Chapter 13. Recent changes in the verbal complex of Frisian

The word order in the verbal complex of Frisian is changing, quite likely under the influence of Dutch. These syntactic changes go together with changes in the morphological restrictions in the verbal complex, i.e. the occurrence of the Infinitivus-Pro-Participle Effect and changes in the distribution of the infinitival suffixes -e and -en. The central question of this paper is how these changes have to be interpreted. We discuss two alternatives: are these changes a matter of interaction between rules of Frisian and Dutch grammar, or are they consequences of the construction of a grammatical subsystem in its own right. We argue that the latter approach appears to be the more promising one.