The quantificational pronouns ietssomething, nietsnothing and watsomething in (36) are the most common nominal elements in the partitive genitive construction.

Section 29.2.1 has already shown that the partitive genitive construction can be used in the same syntactic environments as the quantificational pronoun in isolation. Partitive genitive constructions also behave like pronouns in other ways. First, as shown in (37), the pronouns iets, niets, and wat are never preceded by a determiner (although het niets is acceptable if niets is interpreted as a noun meaning “nothingness”).

Second, modification of the quantificational pronoun by an adjective or a degree modifier is excluded, regardless of whether the pronoun is followed by the partitive genitive, as is illustrated in (38). Note, however, that more or less fixed phrases like een aangenaam ietsa pleasant thing can occur; cf. the discussion of (17).

Although the [+animate] pronouns iemandsomeone and niemandnobody belong to the same class as the pronouns in (36), the (a)-examples in (39) show that they are still excluded in the partitive genitive construction. We refer the reader to Section 29.4 for a brief discussion of the constructions with anders in the (b)-examples, which can easily be confused with the partitive genitive construction.

Quantifier nouns like (hele)boellot, massamass and hooplot in (40) constitute the second class of nominal expressions that can occur in the partitive genitive construction, although speakers tend to have somewhat varying judgments about the acceptability of these cases. Just like the [-animate] existential quantificational pronouns, these nominal expressions can also be used without the partitive genitive. Note that the quantifier noun is always preceded by the indefinite article eena.

The quantifier nouns in (40) can also be combined with plural or substance nouns to form quantificational binominal constructions like those in (41); cf. Section N17.1.1.

It seems that quantifier nouns can only occur in the partitive genitive construction if they can be combined with a substance noun in a binominal construction: quantifier nouns that co-occur with plural nouns only give rise to unacceptable results in the partitive genitive construction. This is shown in (42).

Binominal constructions also occur with measure nouns such as kilokilo, container nouns such as like pakpack, part nouns such as stukpiece and collective nouns such as bergpile, but these never occur in the partitive genitive construction, not even if they can be combined with a substance noun. Of course, examples like een kilo/pak/berg lekkersa kilo/pack/pile of sweets are acceptable but this is due to the fact that lekkers also occurs as a nominalized form with the specialized meaning “sweets”.

The quantifier nouns heleboel, massa and hoop in (40) must be preceded by the indefinite article een. Using the plural form of the noun (if it has one) makes the construction much less acceptable. The same thing holds when the quantifier noun is modified by an adjective. This can be seen by comparing the examples in (44) to example (40c). The lesser acceptability may be due to the fact that the nouns in these cases are more referential; een grote hoop boeken no longer indicates an unbounded quantity of books, but is interpreted literally as “a big pile of books”.

Quantifiers like veelmany/much, meermore, weinigfew/little, minderless, genoeg/voldoendeenough, hoeveelhow many/much, and evenveelas many/much as are generally used as modifiers of nouns, but (45) shows that many of them can also be used without the noun, in which case they have the same distribution as the corresponding full noun phrases.

These quantifiers can also act as the nominal part of the partitive genitive construction. Some examples are given in (46).

The primed cases in (46) show that these quantifiers can be combined with both plural and substance nouns. The examples in (47) show that quantifiers like alleall, elk(e)/iederevery and cardinal numerals such as vierfour, which cannot co-occur with substance nouns, cannot be used in the partitive genitive construction either.

Since we have seen a similar distinction in the previous subsection, the examples in (46) and (47) suggest that the notion of non-countability seems to be a crucial factor in delimiting the set of nominal elements that can occur in the partitive genitive construction. The universal quantifier alle may be a potential problem for this claim, however: although it cannot be combined with neuter substance nouns like water in (47a'), most speakers do accept the combination of alle and a non-neuter substance noun like wijnwine; cf. N19.2.2, sub IG. Note also that elk(e)each can be used with nouns like broodbread or wijnwine, which are often used as substance nouns, but in this case the quantifier triggers an interpretation as a common noun; such cases can therefore be set aside as irrelevant.

An alternative way to delimit the relevant set is to appeal to the fact that while the quantifiers in (46) can be used without a noun or partitive genitive (cf. (45)), the quantifiers and numerals in (47) cannot. However, the examples in (48) pose a problem for such an approach, because the more or less archaic forms allerlei/allerhandeall kinds of and velerleimany may enter the partitive genitive construction, although they cannot be used without a following partitive genitive or noun; cf. Kester (1996:306). For completeness’ sake, note that some speakers judge all examples in (48) to be marked.

Example (49a) shows that the quantifier cannot be preceded by a determiner, and the two (b)-examples show that modification of the quantifier by a degree modifier is possible in the partitive genitive construction, provided that this is also possible if the quantifier modifies a noun.

The sequence wat voorwhat sort of, which is discussed in detail in Section N17.2.2, is often combined with a noun that is either bare or preceded by the (spurious) indefinite article een. Because it is interrogative, the wat-voor phrase is usually moved into the clause-initial position, but it can also be split. In the latter case the interrogative element wat occupies the clause-initial position, while the remnant voor (een) N occupies a clause-internal position.

The string wat voor also occurs as the nominal part of the partitive genitive construction, and again both the unsplit and the split patterns occur. It is not possible to modify the wat-voor phrase with an adjective or an adverb.

The use of the spurious article een seems to give rise to a somewhat marked result, although it is easy to find examples of this type on the internet. The table in (52) shows the number of hits resulting from a Google search (March 2020).

search strings	without	with
Wat voor (een) interessants	185	3
Wat voor (een) leuks	179	80
Wat voor (een) moois	159	154

The constructions in (51) also seem to alternate with the partitive genitive wat voor constructions containing the quantificational pronoun ietssomething. It is not clear to us whether (51) should be analyzed as the counterpart of (53) with deleted iets. An argument that runs counter to this suggestion is that Table (54) shows that the constructions with iets never contain the spurious article een.

search strings	without	with
Wat voor (een) iets interessants	4	0
Wat voor (een) iets leuks	55	0
Wat voor (een) iets moois	91	0

The wat voor constructions can also be used as exclamatives; as shown in (55a&b), both the unsplit and the split patterns occur. For completeness’ sake, observe that the finite verb of the exclamative clause must be in clause-final position; the primed examples in (55) are excluded.

Finally, note that the wat-voor phrases in (50) can contain a substance noun, but become unacceptable when the noun is omitted. This supports the suggestion from the previous subsection that the notion of non-countability is the crucial factor in delimiting the set of nominal-like elements that enter into the partitive genitive construction, not whether that element can be used independently of the following adjective.

This section has shown that the four classes of elements in Table 1 can be used as the nominal part of partitive genitive constructions; some examples are given in the second column. Recall that it is only a subset of the quantifier nouns and quantifiers that can appear in the partitive genitive construction: those that cannot be followed by a substance noun yield an unacceptable result. The third column indicates whether the nominal part can be used independently as a subject or a direct object or whether it obligatorily enters a binominal or partitive genitive construction. The fourth and fifth columns indicate whether the nominal part can be followed by a noun, and, if so, whether it can be a substance noun in that case. The last column indicates whether the nominal part can be modified by a degree modifier.

	examples	indep	noun	subst	degree
[-animate] quantificational pronouns	iets ‘something’ wat ‘something’ niets ‘nothing’	+ + +	— — —	N/A N/A N/A	— — —
quantifier nouns (subset)	een (hele)boel ‘a lot’ een hoop ‘a lot’ een massa ‘a mass’	+ + +	+ + +	+ + +	— — —
quantifiers (subset)	veel ‘much’ weinig ‘little’ allerlei ‘all kinds of’	+ + —	+ + +/?	+ + +/?	+ + —
wat voor	wat voor (een) ‘what kind of’	—	+	+	—

Table 1 does not show that modification of the nominal part by an attributive adjective is never possible.