Taalportaal - the digital language portal

Dutch1
Frisian
Saterfrisian
Afrikaans

Show all

7.1.3.Distribution of noun phrases modified by al and alle

quickinfo

This section discusses the syntactic distribution of noun phrases containing pre-determiners bare al, alle + Num and simplex alle described in Section 7.1.2. We will consider whether they occur as arguments (subject, direct object, indirect object, complement of a preposition), as predicates and/or as adjuncts. In addition, we will discuss the distribution of noun phrases containing the forms allebei and beide'both'.

I. Distribution as arguments
II. Distribution as predicates
III. Distribution as adjuncts

[+] I. Distribution as arguments

Noun phrases containing pre-determiner bare al, alle + Num/allebei, or simplex alle/beide all occur in argument positions, and there are no restrictions on the argument functions these phrases may have. Table 8 summarizes the distribution of the relevant noun phrases.

Table 8: Distribution of al and its alternants as arguments

	bare al	alle + Num	allebei	alle	beide
subject (78a)	+	+	+	+	+
derived subject (78a')	+	+	+	+	+
direct object (78b)	+	+	+	+	+
indirect object (78c)	+	+	+	+	+
object of preposition (78d)	+	+	+	+	+

The examples in (78) illustrate the contexts in which the forms listed in the table can be inserted; note that, contrary to our usual convention, the parentheses around the article do not indicate that de is optional: it is obligatory with bare al, alle + Num and allebei, but it cannot be realized with alle and beide. In the (a)-examples in (78), we are dealing with subjects; in the first example the bracketed phrase is an underlying subject, and in the second (passive) example it is a derived one. Examples (78b&c) illustrate the use of this phrase as a direct and an indirect object, respectively, and (78d) illustrates its use as the object of a preposition.

a.		[___	(de) beurspromovendi]	werkten	hard aan hun proefschrift.
		[___	the bursary.students	worked	hard on their dissertation

a'.		[___	(de) beurspromovendi]	werden	door de commissie	ondervraagd.
		[___	the bursary.students	were	by the committee	interrogated

b.		De commissie	ondervroeg [___	(de) beurspromovendi].
		the committee	interrogated	the bursary.students

c.		De commissie	stelde [___	(de) beurspromovendi]	een vraag.
		the committee	posed	the bursary.students	a question

d.		De commissie	luisterde	aandachtig	naar [___	(de) beurspromovendi].
		the committee	listened	attentively	to	the bursary.students

[+] II. Distribution as predicates

The distribution of al and its alternants is rather restricted within predicative noun phrases. It seems that nominal predicates containing a form of al are more or less restricted to identificational copular constructions, with the singular demonstrative dit/dat'this/that' or the singular neuter personal pronoun het'it' as subject. Note that replacing the demonstrative in the primeless examples in (79) with the personal pronoun zij'they', which is expected to be acceptable since it agrees in number with the predicative noun phrase, gives rise to systematically more degraded results. This is shown by the primed examples. Example (79b) shows that, even with the demonstrative pronoun as the subject of the copular construction, it is difficult to construct pragmatically felicitous examples for allebei. This is presumably unrelated to syntax, given that noun phrases quantified by means of the otherwise identical alle + Num quantifier can be used as predicates, and that replacing alle drie with alle twee also gives rise to a marked result.

a.		Dat	zijn	al	de beurspromovendi van onze vakgroep.
		that	are	all	the bursary.students of our department

a'.	??	Zij	zijn	al	de beurspromovendi van onze vakgroep.
		they	are	all	the bursary.students of our department

b.		Dat	zijn	alle	drie/??allebei	de beurspromovendi van onze vakgroep.
		that	are	all	three/all-both	the bursary.students of our department

b'.	*?	Zij	zijn	alle	drie/allebei	de beurspromovendi van onze vakgroep.
		they	are	all	three/all-both	the bursary.students of our department

c.		Dat	zijn	alle/*beide	beurspromovendi van onze vakgroep.
		that	are	all/both	bursary.students of our department

c'.		Zij	zijn	?alle/*beide	beurspromovendi van onze vakgroep.
		they	are	all/both	bursary.students of our department

Two remarks are needed regarding (79c&c') with beide. First, these examples show that beide is impossible as a quantifier of a predicate nominal. Instead, de beide must be used in contexts of this type: Dat/??Zij zijn de beide beurspromovendi van onze vakgroep. This shows that, in contrast to what is the case in the templates in (78), beide and de beide do not freely alternate if they are construed as quantifiers of a predicative noun phrase. Second, example (79c) with beide should not be confused with (80), in which beiden is construed as a floating quantifier of the pronominal subject.

Dat/Zij	zijn	beiden	beurspromovendi van onze vakgroep.
they	are	both	bursary.students of our department
'They are both bursary students of our department.'

The two examples differ in intonation pattern: whereas beide beurspromovendi in (79c) forms a single intonation phrase, beiden in (80) is followed by a brief intonation break. Further, since the associate of the floating quantifier is +human, the rules of orthography demand that an -n be added to beide in (80); see the introduction to Section 7.1.4.

[+] III. Distribution as adjuncts

The distribution of al phrases in adjunct positions is restricted to phrases that function as temporal modifiers. In the case of bare al, the adverbial phrases in question can be headed by the singular noun tijd'time' (81a) or by the plural nouns shown in (81b). The determiner used is preferably the distal demonstrative die; although the proximate demonstrative deze and the definite article de also occur, they sound marked, although the definite article is pretty common if the noun phrase is modified by, e.g., a relative clause, as in al de keren dat hij hier was'all the times that he was here'; see Section 3.3.2.2, sub V, for the use of singular relative pronoun dat in this example instead of the plural relative pronoun die.

a.	Hij	zat	al die/??deze/??de	tijd	niks	te doen.
	he	sat	all that/this/the	time	nothing	to do
	'He was doing nothing all that time.'

b.	Hij	zat	al die/??deze/??de	keren/uren/dagen/jaren	niks	te doen.
	he	sat	all those/these/the	times/hours/days/years	nothing	to do
	'He was doing nothing during all those occasions/hours/days/years.'

For the other forms only the plural nouns are possible, if any are possible at all. The acceptability of adjunct construal varies substantially from case to case; simplex alle in (82b) is fine with all plural nouns listed, but other alternants pick out only one or two. In (82a), the determiner used is normally also the distal demonstrative die, although proper contextualization may render alle twee/allebei dekeren felicitous.

a.		Hij	zat	alle twee/allebei	die keren/?uren/?dagen/?jaren	niks	te doen.
		he	sat	all two/all-both	those times/hours/days/years	nothing	to do

b.		Hij	zat	alle keren/uren/dagen/jaren	niks	te doen.
		he	sat	all times/hours/days/years	nothing	to do

c.		Hij	zat	beide keren/?uren/dagen/??jaren	niks	te doen.
		he	sat	both times/hours/days/years	nothing	to do

The examples in (83) show that, even though alle does combine with singular tijd in on the high degree reading “lots of time” (cf. Section 7.1.1, sub III), it cannot be construed with tijd as a temporal adjunct. To express what the English prose translation of (83b) expresses, Dutch resorts to al die tijd in (81b). Alternatively, the constructions heel de/die tijd or de/die hele tijd'the whole time' can be used; these are discussed in Section 7.2.

a.	Ik	heb	alle tijd.
	I	have	all time
	'I have lots of time.'

b.	*	Ik	heb	alle tijd	niks	zitten	doen.
		I	have	all time	nothing	sit	do
		'I was doing nothing all [of] the time.'

References:

⇑ Back to top

About this article

Author(s): Hans Broekhuis, Marcel den Dikken

Category: Dutch Syntax

Keywords: ArgumentDemonstrative PronounDistal Demonstrative PronounFloating QuantifierNoun PhrasePronounSyntactic uses of the Noun Phrase

Version: 1.0, December 2015

Version history:

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

report errorprintcite

Jump to:

introduction
references
related articles