Tracing the history of deontic NCI patterns in Dutch
A case of polysemy copying
While the so-called “nominative-and-infinitive” (NCI) is no longer a productive construction in Dutch, the grammar of Present-day Dutch still contains a small set of lexically substantive NCI patterns, most notably geacht worden te and verondersteld worden te. Like their English formal equivalent be supposed to, these Dutch patterns can instantiate both evidential and deontic constructions, the latter being the most frequent one in Dutch. This study focuses on the history of these deontic uses. We show that, with both patterns, the deontic use did not really take off until well into the second half of the twentieth century, and argue against an analysis in terms of grammaticalization along an (unlikely) “evidential to deontic” path. Instead we present a language-contact hypothesis which attributes the development of the deontic uses of Dutch geacht worden te and verondersteld worden te to polysemy copying or distributional assimilation, English be supposed to providing the model. Additional evidence for the influence of English on this domain of Dutch grammar comes from the newly emerging lexically substantive NCI pattern verwacht worden te ‘be expected to’.
References
Corpora
BNC
=
The British National Corpus
(version 3, BNC XML Edition)
2007 Distributed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. Online:
[URL]
.
ConDiv
=
CONDIV corpus geschreven Nederlands
[CONDIV corpus of written Dutch]
1999 Compiled by the QLVL research group at the University of Leuven. More information: see Grondelaers et al (2000).
De Gids
2006 DVD edition of the first 100 volumes (1837–1936) of the periodical
De Gids
(‘The Guide’). Foundation for Historic Future. More information:
[URL]
.
Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren
Digital Library of Dutch Literature]. Online:
[URL]
.
INL38
=
38 miljoen-woorden-corpus
[38 million word corpus of Dutch]
1996 Institute for Dutch Lexicology. Online:
[URL]. More information: see Kruyt and Dutilh (1997).
Secondary sources
Aijmer, Karin
1972
Some Aspects of Psychological Predicates in English
. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finnegan
1999
Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English
. Harlow: Longman.
Colleman, Timothy, and Dirk No
Collins, Peter
2009
Modals and Quasi-modals in English
. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi.
Depraetere, Ilse, and Susan Reed
2006 “Mood and Modality in English.” In
The Handbook of English Linguistics
, ed. by
Bas Aarts, and
April McMahon, 269–290. Oxford: Blackwell.
Duinhoven, A.M
1991 “Dat siet men wit ende reine wesen: A.c.i.-constructies in het Nederlands.”
Nieuwe Taalgids
84: 409–430.
Fischer, Olga
1989 “The Origin and Spread of the Accusative and Infinitive Construction in English.”
Folia Linguistica Historica
8: 143–217.
Fischer, Olga
1992 “Syntactic Change and Borrowing: The Case of the Accusative-and-infinitive Construction in English.” In
Internal and External Factors in Syntactic Change
, ed. by
Marinel Gerritsen, and
Dieter Stein, 17–88. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Fischer, Olga
1994 “The Fortunes of the Latin-type Accusative and Infinitive Construction in Dutch and English Compared.” In
Language Change and Language Structure: Older Germanic Languages in a Comparative Perspective
, ed. by
Toril Swan,
Endre Mørck, and
Olaf Jansen Westvik, 91–133. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Gast, Volker, and Johan van der Auwera
2012 “What Is ‘Contact-induced Grammaticalization’? Examples from Mayan and Mixe-Zoquean Languages.” In
Grammatical Replication and Borrowability in Language Contact
, ed. by
Björn Wiemer,
Bernhard Wälchli, and
Björn Hansen, 381–426. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
Givón, Talmy
1990
Syntax: A Functional-typological Introduction
, vol. 2. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Givón, Talmy
1993
English Grammar: A Function-based Introduction
, vol. 2. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.
Goossens, Louis
1991 “FG Reflections on ‘Tobacco is said to be harmful’.”
Cahiers de l’Institut de Linguistique de Louvain
17 (1–3): 65–74.
Grondelaers, Stefan, Katrien Deygers, Hilde van Aken, Vicky van den Heede, and Dirk Speelman
2000 “Het CONDIV-corpus geschreven Nederlands.”
Nederlandse Taalkunde
5: 356–363.
Haugen, Einar
1950 “The Analysis of Linguistic Borrowing.”
Language
26 (2): 210–231.
Heine, Bernd, and Tania Kuteva
Heine, Bernd, and Tania Kuteva
2005
Language Contact and Grammatical Change
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Huddleston, Rodney, and Geoffrey Pullum
2002
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kruyt, J.G., and M.W.F. Dutilh
1997 “A 38 Million Words Dutch Text Corpus and Its Users.”
Lexikos
7: 229–244.
Langacker, Ronald W
1987
The Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vol. 1: Theoretical Prerequisites
. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Los, Bettelou
2005
The Rise of the To -Infinitive
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moore, Colette
2007 “The Spread of Grammaticalized Forms: The Case of be+supposed to.”
Journal of English Linguistics
35 (2): 117–131.
Noël, Dirk
1997 “The Choice between Infinitives and that-clauses after believe.”
English Language and Linguistics
1 (2): 271–284.
Noël, Dirk
2003 “Is There Semantics in All Syntax? The Case of Accusative and Infinitive Constructions vs. that-clauses.” In
Determinants of Grammatical Variation in English
, ed. by
Günter Rohdenburg, and
Britta Mondorf, 347–377. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Noël, Dirk
2008 “The Nominative and Infinitive in Late Modern English: A Diachronic Constructionist Approach.”
Journal of English Linguistics
36 (4): 314–340.
Noël, Dirk, and Timothy Colleman
Noël, Dirk, and Timothy Colleman
Noël, Dirk, and Johan van der Auwera
2009 “Revisiting be supposed to from a Diachronic Constructionist Perspective.”
English Studies
90 (5): 599–623.
Oxford English Dictionary
1989– Third ed. in progress. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Online:
[URL]
.
Sweetser, Eve
1990
From Etymology to Pragmatics
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs
1989 “On the Rise of Epistemic Meanings in English: An Example of Subjectification in Semantic Change.
Language
65 (1): 31–55.
van der Auwera, Johan, and Vladimir A. Plungian
1998 “Modality’s Semantic Map.”
Linguistic Typology
2 (1): 79–124.
van Leuvensteijn, J.A
1997 “Vroegnieuwnederlands (circa 1550–1650).” In
Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Taal
, ed. by
M.C. van den Toorn,
W.J.J. Pijnenburg,
J.A. van Leuvensteijn, and
J.M. van der Horst, 227–272. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Warner, Anthony
1982
Complementation in Middle English and the Methodology of Historical Syntax: A Study of the Wyclifite Sermons
. London: Croom Helm.
Weinreich, Uriel
1968 [1953]
Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems
. The Hague: Mouton.
Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal
1882–1998 Ed. by
M. De Vries,
L.A. Te Winkel et al. ’s Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff.
Zajicek, Jacques
1970 “Réflexions sur l'accusativus cum infinitivo.”
Nieuwe Taalgids
63: 198–208.
Ziegeler, Debra
2003 “On the Generic Origins of Modality in English.” In
English Modality in Context: Diachronic Perspectives
, ed. by
David Hart, 33–69. Bern: Peter Lang.
Zwart, C
Jan-Wouter
2011
The Syntax of Dutch
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cited by
Cited by 3 other publications
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.