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Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2025
Edited by Kristel Doreleijers, Remco Knooihuizen and Eva van Lier
[Nota Bene 2:2] 2025
► pp. 269–288

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Tread lightly

Deriving distributional differences in Dutch manner adverbials

 | Utrecht University
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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 Utrecht University.

Published online: 31 October 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/nb.00033.clo
Abstract
Different Dutch manner adverbials exhibit different syntactic behaviour in embedded clauses (1); given accounts of the supposed cross-linguistic uniformity of manner adverbials as adpositional phrases, this comes as a surprise.
(1)
…dat
…that
Reinder
R.
het
the
parcours
course
<
 
op
on
deze
this
manier
manner
/
/
te
on
voet>
foot
aflegt <op deze manier/*te voet>.
traverses
‘…that Reinder is traversing the course in this way/on foot.’
I argue non-uniform distribution of Dutch manner adverbial PPs is related to differences in their internal structure; lightness of the nominal complement embedded in them is shown to affect the structure of PP, which in turn affects how they distribute. With Collins, Chris. 2007. Home Sweet Home. NYU Working Papers in Linguistics, 11.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar and . 1994. Predicate Incorporation and the Word Order of Dutch. In Guglielmo Cinque, Jan Koster, Jean-Yves Pollock, Luigi Rizzi, & Rafaella. Zanuttini (Eds.), Paths Towards Universal Grammar: Studies in Honor of Richard S. Kayne (Vol. 11, p. 491). Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, I argue light PPs, as complements of the verb, must move away from sentence-final position, while non-light PPs do so optionally, deriving the observed distributional disparity between MAs.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Lightness matters
    • 2.1Dutch MAs with light v. non-light noun phrases under extraposition
    • 2.2What’s (in) a light noun?
    • 2.3Light complement, light PP
  • 3.Deriving the distribution of Dutch MAs
    • 3.1Collins (2007) and Koster (1994) on the distribution of PPs
    • 3.2Dutch light PP MA as V-complements
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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