Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

Syntactic uses of noun phrases 1103
show that the antecedent can also be generic, although it seems that the indefinite
generic noun phrase in (138c) is somewhat marked.
(138) a. De walvis, dat is een zoogdier.
the whale that is a mammal
b. Walvissen, dat zijn zoogdieren.
whales that are mammals
c. ? Een walvis, dat is een zoogdier.
a whale that is a mammal
The markedness of (138c) may be related to the fact that examples in which the
antecedent of the neuter pronoun is quantified are also marked; whereas the generic
example in (139a) is fully acceptable, the corresponding quantificational
construction in (139b) is degraded.
(139) a. Katten, dat zijn leuke huisdieren.
Cats that are nice pets
b. ?? Sommige/alle katten, dat zijn leuke huisdieren.
some/all cats that are nice pets
8.3. Adverbial use of the noun phrase
Section 8.3.1 will show that, under certain conditions, noun phrases can be used as
adverbial phrases of time. Other adverbial uses are not readily possible, although
Section 8.3.2 will briefly discuss some examples where the adverbially used noun
phrase is non-temporal.
8.3.1. Temporal phrases
This section is divided into four parts. Subsection I focuses on adverbially used
definite noun phrases, and also discusses certain more general properties of
adverbially used noun phrases. Subsection II and III continue with a discussion of
indefinite and quantified noun phrases, respectively. Subsection IV will specifically
consider noun phrases whose nominal head is a name for a conventional unit of
time, like a day of the week, a month of the year, etc.
I. Definite noun phrases
In order for a noun phrase to be usable as an adverbial phrase of time, it must be
possible to construe the nominal head as denoting a certain time interval or a certain
point on the time axis. This is, of course, typically the case with nouns denoting
certain conventional time spans, like dag ‘day’, ochtend ‘morning’, maand ‘month’,
etc. However, nouns denoting certain durative events, like wedstrijd ‘match’ or
lezing ‘lecture’, can also be used in this way. In the subsections below, we will start
by discussing examples in which the adverbially used noun phrase refers to a certain
time interval, followed by a discussion of examples in which it refers to a specific
point in time. This section is concluded with a discussion of some differences
between noun phrases used as time adjuncts and noun phrases used as arguments.