Nederlandse Taalkunde - Volume 20, Issue 1, 2015

Abstract Persistence in the synchronic use of prepositional and postural progressive constructions in Dutch This article presents a corpus-based comparison of the two most frequent progressive constructions in Dutch: the prepositional construction aan het INF zijn ‘be at the INF’ (PREP-progressive) and the posture verb construction liggen/zitten/staan te INF ‘lie/sit/stand to INF’ (POS-progressive). Both constructions have Read More

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 Read More

Abstract Apparent syntactic phoenixes This article investigates ‘syntactic phoenixes’: obsolete or obsolescent constructions that unexpectedly regain currency in language use. Four case studies are investigated to gain insight in the reasons for the revival of these old constructions: (i) transparent free relatives, (ii) the complex preposition-like combination wat betreft, (iii) accusativus and nominativus cum infinitivo (ACI/ Read More

Abstract Emancipation of affixes and affixoids: degrammaticalization or lexicalization? Dutch is particularly rich in derivational morphology. It features a range of productive affixes and affixoids (morphemes which have a specialized meaning when used in compounds). In this paper we review different processes of emancipation (debonding) of both affixes and affixoids. Using a predefined set of criteria, based in part on Read More