Ditransitive verbs and the ditransitive construction: a diachronic perspective

This paper argues for the adoption of a construction-based perspective to the investigation of diachronic shifts in valency, which is a hitherto largely neglected topic in the framework of valency grammar. On the basis of a comparison of the set of verbs attested in the double object argument structure pattern in a corpus of 18th-century British English with the construction's present-day semantic range, I will distinguish between three kinds of valency shifts. It will be shown that the semantic ranges of schematic argument structure constructions are subject to diachronic change, and that the shifts in valency observed in individual verbs are often part of more general changes at the level of the associated argument structure constructions. The latter part of the paper explores frequency shifts in valency and constructional semantics

Over werkwoordalternanties in de Syntax of Dutch

This review article offers a critical discussion of the extensive treatment of verb frame alternations in the first volume on Verbs and Verb Phrases of the Syntax of Dutch (SoD). The article takes a usage-based perspective and focuses on a number of aspects of the grammatical description in the SoD that are too exclusively rooted in the theoretical framework of formal syntax

Constructionalization and post-constructionalization: the constructional semantics of the Dutch krijgen-passive in a diachronic perspective

The grammatical literature on Dutch generally distinguishes two “passive” alternatives to the active double object construction, one of which, the so-called krijgen-passive is a fairly recent addition to the grammar, the earliest reported examples dating from around 1900. The present paper addresses the early and subsequent history of this construction from a diachronic constructionist perspective. The first part of the paper uses data from the 1900-1935 volumes of the Dutch periodical De Gids to reconstruct the lexical and semantic range of the krijgen-passive in its very first decades of life, in order to investigate which (semantic and/or morphological) subclasses of ditransitive verbs played a pathbreaking role in the development of this new construction from other krijgen + participle constructions, i.e. in the constructionalization of the krijgen-passive. The second part of the paper looks into post-constructionalization semantic change, i.e. into the subsequent expansion of the newly emerged construction towards more sub-classes of ditransitive verbs, on the basis of data from the diachronic CONDIV-corpus (1950s to 1990s). Contra recent non-constructionist proposals, it will be argued that the krijgen-passive is an argument structure construction in its own right, with a semantic dynamics of its own, and that the apparently random constraints on its present-day distribution are less puzzling when viewed against the background of the construction’s genesis and subsequent semantic expansion

De aan-constructie in het 17de-eeuwse Nederlands: een semasiologische studie

The Dutch aan-construction (e.g. Hij gaf een bos bloemen aan zijn vrouw „He gave a bouquet to his wife‟), the prepositional alternative for the double object construction (Hij gaf zijn vrouw een bos bloemen „He gave his wife a bouquet‟), is a post Middle Dutch innovation (i.e. after 1500 AD). The precise details of the rise of the aan-construction remain, however, understudied. It is for example unclear whether the construction really breaks through in the 17th century, as Weijnen & Gordijn (1970) argue on the basis of a small corpus of farces, and what its semantic range was in those early days. In this paper we try to shed more light on these issues. On the basis of a self-compiled corpus of literary Dutch, we firstly show that the construction was not only already frequently attested in the language use in the 17th century, but also covered a remarkably wide semantic range at that time. Next, via a detailed comparison with data for the 20th century, we show that there have been interesting changes concerning the semantic evolution of the aan-construction. The structural weight of a cluster of „do‟- and „send‟-verbs for example declines over time and at more general level there seems to be a trend towards more abstract uses of the aan-construction. A diachronic collostructional analysis (Hilpert 2006) and Configural Frequency Analysis (von Eye 2002) lends a statistical underpinning to our observations

Je dood vervelen of je te pletter amuseren? Het intensiverende gebruik van de pseudoreflexieve resultatiefconstructie in hedendaags Belgisch en Nederlands Nederlands

This paper focuses on the intensifying use of the fake reflexive resultative construction, as demonstrated in the example Hij lacht zich een breuk om die mop (lit. ‘He laughs himself a fracture because of that joke’). Although the literal use of the (English) fake reflexive resultative construction has been the subject of several studies, scant attention has been paid to the potential of this construction for conveying an intensifying meaning, though these intensifying uses show an intriguing mix of productivity and lexical idiosyncrasy that deserves careful analysis. This case study will zoom in on the use of the intensifying fake reflexive resultative construction in present-day Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch. The analysis will reveal some discrepancies between two national variants of Dutch and shed light on the development of subschemas displaying various degrees of productivity on the one hand and the possible lexicalisation of strong combinations on the other