Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

656 Syntax of Dutch: nouns and noun phrases
III. The syntactic head of the construction
The examples in (232) show that the interrogative pronoun wat ‘what’ differs from
wie ‘who’ in that it obligatorily triggers singular agreement on the finite verb.
(232) a. Wat ligt/*liggen er op de grond?
what lies/lie there on the floor
b. Wie ligt/liggen er op de grond?
who lies/lie there on the floor
Consequently, if wat functions as the syntactic head of the construction, we would
wrongly expect that a wat voor phrase would trigger singular agreement on the
finite verb as well. The data in (233) therefore suggest that N2 is not only the
semantic but also the syntactic head of the construction.
(233) a. Wat voor een man loopt daar?
what for a man walks there
‘What kind of man is walking there?’
b. Wat voor een mannen lopen/*loopt daar?
what for a men walk/walks there
‘What kind of men are walking there?’
IV. The status of the string wat voor een
The conclusion that N2 is both the semantic and the syntactic head of the wat voor
phrase has given rise to the assumption that the string wat voor een is a complex
modifier. Apart from the fact that the interrogative pronoun wat cannot be replaced
by any other pronoun, there are two arguments that support this assumption: the
element een does not behave like a regular indefinite article, and the element voor
lacks the case assigning property of prepositions. A problem for this assumption is,
however, that wat can be extracted from the string wat voor een, which would be
unexpected in view of the °Lexical Integrity Constraint: when we are indeed dealing
with a lexicalized form, extraction of wat should be blocked.
A. The article een
Support for the assumption that the wat voor phrase is a complex modifier comes
from the fact that een does not act like a regular indefinite article, which is clear
from the fact, illustrated in (234a), that it may precede both singular and plural N2s,
whereas indefinite articles preceding a plural noun normally have a null form. As a
matter of fact, it may be the case that the null form may also appear in the wat voor
construction (alternatively, of course, one may assume that no article is present at
all), but the data in (234b) then show that this null form is not restricted to plural
noun phrases, as would normally be the case.
(234) a. Wat voor een hond/honden heb jij?
what for a dog/dogs have you
‘What kind of dog/dogs do you have?’
b. Wat voor hond/honden heb jij?
what for dog/dogs have you
‘What kind of dog/dogs do you have?’