The relation between pragmatic markers and the peripheries of clauses, utterances and/or turns has been a topic of linguistic interest for the last few decades. Many issues continue to be debated, however, such as “how should the notion of periphery be defined?”, “to what extent do pragmatic… read more
Imperatives and directive strategies have intrigued both formalists and functionalists. They continue to search for the answers to questions like “what are the semantics of the imperative?”, “how is it used (in the world’s languages)?” and “which factors determine the choice between imperatives and… read more
A Sprachbund refers to a region where languages, despite lacking common ancestry, exhibit similarities due to contact influence, as seen with Standard Average European (SAE). Colonialism spread European languages globally, resulting in creole languages and intercontinental varieties. Languages… read more
This is a study of English (just) as well (as) and as good (as) constructions and their counterparts in Dutch and German. These constructions can express an equative meaning, which is the oldest meaning, as well as ‘extended’ meanings, like coordination, with as well as functioning like the… read more
This article investigates the forms and functions of adjectival intensification in West Germanic. With corpus data from different discourse types, we challenge claims that German tends to use synthetic means and Dutch is between German and English but more like English in its preference for… read more
This paper is the first contrastive study of impersonalization in Romanian and English. Taking an acceptability judgment approach, we describe the functional potential in all impersonal uses of not only the pronouns ‘one’, ‘you’ and ‘they’ but also the lesser studied passive. We find inter alia:… read more
This chapter is the first systematic corpus-based study of parenthetical see, you see and do you see in British English. It compares (the relationship between) their clause positions and their uses. The results indicate, inter alia, that see is not simply a shorter form of you see but also that… read more
The present article examines the claim in the literature that the negative first principle, i.e. the preference for the order negation-verb to verb-negation, is stronger in negative imperatives (or prohibitives) than in negative declaratives. To test this hypothesis, we develop – in contrast to… read more
Like its English counterpart such, Dutch zo’n has identifying and intensifying uses. The established pathway from the former to the latter is found to constitute a proportional rather than a discrete shift here. The strong presence of intensifying uses from the start, as compared to the older… read more
This article compares the grammaticalizing human impersonal pronoun ('n) mens in Afrikaans to fully grammaticalized men and non-grammaticalized een mens in Dutch. It is shown that 'n mens and een mens can still be used lexically, unlike mens and men, and that ('n) mens and een mens are… read more
In this article, we examine and compare the main human impersonal pronouns in Afrikaans, Dutch and English. The second person singular, the third person plural and the ‘man’- and ‘one’-pronouns are studied by means of an acceptability judgment questionnaire and a completion questionnaire. The… read more
This paper describes Bantu imperatival and prohibitival speech acts. The study is set against the background of the formal instability of directives and grammaticalization theory. On the basis of a sample of 100 languages, we conclude that imperatival strategies are limited to imperatives,… read more
This article is a synchronic study of the imperatives of intentional visual perception as pragmatic markers in English and Dutch. It examines the frequency of ‘look’ and kijk in spoken language, the types of text in which they occur and, above all, the way in which they are used. On the basis of… read more
This article is a synchronic study of the imperatives of intentional visual perception as pragmatic markers in English and Dutch. It examines the frequency of ‘look’ and kijk in spoken language, the types of text in which they occur and, above all, the way in which they are used. On the basis of… read more
This article examines the English and Dutch imperatives of intentional visual and auditory perception and in particular their use as pragmatic markers. Look, listen, kijk ‘look’ and luister ‘listen’ are compared with respect to frequency, distribution and usage. The difference between look and… read more
