Nederlandse Taalkunde - Volume 28, Issue 2, 2023

Abstract The canonical view on Dutch scrambling in the syntactic literature is that it is subject to information-structural conditions: “new” information is located in a right-peripheral position in the middle field (Jan heeft waarschijnlijk het boek gelezen ‘Jan has probably read the book’) while given information is located in a more leftward position (Jan heeft het boek waarschijnlijk gelezen); see e.g. Verhagen ( Read More

Abstract Constructions in which the verb combines with a fixed preposition in many cases have a verb taking a prepositional object (PO). It is often said that the preposition with a PO is very close to meaningless, and therefore arbitrary, but there are reasons to doubt this assertion. This paper aims at exploring the paths followed by prepositional and constructional meaning towards abstraction. For a relevant sa Read More

Abstract The present study investigates the effect of interlocutors’ gender on the production of persistent verb spelling errors in adolescents’ private online communication. Specifically, we examine whether boys adapt to the – more standard – spelling practices of girls, and whether girls produce more errors in conversations with boys. We focus on (presumably) unintentional spelling errors in regular Dutch verb Read More