Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2023
Edited by Sterre Leufkens and Marco Bril
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 40] 2023
► pp. 248–262
Argument doubling with proper nouns in spoken Dutch
A corpus study
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.
Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Radboud University Nijmegen.
Published online: 3 November 2023
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00090.wet
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00090.wet
Abstract
Argument doubling, also known as (contrastive) left-dislocation, is common in spoken Dutch, but it is unclear exactly what triggers it. Earlier proposals in the literature showed that the construction is not used for marking contrast, and suggested it is used for marking shifted topics instead. However, the results from a Spoken Dutch Corpus study on argument doubling with proper nouns demonstrate that topic-shift does not adequately characterize the construction’s function either. Further examination of our corpus data shows that at least for proper nouns, Dutch argument doubling mostly occurs when a new referent is introduced into the discourse, but that this referent does not necessarily become the topic of the discourse. We hypothesize that argument doubling is a way of giving speakers and/or hearers some extra time to establish and/or process the new discourse referent in the discourse, regardless of whether it will become a discourse-topic after its introduction.
Keywords: spoken Dutch, left dislocation, topic-shift, proper nouns, discourse-new
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Previous literature on argument doubling in Dutch and English
- 3.Argument doubling in the Spoken Dutch Corpus
- 3.1Method
- 3.2Results
- 4.Discussion
- 5.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
References
References (10)
Foolen, Ad, Helen de Hoop & Gijs Mulder. 2018. “Evidentiality: How do you know?” In Evidence for evidentiality ed. by Ad Foolen, Helen de Hoop & Gijs Mulder, 1–16. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Matić, Dejan, Saskia van Putten & Jeremy Hammond. 2016. “Integrated and non-integrated left dislocation: A comparative study of LD in Avatime, Tundra Yukaghir & Whitesands.” In Explorations of the syntax-semantics interface ed. by Jens Fleischhauer, Anja Latrouite & Rainer Osswald, 343–371. Düsseldorf: Düsseldorf University Press.
Oostdijk, Nelleke. 2000. “The Spoken Dutch Corpus. Outline and first evaluation.” Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, 887–894. Athens, Greece: European Language Resources Association.
Prince, Ellen F. 1998. “On the limits of syntax, with reference to left-dislocation and topicalization.” In The limits of syntax ed. by Peter W. Culicover & Louise McNally, 281–302. San Diego, California, USA: Academic Press.
Schmitz, Tijn, Lotte Hogeweg & Helen de Hoop. 2018. “The use of the Dutch additive particle ook ‘too’ to avoid contrast.” Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde 1341: 197–219. [URL]
Shaer, Benjamin & Werner Frey. 2004. “‘Integrated’ and ‘non-integrated left-peripheral elements in German and English.” ZAS Papers in Linguistics 35(2): 465–502.
Shor, Leon. 2020. “Reassessing the third person pronominal ‘copula’ in spoken Israeli Hebrew.” Linguistics 58(6): 1807–1837.