oa De bronconstructies van Belgisch Nederlands (’t) schijnt: een repliek

This is a brief reply to the article by Vliegen in this issue. We argue that, while Vliegen’s suggestion of a link between naar het schijnt and (’t) schijnt is certainly plausible, this need not rule out a scenario in which the emerging use of (’t) schijnt as a particle has also taken its root in (specific uses of) the matrix clause construction het schijnt dat. In modern construction-based approaches to language change, it is accepted that newly developing constructions may have multiple sources. In this perspective, the ‘matrix clause hypothesis’ and the ‘paratactic hypothesis’ are not mutually exclusive.