Nederlandse Taalkunde - Volume 28, Issue 3, 2023

This paper offers a corpus-based investigation of the diachronic evolution of the Dutch modal verbs zullen ‘shall/will’ and willen ‘want’. Although they show considerable differences in their developments, neither of these verbs participates in the marked tendency to regain grammatical autonomy characterizing the ‘central’ modals kunnen ‘can’, mogen ‘may’, moeten ‘must’ and hoeven ‘need’. While the latter verbs from New Dutch onwards occur increasingly often without an additional main verb in the clause, this evolution is largely absent in zullen and willen. The paper attempts to offer an explanation on the basis of the developments in the semantic profile of the modal verbs.

In general linguistics, a paucal is a specific construction that only allows for insertion of the lowest numerals (num), e.g. the Russian num + N.gen.sg, which only allows the numerals 2-4 (Pesetsky 2009). In this paper it is argued that also Dutch shows paucal effects in at least three constructions with numerals: (i) the alle + num + de + N construction, (ii) the num + diminutive construction, and (iii) the historical num + genitive construction. The third paucal construction, which is related to the modern quantitative er construction, which lacks the paucal effect, takes us to the origins and nature of the paucal. Following traditional grammarians who assume a connection of quantitative er with the genitive ending -er (Bech 1952; van der Horst 2009), we are led to the conclusion that extraction of the genitive morpheme to the verbal domain cancels the paucal effect. This brings us to an interpretive rule of paucality that an inflected num at the surface triggers the paucal restriction.

This paper aims to revisit the Dutch Binominal Expressive Construction (cf. een schat van een kind) through an extensive corpus study and to explore its comparability with a potential morphological counterpart in the form of a [N1 N2]N2 compound. We focus on four positively-connotated N1s, namely schat ‘treasure’, droom ‘dream’, pracht ‘splendor, beauty’ and wonder ‘miracle’, three of which occur in both the syntactic and the morphological pattern (e.g. een schat van een kind ‘lit. a treasure of a child’ / *een schatkind ‘lit. a treasure child’, een droom van een huis ‘a dream of a house’ / een droomhuis ‘a dream house’, een pracht van een dochter ‘a beauty of a daughter’ / een prachtdochter ‘lit. a beauty daughter’, een wonder van vrouw ‘a wonder of a woman’ / een wondervrouw ‘a wonder woman’). The differences and similarities between the various patterns are determined through a corpus analysis of their semantic and formal properties, as well as their frequency and productivity. On the theoretical level, the case study will allow us to address the question whether the syntactic and morphological patterns are complementary or in competition with each other. We will show that some subpatterns form good alternates (e.g. [een pracht van een N2] vs. [een pracht-N2]), while others are used in quite divergent ways ([een droom van een N2] vs. [een droom-N2]).