Chapter 7 - Pre-Determiners

Summary

Introduction

This chapter will focus on the pre-determiners al ‘all’ and heel ‘all/whole’ as shown in the primeless examples of (1). They will be discussed in relation to their “inflected” counterparts alle and hele in the nearly equivalent constructions shown in the primed examples.

• a. Al de boeken zijn verkocht. all the books have.been sold ‘All books are sold.’ a′. Alle boeken zijn verkocht. all books have.been sold ‘All books are sold.’

• b. Ze kletsen heel de dag they chatter whole the day‘They chatter all day.’ b′. Ze kletsen de hele dag. they chatter the whole day ‘They chatter all day.’

Before discussing al and heel in detail, we will give a very brief indication of some similarities and differences between these two pre-determiners. The two (and their alternants in the primed examples of (1)) have in common that, in a somewhat extended sense, they act as universal quantifiers. One property of universal quantifiers is that they can be modified by approximative modifiers like bijna ‘nearly’ and vrijwel ‘virtually’. This is illustrated in (2) for the universal quantifier alles ‘everything’, and the negative existential quantifier niets, which can be also be represented as a universal quantifier followed by negation; cf. the equivalence rule ￢∃x ϕ∀x ￢ϕ.

• a. Jan heeft bijna/vrijwel alles verkocht. Jan has nearly/virtually everything sold

• b. Jan heeft bijna/vrijwel niets verkocht. Jan has nearly/virtually nothing sold

The primeless examples in (3) show that the pre-determiners al and heel have the same modification possibilities, and in the primed examples we give similar examples for inflected alle and hele. There are some subtle meaning differences between the two sets of examples. Example (3a), for example, refers to a contextually determined set of books, whereas (3a′) may also refer to the set of books in the speaker's conception of the universe, that is, to all existing books. Example (3b) refers to the parts that make up a house (living, bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, attic, etc.), whereas (3b′) may also refer to the house as a unit, e.g., the house as seen from the exterior.