Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

. *De dokter is een mooi beroep.
the physician is a nice profession
c. *Een dokter is een mooi beroep.
a physician is a nice profession
Syntactic uses of noun phrases 1097
C. Pluralization
The examples in (86) have shown that nominal predicates and the noun phrases they
are predicated of normally agree in number. The examples in (118b&c) show that
this also holds for the indefinite and definite predicative noun phrases in (104b&c).
Example (118a), however, shows that the bare noun phrase in (104a) does not
exhibit plural morphology when its SUBJECT is plural.
(118) a. Zij zijn dokter. [bare NP]
they are physicians
‘They are physicians (by profession).’
b. Zij zijn de doktoren. [definite article]
they are the physicians
‘They are the physicians.’
c. Zij zijn ∅ doktoren. [indefinite article]
they are physicians
‘They behave like/have features typical of real physicians.’
One problem, however, is that we cannot be absolutely sure whether number
agreement is impossible with bare nominal predicates. This is due to the fact that
the plural indefinite article is phonetically empty, so that the only difference
between (118a) and (118c) is the rising intonation contour in the former.
Fortunately, the earlier findings in (116) and (117) can be used as additional support
for the conclusion that the bare noun phrase cannot be plural. As we have seen in
(116), the bare noun phrase dokter, but not the indefinite noun phrase een dokter,
can be modified by the PP van beroep. As is shown in (119a), the plural noun
phrase doktoren cannot be modified by this PP either, so we may conclude that the
plural noun phrase contains the indefinite zero article ∅. Similarly, we have seen
that the bare noun phrase dokter, but not the indefinite noun phrase een dokter, can
be used as the SUBJECT of a nominal predicate headed by beroep ‘profession’. Since
the plural noun phrase doktoren cannot be used in (119b), we must again conclude
that the plural noun phrase contains the article ∅. From, this we can safely conclude
that the bare noun phrase dokter does not have a plural counterpart.
(119) a. Zij zijn dokter/ ?? doktoren van beroep.
they are physician(s) by profession
b. *Doktoren is/zijn een mooi beroep.
physicians is/are a nice profession
D. Modifiers
The examples in (120a) show that the bare noun phrase dokter cannot be modified
by the adjective echt ‘real/true’, whereas this is possible in the other two examples.
In (120b), echte is used to distinguish the genuine doctor from the quacks
surrounding him. The semantic import of echte in (120c) depends on whether accent