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Article published In:
Linguistics in the Netherlands 2021
Edited by Mark Dingemanse, Eva van Lier and Jorrig Vogels
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 38] 2021
► pp. 65–80

Going city

Directional predicates and preposition incorporation in youth vernaculars of Dutch

| Radboud University
| Stony Brook University

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.

Keywords: Dutch youth vernaculars, bare singular nominals, directional resultatives, manner-of-motion verbs, null prepositions
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
Published online: 29 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00050.sch
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