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Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2016
Edited by Jenny Audring and Sander Lestrade
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 33] 2016
► pp. 121–134

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Conditional use of prepositional phrases in Dutch

The case of zonder (‘without’)

 | Leiden University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 21 December 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.33.09reu
Abstract
Conditionality can be expressed using a variety of grammatical constructions, ranging from the prototypical lexical marker if to other grammatical patterns. This corpus study investigates the expression of conditionality using prepositional phrases introduced by Dutch zonder (‘without’) compared to their non-conditional use and the use of als (‘if’). The conditional use of zonder-phrases is discussed with respect to complement type, modal marking and negation. A regression analysis was performed to analyse the contribution of these factors to a conditional interpretation.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Brief overview of the literature
    • 2.1Classifying PPs as conditionals
    • 2.2Previous observations
  • 3.Data selection
  • 4.Factors in the conditional use of zonder-PPs
    • 4.1Complement type
    • 4.2Modal marking
    • 4.3Negation
    • 4.4Logistic regression analysis
  • 5.Conclusion and discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (30)
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