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Plural nominal inflection may appear as -e or -en. The choice between the two depends in part on whether the antecedent of the missing noun is human or not.

In the plural, the nominal inflection -e may also appear as -en, as shown below:

De read-e binne moaier

the red.NE are nicer

The red ones are nicer

De read-e-n binne moaier

the red.NE.PL are nicer

The red ones are nicer

The adjective must bear plural inflection in -en if it is to refer to a human antecedent:

Dy read-e-n fuotbalje tsjin de grien-e-n

those red.NE.PL play.soccer against the grien.NE.PL

Those red ones play soccer against the green ones

*Dy read-e fuotbalje tsjin de grien-e

those red.NE play.soccer against the grien.NE

Those red ones play soccer against the green ones

In many cases, a plural referring to humans develops a lexicalised meaning:

De read-e-n

the red.NE.PL

The socialists

De fin-e-n

the fine.NE.PL

The reformed ones (branch of strict protestants)

It might be argued that -e and -en both involve nominalisation but that they differ with respect to the structural position at which it applies.

Nominalisation after adjectival number agreement:

Table 1

read	+ -e	+ -e	= reade
adjective	number agreement	nominalisation

Nominal number agreement after nominalisation:

Table 2

read	+ -e	+ -n	= readen
adjective	nominalisation	number agreement

so de reade the read one would involve an adjectival structure in which number agreement has been checked in the adjectival domain, so that there are no number features to check after nominalisation has applied. de readen the red ones, on the other hand, would involve nominalisation before agreement has been checked, so that the number features must be checked in the nominal domain, causing the nominal -n to appear. Similar phenomena are found with nominalisations of infinitival verbs, where nominalisation may apply after a large verbal structure has been built up. The non-human interpretation of the -e type could be taken as an indication in generative theory that a pronominal empty category licensed by adjectival number agreement does not allow the feature <human> to be recovered. The human interpretation of -en would likewise indicate that nominal number agreement can identify the feature <human>. It is possible that nominalisations are sensitive to the presence or absence of an antecedent in the linguistic context. If there is an antecedent, the empty nominal is in some sense anaphoric, especially if the antecedent is local, as in examples like the following:

Djoer gebak of goedkeap

expensive.NG pie or cheap

Expensive or cheap pastry

If there is no antecedent, or if it is not local enough, then the empty nominal is pronominal. The following example shows that zero inflection is hardly allowed in such cases:

*Hok iten wol se? Se wol sûn ha

which food wants she she wants healthy have

Which food does she want to have? She wants to have healthy food

Hokke bôle wol se? Se wol brune ha

which bread wants she she wants brown have

Which bread does she want to have? She wants to have brown bread

On the other hand, when the antecedent is very locally present, zero inflection is allowed, as shown below:

?Wolst lekker gebak of sûn?

want.2SG tasty pastry or healthy

Do you want to have tasty or healthy pastry?

Wolst reade beien of blauwe?

want.2SG red berries or blue

Do you want to have red or blue berries?

References

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About this article

Author(s): Eric Hoekstra, Joke Weening

Category: Frisian Syntax

Keywords: plural nominal inflectionhuman antecedent

Version: 1.0, December 2015

Version history:

version	editor(s)	date	remarks
1.0	Eric Hoekstra, Joke Weening	December 2015

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