Chapter 4 - Projection of noun Phrases III: Binominal Constructions

Summary

Introduction

This chapter will discuss nominal °projections that contain two nouns without it being obvious which of the two nouns is to be considered the head of the construction. Section 4.1 will discuss noun phrases of the type een paar boeken ‘a couple of books’, in which two nouns may occur adjacently, without an intervening preposition. Section 4.2 will discuss binominal constructions that do require the presence of a preposition, such as the N of a N construction een schat van een kind ‘a treasure of a child’, in which the preposition van obligatorily intervenes between the two noun phrases.

Binominal constructions without a preposition

This section discusses binominal constructions in which the two nouns may or must occur adjacently, that is, without a preposition connecting the two. Section 4.1.1 will discuss constructions like een paar boeken ‘a couple of books’, in which the first noun quantifies the latter. Section 4.1.2 continues with the apparently similar non-quantificational construction een soort boek ‘a kind of book’. Section 4.1.3 concludes with an overview of several other types of binominal constructions.

Quantificational constructions: een paar boeken ‘a couple of books’

This section discusses quantificational binominal constructions, that is, noun phrases in which the quantificational part of the noun phrase is expressed by means of another noun phrase. An example is given in (1a). The first noun phrase een paar ‘a couple’ expresses the quantity of the set of objects denoted by the second noun phrase voorbeelden ‘examples’. In other words, the string een paar is comparable to the cardinal numeral twee ‘two’ or the quantifier enkele ‘some’ in (1b). Since English features the preposition of in the renderings of examples like (1a), we will include this preposition in the glosses within square brackets for convenience.

• a. een paar voorbeelden

• a couple [of] examples

• ‘a couple of examples’

• b. twee/enkele voorbeelden

• two/some examples

The quantificational binominal construction in (1a), which will henceforth be referred to as QC, is remarkable in that the two noun phrases seem to be juxtaposed: unlike in English, no preposition, such as van ‘of’, is used.