The adjectives in the primed and primeless examples in (230) differ in an important respect: adjectives of the former group can be modified not only by means of intensifiers, as in (231), but also by means of nominal measure phrases; combining the adjectives of the latter group with these measure phrases normally leads to an infelicitous result. This is demonstrated in (235).

In the acceptable examples in (235), the adjectives have lost their antonymous meaning aspect in the sense that they no longer stand in opposition to the adjectives in the primed examples in (230). The use of the adjective oud'old' in (236a), for example, does not imply that the kitten is old; in fact, the kitten is quite young (namely two days), which can be emphasized by using an evaluative particle such as pas'only' or maar'only'. Therefore, it is clear that the adjective oud'old' no longer stands in opposition to the adjective jong'young'. Something similar holds for the adjective lang'long' in (236b).

Given that measure adjectives like oud and lang do not exhibit an antonymous meaning aspect if they are modified by a measure phrase, they should be considered as neutral forms in such cases. Adjectives such as jong and kort, on the other hand, normally retain their full meaning, which accounts for the fact that examples such as (237) can only be used in jest.

      If measure adjectives are questioned, it is generally the neutral form that shows up, as in (232) and (238). The non-neutral form can only be used if the context provides specific clues that the entity in question is in fact young/short and that the speaker wants to know to what degree this is the case.

      The semantics of the examples above is rather transparent: the nominal measure phrase indicates the precise position of the subject of the adjective on the implied scale. For instance, example (236a) indicates that d = ||2 days||. However, we cannot represent this example as in (239a) as this would wrongly imply that the kitten is old. A more appropriate representation would therefore be the one in (239b), in which the use of boldface indicates that we are dealing with the neuter form of a measure adjective.

      The nominal measure phrase and the adjective form a constituent, which is clear from the fact that they can be placed in clause-initial position together; cf. the constituency test. This is demonstrated by means of the primeless examples in (240), which correspond to the examples in (236). The singly-primed examples show that topicalization of the nominal modifier in isolation gives rise to a slightly marked result, and requires an intonation contour with heavy accent on the numeral. Stranding the nominal measure phrase, as in the doubly-primed examples, is excluded.

      Occasionally, the predicative adjective can be dropped if a nominal measure phrase is present. This is, for example, the case if we are dealing with age, as in (241a). If referring to human beings, examples such as (241b) can also be used to indicate a personʼs height.

Similarly, if a certain object is partly defined by means of having a certain proportion (length, width, etc.), or if the intended proportion can be recovered from the context, the adjective is occasionally left out as well. Some examples are given in (242).

      As is shown in the primeless examples of (243), the temporal measure adjective lang differs from the other measure adjectives in that it cannot readily be used in copular constructions. The intended assertions can be expressed instead by means of the verb duren'to go on' in the primed examples. Note that the adjective is preferably dropped if a nominal measure phrase is present, which may be due to the fact that the meaning expressed by the neutral form of the adjective lang is already implied by the measure verb duren.

The copular verb zijn'to be' is possible, however, in the examples in (244), which involve coordination of a temporal measure adjective and an adjective of some other type. The measure verb duren, on the other hand, is excluded in these cases.

      The primeless examples of (245) show that the measure adjective of weight zwaar'heavy' can be used in copular constructions, but not if a nominal measure phrase is present. If we replace the copula by the measure verb wegen'to weigh', as in the primed examples, the nominal measure phrase becomes fully acceptable. Expressing both the measure adjective and the nominal measure phrase yields a rather marked result, which may again be due to the fact that the meaning expressed by the neutral form of the adjective zwaar is already implied by the measure verb wegen.

The examples in (246) show that measure verbs obligatorily take an adjectival complement if no nominal measure phrase is present, which shows that the meanings expressed by the non-neutral forms of the measure adjectives surpass those already implied by the measure verbs. For completeness’ sake, note that the measure adjectives can at least marginally be left out if the verb is heavily stressed or used in constructions such as De vergadering duurde en duurde en duurde'The meeting went on and on and on'.

For completeness’ sake, we want to note that examples such as (245a') are often rejected in the normative literature, although the metaphorical use of zwaar wegen in example such as (247) is accepted by all speakers; for details, we refer the reader to onzetaal.nl/taaladvies/advies/zwaar-wegen-veel-wegen. We will briefly return to this issue in V2.4.

The examples in (248) show that nominal measure phrases can also be used to modify complex APs headed by te'too'. In cases like these, the measure adjectives are always overtly expressed.

The fact that the measure adjective cannot be omitted may be related to the fact that we are not dealing with the neutral form of the adjectives. The examples in (249) show, at least, that non-neutral forms can enter the construction as well; cf. the contrast with the examples without te ’too’ in (235).

Note that it is not only the intensifier te 'too' that may license the presence of a nominal measure but that the same thing holds for the comparative form of the measure adjectives in (250); see Section 4.3.2, sub I, for more discussion. For convenience, we will include such comparative examples in the discussion below.

The fact that nominal measure phrases may modify the non-neuter forms of the measure adjectives if the latter are modified by te or have the comparative form may also account for the fact that adjectives like zwaar'heavy' and warm'warm', which cannot readily be preceded by nominal measure phrases in their unmodified positive form (cf. (245)), can co-occur with them in (251).

      From a semantic point of view the examples discussed so far are not completely on a par with those in (235). Section 1.3.2.2, sub I, has argued that the truth-value of constructions containing a gradable adjective is generally determined in relation to a possibly contextually determined comparison class/set. In the case of an adjective in the positive degree or an adjective preceded by te 'too' , the comparison class/set can be made explicit by means of a voor -PP, and in the case of a comparative by means of a dan/als -phrase. This is illustrated in (252).

Things change, however, if the adjective is modified by a nominal measure phrase. The examples in (253) show that this blocks the addition of a voor-phrase to the adjective in the positive degree, whereas nothing changes if the adjective is preceded by te or in the comparative form. This suggests that, in a sense, the addition of a nominal measure phrase to adjectives in the positive degree makes the AP “absolute" in nature, whereas the gradable nature of adjectives preceded by te and comparatives remains unaffected.

      The primeless examples in (254) show that, as in the case of the measure adjectives in the positive form in (240), preposing of APs like those in (249) and (250) may pied-pipe the nominal measure phrases, which demonstrates that they form a constituent. The singly-primed examples show that preposing the nominal phrase in isolation is marked, but not entirely excluded. Stranding the nominal measure phrase is normally impossible; the doubly-primed examples may perhaps be marginally acceptable if the nominal measure phrase is presented as an afterthought, in which case it must be preceded by an intonation break, but this is irrelevant here.

Examples (240) and (254) have shown that APs modified by a nominal measure phrase normally cannot be split. This is possible, however, if the nominal measure phrase is questioned. We illustrate this in (255) for some of the primeless examples in (249) and (250).

Extraction of the nominal measure phrase is sometimes also allowed if it is assigned heavy accent or preceded by a focus particle like slechts'only'.

      Given the acceptability of the examples above, we expect similar extractions to be possible in the case of neutral measure adjectives in the positive degree. This expectation, however, is not borne out; the primeless examples in (257) sound relatively odd (although examples such as (257a) are given as fully acceptable by Corver, 1990, for which reason we mark it with a percentage sign). Plausibly, this should not be attributed to some syntactic restriction but to the fact that the same questions can be expressed more economically by combining the positive measure adjectives with the interrogative intensifier hoe'how'; cf. example (238).