This section discusses quantificational binominal constructions, i.e. noun phrases in which the quantificational part of the noun phrase is expressed by another noun phrase. An example is given in (1a). The first noun phrase een paara couple expresses the quantity of the set of objects denoted by the second noun phrase voorbeeldenexamples. In other words, the string een paar is comparable to the cardinal numeral tweetwo or the quantifier enkelesome in (1b). Since the preposition of is used in English to render examples such as (1a), we will include this preposition in square brackets in the glosses for convenience.

The quantificational binominal construction (henceforth: QBC) in (1a) is notable for the fact that the two noun phrases appear to be juxtaposed: unlike in English, no preposition such as vanof is used. For convenience, we will distinguish the two nouns by appealing to linear order: the first noun in a QBC will be referred to as N1, and the second as N2. Thus, in (1a), the noun paar is an N1 and voorbeelden is an N2.

This section is organized as follows. Section 17.1.1.1 begins with a brief characterization of the types of N1 and N2 that can be used. Section 17.1.1.2 continues by showing that there are at least three types of QBC, depending on whether N1 or N2 acts as the syntactic/semantic head of the construction. Sections 17.1.1.3 and 17.1.1.4 examine the properties of N1 and N2, respectively. Finally, Section 17.1.1.5 discusses various aspects of the modification of the nouns in QBCs. A related construction with QBCs is the so-called partitive construction vier van die koekjesfour of the cookies; this construction will not be discussed here, but in Section 19.4.