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6.2.4.Degree quantifiers

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This section discusses degree quantifiers. Subsection I deals with their use as modifiers of the noun phrase. Subsection II is concerned with their independent use as arguments; degree quantifiers cannot be used as floating quantifiers.

I. Use as modifier
- A. High and low degree quantifiers
- B. Voldoende'sufficient', genoeg'enough' and zat'plenty'
II. Use as argument
- 1. High and low degree quantifiers
- 2. Other degree quantifiers

[+] I. Use as modifier

This subsection discusses the use of gradable quantifiers as modifiers of the noun phrase. We will start with a discussion of the high/low degree quantifiers veel/weinig'many/few', which indicate that the cardinality involved is higher/lower than some tacitly assumed norm. After that, we will discuss the degree quantifiers like voldoende'sufficient', genoeg'enough' and zat'plenty', which indicate that some tacitly assumed norm is met.

[+] A. High and low degree quantifiers

This subsection discusses some properties of the high and low degree quantifiers veel and weinig. It should be noted that these quantifiers are not only used as modifiers of the noun phrase, but can also be used as adverbial phrases. Since it would disturb our present discussion too much to also discuss this adverbial use here, we will return to it in a separate section; cf. Section 6.2.6.

[+] 1. Core semantics and the nature of the head noun

The semantic representations in (150) show that degree quantifiers like veel/weinig'many/few' are not only existential but express in addition that the cardinality of the intersection of the set denoted by the noun jongens and the VP op straat lopen'to walk in the streets' is higher/lower than a certain contextually determined norm. Note that this norm is not some absolute number, but may have some lower and upper bound. In the semantic representations in (150), n and n' refer to, respectively, the lower and the upper bound of this range.

150

a.		Er	lopen	weinig jongens	op straat.
		there	walk	few boys	in the.street

a'.

∃x (x:boy) (x walk in the street & 1 < |A ∩ B| < n)

b.		Er	lopen	veel jongens	op straat.
		there	walk	many boys	in the.street

b'.

∃x (x:boy) (x walk in the street & |A ∩ B| > n')

The degree quantifiers differ from the purely existential ones in that they modify not only (plural) count nouns like jongens'boys' in (150), but also non-count nouns like the substance noun water in (151). Of course, the notion of cardinality is not applicable in the case of non-count nouns; instead, the degree quantifier expresses that the quantity of the substance denoted by the noun is higher/lower than a certain contextually determined norm.

151

a.		Er	zit	veel water	in de fles.
		there	is	much water	in the bottle

b.		Er	zit	weinig water	in de fles.
		there	is	little water	in the bottle

[+] 2. Weak and strong use

In (150) and (151), the noun phrases modified by the degree quantifiers are the subject of an expletive construction, and are therefore clearly weak. It is, however, also possible to use such noun phrases strongly. Examples of strong noun phrases with degree quantifiers are given in (152). As with the existential quantifier enkele, the degree modifiers veel and weinig may either quantify over a pre-established set of entities in domain D, or be more “generic”, that is, quantify over all the relevant entities in the speakerʼs conception of reality. Under the first reading, an example such as (152) makes the specific claim that of a contextually determined set of books the cardinality of the set of books that contain printerʼs errors is higher than some tacitly assumed norm. Under the second, “generic” reading, the speaker makes the more general claim that a relatively large proportion of all existing books contain printerʼs errors. Example (152b) exhibits the same type of ambiguity.

152

a.		Veel boeken	bevatten	honderden	zetfouten.
		many books	contain	hundreds.of	printerʼs.errors

b.		Weinig boeken	bevatten	geen zetfouten.
		few books	contain	no printerʼs.errors

[+] 3. The adjectival nature of the quantifier

The quantifiers veel and weinig are adjectival in nature, which is clear from the facts that these quantifiers can be modified by degree modifiers such as erg'very' or te'too', and that they can even be the input for comparative and superlative formation (although the superlative form of weinig often gives rise to a marked result).

153

	veel	weinig
degree modification	erg/te veel boeken ‘very/too many books’	erg/te weinig boeken ‘very/too few books’
comparative formation	meer boeken ‘more books’	minder boeken ‘fewer books’
superlative formation	de meeste boeken ‘most books’	*?de minste boeken ‘fewest books’

It therefore does not really come as a surprise that quantificational veel can be found in the same position as the attributive adjectives, that is, in a position following the plural determiner de'the' in (154a). In this position veel must be inflected. If the definite determiner is absent veel can either be inflected or uninflected: vele/veel boeken. In order to account for these two possibilities, one may assume that the form depends on the absence or presence of the phonetically empty indefinite article ∅: the two forms can then be assumed to correspond to (154b) and (154c), respectively. The primed examples in (154) show that, although the inflected form of weinig is at least marginally possible, it leads to a severely degraded result if no overt article is present.

154

a.		de	vele/*veel	boeken
		the	many	books

a'.	?	de	weinige	boeken
		the	few	books

b.		∅ vele	boeken
		∅ many	books

b'.	*?	∅	weinige	boeken
		∅	few	books

c.		veel	boeken
		many	books

c'.		weinig	boeken
		few	books

The differences in inflection may be taken to indicate that the quantifier may occupy two different positions within the noun phrase: [DP D [QP Q [NP ... N ]]]. The uninflected quantifier may be taken to occupy the regular quantifier position Q, as in (155a), whereas the inflected quantifier may be taken to occupy the position of an attributive adjective within NP, as in (155b).

155

[DP D [QP veel [NP ... N ]]]

[DP D [QP Q [NP vele N ]]]

There is, however, one problem with such an assumption. As is shown by (156a), attributive adjectives may license N-ellipsis: the only requirement for this is that the context provides sufficient information to identify the content of the empty noun; cf. Section A5.4). N-ellipsis is, however, never possible with the high degree quantifier veel in (156b); this would, of course, be unexpected if it functions as an attributive adjective. We leave this point for future research, while noting that the superlative form of vele, meeste'most', can be used in this construction; cf (156c).

156

a.	Hij	heeft [DP	de blauwe e]	verkocht.
	he	has	the blue	sold
	'He has sold the blue one(s).'

b.	*	Hij	heeft [DP	de vele e]	verkocht.
		he	has	the many	sold

c.	Hij	heeft [DP	de meeste e]	verkocht.
	he	has	the most	sold
	'He has sold most of them.'

[+] B. Voldoende'sufficient', genoeg'enough' and zat'plenty'

Besides the high and low degree quantifiers discussed above, there are quantifiers such as voldoende'sufficient', genoeg'enough' and zat'plenty', which express that the cardinality of the intersection satisfies a certain contextually determined norm. The examples in (157) with voldoende'enough' show that degree modifiers of this type are able to modify both count and non-count nouns, and are normally used with a weak reading. Recall from the discussion of the semantic representations in (150) that n and n' in (157a') refer to, respectively, the lower and the upper bound of the range that falls within the contextually determined norm.

157

a.		Er	lopen	voldoende jongens	op straat.
		there	walk	enough boys	in the.street

a'.

∃x (x:boy) (x walk in the street & n ≤ |A ∩ B| ≤ n')

b.		Er	zit	voldoende water	in de fles.
		there	is	enough water	in the bottle

The degree quantifiers like genoeg and zat allow somewhat more freedom in their syntactic distribution than the other degree quantifiers; (158) shows that these quantifiers need not be placed in prenominal position, but can also occur postnominally. This is reminiscent of their behavior as modifiers of the adjectives illustrated in the primed examples, where they must follow the modified element.

158

a.		Hij	heeft	<genoeg>	boeken <genoeg>.
		he	has	enough	books

a'.		Hij	is	<*genoeg>	oud <genoeg>.
		he	is	enough	old

b.		Hij	heeft	<zat>	boeken <zat>.
		he	has	plenty	books

b'.		Dat is	<*zat>	moeilijk <zat>.
		that is	enough	difficult

The quantifiers genoeg and voldoende (but not zat) can also be negated, thus expressing sentential negation. Two examples are given in (159). The examples differ in that sentential negation is brought about by means of the negative adverb niet in the case of genoeg, whereas in the case of voldoende negation is brought about by means of affixation with on-. Since negation is morphologically expressed on the quantifier itself in the case of voldoende, one might suggest that the negative adverb niet forms a constituent with the quantifier genoeg in (159a), and in fact there is some evidence that this is indeed the case; as (159a') shows, the presence of niet excludes postnominal placement of the quantifier, which might be due to the fact that the quantifier is now complex.

159

a.	Hij	heeft	niet	genoeg	boeken.
	he	has	not	enough	books
	'He doesnʼt have enough books.'

a'.

Hij heeft niet boeken genoeg.

b.	Hij	heeft	onvoldoende	boeken.
	he	has	not.enough	books
	'He doesnʼt have enough books.'

Although there is some reason for assuming that sentential negation is realized as part of the quantifier in (159), this cannot be the case for all negated quantifiers. This is clear from the examples in (160) with the quantifier genoeg. Example (160a), which has basically the same meaning as (159a), shows that the noun phrase genoeg boeken can be topicalized while stranding the negative adverb niet, which suggests that sentential negation can also be expressed externally to the quantified noun phrase, which is confirmed by example (160b), in which sentential negation is realized on the time adverb nooit'never'. Example (160c) shows that sentential negation can also be expressed within the noun phrase by means of the negative article geen'no'; this case contrasts sharply with the one in (159a), however, in that the quantifier must be placed postnominally.

160

a.		Genoeg boeken	heeft	hij	niet.
		enough books	has	he	not

b.		Hij	heeft	nooit	genoeg boeken.
		he	has	never	enough books

c.		Hij	heeft	geen	<*genoeg>	boeken <genoeg>.
		he	has	no	enough	books

The examples in (159a&b) express that the cardinality of the set denoted by the noun does not satisfy the lower bound of the contextually determined norm. It is also possible to express that the cardinality exceeds the upper bound of this norm by using the complex phrase meer dan genoeg/voldoende'more than enough'; zat sounds somewhat marked (although we found a couple of cases on the internet). A more extensive discussion of examples such as (161a) can be found in Section 6.2.5.

161

a.	Hij	heeft	meer dan	genoeg/voldoende	boeken.
	he	has	more than	enough	books
	'He has more than enough books.'

b.	?	Hij	heeft	meer dan zat	boeken.
		he	has	more than plenty	books

[+] II. Use as argument

This subsection discusses the use of the degree quantifiers as independent arguments. As in Subsection I, we will discuss the high/low degree quantifiers veel and weinig, and the degree quantifiers voldoende, genoeg and zat, which indicate that some tacitly assumed norm is met, in separate subsections.

[+] 1. High and low degree quantifiers

This subsection makes a distinction between uninflected and inflected veel/weinig and show that these two instances differ in several respects. We start with a discussion of the uninflected forms. Like most existential quantifiers, the degree quantifiers veel and weinig are normally not used as independent arguments: example (162b) is acceptable due to the presence of quantitative er, but example (162c), in which the quantifier is truly independent, is unacceptable.

162

a.		Er	lopen	veel/weinig jongens	op straat.
		there	walk	many/few boys	in the.street

b.		Er	lopen	er	[veel/weinig [e]]	op straat.
		there	walk	er	many/few	in the.street

c.	*	Er	lopen	veel/weinig	op straat.
		there	walk	many/few	in the.street

Things are different, however, if we are dealing with non-count nouns. Since the quantitative er construction requires the empty noun to be plural, it does not really come as a surprise that example (163b) is excluded. However, in contrast to (162c), (163c) is acceptable. This example can be construed with a count noun interpretation, in which case veel/weinig can refer to a certain quantity of wine. Alternatively, veel/weinig may be construed as referring to a set of discrete entities of a miscellaneous sort (“loads of different things”).

163

a.		Er	zit	veel/weinig wijn	in de fles.
		there	is	much/little wine	in the bottle

b.	*	Er	zit	er	[veel/weinig [e]]	in de fles.
		there	is	er	much/little	in the bottle

c.		Er	zit	veel/weinig	in de fles.
		there	is	much/little	in the bottle

The judgments on the examples in (162) and (163) remain the same if the quantifiers veel and weinig are modified by degree modifiers like erg'very' or te'too', or if they are replaced with their comparative forms meer'more' and minder'less'. Replacement by the superlative forms (het) meest'(the) most' and (het) minst'(the) least' is of course excluded since this would make the noun phrases definite; definite noun phrases do not license quantitative er and are not possible in expletive constructions.
The examples in (164) show that veel/weinig can also be used as the predicate in a copular construction or as a measure phrase with verbs like kosten. In this case, veel and weinig can also be replaced by both the comparative and the superlative form; the latter can optionally take an -e ending.

164

a.	Dat	is	erg	veel/weinig.
	that	is	very	much/little
	'That is quite a lot/very little.'

b.	Dat	is meer/minder	dan	je	nodig	hebt.
	that	is more/less	than	you	need	have
	'That is more/less than you need.'

c.		Dat is het meest(e)/minst(e).
		that is the most/least

165

a.		Dat	kost/weegt	veel/weinig.
		that	costs/weighs	much/little

b.		Dit boek	kost	meer/minder	(dan dat boek).
		this book	costs	more/less	than that book

c.		Dat boek	kost	het meest(e)/minst(e).
		that book	cost	the most/least

Let us now continue with the inflected form. The examples in (154), repeated here as (166), show that while veel may also occur in an inflected form; inflected weinige gives rise to a marked/degraded result. If no overt article is present, veel can either be inflected or uninflected, and we assume that the form depends on the absence or presence of the phonetically empty indefinite article ∅.

166

a.		de	vele/*veel	boeken
		the	many	books

a'.	?	de	weinige	boeken
		the	few	books

b.		∅ vele	boeken
		∅ many	books

b'.	*?	∅	weinige	boeken
		∅	few	books

c.		veel	boeken
		many	books

c'.		weinig	boeken
		few	books

The (a)-examples in (167) show that quantified non-count nouns never occur in noun phrases containing a definite article. If we conclude from this that it cannot co-occur with the indefinite article either, we correctly predict that non-count nouns are always preceded by the uninflected forms.

167

a.	*	de	vele/veel	melk
		the	much	milk

a'.	*	de	weinige	melk
		the	little	milk

b.	*	∅ vele	melk
		∅ much	milk

b'.	*	∅	weinige	melk
		∅	little	milk

c.		veel	melk
		much	milk

c'.		weinig	melk
		little	milk

It is not really surprising that the quantitative er construction in (168b) is acceptable to about the same degree as the examples in (168a). What is surprising, is that the independent uses of these quantifiers in (168c) also give rise to a more or less acceptable result; this shows that the inflected forms differ markedly from their uninflected counterparts in (162c), which cannot be used as independent arguments. Furthermore, the fact that both the independent use of velen and that of weinigen are judged grammatical suggests that there is in fact no direct relation between these independent uses of the quantifiers in (168c) and their use as modifiers of the noun phrases in (168a&b). Recall that the orthographic rules require a (mute) -n on the independently used quantifiers in (168c) if they are +human.

168

a.		Er	lopen	vele/*?weinige	mensen	op straat.
		there	walk	many/few	people	in the.street

b.		Er	lopen	er	[vele/*?weinige [e]]	op straat.
		there	walk	er	many/few	in the.street

c.		Er	lopen	velen/slechts weinigen	op straat.
		there	walk	many/only few	in the.street

The fact that the independently used quantifiers velen and weinigen in (168c) function as the subject of an expletive construction shows that they can be used as weak noun phrases, but they can also be used as strong noun phrases, as is illustrated by (169a). The remaining examples in (169) show that such independently used quantifiers can be used in all regular argument positions, that is, as a direct or indirect object or as the complement of a preposition.

169

a.		Velen/Slechts weinigen	hebben	geklaagd	over de kou.	subject
		many/only few	have	complained	about the cold

b.	Ik	heb	daar	velen/slechts weinigen	ontmoet.	direct object
	I	have	there	many/only few	met
	'Iʼve met many/only few people there.'

c.	Ik	heb	velen/slechts weinigen	een kaart	gestuurd.	indirect object
	I	have	many/only few	a postcard	sent
	'Iʼve sent many/only few people a postcard.'

d.	Ik	heb	aan velen/slechts weinigen	een kaart	gestuurd.	complement of P
	I	have	to many/only few people	a postcard	sent
	'Iʼve given an unsatisfactory mark to many/only few people.'

[+] 2. Other degree quantifiers

The degree modifiers which express that the cardinality of the intersection satisfies a contextually determined norm pattern more or less like uninflected veel'many' and weinig'few'. If genoeg, voldoende and zat trigger plural agreement on the finite verb, they must be accompanied by quantitative er.

170

a.		Er	lopen	genoeg/voldoende/zat jongens	op straat.
		there	walk	enough/enough/plenty boys	in the.street

b.		Er	lopen	er	[genoeg/voldoende/zat [e]]	op straat.
		there	walk	er	enough/enough/plenty	in the.street

c.	*	Er	lopen	genoeg/voldoende/zat	op straat.
		there	walk	enough/enough/plenty	in the.street

However, if these elements trigger singular agreement, quantitative er cannot be realized. Just like veel/weinig in (163c), the quantifiers in (171c) can be construed with a non-count noun interpretation, in which case they refer to a certain quantity of wine, or they can be used to refer to a set of discrete entities of a miscellaneous sort.

171

a.		Er	zit	genoeg/voldoende/zat	wijn	in de fles.
		there	is	enough/enough/plenty	wine	in the bottle

b.	*	Er	zit	er	[genoeg/voldoende/zat [e]]	in de fles.
		there	is	er	enough/enough/plenty	in the bottle

c.		Er	zit	genoeg/voldoende/zat	in de fles.
		there	is	enough/enough/plenty	in the bottle

References:

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About this article

Author(s): Hans Broekhuis

Category: Dutch Syntax

Publication date: 22 November 2023

Keywords: AgreementAttributiveDegree QuantifierExpletive ConstructionMeasure PhraseN(P)-EllipsisNegationQuantifierQuantitative erSentential NegationSubject-verb Agreement

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