This is a brief reply to the article by Vliegen in this issue. We argue that,
while Vliegen’s suggestion of a link between naar het schijnt and (’t) schijnt is certainly
plausible, this need not rule out a scenario in which the emerging use of (’t)
schijnt as a particle has also taken its root in (specific uses of) the matrix clause
construction het schijnt dat. In modern construction-based approaches to language
change, it is accepted that newly developing constructions may have multiple
sources. In this perspective, the ‘matrix clause hypothesis’ and the ‘paratactic
hypothesis’ are not mutually exclusive