Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2017
Edited by Sander Lestrade and Bert Le Bruyn
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 34] 2017
► pp. 17–29
The change of Frisian infinitives
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: 23 November 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.34.02ber
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.34.02ber
Abstract
This paper discusses the two types of infinitives in Frisian: infinitives ending in -E (e.g. rinne “walk”) and infinitives ending in -EN (e.g. rinnen “walk”). It shows that their distribution can be accounted for by their different underlying syntactic structure: the -E infinitive has a fully verbal structure whereas the -EN infinitive has a flexible structure which always involves a DP. Moreover, I argue that the fact that the difference between the two forms is disappearing can be explained both by Dutch influence and by the fact that the structure of the infinitives already showed much overlap.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The data
- 2.1Traditional distribution
- 2.2Recent data
- 2.2.1Method
- 2.2.2Results
- 3.Analysis
- 3.1The structure of the infinitives
- 3.1.1The -E infinitive
- 3.1.2The -EN infinitive
- 3.2Language change
- 3.1The structure of the infinitives
- 4.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
References
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