Connecting conditionals: a corpus-based approach to conditional constructions in Dutch

Conditionals, or if-then sentences, form a crucial ingredient of everyday reasoning and argumentation, as they enable us to express our thoughts about possible states of the world. They are used in very different ways, and the main aim of this dissertation is to investigate to what extent these different uses of conditionals are connected to one another and to their grammatical features.The first part of this dissertation presents an analysis of conditionals in terms of implicatures of 'unassertiveness' and 'connectedness'. Insights from semantics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, and neighbouring fields are combined. In the second part, the analysis is tested on a corpus of spoken and written Dutch discourse. To investigate the relation between the meaning and grammar of conditionals, several cluster analyses are conducted. The results show that grammatical features such as verb tense and modal marking do not, or only weakly, license generalised implicatures of unassertiveness and connectedness. This outcome sheds light on difficulties in applying general categories of conditionals to language use data, and it suggests that the fundamentals of categorising conditional constructions need revision.The dissertation shows the benefits of combining semantic and pragmatic analyses of conditionals. It provides an extensive discussion of classifications of conditionals, an overview of the grammatical features of Dutch conditionals, and it presents cluster analyses using state-of-the-art machine-learning techniques. The study should therefore be of interest to anyone concerned with the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of conditionals, and to anyone working on Dutch grammar, corpus linguistics, theories of argumentation, and the interface between semantics and pragmatics.NWOTheoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Sentence-medial if-clauses in Dutch: Frequency, semantic domain and syntactic integration

Sentence-medial if-clauses deviate from regular clause-order patterns by their insertion into the main clause, rather than preceding or following it. This phenomenon is analysed in Dutch in terms of semantic domain and syntactic integration.Language Use in Past and Presen

Clause order and syntactic integration patterns in Dutch conditionals

AbstractConditional clauses in Dutch can occur in sentence-initial and sentence-final position. For sentence-initial conditionals, a number of syntactic integration patterns are available. This corpus study investigates to what extent clause order and syntactic integration are associated with mode (spoken, written) and register (formal, informal). Sentence-initial position of the conditional clause is shown to be most frequent in both modes and registers, although sentence-final position is more frequent than one would expect based on the literature, especially in written texts. The distribution of syntactic integration patterns shows a clear difference between modes, as full integration of the conditional clause into the main clause is most frequent in written texts, whereas the use of the resumptive element dan (‘then’) is most frequent in spoken texts.Descriptive and Comparative Linguistic

Van gamen tot netflixen: de spelling van Engelse leenwerkwoorden

Onderzoek naar werkwoordspelling laat zien dat fouten in de vervoeging veroorzaakt worden door o.a. tijdsdruk en homofone werkwoordsvormen, zoals 'verhuist'-'verhuisd' (cf. Sandra, Frisson & Daems, 1999; Chamalaun, 2023). Wij onderzochten een ander struikelblok voor veel leerlingen: de spelling van leenwerkwoorden. Dergelijke werkwoorden dienen volgens de officiële spellingregels van de Nederlandse taal te worden vervoegd (Taalunie, 2011, p. 36), maar veelgebruikte ezelsbruggetjes, zoals die om de stam te vinden (wij-vorm minus 'en'), leveren hier het incorrecte 'gam' in plaats van 'game' op. Daarnaast wordt de spelling van leenwerkwoorden, zo blijkt uit onze data, vaak 'verengelst' - in plaats van 'genetflixt' wordt 'genetflixed' geschreven. In deze bijdrage beantwoorden wij de vraag in welke mate de leenwoordstatus van een werkwoord een rol speelt bij het maken van spelfouten. Daarnaast laten we zien in hoeverre er een relatie bestaat tot typen leenwerkwoorden uitgesplitst naar stameinde, zoals -e en -x in bovenstaande voorbeelden. Daartoe vergeleken we in een grootschalige analyse van recente data afkomstig van website Gespeld (Reuneker, z.d.) de door leerlingen gemaakte fouten in de vervoegingen van leenwerkwoorden en niet-leenwerkwoorden. We laten zien dat een beperkt aantal stamuitgangen het grootste deel van de fouten veroorzaakt en we doen suggesties voor het spellingonderwijs.Language Use in Past and Presen

Assessing classification reliability of conditionals in discourse

Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Dat als: Een 'stijlfout' in de praktijk

Dutch style guides and teaching methods consider the direct sequence of the subordinating conjunctions dat ‘that’ and als `if' a stylistic lapse. It is advised to rewrite sentences containing the sequence by repositioning the conditional als-clause to the final position of the sentence. This study aims to find out to what extent this stylistic lapse actually occurs in several types of texts, and in which situations the aforementioned advice is suitable. We use corpus data from different modes and registers, we provide an overview of language advice from grammars, style guides and teaching methods, and we provide a comparison of Dutch dat als to the treatment of that if in English usage guides. Finally, we analyze the effects of the proposed reformulations, focusing on the function of the conditional clause in context. By doing so, we aim to formulate an informed view on the wide-spread advice concerning dat als `that if', and we aim to refine the advice available in the literature

Dat als: Een 'stijlfout' in de praktijk

Dutch style guides and teaching methods consider the direct sequence of the subordinating conjunctions dat ‘that’ and als `if' a stylistic lapse. It is advised to rewrite sentences containing the sequence by repositioning the conditional als-clause to the final position of the sentence. This study aims to find out to what extent this stylistic lapse actually occurs in several types of texts, and in which situations the aforementioned advice is suitable. We use corpus data from different modes and registers, we provide an overview of language advice from grammars, style guides and teaching methods, and we provide a comparison of Dutch dat als to the treatment of that if in English usage guides. Finally, we analyze the effects of the proposed reformulations, focusing on the function of the conditional clause in context. By doing so, we aim to formulate an informed view on the wide-spread advice concerning dat als `that if', and we aim to refine the advice available in the literature.Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Wat is er mis met 'dat als'?

Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Wat is er mis met 'dat als'?

Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Als ik praat, dan praat ik money: de hiphopste woorden

Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic