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5.1.2.3.Special cases

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Singular count nouns are normally not used in argument position without an article: see Section 8.2.2 for the use of bare singular count nouns used as predicates. There are, however, a number of cases in which bare singular count noun is acceptable.

I. N+V collocations
II. Locational P + N collocations
III. Coordination
IV. Conclusion

[+] I. N+V collocations

The use of bare count nouns is possible in certain N+V collocations like piano spelen'to play the piano' and paard rijden'to ride on horseback'. Collocations like these behave like particle verbs such as weggooien'to throw away'. First the examples in (116) show that both the bare count noun and the particle must be adjacent to the verb; scrambling leads to severe ungrammaticality.

116

a.	Jan zal	morgen	piano spelen
	Jan will	tomorrow	piano play
	'Jan will play the piano tomorrow.'

a'.

Jan zal piano morgen spelen.

b.	Jan wil	morgen	paard	rijden.
	Jan wants	tomorrow	horse	drive
	'Jan wants to ride on horseback tomorrow.'

b'.

Jan wil paard morgen rijden.

c.	Jan zal	dat boek	morgen	weggooien.
	Jan will	that book	tomorrow	throw.away
	'Jan will throw away that book tomorrow.'

c'.

Jan zal dat boek weg morgen gooien.

The N+C collocation yet cannot be considered a single word given that verb-second can split the noun and the verb, just like it can split the verb and the particle.

117

a.	Jan speelt	morgen	piano.
	Jan plays	tomorrow	piano
	'Jan is playing the piano tomorrow.'

b.	Jan rijdt	morgen	paard.
	Jan drive	tomorrow	horse
	'Jan is riding on horseback tomorrow.'

c.	Jan gooit	het boek	morgen	weg.
	Jan throws	the book	tomorrow	away
	'Jan throws the book away tomorrow.'

Topicalization of the verb, on the other hand, must pied-pipe the bare count noun or the particle, as is illustrated in (118).

118

a.		Piano spelen	zal	Jan morgen.
		piano play	will	Jan tomorrow

a'.

Spelen zal Jan morgen piano.

b.		Paard	rijden	mag	Jan morgen.
		horse	drive	is.allowed	Jan tomorrow

b'.

Rijden mag Jan morgen paard.

c.		Weg	gooien	zal	Jan dat boek	morgen.
		away	throw	will	Jan that book	tomorrow

c'.

Gooien zal Jan dat boek morgen weg.

The examples above show that we are dealing with more or less idiomatic expressions, which are very common for all kinds of recurring activities (such as certain domestic duties). It seems that the formation of these collocations is only possible if there is no simple verb expressing the activity. For example, whereas the collocation auto rijden'to drive a car' is possible the collocation fiets rijden is apparently blocked by the existence of the verb fietsen'to cycle'. We will return to the N+V collocations discussed above in Section 5.1.5.2, sub I, where we will show that there are reasons for assuming that they are structurally ambiguous.

[+] II. Locational P + N collocations

There are also more or less fixed P + N collocations; two examples are given in (118). The expressions are more or less idiomatic in the sense that they are not entirely built up compositionally; as is shown by the English translations, the PP does not merely refer to a location. For a more extensive discussion of prepositions that take bare noun phrases as their complement, see Section P2.1.

119

a.	Jan zit	hier	op school.
	Jan sits	here	on school
	'Jan is enrolled as a student in this school.'

b.	Jan zit hier	al jaren	op kantoor.
	Jan sit here	already for years	on office
	'Jan is already employed at this office for years.'

[+] III. Coordination

The examples in (120a&b) show that whereas a bare count noun like mes'knife' cannot be used in argument position, the coordinated phrase mes en vork can. Again, it seems that we are dealing with more or less idiomatic constructions, as will be clear from the fact illustrated by (120c) that the relative position of the two conjuncts cannot be changed. Example (120d), finally, shows that there are extra-linguistic constraints on the conjuncts: the unacceptability of mes and lepel is clearly related to the Western convention that one uses a knife and a fork at dinner, not a knife and a spoon.

120

a.	*	Jan gebruikte	mes	bij het avondeten
		Jan used	knife	with the dinner
		'Jan used knife at dinner.'

b.		Jan gebruikte	mes en vork	bij het avondeten
		Jan used	knife and fork	with the dinner

c.	*	Jan gebruikte	vork en mes	bij het avondeten
		Jan used	fork and knife	with the dinner

d.	*	Jan gebruikte	mes en lepel	bij het avondeten
		Jan used	knife and spoon	with the dinner

There are many examples of coordinated bare singular count nouns. In (121) some typical examples are given involving kinship nouns: we may add vader en moeder'father and mother' although we may be dealing with vocatives in this case. All of these cases seem idiomatic in the sense that the order of the conjuncts is rigid and sometimes the meanings are not compositional: man en vrouw refers to a couple, and moeder en kind typically refers to a mother and her newborn baby.

121

a.		man en vrouw
		man and woman
		'husband and wife'

a'.

vrouw en man

b.		broer en zuster
		brother and sister

b'.

zuster en broer

c.		moeder en kind
		mother and child
		'mother and her baby'

c'.

kind en moeder

Other examples involve nouns referring to objects that are typically used together. A typical example is mes and vork'knife and fork' from example (120), but there are many more: a small and random set is given in (122).

122

a.		draad	en	naald
		thread	and	needle

c.		pen en	papier
		pen and	paper

b.		huis	en	tuin
		house	and	garden

d.		pijl	en	boog
		arrow	and	bow

Another clearly idiomatic example is dag en nacht'day and night' in (123), which is rather special in that it is used, not as an argument, but as an adverbial phrase meaning something like “continuously for a very long time”.

123

		Hij huilde	dag en nacht.
		he cried	day and night

Note that the conjunction need not be en'and' but can also be noch'neither ... nor'. It is clear from the meaning that we are dealing with fixed expressions in (124). We have not been able to find examples with the disjunctive coordinator of'or', which do occur in English: cf. It is feast or famine these days for a working fisherman (Carole Boster, p.c.).

124

a.	Hij	heeft	kind noch kraai.
	he	has	child nor crow
	'He has no family at all.'

b.	Hij	geeft	taal	noch	teken.
	he	gives	language	nor	sign
	'There is no sign of life from him.'

Using coordinated bare count nouns in prepositional adverbial phrases is very common, as shown by the examples in (125). Note that all these constructions often have a “high degree” reading; see Postma (1995) for discussion.

125

a.	Het schip	verging	met	man en	muis.
	the ship	was.wrecked	with	man and	mouse
	'The ship was lost with everyone on it.'

b.	Hij	verzette zich	met man en macht.
	he	resisted refl	with man and power
	'He resisted with all his might.'

c.	Hij ging	van deur	tot deur.
	he went	from door	to door
	'He went to all places.'

Again the disjunctive coordinator of'or' is normally not found, although it should be noted that the fixed collocation op leven en dood in, e.g., op leven en dood vechten'to fight a life-and-death battle' is sometimes realized with of; a Google (1/13/2015) resulted in about 4000 hits for the string [op leven of dood] but more than 100.000 hits for [op leven en dood] (numbers include all cases).
Finally, note that none of the examples above involve conjuncts containing a modifier. This is not accidental: adding a modifier to any of the bare nouns above will give rise to an ungrammatical result.

[+] IV. Conclusion

The previous subsections have shown that bare singular count noun may occasionally occur in argument position, but that this always triggers some special meaning aspect; see De Swart & Zwarts (2001) for more discussion. We therefore conclude that we are normally dealing with more or less idiomatic constructions; see Zwarts (2008) for a potential counterexample to this claim.

References:

Postma, Gertjan1995Zero semantics. A study of the syntactic conception of quantificational meaningUniversity of LeidenThesis
Swart, Henriëtte de2001Weak readings of indefinites: type shifting and closureThe Linguistic Review1869-96
Zwarts, Joost2008Some remarks on bare coordination

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About this article

Author(s): Hans Broekhuis, Marcel den Dikken

Category: Dutch Syntax

Keywords: Bare NounCoordinationKinship NounN(P) + V collocationsNounParticle VerbTopicalizationVP-TopicalizationVerbVerb-Second

Version: 1.0, December 2015

Version history:

version	editor(s)	date	remarks
1.0	Hans Broekhuis, Marcel den Dikken	December 2015

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