Some notes on semi-lexical silence in Dutch noun phrases

In this article, it is argued that the Dutch nominal expression Anna’s in the dialectal Dutch sentence We kwamen Anna’s tegen (We met Anna’s; ‘We met Anna’) is a hidden possessive noun phrase consisting of the proper name Anna and a silent grammatical noun PERSON in the sense of Kayne (2003). A similar analysis will be proposed for a temporal expression like Dinsdags (Tuesday-s; ‘(on) Tuesday’), with the difference that TIME is the silent noun. It is further argued that PERSON and TIME have the characteristics of what Emonds (1985) calls a grammatical (i.e. semi-lexical) noun.