Example (220) illustrates a special use of the definite article before a measure phrase, where it alternates with the Latinate preposition per, which always takes bare singular complements; cf. Ik ga wel per treinI will take the train in (167). However, we cannot conclude from this that de and het function as prepositions, since they agree in gender with the following noun, which is a property of articles, not of prepositions. The semantic contribution of the article de/het and the preposition per is distributive in the sense that it distributes a certain purchase price over a unit of measurement such as liter.

The distributive article can also mediate between a monetary unit and a person who has to pay the corresponding amount of money, as in (221a). In this context, only manperson seems felicitous; substituting vrouwwoman for man leads to an unacceptable result, and the same goes for replacing man with persoonperson or kindchild. The awkwardness of de in (221b) matches that of the corresponding example with the preposition per, but the deviation of (221c&d) cannot be dismissed on the same grounds, since the corresponding examples with per are perfectly acceptable.

The fact that the phrase headed by the measure noun euro and the distributive phrase can be placed simultaneously in the clause-initial position shows that they form a constituent (the constituency test). This is also supported by the primed and doubly-primed examples in (222), which show that splitting the two leads to at least a marked result.

Nevertheless, the relative acceptability of (222b'') may suggest that in some cases topicalization of the distributive phrase is at least marginally possible. At first glance, this suggestion would seem to be further supported by a construction such as (223b), which is perfectly acceptable. However, it may be the case that (223b) is not syntactically related to (223a); the phrase de man may simply function as an independent °VP adverbial, comparable to distributive elements like allenall or allemaalall in (223b'). Since we have no conclusive arguments for any of the options, we leave this issue for future research.

Haeseryn et al. (1997:191-2) point out that the meaning contributed by a definite article preceding nouns denoting units of measurement is not always crystal clear and can vary from case to case. Thus, the PP om de minuut in (224a) is interpreted as meaning “every minute” while the structurally identical PP om de week in (224b) is usually understood as “every other week”; since some speakers also allow the “every week” reading, this can lead to misunderstandings that can be resolved by adding the adjective andereother, as in (224b').

The fact that andere can be added in (224b) suggests that om de week itself does not explicitly mean “every other week”; if it did, the addition of andere would be tautological, as it is in fact in (225a), where the result of inserting andere is very awkward due to the fact that om het jaar already unambiguously expresses that we are dealing with a biennial event. It remains an open question which feature of the lexical semantics of the noun is responsible for this surprising interpretive variation of the PP om de N. As a tendency it seems to be the case that the longer the period of time denoted by the noun, the more the “every other N” reading is favored: nouns like secondesecond and minuutminute clearly favor the “every N” reading, whereas nouns like maandmonth and jaaryear favor the “every other N” reading. Note, however, that modifiers like half or numerals like tweetwo in (225b) can override this tendency; the presence of such modifiers always results in an “every half/two N” reading.

This subsection discusses phrases like in/tegen de duizend boeken in (226), which seem to consist of a preposition followed by a plural noun phrase with the definite article de and a numeral. However, phrases like these have the distribution of a noun phrase, which is clear from the fact that they cannot be extraposed, as shown in the primed examples. This would follow immediately if in/tegen de duizend boeken were a regular (i.e. nominal) direct object; cf. also the discussion of (229) below.

The primeless examples in (226) are used to express ownership: it is said that Peter owns a certain number of books. The use of the definite article de in such examples is special because no definite meaning aspect seems to be contributed by the determiner: their paraphrases in (227) make clear that the phrases are semantically indefinite.

In fact, the indefiniteness of the phrases in (226) can be easily established without appealing to the paraphrases in (227). First, the “have” sentences in (226) seem to favor a permanent possession/ownership reading, and these do not allow definite direct objects. This is shown in (228): since birthmarks are permanently possessed, the use of the definite determiner in (228a) leads to a semantically strange result. Similarly, (228b) is strange in the intended reading that Jan is the owner of the books.

That we are dealing with noun phrases and not PPs is also shown by the examples in (229), which show that in/tegen de duizend boeken can be used as subject in an expletive construction. Since PPs cannot normally be used as subjects, these examples provide conclusive evidence that we are dealing with indefinite noun phrases.

The fact that the definite article de does not contribute the meaning of definiteness to the phrase as a whole suggests that it is not an immediate constituent of the noun phrase headed by boeken: a reasonable alternative is to analyze in de duizend boeken in such a way that in de duizend is a constituent quantifying boeken; cf. (230a). This representation gives structural recognition to the fact that in de duizend alternates with ruim duizendover a thousand in (227a), in which ruim duizend is also a constituent; cf. Section 20.1.1.5, sub III, for a more detailed analysis.

We conclude this subsection with two additional observations. The first is that, although the two forms in (230) are indefinite DPs with more or less the same meaning, they cannot always occur in the same syntactic environment; the two examples in (231) both express that the damage exceeds the amount of 1000 euros, but nevertheless they involve different verbs.

Second, the construction in (231a) is also special in that the numeral can be pluralized, which leads to a non-trivial meaning change: the sequence in + numeral no longer means “more than Num Ns” but “several Numpl. Ns”.

It is not immediately clear what determines the choice between the two objects in (231), but it seems reasonable to assume that it is related to some aspectual difference between the verbs lopen and belopen; we will leave this issue for further research.

Example (233a) shows that the indefinite article een can also be construed with numerals, which is surprising considering that een is not normally used with plural noun phrases (except in the cases discussed in Section 19.1.4.2). In this context, een can be preceded by zo, leading to the contracted form zo’n in (233b). The interpretation of een/zo’n tachtig boeken is “about eighty books”.

A related case with similar semantics is given in (234). This example is less striking because here een is construed with a singular noun phrase. Note that while zo’n is in free variation with een in (233), it is awkward in (234b).