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Article published In:
Linguistics in the Netherlands 2020
Edited by Elena Tribushinina and Mark Dingemanse
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 37] 2020
► pp. 149–164

Discourse-related V1 declaratives in Dutch

| Utrecht University

This paper discusses two types of discourse-related V1 declaratives in Dutch. The first type involves a missing argument. In the position before the finite verb a referential 3rd person pronoun is deleted. The deletion of the pronoun is constrained by the recoverability condition, which requires that its referential features can be reconstructed from context. I will argue that only the deletion of a d(emonstrative)-pronoun is “topic drop”. Deleted topic d-pronouns are subject to the same syntactic conditions as overt topic d-pronouns. Like the overt d-pronoun, the deleted d-pronoun refers to the focus constituent of the preceding sentence. A deleted p(ersonal)-pronoun, by contrast, does not have a uniquely determined antecedent. The second type of V1 declarative is found in so-called “narrative inversion” in which all arguments are present, and no empty element needs to be postulated. Various types of narrative inversion and the kind of discourse relation they imply are discussed.

Keywords: Dutch, topic drop, subject drop, narrative inversion
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Two types of sentence-initial deletion in Dutch
  • 3.Distinction between d-pronouns and p-pronouns: Topics and canonical subjects
  • 4.The discourse function of d-pronouns and p-pronouns
  • 5.Recoverability of deletion
    • 5.1Topic drop: Subject and object d-pronouns
    • 5.2Subject drop of 3rd person p-pronouns
  • 6.Narrative inversion: No missing argument
    • 6.1Narrative inversion in the main clause: Temporal succession
    • 6.2Narrative inversion in conditional or temporal clauses
    • 6.3Narrative inversion in spoken Dutch: No stylistic effect
  • 7.Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 27 October 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00043.kam
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