Linguistics in the Netherlands - Current Issue

In this article, we focus on the origin of the Wolof subject-focus construction (SFC) from a dynamic perspective. In Wolof, argument focus is expressed morpho-syntactically by means of copulaless cleft constructions consisting of the juxtaposition of the focus and a free relative clause. The free relative clause is headed by a determiner, which takes the form a in the case of the SFC. The determiner a is not found anywhere else in the language outside of SFC. We hypothesise that Wolof borrowed its SFC from Berber languages. The sociohistorical scenario, based on oral tradition, could have been the emergence of Wolof, as a crucible of contact between peoples of diverse origin including Berber groups. This finding is strengthened by the occurrence of other elements common to Wolof and Berber languages, such as clitic attraction, negation, copula insertion, as well as a number of lexical parallelisms.

This paper concerns the verbal diminutive suffixes -el and -er in Afrikaans. In previous work (Cavirani-Pots et al. 2023), these suffixes have been analysed on par with their Dutch counterparts. In this paper we present the results of a nonsense word experiment on these suffixes in Afrikaans (94 participants) and Dutch (242 participants). The results show that the Afrikaans participants significantly underperform in guessing the meaning of these suffixes compared to the Dutch participants. We take this to mean that the underlying structure of verbs containing these suffixes is different in the two languages. Based on the three-way division of affix types of Creemers et al. (2018), we follow Cavirani-Pots et al. (2023)’s analysis of the Dutch -el and -er suffixes as being level Ia suffixes, i.e. suffixes that appear right above the stem they attach to. For Afrikaans, however, we propose that -el and -er have lost their suffixal status, and have undergone univerbation with the stem.

Ongoing processes of dialect leveling and loss have given rise to the widespread use of the concept of hyperdialectism in sociolinguistic research. Hyperdialectisms are considered to be a reaction to dialect loss: a typical dialect feature that is distinctive from the standard language or a neighboring dialect is overgeneralized. However, there is pitfall in using the concept as an umbrella term for all deviating dialect forms. In this paper, we aim to provide a revisited view of hyperdialectisms based on written dialect sources. In doing so, we use hyperdialectal adnominal gender marking in southern Dutch Brabantish dialects as a case study. We show that unexpected forms were already present in early twentieth-century dialect use, despite dialect grammar descriptions from the second half of the century often being used as a point of reference for ‘correct’ grammar. Furthermore, we argue that the concept of hyperdialectism requires careful layering in sociolinguistic analysis.

The simple past in Dutch, as in many other European languages, is not necessarily used to refer to a past eventuality. A Dutch example of a verb in simple past that does not refer to a past event, taken from the Spoken Dutch Corpus (CGN), is: Pa die ging morgen golfen ‘Dad is going to play golf tomorrow.’ Here, the past tense verb ging ‘went’ can be called a ‘fake past’, since it refers to a future eventuality, as can be seen from the adverb tomorrow. We argue that this use of the past tense is not modal, because it does not involve reference to a counterfactual, hypothetical, or unlikely eventuality. We present a Reichenbachian (1947) analysis of this use of past tense, in which we argue that while the eventuality takes place in the future, past tense is used to indicate that the point of perspective (R) is situated in the past (i.e. R-S-E).

When considering the acceptance of split NPs, the Germanic language family reveals substantial variation. This is especially the case for Dutch as the observations seem rather contradictory, hence the question whether or not Dutch allows for split NPs. Via a large-scale questionnaire, the present study shows that some Dutch dialects allow split NPs to a larger extent than others, and that a geographical basis amidst the variation can be found in the southern regions of the Netherlands. These findings are crucial as they shed light onto the (syntactic) microvariation within the Netherlands which in turn leads to valuable insights into a future analysis of split NPs.

Left Dislocation in Dutch is still poorly understood. In particular, it is unclear why speakers of Dutch use this construction and which factors influence its use. To obtain more insight in the function and use of Left Dislocation in Dutch, we elicited narratives from 30 adult speakers of Dutch and carried out an analysis of the use of Left Dislocation constructions in these narratives. Our analysis revealed that neither the introduction of new referents, nor the expression of a contrast between two referents, nor the marking of a shifted topic is able to explain all uses of Left Dislocation in these narratives. We speculate that the function of Left Dislocation in Dutch is to mark a referent as a potential topic for the further discourse.

This paper provides an overview, based on the MAND database and on additional recordings for Limburgian Panningen, of diminutive formation in Limburgian and focuses on the status of n-assimilation. It is shown that both the presence and the absence of n-assimilaton poses problems both for existing phonological descriptions as well as for constraint-based approaches to phonology such as standard Optimality Theory. We will show that the nature of the three interacting modifications, that is n-assimilation, k-fronting and s-insertion is different. k-fronting and s-insertion are limited in their application to the diminutive suffix and are as such lexical modifications. n-assimilation is shown to apply also across word boundaries and is a post-lexical modification. This allows for a straightforward description in stratal OT and for a better understanding of the data observed.

An investigation into the production of universal quantifiers with negation in the CHILDES database of Dutch shows several scopal properties that have not been discussed before. First, it shows a crucial distinction between child and adult Dutch. A universal quantifier with scope over negation has an isomorphic interpretation in adult Dutch, but an inverse scope interpretation in child Dutch. This raises the question why children do not adopt the surface scope interpretation. Second, it indicates a possible answer to the puzzle why languages often avoid a universal quantifier under the scope of negation. I will discuss the idea that the explanation may lie in the type of reading of a quantifier, collective/distributive and specific/non-specific. It might also explain why no language has a lexicalized negated universal pronoun *neverything.

Dutch children temporarily use a possessor se construction with proper/kinship names and pronouns, like dit is Laura-se/opa-se/hem-se jas (‘this is Laura’s/grandpa’s/his coat’). The se possessive is not available in standard Dutch, although examples of it are found on the internet. The se possessive is fully productive with all nouns in Afrikaans.

In standard Dutch prenominal possessive constructions show a wide range of variations and restrictions. Dutch children avoid the complexity of the system, but what makes the children apply the se possessive in the first place? I will show that it is due to three properties specific to Dutch. Nevertheless, the se possessive does not persist in standard Dutch as it did in Afrikaans. The Dutch Achilles’ heel might be the early use of weak possessive pronouns.

This paper describes the possible predication strategies in Makhuwa-Enahara and under what circumstances each occurs. Makhuwa-Enahara (Bantu P31E) has three main copular constructions: Predicative Lowering, the invariant copulas ti (affirmative) and kahi (negative), and the verbal copulas ori and okhala. It was previously posited that the choice between predication strategies depended on the syntactic type of the predicate, but further analysis shows that deference is instead given to the semantic type of the predication. The underlying structures of Makhuwa-Enahara are identical for Equation, Predication, and Identification; Specification shows a different structure, and Locative predication yet another. Predicative Lowering and the invariant copula are argued to be different spell-outs of the Pred head, depending on its raised position within the syntactic tree and whether or not the initial element of the predicate is long enough to undergo Predicative Lowering.

Here we investigate the use of the politeness marker por favor ‘please’ in a corpus of contemporary Spanish dialogues from film scripts and literary dialogues. We argue that por favor is in fact only occasionally used as an expression of politeness. Apart from these uses, we distinguish between cases where por favor functions as a marker of illocutionary force and other discourse functions, that include the expression of impatience and disapproval. While the formulaic use of por favor is mainly limited to routine situations in the public sphere, the other functions are typical of private conversations. We argue that the ancient use of the expression can account for its contemporary non-polite uses.

Various non-standard language varieties in the Netherlands traditionally allow for the use of masculine personal subject pronouns (i.e. regionally distinct variants of hij ‘he’) in reference to women. While this practice is well-documented within Dutch dialectology, especially during the twentieth century, it is unclear to what extent this feature still exists nowadays. Moreover, the use of masculine subject forms for female reference has not previously been described for Limburgian dialects. This paper offers a start to filling these gaps, by providing insight into the contemporary use of ‘he’ for women in Dutch dialects, with a specific focus on occurrences in Dutch Limburg. We report on a Twitter query and three interviews, showing (i) that the use of ‘he’ for women still exists in various Dutch dialects, and (ii) how native speakers of a Limburgian dialect use and perceive this feature of their dialect.

The auxiliary doen ‘do’ in standard Dutch is usually described as ‘dummy’ because it supposedly adds nothing substantial to the meaning of the sentence. We argue, however, that the auxiliary does have a function in the sentence, as a marker of either habitual or intentional aspect. In an online production experiment, we investigated the acceptability of the allegedly dummy auxiliary doen ‘do’. Results show that the degree of acceptability of the auxiliary doen ‘do’ is very low, even lower than the widely disapproved use of hun ‘them’ as a subject in Dutch. However, because a significant difference was found in the acceptability between the habitual and the intentional reading, we conclude that the auxiliary doen ‘do’ in Dutch cannot be dummy, i.e. semantically empty.

In his latest book on relative clauses, Cinque claims that there are two fundamentally different kinds of appositive (non-restrictive) relative clauses. The unintegrated ones are the typical English type, the integrated ones are found in various languages, including Chinese and Japanese. This second type shares some characteristics with restrictive relatives, and seems to require a different syntactic analysis. Some languages, like Italian, supposedly have both types. A list of a dozen criteria differentiates the two, such as the use of relative pronouns and the possibility of heavy pied piping. However, when we carefully look at Dutch and other languages, the picture starts to blur considerably, and an abundance of (micro)variation shows up. This is problematic. I argue that the suggested criteria do not add up to two natural classes at all and are in fact non-explanatory. Therefore, we need to focus on what is truly fundamental to non-restrictiveness, which leads to a different perspective on the matter.

Argument doubling, also known as (contrastive) left-dislocation, is common in spoken Dutch, but it is unclear exactly what triggers it. Earlier proposals in the literature showed that the construction is not used for marking contrast, and suggested it is used for marking shifted topics instead. However, the results from a Spoken Dutch Corpus study on argument doubling with proper nouns demonstrate that topic-shift does not adequately characterize the construction’s function either. Further examination of our corpus data shows that at least for proper nouns, Dutch argument doubling mostly occurs when a new referent is introduced into the discourse, but that this referent does not necessarily become the topic of the discourse. We hypothesize that argument doubling is a way of giving speakers and/or hearers some extra time to establish and/or process the new discourse referent in the discourse, regardless of whether it will become a discourse-topic after its introduction.

We examine equative constructions in Dutch, comparing it to their counterparts in two other Germanic languages, namely English and German. We observe that there is significant variation in the morphosyntax of equative constructions based on whether what is being compared is a gradable adjective or a verb (e.g. Kim is as tall as Sue and Kim ran as Sue (did)) across the three languages and that the morphosyntax corresponds to meaning differences, determining what exactly can be compared in these constructions. Based on these observations, we propose an account for Dutch equative constructions based on eventuality kinds, which has implications for the semantics of comparison constructions in general in relation to the ontological status of degrees and manners in the grammar.