn’t see IT/THIS.’
Ons heeft Peter niet gezien.
‘Peter didn’t see US.’
Jullie/*Je heeft Peter niet gezien.
‘Peter didn’t see YOU.’
Hun/*Ze heeft Peter niet gezien.
‘Peter didn’t see THEM.’
The discussion above has shown that subject and object pronouns differ in that
the latter must be stressed in clause-initial position, whereas the former need not be.
This difference between subject and object pronouns has been used to argue that,
despite appearances, clause-initial subjects are not topicalized, but rather occupy the
regular subject position, which may perhaps also account for the fact that the
expletive er, which is generally assumed to occupy the subject position, can also be
used clause-initially; cf. 8.1.4. This conclusion, if correct, has various theoretical
ramifications in that it presupposes that in subject-initial main clauses, the finite
verb does not occupy the C(omplementizer)-position but is placed in the lower
I(nflection)-position, which in turn implies that the I-position is to the immediate
right of the subject position: [IP subject I + Vfin [VP ... tVfin (V)]]. This breaks
radically with the more traditional view on the syntax of Dutch, according to which
the I-position is in the right periphery of the clause, following the base-positions of
the verb(s). Since this is not the place to elaborate on these theoretical
consequences, we refer the reader to Zwart (1997) and Broekhuis (2000/2008) for
relevant discussion.
II. Information structure
As was mentioned in the introduction to this section, the notion of topicalization
suggests that this movement plays a role in determining the information structure of
the clause by moving the discourse topic into the first position of the clause. A
potential problem for such a claim is that clause-initial subjects need not be topics.
It seems, however, that this problem can be set aside, as we saw in the previous
subsection that there are reasons to assume that these subjects are actually not
topicalized but occupy the regular subject position. Therefore, it seems indeed
possible to maintain that topicalization applies for information-structural reasons.
However, we will see below that the preposed phrase need not be a discourse topic,
but may also be presented as a contrasted or emphatic °focus; see, e.g., Neeleman &
Van de Koot (2008).