In the discussion of the external syntactic distribution of heel phrases, a distinction must be made between the various semantic readings of heel . It turns out that heel phrases normally readily appear in all argument positions, although we will show that a special proviso is needed in the case of the negative polarity reading. Heel phrases, with the notable exception of negative polar heel ones, can normally also be used as predicates or adjuncts. The possibilities are given in the table in (276); the numbers refer to the examples to be discussed in the following subsections. Negative polarity readings of pre- and post-determiner heel will be treated on a par in what follows, although the former is clearly preferred in this function, hence the distinction made in the final column in the table.

The examples in (282) show that all heel phrases can be used as nominal predicates except for those involving heel used as a negative polarity item contributing condescension.

The ungrammaticality of (282e) is entirely due to the presence of heel/hele ; without it, the sentence is perfect. Since the problem with this example is clearly not due to the lack of a c-commanding licenser (which was the case with the subject cases in 278a&b), we have to find some other reason for the unacceptability of (282e). One option that comes to mind is that this is due to the fact that predicates normally provide new information, so the heel -phrase does not satisfy the D-linking requirement imposed on the negative polarity reading, which was discussed in Section 7.2.1.2.2, sub III.

Both pre-determiner bare heel and post-determiner inflectible heel show up in noun phrases that function as adverbial phrases. In (283a&b), heel and hele contribute their core quantificational semantics of exhaustivity/totality. In (283c), by contrast, the semantics of hele is that of (very) high degree; she was crying for a very long time. This difference between (283a&b) and (283c) is confirmed by the different intonation patterns they exhibit; cf. the discussion in Section 7.2.1.2.2.

The unacceptable intonation pattern of (283c) is not categorically impossible for hele dagen , however. The minimal pair in (284a&b) is illustrative in this connection. While in the (a)-example the adjunct hele dagen specifies the extent of the entire duration of her working on her dissertation, in the (b)-example hele dagen says that she worked on her dissertation for an unspecified number of whole days (that is, it specifies the amount of time per day that she worked on her dissertation). In its stressed form hele is adjectival, as is clear from the fact that hele dagen alternates with halve dagen , as is shown in (284c).

      In (283a&b), the adjunct reading of the heel phrases is available for both pre- and post-determiner heel . In these examples, the syntax of the overall construction makes adjunct construal the only possibility for the heel phrases. In examples of the type in (285), however, the noun phrase following the verb in principle has two construal possibilities; it can be interpreted either as the object of the verb, in which case the verb fluiten means “to play the flute”, or as an adjunct, in which case fluiten means “whistle”; see Section 8.3 for more discussion. It may be the case that adjunct construal is not equally felicitous in the two examples in (285); some (but not all) speakers find that the object reading is strongly preferred in the case of (285a), while (285b) is ambiguous. This suggests that, at least for a subset of speakers, the adverbial reading of heel phrases with pre-determiner bare heel is restricted.

      The discussion above has focused on the construal of heel phrases as temporal adverbial phrases. This is indeed by far the most frequent way in which heel phrases are used as adjuncts; the examples in (286) show that even heel phrases headed by a noun that can otherwise be used as a measure phrase for distance can receive a temporal interpretation.

      So far we have seen that in adjuncts heel can receive a core quantificational interpretation, a degree interpretation and a reading which is presumably to be classified as adjectival (the “full-time” interpretation of hele dagen illustrated in (284b&c)). What is impossible is for heel to be interpreted as a negative polarity item contributing condescension; while example (287) is certainly grammatical, both with and without heel/hele , the negative polarity interpretation is not available; the reading assigned to heel/hele is the core interpretation of exhaustivity/totality.