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Article published In:
Linguistics in the Netherlands 2019
Edited by Janine Berns and Elena Tribushinina
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 36] 2019
► pp. 115–129
Part II: Selected papers presented at the Dutch Annual Linguistics Day of 2019

Changes in argument structure

The case of Dutch vernieuwen

| Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

English is often contrasted with German and Dutch when it comes to the semantic roles that the subject can express (Hawkins 1986; Los & Dreschler 2012). Specifically, English seems to have more middles (She photographs well) and allows for unusual inanimate subjects (The cottage sleeps four). However, it seems that the semantics of the grammatical subject in Dutch are also changing, as witnessed by recent examples from websites and advertisements, such as Uw fietsenstalling verbetert and Presikhaaf vernieuwt. Although these sentences do not have the adverb that is typical of middles in Dutch (Broekhuis, Corver & Vos 2015: 455ff.), they meet several other requirements for middle formation. In this paper, I analyse examples with one such verb, vernieuwen, and identify two different types of intransitive uses for this predominantly transitive verb. I argue that ambiguity, analogy and genre all play an important role in this change in argument structure.

Keywords: middles, semantic roles, subject, analogy, syntactic change
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background: Transitivity alternations and middles in Dutch
  • 3. Vernieuwen: Transitive, intransitive and middle
    • 3.1A note on data and methodology
    • 3.2Current transitive and intransitive uses of vernieuwen
    • 3.3Is this really a new development?
  • 4. Vernieuwen as a middle: Explaining an ongoing development
    • 4.1Genre
    • 4.2Ambiguity, vagueness and analogy
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 5 November 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00027.dre
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