@article{aup:/content/journals/10.5117/NEDTAA2018.3.006.STEV, author = "Stevens, Emmy", title = "Altijd leuk, zo’n ironische constructie!", journal= "Nederlandse Taalkunde", year = "2019", volume = "23", number = "3", pages = "371-381", doi = "https://doi.org/10.5117/NEDTAA2018.3.006.STEV", url = "https://www.aup-online.com/content/journals/10.5117/NEDTAA2018.3.006.STEV", publisher = "Amsterdam University Press", issn = "2352-1171", type = "Journal Article", keywords = "verbal irony, default ironic constructions, expressivity, collostructional analysis", abstract = "Abstract Some linguistic constructions can be considered default ironic construc­tions, as those combinations of words almost always trigger an ironic reading (Giora, Drucker & Fein 2014, Giora et al 2015). According to La Roi (2014), the Dutch altijd-X-construction can be considered such a default ironic construction. However, a corpus analysis reveals that most of the instances are not ironic. The assumption that the altijd-X-construction is ironic by default no longer holds. Nevertheless, the corpus analysis indeed shows that the combination of altijd with a positive evaluative word is significantly more interpreted as ironic than the usage of altijd or the positive evaluative words in isolation.", }