Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

Syntactic uses of noun phrases 1071
However, unlike modal adverbs, the negative quantifiers can precede the
frequency adverbs. The two examples in (47), which are the negative counterparts
of the primed examples in (42), respectively express that there is not a certain
person who has often been insulted by Jan and that there is not a certain thing that
has often been dropped by Jan.
(47) a. dat Jan niemand vaak heeft uitgescholden.
that Jan nobody often has prt.-insulted
b. dat Jan niets vaak laat vallen.
that Jan nothing often drops
The examples in (48) show that the negative quantifiers can also follow the adverbs
of frequency. In these examples the quantifier is in the scope of the adverb: (48a)
expresses that it is often the case that Jan does not want to see anyone and (48b) that
it is often the case that Jan does not want to eat anything.
(48) a. dat Jan vaak niemand wil zien.
that Jan often nobody wants see
‘that Jan often doesn’t want to see anyone.’
b. dat Jan vaak niets wil eten.
that Jan often nothing wants eat
‘that Jan often doesn’t want to eat anything.’
V. Interplay of indirect and direct objects
In the subsections above, we have seen that scrambling is related to several meaning
aspects of the clause: scrambling affects the information structure of the clause, it
affects the scope relations between quantifiers, and it may trigger a partitive or
generic reading of the moved nominal object. This section will show that there are
also syntactic constraints on this movement.
So far, we have mainly considered scrambling of the direct object in the clause,
but indirect objects behave in more or less the same way. This implies that in
double object constructions like (49), there are various word order possibilities. In
(49a), neither of the objects is scrambled, which leads to an interpretation according
to which both the indirect and the direct object are part of the focus of the clause. In
(49b), the indirect object is scrambled, but the direct object is not, which leads to an
interpretation according to which the indirect object is part of the presupposition,
and the direct object is part of the focus of the clause. In (49c), both objects are
scrambled, which leads to a reading according to which they are both part of the
presupposition. Given this, one would expect that it is also possible to scramble just
the direct object, that is, to move the direct object across the indirect object. As is
shown in (49d), however, this is not possible, from which we must conclude that the
indirect object blocks movement of the direct object. In order to express that it is
only the indirect object that belongs to the focus of the clause, one has to use (49a)
with sentence accent on the noun moeder (and not on the direct object, as would
normally be the case), or a construction with a periphrastic indirect object: dat Jan
het boek waarschijnlijk aan zijn moeder heeft gegeven ‘that Jan probably has given
the book to his mother’.