Taalportaal - the digital language portal

Dutch1
Frisian
Saterfrisian
Afrikaans

Show all

5.1.5.1.The semantics of geen'no'

quickinfo

Section 5.1.1.1 has shown that the core meaning of the negative article geen can easily be described by means of Figure 1 from Section 1.1.2, sub IIA, repeated below; its semantic contribution is normally to indicate that the intersection A ∩ B is empty. For instance, an example such as Er zwemmen geen ganzen in de vijver'There are no geese swimming in the pond' expresses that the intersection of the set of geese and the set of entities swimming in the pond is empty.

Figure 1: Set-theoretic representation of the subject-predicate relation

The discussion in the following subsections will show, however, that a simple description like this does not do full justice to the intricacies involved in the semantics of geen. Subsection I investigates the scope of the negation expressed by geen, followed in Subsection II by a discussion of geen in (non-)specific and generic noun phrases. Subsection III concludes by showing that in many cases geen may exhibit special semantic properties that may be totally unrelated to its core meaning.

I. Negative quantification and scope
II. Specificity and genericity
III. Special semantics

[+] I. Negative quantification and scope

This subsection discusses the scope of the negation inherently expressed by geen. Subsection A considers the most common situation in which geen expresses sentential negation, that is, takes scope over the complete clause in which it occurs. Subsection B discusses cases of constituent negation, in which case geen simply has scope over the noun phrase containing geen. Negation can also have scope over a subpart of the noun phrase containing geen, as will be shown in Subsection C. Subsection D will show that, unlike sentential niet, geen cannot take some other constituent of the clause in its scope.

[+] A. Scope outside the containing noun phrase

The core semantics of geen is that of negation, but although geen forms a syntactic constituent with the noun it precedes, the scope of negation is not necessarily confined to the noun phrase; in the majority of cases, the negation in geen takes sentential scope. This is particularly clear from the fact illustrated in (205) that geen can license negative polarity items like ooit'ever' and ook maar X'any X', which can only be used in the presence of a structurally superior negative element; note that this holds regardless of whether the geen phrase is an argument, as in (205a), or an adjunct, as in (205b). That it is really the presence of geen that licenses these negative polarity items is clear from the fact that geen does not alternate with een in (205), though this would be possible in the absence of the negative polarity items.

205

a.	Ik	zou	geen/*een auto	ooit	aan	ook maar iemand	cadeau	geven.
	I	would	no/a car	ever	to	anyone	present	give
	'No car would I ever give to anyone as a present.'

b.	Ik	zou	geen/*een moment	ook maar ergens	met hem	willen praten.
	I	would	no/a moment	anywhere	with him	want talk
	'At no time would I want to talk to him at any place.'

The examples in (206) and (207) also support the conclusion that geen can take sentential scope. First, observe from the contrast in (206a&b) that the sentential negative adverb niet cannot occur in clause-initial position; example (206b') shows that this is even excluded if niet is pied-piped by a topicalized participial verb phrase.

206

a.	Ik	heb	die brief	niet	geschreven.
	I	have	that letter	not	written
	'I didnʼt write that letter.'

Niet heb ik die brief geschreven.

b'.

[VP Niet geschreven] heb ik die brief.

Crucial for our argument is that the ungrammaticality of (206b') shows that phrases containing sentential negation cannot be topicalized (whereas this is possible in the case of constituent negation), as this allows us to conclude from the ungrammaticality of (207b) that the noun phrase geen brief expresses sentential negation. This argument is somewhat weakened, however, by the fact that the stronger form of negation geen enkele'not a single' is not subject to this restriction; we will discuss this in Subsection III.

207

a.	Ik	heb	geen brief	geschreven.
	I	have	no letter	written
	'I didnʼt write a letter.'

[NP Geen brief] heb ik geschreven.

The fact that the negation takes scope outside the noun phrase may also account for the fact that noun phrases preceded by geen is normally part of a plural noun phrase, which therefore also triggers plural agreement on the verb. This makes sense semantically given that the sentence in (208b) is simply the negation of the sentence in (208a) with a bare plural noun phrase triggering plural agreement: ¬(er lopen kinderen op straat).

208

a.	Er	lopen	kinderen	op straat.
	there	walk	children	in the street
	'There are children walking in the street.'

b.	Er lopen geen	kinderen	op straat.
	there walk no children	in	the.street
	'There are no children walking in the street.'

Note in passing that the examples in (209) show that geen can also occur in singular noun phrases, but in that case it is not just used as sentence negation. Examples (209b) is either used as the explicit denial of some earlier given proposition that a child is walking in street (“No, your wrong, there is no child walking in the street”), or it receives the somewhat special meaning “not a single”; see, respectively, Section 5.1.1.1 and Subsection III for more discussion.

209

a.	Er	loopt	een kind	op straat.
	there	walks	a child	in the street
	'There is a child walking in the street.'

b.	Er	loopt	geen kind	op straat.
	there	walks	no child in	the.street
	Proposition denial: 'No, It isnʼt true that a child is walking in the street'
	“Not a single” reading: 'There isnʼt a single child walking in the street.'

[+] B. Scope over the containing noun phrase: contrastive constructions

In contrastive contexts, geen may be used as a constituent negator. If the noun phrase is singular, geen usually alternates with niet een, as is illustrated in (210a), but if the noun phrase is plural the use of geen is the only option, as shown by the (b)-examples in (210).

210

a.	Er	is geen/niet een brief	gekomen	maar	een pakje.
	there	is no/not a letter	come	but	a parcel
	'There came not a letter but a parcel.'

b.		Er	zijn	geen brieven	gekomen	maar	een pakje.
		there	are	no letters	come	but	a parcel

b'.	*	Er	zijn	niet	Ø/een	brieven	gekomen	maar	een pakje.
		there	are	not	Ø/a	letters	come	but	a parcel

Topicalization of a geen phrase expressing constituent negation, as in (211a), is at least marginally possible, and seems to lead to a better result than topicalization of the negative adverb niet and its associate noun phrase.

211

a.	?	Geen brief	heb	ik	geschreven	maar	een memo.
		no letter	have	I	written	but	a memo
		'I wrote not a letter but a memo.'

b.	??	Niet een brief	heb	ik	geschreven	maar	een memo.
		not a letter	have	I	written	but	a memo

Using geen in contrastive contexts is excluded if the noun phrase functions as the complement of a PP. In fact, Haeseryn et al. (1997: 1657) noticed that geen-phrases occur as the complement of PPs in idiomatic constructions only; see Section 5.1.5.3 for more discussion.

212

a.	Dat	moet	je	niet	met een kwast	verven,	maar	met een roller.
	that	must	you	not	with a brush	paint	but	with a roller
	'You shouldnʼt paint that with a brush, but with a roller.'

b.	*	Dat	moet	je	met geen kwast	verven,	maar	met een roller.
		that	must	you	with no brush	paint	but	with a roller

The fact that geen and niet een alternate in sentences such as (210a) sharply contrasts with the lack of a similar alternation in examples like those given in(213). These examples show that, in contrast to geen, negative quantifiers/adverbs like niemand, niets, nergens and nooit cannot be used in contrastive contexts.

213

a.	Er	is niet iemand/*niemand	gekomen	maar	iedereen.
	there	is not somebody/nobody	come	but	everyone
	'Not somebody came but everybody.'

b.	Er	is niet iets/*niets	misgegaan	maar	alles.
	there	is not something/nothing	wrong.gone	but	everything
	'Not something but everything has gone wrong.'

c.	Er	is niet ergens/*nergens	corruptie	gepleegd	maar	overal.
	there	is not somewhere/nowhere	corruption	committed	but	everywhere
	'Not somewhere but everywhere there was corruption committed.'

d.	Er	is niet ooit/*nooit	corruptie	gepleegd	maar	altijd.
	there	is not once/never	corruption	committed	but	always
	'Not once but always there has been corruption.'

We want to emphasize that, outside of contrastive contexts such as (210), replacing geen with niet een is impossible in most cases. Thus, in a neutral sentence such as (214), it would be odd to use niet een instead of geen. This strongly suggests that geen cannot systematically be treated as a contraction of niet and the indefinite article een, as this would lead to the wrong expectation that the infelicity of (214) with niet een would be preserved if niet and een are fused into geen.

214

Er	is geen/#niet een brief	gekomen.
there	is no/not a letter	come
'There didnʼt come any letter.'

[+] C. Scope inside the containing noun phrase

The two previous subsections have shown that geen takes scope either outside the noun phrase, expressing sentential negation, or over the noun phrase that contains it, expressing constituent negation. This does not exhaust the possibilities; geen may also take scope over an attributive modifier within the noun phrase rather than over the noun phrase as a whole. We find an example of this type in (215a), which alternates with the semantically more transparent (215b). While (215b) is unambiguous and has only a reading where niet negates the adjective geringe, (215a) is ambiguous between that reading and a reading in which geen negates the entire noun phrase. The latter reading comes to the fore in the unambiguous paraphrase in (215c), in which niet precedes the indefinite article.

215

a.		Dat	is	geen geringe prestatie.
		that	is	no insignificant accomplishment

b.		Dat	is	een	niet geringe	prestatie.
		that	is	a	not insignificant	accomplishment

c.		Dat	is	niet een geringe prestatie.
		that	is	not an insignificant accomplishment

Note that, if one wanted to treat geen as the contraction of niet and the indefinite article een, one would have to assume that the order of niet and een is immaterial; both een niet in (215b) and niet een in (215c) should be able to “fuse” into geen.
Scopal ambiguity of a similar nature to that in (215a) is found in noun phrases of the type illustrated in (216a), whose ambiguity comes out in the paraphrases in (216b&c). Depending on the precise analysis of noun phrases of the type professor Van Riemsdijk (see 4.1.3 for a suggestion), either (216b) or (216c) instantiates a case in which geen takes scope over a subpart of the noun phrase it is contained by.

216

a.		Ik	ken	geen professor	Van Riemsdijk.
		I	know	no professor	Van Riemsdijk

b.		Ik	ken	[geen Van Riemsdijk]	die	professor is.
		I	know	no Van Riemsdijk	that	professor is

c.		Ik	ken	[geen professor]	die	Van Riemsdijk	heet.
		I	know	no professor	that	Van Riemsdijk	is.called

[+] D. No scope over a noun phrase external constituent

Although the previous subsection has shown that geen can be semantically associated with an element with which it does not form a constituent, such syntax/semantics mismatches are certainly not possible in just any context. In order to see this, first observe that the negative adverb niet in (217a) can be semantically construed with the adverbial phrase of manner goed'well', even though it does not form a constituent with it, which is clear from the fact that it must be stranded under topicalization. In (217b), by contrast, the negative article geen cannot be associated with the adverbial phrase; the sentence is marginally acceptable at best on a highly marked count noun reading of hitte.

217

a.		Ik	verdraag	hitte	niet (goed).
		I	bear	heat	not well

a'.

Niet goed verdraag ik hitte.

a''.

Goed verdraag ik hitte niet.

b.	*	Ik	verdraag	geen hitte	goed.
		I	bear	no heat	well

We can conclude from this that although the scope of geen is not confined to that of its noun phrase but can be extended to the clause or limited to a subpart of the noun phrase, geen is still tied up with its noun phrase in the sense that it cannot be semantically associated with other constituents of the clause.

[+] II. Specificity and genericity

Noun phrases containing geen pattern syntactically with the indefinite noun phrase. This is clear, for example, from the fact illustrated in (218a) that subjects containing geen must occur with the expletiveer; apart from example (218a'), which is acceptable on the special “not a single” reading that will be discussed in Subsection IIIA, all primed examples are degraded. Note that this is not due to the restriction on topicalization discussed in Subsection IA, given that subjects need not be topics; cf. Section 8.1.2, sub II.

218

a.	Er	is vandaag	geen brief	verstuurd.
	there	is today	no letter	sent
	'No letter was sent today.'

a'.

Geen brief is vandaag verstuurd.

b.	Er	spelen	vandaag	geen kinderen	op straat.
	there	play	today	no children	in the.street
	'There are no children playing in the street.'

b'.

Geen kinderen spelen vandaag op straat.

c.	Er	stond	gisteren	geen melk	in de ijskast.
	there	stands	yesterday	no milk	in the fridge
	'There was no milk in the fridge yesterday.'

c'.

Geen melk stond gisteren in de ijskast.

Another finidng in support of the indefiniteness of noun phrases containing geen is that they cannot be scrambled across certain adverbials: cf. Section 8.1.3, sub IC. This is illustrated by the unacceptability of scrambled counterparts of the primeless examples in (218), given in (219).

219

Er is geen brief vandaag verstuurd.

Er spelen geen kinderen vandaag op straat.

Er stond geen melk gisteren in de ijskast.

It seems that noun phrases with geen behave like indefinites even in generic contexts. In order to see this, consider the generic constructions in (220). Example (220a) shows that the generic plural noun phrase must be scrambled to a position in front of the clausal adverbwaarschijnlijk'probably'; cf. Section 8.1.3, sub IC. The noun phrase with geen in (220b), by contrast, cannot be placed to the left of waarschijnlijk.

220

a.	Hij	begrijpt	< formules>	waarschijnlijk <*formules>	niet.
	he	understands	formulae	probably	not
	'He probably doesnʼt understand formulae.'

b.	Hij	begrijpt	<*geen formules>	waarschijnlijk <geen formules>.
	he	understands	no formulae	probably
	'He probably doesnʼt understand formulae.'

To conclude this subsection, note that negative sentences with generic bare noun phrases sometimes feature intriguing semantic differences between the variants involving niet and their counterparts with geen. Example (221a), for example, allows two subtly different lexical meanings of accepteren'to accept'; the speaker either does not wish to receive any charity, or he is opposed to the existence of charity as a phenomenon. This latter reading is conspicuously more prominent in (221b).

221

a.		Ik	accepteer	geen liefdadigheid.
		I	accept	no charity

b.		Ik	accepteer	liefdadigheid	niet.
		I	accept	charity	not

[+] III. Special semantics

The previous subsections have discussed the core semantics of the negative article geen. This subsection addresses a number of more or less specialized meaning contributions of geen. We will start our discussion with the “not a single” reading, which stays close to the core semantics of negative quantification, but we will see that there are contexts in which the semantic contribution made by geen can diverge substantially from the core meaning; negative quantification is sometimes even entirely absent in some of geenʼs uses.

[+] A. “Not a single” reading

The negative article geen sometimes expresses a meaning that is stronger than simple negation and which we will refer to as the “not a single” reading. This reading requires that geen be followed by some stressed element, and can sometimes be enhanced by the addition of certain elements.

[+] 1. Geen + N

The “not a single” reading is particularly common for noun phrases in subject position, as in (222a); in non-expletive constructions, all subjects containing geen are of this type. Objects containing geen can receive this interpretation as well, and, for topicalized objects, this reading is in fact the only one available; cf. the discussion of (207).

222

a.	Geen schip	is 100% waterdicht.
	no ship	is 100% watertight
	'Not a single ship is 100 per cent watertight.'

b.	?	Geen schip	levert	men	100% waterdicht	af.
		no ship	delivers	one	100% watertight	prt.
		'Not a single ship is 100 per cent watertight at the point of delivery.'

Prosodically, the “not a single” reading of geen phrases is directly recognizable by the fact that there is main stress on the element immediately following geen. This is often the head noun, but if an attributive adjective is present, it is the adjective that receives greatest prominence.

223

[geen schip] is 100% waterdicht

[geen nieuw schip] is 100% waterdicht

Despite the fact that geen is part of the noun phrase, it can take scope outside the noun phrase, which is clear from the fact that geen can license negative polarity items like ooit; cf. Subsection IA. This is illustrated in (224a) for a subject and in (224b) for a topicalized object.

224

a.		Geen computerprogramma	is ooit	volledig	storingsvrij.
		no computer.program	is ever	completely	error.free

b.	?	Geen computerprogramma	heeft	dit bedrijf	ooit	storingsvrij	afgeleverd.
		no computer.program	has	this company	ever	error.free	delivered

[+] 2. Geen enkel(e) +N

The “not a single” reading of geen phrases is particularly common for subjects of comparative constructions.

225

a.		Geen schip	vaart	sneller	naar Engeland	dan	het onze.
		no ship	sails	faster	to England	than	ours

b.		Geen limonade	smaakt	lekkerder	dan	deze.
		no lemonade	tastes	nicer	than	this.one

A distinction within this class of constructions should be made, however, between comparatives like the ones in (225), where particular makes or brands of the same product type are compared, and those like (226), where two different types of product are compared. In contrast to the primeless examples, the primed examples in (226) sound distinctly odd.

226

a.		Een schip	vaart	sneller	dan een luchtballon.
		a ship	sails	faster	than a hot.air.balloon

a'.	??	Geen schip	vaart	sneller	dan een luchtballon.
		no ship	sails	faster	than a hot.air.balloon

b.		Limonade	smaakt	lekkerder	dan	versgeperst	sinaasappelsap.
		lemonade	tastes	nicer	than	freshly.squeezed	orange.juice

b'.	??	Geen limonade	smaakt	lekkerder	dan	versgeperst	sinaasappelsap.
		no lemonade	tastes	nicer	than	freshly.squeezed	orange.juice

The messages that the primed examples in (226) intend to express can be expressed if we add the modifier enkel(e), as in (227a&b). In accordance with the generalization that main stress must be assigned to the element following geen, main prosodic prominence is assigned to the modifier: geen enkel(e) N.

227

a.		Geen enkel schip	vaart	sneller	dan een luchtballon.
		no single ship	sails	faster	than a hot.air.balloon

b.		Geen enkele limonade	smaakt	lekkerder	dan versgeperst sinaasappelsap.
		no single lemonade	tastes	nicer	than freshly.squeezed orange.juice

The modifier enkele can also be used if reference is made to specific entities, as in (228). In this use, enkele alternates with the numeral één, which will be discussed in the following subsection.

228

a.	Hij heeft	geen enkele/één fout	gemaakt.
	he has	no single/one mistake	made
	'He didnʼt make a single mistake.'

b.	Ik heb	geen enkel/één boek	verkocht.
	I have	no single/one book	sold
	'I havenʼt sold a single book.'

[+] 3. Geen één + N

The “not a single” reading can also be emphasized by adding the element één, as in the primeless examples in (229). These examples alternate with the constructions with the negative adverb niet in the primed examples, which clearly involve the numeral één. Note that in both constructions, negation is construed with the numeral and that emphasis is put on the fact that the number of mistakes made/books sold is zero; as a result, main accent must also be assigned to the numeral in the primed examples.

229

a.	Hij	heeft	geen	één fout	gemaakt.
	he	has	no	one mistake	made
	'He didnʼt make a single mistake.'

a'.		Hij	heeft	niet	één fout	gemaakt.
		he	has	not	one mistake	made

b.	Ik	heb	geen	één boek	verkocht.
	I	have	no	one book	sold
	'I havenʼt sold a single book.'

b'.		Ik	heb	niet	één boek	verkocht.
		I	have	not	one book	sold

[+] 4. Geen ene + N

The “not a single” interpretation of geen is the one normally found in the numerous idiomatic constructions featuring geen phrases. The idiomatic noun phrases in (230) have the prosody characteristic of the “not a single” cases discussed above: main accent is assigned to the element following geen. The primed examples show that the idiomatic examples also pattern with the non-idiomatic ones in allowing topicalization.

230

a.	Hij	heeft	er	geen	jota/moer	van	begrepen.
	he	has	there	no	iota/nut	of	understood
	'He didnʼt understand a word of it.'

a'.

Geen jota/moer heeft hij ervan begrepen.

b.		Hij	heeft	geen	vinger/hand/poot	uitgestoken.
		he	has	no