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7.2.2.2.1.Adjectival heel
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Adjectival heel'whole' occurs in singular and plural count noun phrases, as illustrated in Table 13. This form of post-determiner heel often alternates with adjectives denoting completeness/totality; examples include compleet'completely', totaal'totally', and geheel'completely'. The adjective geheel (which is derived from heel by means of the prefix ge-) is discussed in Section 7.2.2.3.

Table 13: Adjectival heel in noun phrases headed by a count noun
singular plural
[-neuter] [+neuter]
definite
articles
de hele taart
the whole cake
het hele glas
the whole glass
de hele taarten/glazen
the whole cakes/glasses
demonstrative
pronouns
die hele taart
that whole cake
dat hele glas
that whole glass
die hele taarten/glazen
those whole cakes/glasses
deze hele taart
this whole cake
dit hele glas
this whole glass
deze hele taarten/glazen
these whole cakes/glasses
possessive
pronouns
mijn hele taart
my whole cake
mijn hele glas
my whole glass
(?)mijn hele taarten/glazen
my whole cakes/glasses

Although adjectival heel can readily be combined with plural count nouns, it is difficult to find pragmatically felicitous examples with pluralia tantum; example (249a) may work reasonably well on an interpretation of heel as gaaf'unscathed/intact/unaffected'; the status of (249a) is the same as that of the relative clause paraphrase in (249b), in which heel is a predicate.

249
a. # de hele hersenen
  the  whole  brains
  'the whole/intact brain'
b. # de herseneni [diei (nog) heel zijn]
  the  brains  that   still  whole  are
  'the brain that is (still) intact'

For formal plurals that denote a conventionally fixed unit, no context can be found in which adjectival heel can plausibly be used as a modifier meaning “whole, intact”; Section 7.2.2.2.2 will show that heel receives a quantificational reading in this context. The lexical semantics of adjectival heel also makes it impossible for it to be combined with non-count nouns.
      Since adjectival heel is a regular adjective, its distribution in the noun phrase is identical to that of other adjectives of the same semantic type (that is, the non-gradable adjectives); cf. Section A5. In what follows the discussion of post-determiner inflectible heel will focus on its quantificational uses.

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