Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

Binominal constructions 627
(142) a. Jan heeft een bord van die heerlijke spinazie opgegeten.
Jan has a plate of that delicious spinach prt.-eaten
b. Jan heeft [een bord [e] [PP van die heerlijke spinazie]] opgegeten.
Partitive: ‘Jan ate a plate of that delicious spinach (over there).’
b′. Jan heeft [een bord [NP van die heerlijke spinazie]] opgegeten.
Pseudo-partitive: ‘Jan ate a plate of that delicious spinach (you know).’
Despite these similarities there are various ways to distinguish the two
constructions. We have already seen that we can appeal to the meaning of the
complete construction: a partitive construction denotes a subset of a presupposed
superset, whereas a pseudo-partitive construction denotes set of entities of a kind
familiar to the addressee. In addition, the following subsections will show that we
can appeal to a number of more syntactic properties of the two constructions.
I. The preposition van
The analyses of the partitive and pseudo-partitive noun phrases given above imply
that the status of van differs in the two constructions: in the former it is a regular
preposition, whereas in the latter it is a spurious one. To substantiate this claim, we
will investigate in more detail constructions in which the spurious van-PP is used as
an argument of a verb or a preposition, and show that it behaves as a noun phrase.
A. Selection
The spurious van-PP can substitute for nominal arguments of verbs, which is shown
in the examples in (143), involving the verbs zitten ‘to sit/to be’ and bakken ‘to
bake’. The fact that the spurious van-PP functions as the subject in (143) is
especially telling: genuine PPs normally cannot have this syntactic function.
(143) a. Er zitten nog (van die) vieze koekjes in de trommel.
there sit still of those awful cookies in the tin
‘There are still some of those awful cookies in the tin.’
b. Hij bakt vaak (van die) vieze koekjes.
he bakes often of those awful cookies
‘He often bakes (such) awful cookies.’
Example (144) shows that the spurious van-PP can also substitute for the nominal
complement of a preposition. Again, this is revealing given that prepositions
normally do not take PP-complements.
(144) Zij loopt altijd op (van die) afgetrapte schoenen.
she walks always on of those worn.out shoes
‘She always walks on worn-out shoes.’
The fact that the spurious van-PP has the distribution of a regular noun phrase is
consistent with the analysis of the pseudo-partitive construction proposed in the
previous subsection, where the van-phrase is analyzed as a nominal projection.
B. Extraposition
PP-complements of verbs differ from nominal complements in that they can
undergo °PP-over-V. An example is given in (145a). As is shown in (145b),