Nederlandse Taalkunde - Volume 20, Issue 1, 2015

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 in common that they cannot occur with stative verbs, both are grammaticalised constructions with locative origins, and both can often occur with the same verbs. However, we argue that each construction has its own semantic profile: the PREP-progressive has a processual profile, zooming in on the ongoing process itself, whereas the POS-progressive has a situational profile, typically locating the ongoing process in a well-described spatio-temporal frame. This profile is in fact a relic from their original postural use; as such, the POS-progressive provides a good illustration of Hopper’s (1991) persistence principle.

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.

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/NCI) and (iv) bare infinitive with the young modal hoeven. In all cases, the (temporary) reversal of the diachronic trends in the internal syntax of these constructions is argued to be driven by an analogical pull by cognate constructions. As such, the phoenixes are in fact illusions: the revival only affects a particular corner of the whole construction, namely where it borders on the neighbouring construction. The diachronic developments underscore the need to take into account the impact of the broad grammatical environment in which syntactic changes take place in grammaticalisation.

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 Lehmann’s parameters of grammaticalization, we outline morphological, syntactic and semantic characteristics of different affixes and affixoids that have undergone varying degrees of emancipation. The analysis shows that these parameters may be set differently in different morphological constructions, and also that they interact with one another in intricate ways. Some bound morphemes can only take scope over a phrase, whereas others come to be used as a free morpheme, which implies morphosyntactic changes as well as a change in semantics, e.g. hyperonymy or specialization. From the qualitative analysis based on our criteria it emerges that debonding of derivational affixes and affixoids is neither degrammaticalization nor lexicalization, but rather a process sui generis.