Nederlandse Taalkunde - Current Issue

Dutch has three seem-type verbs (schijnen, lijken, blijken), which behave in clearly different ways, although they can all be regarded as epistemicevidential markers in some of their uses. This paper addresses the semantic contribution of blijken, its morpho-syntactic variability and the possible link between both. The analysis is based on data taken from the Corpus of Spoken Dutch (CGN). One of the main findings of this paper pertains to the fact that blijken not only has (typically intersubjective) epistemic-evidential meaning, but also expresses mirativity, especially in those constructional patterns in which the qualification expressed by the verb is non-focal (and hence has only secondary information status). The corpus data show that such non-focal uses of blijken can occur in every construction type the verb occurs in, but clearly favour inherently non-focalizing syntactic patterns like the auxiliary use of blijken with a te-infinitive.

In this article we analyse the because X constructions in Dutch, English, and German in light of their assumed elliptic character. We show that the construction in all three languages started out as textual ellipses and later on developed into situational ellipses. Recently, as we show using data from Twitter, non-elliptical instances can be found as well. On the one hand, we focus on the underexplored aspect of the ellipticity of these constructions. On the other hand, we address the more general question of where and how to draw the line between elliptical and non-elliptical structures.

This paper focuses on the variable placement of the particle of particle verb constructions in Dutch and German. In particular, the option to place the particle in first sentence position is studied in a judgment task. We asked native speakers of Dutch to judge utterances which differ with respect to the semantic transparency of the particle and with respect to the distance between particle and verb. In spite of an overall awkwardness of constructions with a fronted particle, the factors under investigation turned out to influence their well-formedness. Our observations thus raise some questions about the acceptability and the grammaticality status of such dubious structures. When comparing our results to those found by Trotzke et al. (2015), who did a similar study for German, we find that the patterns in the two languages are similar but that there are nonetheless some important differences to note. We suggest that this discrepancy has to do with the more flexible use of the first sentence position in German.

The present study investigates the variation in the plural inflections in modern Dutch dialects, focusing on their diachronic development. The original diversity of declensional classes found in the earliest attested stage of Dutch is indirectly reflected in the varied inventory of plural morphemes in present-day dialects. The gradual confusion and merger of class-specific inflectional markers over time contributed to a reduction in the repertoire of the inherited inflectional plural exponents. With time, the distribution of plural markers tended to become increasingly determined by phonology and gender, or was guided by semantics. The aim of this study is to trace back the patterns of variation in the plural inflection across three present-day Dutch varieties to those found in the earliest attested Dutch and Low Saxon material. The research question addressed in the study is whether the contrasts found across the examined modern Dutch dialects can be directly traced back to the variation in Old Dutch and Old Saxon. The analysis of the developments in plurality patterns is framed in the context of the West Germanic linguistic continuum, allowing us to evaluate the position of Dutch on this continuum. The study reveals that the boundary between different inflectional patterns runs across the Dutch dialectal continuum, with western varieties showing more affiliation with the English plurality patterns, while eastern and southeastern dialects demonstrating a closer affiliation with German. The findings indicate as well that the early traces of this contrast are already detectable in the earliest attestations of Dutch.