RT Journal Article SR Electronic(1) A1 Vanderbauwhede, GudrunYR 2015 T1 Over desemantisering en interne conflicten JF Nederlandse Taalkunde, VO 20 IS 1 SP 37 OP 67 DO https://doi.org/10.5117/NEDTAA2015.1.VAND PB Amsterdam University Press, SN 2352-1171, AB Abstract On semantic bleaching and internal conflicts: the interaction between definite determiners and speech act related referential adjectives in the Dutch and French noun phrase In this paper, we present the results of a corpus-based contrastive study of the way in which definite determiners, in particular definite articles and demonstratives, and a specific type of adjectives, namely ‘speech act related referential adjectives’, contribute to the establishment of definite reference in the Dutch and French noun phrase. Speech act related referential adjectives express a primarily temporal (e.g. de huidige situatie), spatial (e.g. de aanwezige menigte) or deictic textual (e.g. onderhavig boek) meaning. We focus on two grammaticalization processes which allow to explain most of the quantitative and qualitative divergences observed for this topic between both languages: the semantic bleaching of the referential force of the French demonstrative noun phrase in comparison with the Dutch demonstrative noun phrase and the presence of Dutch speech act related referential adjectives in the determiner position of the noun phrase., UL https://www.aup-online.com/content/journals/10.5117/NEDTAA2015.1.VAND