Going city
Directional predicates and preposition incorporation in youth vernaculars of Dutch
In certain varieties of Dutch spoken among young people, the preposition and determiner in locative and
directional PPs can sometimes be omitted. We argue on the basis of language data taken from Twitter and intuitions of young
speakers of Dutch that nominal arguments in these constructions do not have a DP layer, the absence of which leads to a special
interpretation. The option to omit the preposition is related to the structural and semantic complexity of the verb. The bare
construction is possible only with simple verbs, and not with manner-of-motion verbs. We present an analysis that accounts for the
non-pronunciation of prepositions in directional predicates by claiming that they can be licensed through incorporation into the
verb. This type of incorporation is blocked if the verb is structurally complex.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Omitting the determiner for enriched pragmatic meaning
- 3.Structural complexity of the verb
- 4.Omitting the preposition
- 5.Beyond youth vernaculars of Dutch
- 6.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
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