Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

1064 Syntax of Dutch: nouns and noun phrases
A question like (28a), on the other hand, clearly does not presuppose the
referent of the noun phrase het boek to be a topic of discourse, and now the
preferred answer has the noun phrase following the adverb. The answer in (28b′)
with the nominal object preceding the adverb is only possible when the context
provides more information, e.g., when the participants in the discourse know that
Jan had the choice between reading a set of articles or reading a certain book; in that
case the nominal object preceding the adverb is likely to have contrastive accent.
(28) a. Wat heeft Jan gelezen? [question]
what has Jan read
b. Hij heeft waarschijnlijk het boek gelezen. [answer = (26a)]
b′. *? Hij heeft het boek waarschijnlijk gelezen. [answer = (26b)]
That the noun phrase het boek refers to “new” information is also clear from the fact
that replacing the noun phrase het boek by the personal pronoun het gives rise to an
infelicitous result: using the pronoun makes the answer uninformative since it
presupposes (contrary to fact) that the identity of the referent is already known to
the person asking the question.
Note that in (28) the activity of reading is still presupposed as a topic. This is
not the case in an example like (29), but in this case also the utterance with the
direct object following the adverb is strongly preferred. The answer with the
nominal object preceding the adverb is only possible when the context provides
more information, e.g., when the participants in the discourse know that Jan had the
choice between reading the book or following a crash course in linguistics. Note
that (29) shows that (26a) can be construed not only with the noun phrase het boek,
but also with the complete verb phrase het boek gelezen, as “new” information.
(29) a. Wat heeft Jan gedaan? [question]
what has Jan done
b. Hij heeft waarschijnlijk het boek gelezen. [answer = (26a)]
b′. *? Hij heeft het boek waarschijnlijk gelezen. [answer = (26b)]
To conclude we want to note that according to some research the informationalstructural
effect described above are tendencies not absolute rules.
II. Referential personal pronouns
Referential personal pronouns are typically used to refer to active topics of
discussion. Therefore, we correctly predict them to normally occur in a position
preceding the clause adverbs. This is clear from the fact that in an example like
(30a), the pronoun het must precede the adverb waarschijnlijk ‘probably’.
(30) Jan heeft waarschijnlijk gelezen.
Jan has it probably read
‘Jan has probably read it.’
The requirement that personal pronouns precede the clause adverbs can, however,
be overruled in contrastive contexts by assigning contrastive focus accent to the
pronoun. Given the fact that weak pronouns cannot be assigned accent, this is only
possible with strong pronouns. Some illustrative examples are given in (31); the