This section discusses the negative element geenno. Although geen is always part of a noun phrase, it usually takes clausal scope, i.e. it expresses sentence negation. As a result, it often expresses more or less the same meaning as the combination of the negative adverb nietnot and an indefinite noun phrase with the indefinite article eena. A pair of examples illustrating the alternation between geen N and niet + een N is given in (235).

The alternation in (235) has led to the idea that geen is the result of a fusion of the negative adverb and the indefinite article; cf. Haeseryn et al. (1997: §29.4). However, Table 3 shows for noun phrases headed by a non-neuter noun that this cannot be true for all contexts in which geen can be used; geen occurs with a greater variety of noun phrases than the indefinite article een, such as those headed by plural and non-count nouns; cf. also Section 18.1.5.2, sub I.

	count nouns		non-count nouns
	singular	plural
definite	de vrouw the woman	de vrouwen the women	de wijn the wine
indefinite	een vrouw a woman	∅ vrouwen women	∅ wijn wine
negative	geen vrouw no woman	geen vrouwen no women	geen wijn no wine

Furthermore, Section 18.1.5.1 will show that there are also several syntactic constructions in which the replacement of the combination niet een by geen fails. For these reasons, it seems difficult to maintain that geen is the result of the fusion of the negative adverb niet and the indefinite article een.

In fact, it is by no means clear that geen is a determiner: we have suggested in several places that eena should perhaps be analyzed as a numeral, and for geenno there is even more evidence to support such an assumption. For example, geen differs from all determiners in that it can be used in constructions with quantitative er. The examples in (237) show that in this respect geen rather resembles numerals such as driethree or weak quantifiers such as enkelesome

The same applies to the partitive construction in (237): in this construction, geen can be replaced by a numeral and certain quantifiers, but not by a determiner.

Finally, the examples in (238) show that geen can be modified by adverbial phrases like vrijwel/bijna, an option it shares with some numerals and quantifiers, but which is never available for determiners. Given these data, it might be fully justified to consider geen not as an article, but as a numeral or quantifier.

Despite all this, we will discuss the element geen here and not in Chapter 19 on numerals and quantifiers, for the practical reason that the analysis of geen as an article seems to be the more common one in the Dutch literature; cf. also Klooster (2001b). We are aware of the controversy surrounding this decision, so in order to emphasize the existence of the alternative analysis, we will use the term negative quantifier for the remainder of this section.

Section 18.1.5.1 begins with a brief discussion of the semantic contribution of geen. This is followed in Section 18.1.5.2 by a discussion of the distribution of geen within the noun phrase. Section 18.1.5.3 concludes with a discussion of the distribution of noun phrases containing geen and some remarks on the use of geen as an independent constituent.