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    7.2.2.2.1.Adjectival heel
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    Adjectival heel'whole' occurs in singular and plural count noun phrases, as illustrated in Table 13. This form of post-determiner heel often alternates with adjectives denoting completeness/totality; examples include compleet'completely', totaal'totally', and geheel'completely'. The adjective geheel (which is derived from heel by means of the prefix ge-) is discussed in Section 7.2.2.3.

    Table 13: Adjectival heel in noun phrases headed by a count noun
      singular plural
      [-neuter] [+neuter]  
    definite
    articles    		 de hele taart
    the whole cake    		 het hele glas
    the whole glass    		 de hele taarten/glazen
    the whole cakes/glasses
    demonstrative
    pronouns    		 die hele taart
    that whole cake    		 dat hele glas
    that whole glass    		 die hele taarten/glazen
    those whole cakes/glasses
      deze hele taart
    this whole cake    		 dit hele glas
    this whole glass    		 deze hele taarten/glazen
    these whole cakes/glasses
    possessive
    pronouns    		 mijn hele taart
    my whole cake    		 mijn hele glas
    my whole glass    		 (?)mijn hele taarten/glazen
    my whole cakes/glasses

    Although adjectival heel can readily be combined with plural count nouns, it is difficult to find pragmatically felicitous examples with pluralia tantum; example (249a) may work reasonably well on an interpretation of heel as gaaf'unscathed/intact/unaffected'; the status of (249a) is the same as that of the relative clause paraphrase in (249b), in which heel is a predicate.

    249
    a. # de hele hersenen
      the  whole  brains
      'the whole/intact brain'
    b. # de herseneni [diei (nog) heel zijn]
      the  brains  that   still  whole  are
      'the brain that is (still) intact'

    For formal plurals that denote a conventionally fixed unit, no context can be found in which adjectival heel can plausibly be used as a modifier meaning “whole, intact”; Section 7.2.2.2.2 will show that heel receives a quantificational reading in this context. The lexical semantics of adjectival heel also makes it impossible for it to be combined with non-count nouns.
          Since adjectival heel is a regular adjective, its distribution in the noun phrase is identical to that of other adjectives of the same semantic type (that is, the non-gradable adjectives); cf. Section A5. In what follows the discussion of post-determiner inflectible heel will focus on its quantificational uses.

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      About this article
      Author(s): Hans Broekhuis, Marcel den Dikken
      Category: Dutch Syntax
      Publication date: 22 November 2023
      Keywords: Demonstrative PronounPluralia tantumPossessive PronounPronoun
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