Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

(219) a. die schat van *(een) Marie
that treasure of a Marie
b. dat serpent van *(een) Marie
that snake of a Marie
Binominal constructions 651
The same can perhaps be shown on the basis of substance nouns, which normally
cannot be preceded by an indefinite article either: een pracht van een wijn/kaas (lit.:
a beauty of a wine/cheese). However, a caveat is in order, since speakers tend to no
longer construe the N2s in such cases as substance nouns. Instead, the noun wijn
will, for instance, be interpreted as referring to a certain kind of N2, and the N2 kaas
as referring to an actual object.
There are also proper nouns that can be preceded by a definite, but not by an
indefinite article, for example de/*een Westerkerk or het/*een paleis op de Dam.
Again, these proper nouns must be preceded by een in the N van een N construction;
note that the definite article, which is normally present, cannot be used in these
binominal constructions.
(220) a. die pracht van een Westerkerk
that beauty of a Westerkerk
b. dat monster van een Paleis op de Dam
that monster of a Paleis op de Dam
The facts in (219) and (220) have led to the suggestion that een is actually not part
of the noun phrase headed by N2, but is present to perform some other function; see
Bennis et al. (1998) for discussion.
VII. The preposition van
Since the preposition van cannot be replaced by any other preposition, it has been
suggested that it is a spurious preposition. Alexiadou et al. (2007: 246) suggest that
this can further be motivated by the fact that, unlike true van-PPs, the sequence van
+ noun phrase cannot undergo pronominalization. Another fact that may point in
this direction is that this sequence cannot be moved independently of the sequence
preceding van.
(221) a. Jan is een boom van een kerel.
Jan is a tree of a fellow
b. *Jan is een boom ervan.
Jan is a tree there-of
Bennis et al. (1998) also adopt the claim that van is a spurious preposition and they
have suggested that its syntactic function is to signal the predicative relation
between N1 and N2; they claim that, in a sense, van is comparable to the copula zijn
‘to be’ in a copular construction.
VIII. Syntactic distribution
The N van een N construction can be used in all regular NP-positions, that is, both
as an argument and as a nominal predicate. In (222), we give examples in which the
construction functions as a subject, a direct object, an indirect object, the
complement of a preposition, and a predicate in a copular construction.