he was due some

Question

      ‘Never mind the picture. Somebody other than you or Owen must have had access to that credit card. We’re going to run through a few people, OK?’
      ‘All right,’ she mumbled, cowed.
      ‘Elizabeth Tassel supervised work on the house in Talgarth Road, right? How was that paid for? Did she have a copy of your credit card?’
      ‘No,’ said Leonora.
      ‘Are you sure?’
      ‘Yeah, I’m sure, cos we offered it to her and she said it was easier just to take it out of Owen’s next royalties cos he was due some any time. He sells well in Finland, I dunno why, but they like his—’
      ‘You can’t think of any time where Elizabeth Tassel did something for the house and had the Visa card?’ (The Silkworm, by Robert Galbraith)

When he was expected to get money that is to given to him, I can remind this structure: 'some money was due to him.' It seems that this structure in the book, 'he was due some,' has the equvivalent menaning, but I'm not sure. Do both denote the same meanig or is there some other differnent meaning?

Answer 1

A Noun Phrase is consists of a noun as head, alone or accompanied by one or more dependents. Some kind of dependent precede the head, others follow: we speak of pre-head and post-head dependents.

What do you mean by head?

The head position can be filled by a noun, as in the man(in this noun phrase, the head position is occupied by a noun - man) or a nominal, as in the old man(in this noun phrase, the head position is occupied by a nominal - old man). In the latter example, the nominal itself has the noun - man - as head, and we will refer to this as the ultimate head of the noun phrase, i.e. the final head element in a line running from the noun phrase through any intermediate heads until we reach the level of the word. Except in a few cases (for example in fused-head constructions), the ultimate head of in NP structure is a noun.

Fused-head or elliptical NPs (Noun phrase) : -

Fused-head NPs are those where the head is combined with a dependent function that in ordinary NPs is adjacent to the head, usually determiner or internal modifier:

Where are the sausages? Did you buy [some] yesterday? [determiner-head]

The first candidate performed well, but [the second] didn't. [modifier-head]

In the sentences above some and the second are the examples of **fused-head or elliptical NPs*. If we rewrite those sentences with regular noun phrases they will look like the following -

Where are the sausages? Did you buy some sausages yesterday?

The first candidate performed well, but the second candidate didn't.

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Now coming back to your question. The sentence is

Yeah, I’m sure, cos we offered it to her and she said it was easier just to take it out of Owen’s next royalties cos he was due some any time...

Here in that sentence some is a fused-head NP. The natural or un-elliptical form is some royalties.

Hope this helps :)