Some notes on semi-lexical silence in Dutch noun phrases

Abstract

In this article, it is argued that the Dutch nominal expression Anna’s in the dialectal Dutch sentence We kwamen Anna’s tegen (We met Anna’s; ‘We met Anna’) is a hidden possessive noun phrase consisting of the proper name Anna and a silent grammatical noun PERSON in the sense of Kayne (2003). A similar analysis will be proposed for a temporal expression like Dinsdags (Tuesday-s; ‘(on) Tuesday’), with the difference that TIME is the silent noun. It is further argued that PERSON and TIME have the characteristics of what Emonds (1985) calls a grammatical (i.e. semi-lexical) noun.

Keywords

• nominal expression
• silent PERSON
• temporal expression
• silent TIME
• Dutch