Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

(36) a. dat Jan waarschijnlijk een bestseller leest.
that Jan probably a bestseller reads
a′. dat Jan een bestseller waarschijnlijk leest.
b. dat Jan meestal een bestseller leest.
that Jan generally a bestseller reads
b′. dat Jan een bestseller meestal leest.
c. dat Jan meestal bestsellers leest.
that Jan generally bestsellers reads
c′. dat Jan bestsellers meestal leest.
Syntactic uses of noun phrases 1067
Scrambling of indefinite nominal objects is also possible, and is perhaps even
preferred, when the noun phrase contains an attributive adjective like volgende
‘next’ or nieuwe ‘new’ or an ordinal numeral, as in the examples in (37). The
indefinite noun phrases in these examples seem comparable to English noun phrases
containing free choice any: Jan will turn down any invitation that comes next; the
Security Council will condemn any attack that comes next. Since we are not aware
of any discussion of data like these in the literature, we will leave these for future
research; see also example (64) for comparable examples with the negative adverb
niet ‘not’.
(37) a. Jan zal een volgende/nieuwe uitnodiging waarschijnlijk afslaan.
Jan will a next/new invitation probably turn.down
‘Jan will probably turn down any invitation that comes next/new invitation.’
a′. ? Jan zal waarschijnlijk een volgende/nieuwe uitnodiging afslaan.
b. De Veiligheidsraad zal een nieuwe/tweede aanval waarschijnlijk veroordelen.
the Security Council will a new/second attack probably condemn
‘The Security Council will probably condemn a subsequent/second attack.’
b. ? De Veiligheidsraad zal waarschijnlijk een nieuwe/tweede aanval veroordelen.
IV. Quantified noun phrases and quantifiers
This subsection discusses scrambling of quantified nominal objects and quantifiers,
and its semantic effects. Existentially, universally and negatively quantified noun
phrases are discussed in separate sections. Before we start we want to note that the
felicitousness of a certain word order is often determined not only by the quantifier
in question, but also by the meaning of the predicate; certain orders may be
infelicitous because they give rise to an improbable reading with some predicates.
In the following we will abstract away from these effects of the choice of the
predicate but simply select predicates that give rise to felicitous results.
A. Existentially quantified noun phrases
The placement of an existentially quantified nominal object with respect to a modal
adverb like waarschijnlijk ‘probably’ seems to depend on the nature of the
quantifier. When the quantifier normally triggers a nonspecific reading of the noun
phrase, as does enkele ‘some’ in (38a&a′), the nominal object is preferably placed
after the adverb. When the quantifier allows both a nonspecific and a specific
reading, as does veel ‘many’ in (38b&b′), the nominal object can readily occur on
either side of the adverb. When the quantifier normally triggers a specific reading,