Cover not available

Article published In: Diachronica
Vol. 31:2 (2014) ► pp.159–191

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Lexical expansion in the HAVE and BE perfect in Dutch

A constructionist prototype account

 | University of Gothenburg
Published online: 5 August 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.31.2.01cou
This article investigates lexical expansion in the HAVE and BE perfect in Dutch. It is known from previous research that early perfects show more lexical restrictions than their modern counterparts. The aim of this article is to uncover how perfects change their collocational preferences over time. The present study tackles this issue taking a quantitative corpus perspective. The empirical basis for this study is a sample of HAVE and BE perfects taken from a corpus of Dutch legal texts (1250–1800). The sample is analyzed using the method of diachronic distinctive collexeme analysis. The statistical analysis indicates that both perfect constructions show fine-grained shifts in collocational preferences over time. The observed lexical expansion has the following properties: it proceeds (a) gradually, (b) through semantically related verb classes, (c) away from a prototype. These properties are accounted for making use of insights from prototype theory and construction grammar.
References (55)
. 2012. The Old English have-perfect and its congeners. Journal of English Linguistics 411. 133–164.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baayen, Harald. 2008. Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Benveniste, Émile. 1968. Mutations of linguistic categories. In Winfred Lehmann & Yakov Malkiel (eds.), Directions for historical linguistics, 85–94. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boogaart, Ronny. 1996. Aspect and temporal ordering: A contrastive analysis of Dutch and English. Amsterdam: VU University Amsterdam dissertation.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan & David Eddington. 2006. A usage-based approach to Spanish verbs of ‘becoming’. Language 821. 323–355. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2003. Cognitive processes in grammaticalization. In Michael Tomasello (ed.), The new psychology of language, vol. 21, 145–167. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. Language, usage and cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins & William Pagliuca 1994. The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carey, Kathleen. 1994. Pragmatics, subjectivity and the grammaticalization of the English perfect. San Diego: University of California dissertation.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect: An introduction to the study of verbal aspects and related problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Coussé, Evie. 2008. Motivaties voor volgordevariatie: Een diachrone studie van werkwoordsvolgorde in het Nederlands. Ghent: Ghent University dissertation.
CrossRef DOI logo with hyperlink to permanent DOI
.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. Een digitaal compilatiecorpus historisch Nederlands. Lexikos 201. 123–142. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. On ambiguous past participles in Dutch. Linguistics 491. 611–634. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. The grammaticalization of the have perfect in Dutch: A corpus study of contextual extension and semantic generalization. Language Sciences 361. 103–112. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2001. Radical construction grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E., Devin M. Casenhiser & Nitya Sethuraman. 2004. Learning argument structure generalizations. Cognitive Linguistics 151. 289–316. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan Th. & Anatol Stefanowitsch. 2004. Extending collostructional analysis: A corpus-based perspective on ‘alternations’. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 91. 97–129. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan Th. 2007. Coll.analysis 3.2. A program for R for Windows 2.x.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haeseryn, Walter, Kirsten Romijn, Guido Geerts, Jaap de Rooij & Maarten C. van den Toorn. 1997. Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst. Groningen/Deurne: Martinus Nijhoff uitgevers/Wolters Plantyn.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Harris, Alice C. 2003. Cross-linguistic perspectives on syntactic change. In Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda (eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics, 529–551. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hilpert, Martin. 2006. Distinctive collexeme analysis and diachrony. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 21. 243–257. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2004. Lexicalization and grammaticization: Opposite or orthogonal? In Walter Bisang, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann & Björn Wiemer (eds.), What makes grammaticalization: A look from its components and its fringes, 21–42. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. & Sandra A. Thompson. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 561. 251–299. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kern, Johan Hendrik. 1912. De met het participium praeteriti omschreven werkwoordsvormen in ‘t Nederlands. Amsterdam: Johannes Müller.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, fire and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald. 1987. Foundations of cognitive grammar. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levin, Beth & Malka Rappaport Hovav. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the syntax-lexical semantics interface. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levin, Beth. 1993. English verb classes and alternations: A preliminary investigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McFadden, Thomas & Artemis Alexiadou. 2006. Auxiliary selection and counterfactuality in the history of English and Germanic. In Jutta M. Hartmann & László Molnárfi (eds.), Comparative studies in Germanic syntax, 237–262. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. Perfects, resultatives, and auxiliaries in Earlier English. Linguistic Inquiry 411. 389–425. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nedjalkov, Vladimir P. & Sergej Jaxontov. 1988. The typology of resultative constructions. In Vladimir P. Nedjalkov (ed.), Typology of resultative constructions, 3–62. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Paul, Hermann. 1902. Die Umschreibung des Perfektums im Deutschen mit haben und sein. Munich: Verlag der k. Akademie.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perlmutter, David. 1978. Impersonal passives and the unaccusative hypothesis. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS) 41. 157–189. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pijnenburg, Willy J.J. & Tanneke H. Schoonheim. 1998. Het Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek: De geschiedenis van een project. Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde 1121. 152–164.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pinkster, Harm. 1987. The strategy of chronology of the development of future and perfect tense auxiliaries in Latin. In Martin Harris & Paola Ramat (eds.), Historical development of auxiliaries, 193–223. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
R Core Team. 2012. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reenen, Pieter Th. van & Maaike Mulder. 1993. Een gegevensbank van 14de-eeuwse Middelnederlandse dialecten op de computer. Lexikos 31. 259–281.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shannon, Thomas F. 1989. Perfect auxiliary variation as a function of transitivity and Aktionsart. In Joseph Emonds, P.J. Mistry, Vida Samiian & Linda Thornburg (eds.), Proceedings from the Western Conference on Linguistics (WECOL), 254–266. Fresno: California State University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1990. The unaccusative hypothesis and the history of the perfect auxiliary in Germanic and Romance. In Henning Andersen & Konrad Koerner (eds.), Historical linguistics 1987: Papers from the 8th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL), 461–488. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1993a. To be or not to be in Dutch: A cognitive account of some puzzling perfect auxiliary phenomena. In Robert S. Kirsner (ed.), Beyond the Low Countries, 85–96. Lanham: University Press of America.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1993b. Split intransitivity in German and Dutch: Semantic and pragmatic parameters. In Rosina Lippi-Green (ed.), Recent developments in Germanic linguistics, 97–113. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1995. Towards a cognitive explanation of perfect auxiliary selection: Some modal and aspectual effects in the history of German. American Journal of Germanic Linguistics & Literatures 71. 129–163. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sorace, Antonella. 2000. Gradients in auxiliary selection with intransitive verbs. Language 761. 859–890. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stefanowitsch, Anatol & Stefan Th. Gries. 2003. Collostructions: Investigating the interaction between words and constructions. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 81. 209–243. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stefanowitsch, Anatol. 2006. Distinctive collexeme analysis and diachrony: A comment. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 21. 257–262. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Timberlake, Alan. 1975. Hierarchies in the genitive of negation. The Slavic and East European Journal 191. 123–138. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 1972. A history of English syntax. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vincent, Nigel. 1982. The development of the auxiliaries habere and esse in Romance. In Nigel Vincent & Martin Harris (eds.), Studies in the Romance verb, 71–96. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yoon, Soyeon. 2012. Constructions, semantic compatibility and coercion: An empirical usage-based approach. Houston: Rice University dissertation.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (11)

Cited by 11 other publications

Sommerer, Lotte & Freek Van de Velde
2025. Constructional Networks. In The Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar, ► pp. 220 ff. DOI logo
Hilpert, Martin
2024. Corpus linguistics meets historical linguistics and construction grammar: how far have we come, and where do we go from here?. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 20:3 ► pp. 481 ff. DOI logo
Norde, Muriel & Graeme Trousdale
2024. Creativity, paradigms and morphological constructions: evidence from Dutch pseudoparticiples. Linguistics DOI logo
Broekhuis, Hans
2021. The rise of the periphrastic perfect tense in the continental West Germanic languages. In The Perfect Volume [Studies in Language Companion Series, 217], ► pp. 261 ff. DOI logo
Dekalo, Volodymyr
2021. Exploring relative degrees of auxiliarization empirically in German modal constructions with wissen and verstehen . In Modality and Diachronic Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 32], ► pp. 53 ff. DOI logo
Hilpert, Martin, Bert Cappelle & Ilse Depraetere
2021. Modality in Diachronic Construction Grammar. In Modality and Diachronic Construction Grammar [Constructional Approaches to Language, 32], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Larsson, Ida
2021. On the emergence of auxiliary selection in Germanic. In The Perfect Volume [Studies in Language Companion Series, 217], ► pp. 291 ff. DOI logo
Sommerer, Lotte
2019. Van Goethem, Kristel, Muriel Norde, Evie Coussé & Gudrun Vanderbauwhede (eds.). (2018).Category Change from a Constructional Perspective. Constructions and Frames 11:2 ► pp. 317 ff. DOI logo
Coussé, Evie
2018. Grammaticalization, host-class expansion and category change. In Category change from a constructional perspective [Constructional Approaches to Language, 20], ► pp. 93 ff. DOI logo
Gillmann, Melitta
2018. Manner of motion and semantic transitivity. In Reorganising Grammatical Variation [Studies in Language Companion Series, 203], ► pp. 231 ff. DOI logo
Fonteyn, Lauren & Stefan Hartmann
2016. Usage-based perspectives on diachronic morphology: A mixed-methods approach towards English ing-nominals. Linguistics Vanguard 2:1 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue