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Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2024
Edited by Marco Bril and Kristel Doreleijers
[Nota Bene 1:2] 2024
► pp. 276–292

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Als dan or dan als?

Preferences in clause order for Dutch conditionals

 | Radboud University Nijmegen
 | Radboud University Nijmegen
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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: 24 January 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/nb.00017.van
Abstract
Dutch conditional sentences can occur in canonical clause order, such that the antecedent precedes the consequent, but also in non-canonical order, with the antecedent in sentence-final position. One explanation for the existence of this variety lies in the implicatures they convey: predictive conditionals have what . 2022. Connecting conditionals: A corpus-based approach to conditional constructions in Dutch. LOT. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar labels a more direct connectedness, possibly resulting in a larger preference for the canonical order than speech act conditionals, which are known for their indirect connectedness. Clause order preference could also be influenced by the desire to optimise discourse coherency (Lee, Chang-Bong. 2001. The information status of English if-clauses in natural discourse. Language Research 91. 483–505.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). We put these two factors to the test in an online experiment and found evidence for both theories but not for their interaction. Interestingly, we also found a general preference for the canonical order across all conditions.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Clause order and connectedness
    • 1.2Clause order and information structure
    • 1.3The current study
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1Materials
    • 2.2Participants and procedure
  • 3.Results
  • 4.General discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (39)
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