Verbleekte partitieven: descriptieve, syntactische en semantische aspecten

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe Dutch faded partitives and analyze the syntax and semantics of the construction. It will be suggested that no fundamental syntactic or semantic differences exist between faded and ordinary partitives, apart from the fact that embedded NP’s in faded partitives denote kinds. Yet, some other observations about the differences between the two types of partitive constructions have been made in the literature. It has been claimed that unmodified faded partitives are ill-formed under a generic reading. This paper argues against this claim and concludes that faded partitives appear infrequently in preverbal subject position, but if they appear in this position, the generic reading becomes the most natural interpretation. The analysis is based on a review of the existing literature and on the results of corpus studies into the syntax and semantics of faded partitives.