Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2025
Edited by Kristel Doreleijers, Remco Knooihuizen and Eva van Lier
[Nota Bene 2:2] 2025
► pp. 430–447
The diminutive form eentje
A syntactic analysis
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 University of Amsterdam.
Published online: 31 October 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/nb.00042.sle
https://doi.org/10.1075/nb.00042.sle
Abstract
In this paper a syntactic analysis of the Dutch diminutive form eentje ‘one.dim’ is put forth. Within a syntactic approach to morphology, it is claimed that the form eentje results from movement operations to license an empty noun. On the basis of data from the Corpus Spoken Dutch (Netherlandic and Belgian Dutch data) on the combination of eentje and één ‘one’ with or without the quantitative pronoun er, it is argued that eentje does not result from nominalization, as could be suggested by the diminutive form in -tje. It is proposed that differences between Netherlandic Dutch and Belgian Dutch with respect to the omission of the quantitative pronoun er with één and eentje and higher numerals in the informal data point to a different analysis of een(tje) in these two varieties.
Keywords: eentje, numeral, diminutive, quantitative pronoun, syntax, language variation, Dutch
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.A syntactic analysis of eentje in standard Dutch
- 3.An alternative analysis: eentje as a nominalization
- 4.The omission of er with other numerals
- 5.Een(tje) and other numerals
- 6.Conclusion
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
References
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