Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

Binominal constructions 657
It is not entirely clear whether een can also precede N2 when the latter is an
existential pronoun (which would be normally excluded: *een iets/iemand). Our
intuitions are that this is impossible when N2 is the [-HUMAN] pronoun iets
‘something’, but at least marginally possible when it is the [+HUMAN] pronoun
iemand ‘someone’. This intuition seems to be confirmed by a Google search
performed in June 2008: whereas the search on the string [wat voor een iets]
resulted in only 3 wat voor constructions, the search on [wat voor een iemand]
yielded 17 results. It can further be noted that in most of these cases the wat voor
phrase was used as the predicate in copular constructions like wat voor een iets is
dat? ‘what kind of thing is that?’ and wat voor een iemand ben jij? ‘what kind of
person are you?’
(235) a. Wat voor ( *? een) iets zou jij willen hebben?
what for a something would you want have
‘What kind of thing would you like to have?’
b. Wat voor ( ? een) iemand zou jij willen uitnodigen?
what for a someone would you want invite
‘What kind of person would you like to invite?’
Another argument in favor of the idea that een is a spurious article is that it
cannot be replaced by any other determiner or any other element that may occur in
the left periphery of the noun phrase; replacement of een by, e.g., a definite article
or a numeral leads to an ungrammatical result.
(236) Wat voor *de/ *? drie honden heb jij?
what for the/three dogs have you
It must be noted, however, that there is one apparent counterexample to the claim
that N2 cannot be preceded by a numeral, viz., constructions involving an empty N2
licensed by °quantitative er, as in (237). Een, which is normally pronounced with a
schwa, must be pronounced in this construction like the numeral één ‘one’, /e:n/.
However, since één cannot be replace by a numeral like drie, it seems plausible that
the occurrence of één in (237) is due to the fact that the empty noun must be
preceded by some element carrying stress. Note that examples like (237a) also
occur without er: we found various instances of Wat voor een wil je (hebben)? on
the internet.
(237) a. [Wat voor één/*drie [e]] wil jij er hebben?
what for a/three want you ER have
‘What kind would you like to have?’
b. Wat wil jij er [voor één/*drie e] hebben?
Some speakers also allow examples like (237a) without een being present, as shown
in (238a). The split pattern in (238b), on the other hand, is consistently judged
unacceptable, which might be related to the fact that the phonetic string in (238b)
has a more prominent reading in which er ... voor functions as a pronominal PP:
Wat wil jij ervoor hebben? ‘What do you want to have for it?’. Examples like
(238a) also occur without er: we found various instances of Wat voor wil je
(hebben)? on the internet.