Nederlandse Taalkunde - Volume 21, Issue 3, 2016

Abstract* Generative syntactic theory of the past 35 years has developed from Government and Binding theory with its large set of articulated building principles, parameters and constraints into Minimalism with its small set of general principles and its reduction of syntactic variation to the Lexicon and Phonological Form. Hans Bennis’s syntactic work clearly mirrors this development. Also, since the nineties of the past centu Read More

Abstract In this essay, I challenge Hans Bennis to rewrite his influential PhD-thesis Gaps and Dummies (1986) in function of evolved linguistic thinking about data collection issues, and the I-language vs. E-language dichotomy. More concretely, I dare him to renounce the generative garden of introspected generalizations, and face the jungle of spontaneously produced data, in order to fully appreciate the distributional compl Read More

Abstract The past thirty years or so have seen an increased interest from the part of generative syntacticians in dialect data. The article addresses the question to what extent generative methods in studying dialect syntax depart from traditional dialectological methods, and whether both disciplines have been integrated successfully. Despite earlier pessimistic accounts like De Schutter (2005) and Goossens & Van Keymeule Read More

Abstract This article examines the grammatical properties of the Dutch construction Kluns dat/die je bent! Specifically, it addresses the question of how exclamation is formally encoded in this construction. In line with Bennis (1998), it is proposed that exclamative force follows from an interaction between lexical properties of function words, on the one hand, and configurational structure (syntax), on the other hand. It is Read More

Abstract For a scholar like Arie Verhagen, with his relentless curiosity and irrepressible research drive, retirement is merely an academic rite de passage and never a real retirement. Even so, the symbolic change of state is a fitting occasion to take stock of what has so far been achieved – pending further original contributions and novel insights. The following pages will first present a chronologically ordered overview of Arie Read More

Abstract Verhagen’s thesis on the relative order of nominal arguments and sentence adverbials in the middle field of the clause argued that the order variation found in Dutch can be described in a more insightful way within a functional approach than within a formal, generative grammar. This was true in the 1980s, when generative grammar was concerned with competence only. In current generative grammar, however, Read More

Abstract In contrast to written Dutch, spoken Dutch sees the sporadic emergence of a coordinating use of the subordinate conjunction omdat (‘because’). Starting from the paper by Persoon, Sanders, Quené & Verhagen (2010), this article aims at investigating the role coordinating omdat plays on the distinct levels of syntax, semantics, and discourse. Results suggest that coordinating omdat plays a discourse-specific role t Read More

Abstract Verhagen (2000) showed that Dutch causal connectives want (‘for’) and omdat (‘because’) differ in their intersubjective configuration: want expresses conceptual distance between speaker and other conceptualizers, while omdat does not. In this article we analyze how this difference is exploited stylistically in Dutch narrative fiction. We employ a combined model of subjectivity, mental spaces and domains to Read More