A functional typology of Dutch insubordinate infinitives | Amsterdam University Press Journals Online
2004
  1. Home
  2. A-Z Publications
  3. Nederlandse Taalkunde
  4. Volume 28, Issue 1
  5. Article
Volume 28, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 1384-5845
  • E-ISSN: 2352-1171

Abstract

Abstract

This paper aims to offer a typology of Dutch insubordinate infinitives, which, following Evans’s (2007) definition of insubordination, are defined as ‘the main clause use’ of infinitival constructions. The main objectives of this paper are to provide a pragmatic analysis of these constructions in Dutch and, through cross-linguistic comparison, investigate whether their attested pragmatic functions correspond to the pragmatic functions of (a) insubordinate constructions in general and (b) insubordinate infinitives in particular. This is done on the basis of a corpus study, examining a sample of independent infinitival constructions attested in the Corpus of Spoken Dutch (CGN). Ultimately, three primary functions are distinguished for Dutch insubordinate infinitives that align with different types of insubordinate constructions attested cross-linguistically: they can be employed for (i) discursive strategies, (ii) interpersonal control, and (iii) evaluation and exclamation. In addition, through processes of insubordination and idiomatization a new type of output is created in which the insubordinate infinitival constructions behave as discourse markers. In adopting a language-specific, corpus-based approach, this study provides a first systematic and comprehensive functional typology of insubordinate infinitival constructions in Dutch. At the same time, it contributes to the ongoing theoretical debate on the functional load of insubordinate constructions.

© Anouk Van den Stock, Astrid De Wit, Reinhild Vandekerckhove & Pedro Gras
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.5117/NEDTAA2023.1.003.STOC
2023-04-01
2024-04-18
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Anthonissen, L., A.De Wit & T.Mortelmans (2019). (Inter)subjective uses of the Dutch progressive constructions. Linguistics57, 1111–1159.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Beijering, K. (2017). Semi-insubordinate dat-constructions in Dutch. Formal, semantic and functional properties. Nederlandse Taalkunde22, 333-357.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Blom, A. (1987). Kloppen s.v.p. Onderdeel van een procedure. Voortgang: jaarboek voor deneerlandistiek8, 177-189.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Blom, E. (2007). Modality, infinitives, and finite bare verbs in Dutch and English child language. Language Acquisition14, 75-113.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Blom, E. & F.Wijnen (2000). How Dutch children’s root infinitives become modal. In: Proceedings BUCLD24, 128-139.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Blom, E., E.Krikhaar & F.Wijnen (2001). Nonfinite clauses in Dutch and English child language: An experimental approach. In: Proceedings BUCLD25, 133-144.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Boogaart, R. (2010). De verzuchtingsinfinitief. Vaktaal, tijdschrift van de landelijke vereniging van neerlandici23, 9-10.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Boogaart, R. & K.Verheij (2013). Als dàt geen insubordinatie is. De pragmatiek van zelfstandige conditionele zinnen. In: T.Janssen & J.Noordegraaf (eds.), Honderd jaar taalwetenschap. Artikelen aangeboden aan Saskia Daalder bij haar afscheid van de Vrije Universiteit. Amsterdam, St. Neerlandistiek VU & Münster: Nodus Publikationen, 13-28.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Broekhuis, H. & N.Corver (2017). The expressive en maar-construction. In: H.Reckman, L. L.Cheng, M.Hijzelendoorn & R.Sybesma (eds.), Crossroads Semantics: Computation, experiment and grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 305-325.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Christofaro, S. (2016). Routes to insubordination: A typological perspective. In: N.Evans & H.Watanabe (eds.), Insubordination. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 393-422.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Comrie, B., D.Forker & Z.Khalilova (2016). Insubordination in Tsezic languages. In: N.Evans & H.Watanabe (eds.), Insubordination. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company171-182.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. D’HertefeltS. & J.-C.Verstraete (2014). Independent complement constructions in Swedish and Danish: Insubordination or dependency shift? Journal of Pragmatics60, 89-102.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. D’Hertefelt, S. (2018). Insubordination in Germanic: A typology of complement and conditional constructions. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Evans, N. (2007). Insubordination and its uses. In: I.Nikolaeva (ed.), Finiteness. Theoretical and Empirical Foundations. New York: Oxford University Press, 366-431.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Evans, N. & H.Watanabe (2016). The dynamics of insubordination. An overview. In: N.Evans & H.Watanabe (eds.), Insubordination. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1-37.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Van Eynde, F. (2004). Part of speech tagging en lemmatisering van het Corpus Gesproken Nederlands. Leuven: KU Leuven.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Fortuin, E. (2003). De directieve infinitief en de imperatief in het Nederlands. Nederlandse taalkunde8, 14-43.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. Giorgi, A. & F.Pianesi (1997). Tense and aspect: From semantics to morphosyntax. New York: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Gras, P. (2011). Gramática de construcciones en interacción. Propuesta de un modelo y aplicación al anális de estructuras independientes con marcas de subordinación en español. Ph.D. dissertation. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Gras, P. & M.S.Sansiñena (2015). An interactional account of discourse-connective que-constructions in Spanish. Text & Talk35, 505–529.
     [Google Scholar]
  21. Gras, P. (2016). Revisiting the functional typology of insubordination: Insubordinate que-constructions in Spanish. In: N.Evans & H.Watanabe (eds.), Insubordination. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 113-143.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Gras, P. & M.S.Sansiñena (2017). Exclamatives in the functional typology of insubordination: Evidence from complement insubordinate constructions in Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics115, 21-36.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Gras, P. & M.Estellés (submitted). Testing insubordination: a diachronic corpus approach to a ver si-constructions in Spanish [Manuscript submitted for publication].
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Grohmann, K.K. & R.Etxepare (2003). Root infinitives: A comparative view. Probus15, 1-34.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Haeseryn, W., K.Romijn, G.Geerts, J.De Rooi & M.C.van den Toorn (1997). Algemene Nederlandse spraakkunst. Groningen, Deurne: Nijhoff, Wolters Plantyn.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Hoekstra, T. & N.Hyams (1998). Aspects of root infinitives. Lingua106, 81-112.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Jucker, A. & Z.Yael (1998). Discourse marker: Descriptions and theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Kirsner, R.S. (2003). On the interaction of the Dutch pragmatic particles hoor and hè with theimperative and infinitivus pro imperativo. In: A.Verhagen & J.van de Weijer (eds.), Usage-based approaches to Dutch. Lexicon, grammar, discourse. Utrecht: LOT, 59-96.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. Langacker, R.W. (1982). Space Grammar, analysability, and the English passive. Language58, 22-80.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Langacker, R.W. (2009). Cognitive Grammar. In: D.Sandra, J.-O.Östman & J.Verschueren (eds.), Cognition and Pragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 78-85.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Lasser, I. (2002). The roots of root infinitives: remarks on infinitival main clauses in adult and child language. Linguistics40, 767-796.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Lastres-López, C. (2018). If-insubordination in spoken British English: Syntactic and pragmatic properties. Language Sciences66, 42-59.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Van linden, A. & F.Van de Velde (2014). (Semi-)autonomous subordination in Dutch: Structures and semantic-pragmatic values. Journal of Pragmatics60, 226-250.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Lombardi Vallauri, E. (2016). Insubordinated conditionals in spoken and non-spoken Italian. In: N.Evans & H.Watanabe (eds.), Insubordination. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 145-169.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. McGregor, W.B. (1997). Semiotic Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Maschler, Y. (1998). The discourse markers segmenting Israeli Hebrew talk-in-interaction. In A.Jucker & Y.Ziv (eds.), Discourse marker: Descriptions and theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Mithun, M. (2008). The extension of dependency beyond the sentence. Language84, 69-119.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Mithun, M. (2016). How fascinating! Insubordinate exclamations. In: N.Evans & H.Watanabe (eds.), Insubordination. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 367-391.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Nikolaeva, I. (2007). Constructional Economy and nonfinite independent clauses. In: I.Nikolaeva (ed.), Finiteness. Theoretical and Empirical Foundations. Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press, 138-180.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Nikolaeva, I. (2014). The Narrative Infinitive Construction in French and Latin. In: H.C.Boas & F.Gonzálvez-García, Romance Perspectives on Construction Grammar. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 139-179.
     [Google Scholar]
  41. Van Olmen, D. (2009). De imperativische infinitief in het Nederlands. Een corpusgebaseerde benadering. Nederlandse Taalkunde14, 147-170.
     [Google Scholar]
  42. Sansiñena, M.S., H.De Smet & B.Cornillie (2015). Between subordinate and insubordinate. Paths towards complementizer-initial main clauses. Journal of Pragmatics77, 3-19.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Schmid, H.J. (2015). A blueprint of the entrenchment-and-conventionalization model. Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association3, 3-25.
     [Google Scholar]
  44. Schwenter, S.A. (2016). Independent si-clauses in Spanish: Functions and consequences for insubordination. In: N.Evans & H.Watanabe (eds.), Insubordination. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 89-111.
     [Google Scholar]
  45. Traugott, E.C. (2014). Toward a constructional framework for research on language change. Cognitive Linguistic Studies1, 3-21.
     [Google Scholar]
  46. Traugott, E.C. (2017). ‘Insubordination’ in the light of the Uniformitarian Principle. English Language and Linguistics21, 289-310.
     [Google Scholar]
  47. Verstraete, J.-C. & S.D’Hertefelt (2016). Running in the family: Patterns of complement insubordination in Germanic. In: N.Evans & H.Watanabe (eds.), Insubordination. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 65-87.
     [Google Scholar]
  48. Verstraete, J.-C., S.D’Hertefelt & A.Van linden (2012). A typology of complement insubordination in Dutch. Studies in Language36, 123–153.
     [Google Scholar]
  49. Wiemer, B. (2017). Main clause infinitival predicates and their equivalents in Slavic: Why they are not instances of insubordination. In: L.Jedrzejowski & U.Demske (eds.), Infinitives at the Syntax-Semantics Interface: A Diachronic Perspective. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 265–338.
     [Google Scholar]
  50. Wiemer, B. (2019). On illusory insubordination and semi-insubordination in Slavic: independent infinitives, clause-initial particles and predicatives on the test. In: K.Beijering, G.Kaltenböck & M.Sol Sansiñena (eds.), Insubordination: Theoretical and Empirical Issues. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 107-166.
     [Google Scholar]
  51. Wijnen, F. (1998). The temporal interpretation of Dutch children’s root infinitivals: the effect of eventivity. First language18, 279-402.
     [Google Scholar]
  52. De Wit, A. & R.Vandekerckhove (2022). Lache, Giere, Boeie. The use of insubordinate infinitives in informal Computer-Mediated-Communication. In: G.Kristiansen, K.Franco, S.De Pascale, L.Rosseel & W.Zhang (eds.), Cognitive Sociolinguistics Revisited, 359-370.
     [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.5117/NEDTAA2023.1.003.STOC
Loading
A functional typology of Dutch insubordinate infinitives
NedTaal 28, 72 (2023); https://doi.org/10.5117/NEDTAA2023.1.003.STOC
/content/journals/10.5117/NEDTAA2023.1.003.STOC
/content/journals/10.5117/NEDTAA2023.1.003.STOC
Loading

Data & Media loading...

Keyword(s): Dutch; insubordinate infinitives; insubordination; root infinitives

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error