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Qualitative-Quantitative Analyses of Dutch and Afrikaans Grammar and Lexicon
Sharing certain assumptions but differing in theory and practice, both Columbia School linguistics (CS) and Cognitive Grammar (CG) have increasingly supported their analyses with quantitative evidence. Citation of individual sentences, in isolation or in context, has been supplemented with counts of linguistic forms in texts, informant questionnaires, and perception tests. The present volume, continuing a dialogue between CS and CG, offers six such qualitative-quantitative studies, one on Afrikaans and five on Dutch. Topics include (a) demonstratives, (b) pragmatic particles and imperatives, (c) a puzzling “dismissive” idiom, (d) progressive aspect, and (e) indirect objects. While CS is better suited for analyzing relatively closed systems (e.g. tense, pronouns), CG provides more insight into the vagaries of the amorphous lexicon. The author also offers personal remarks on “linguistics as a path” and discusses how in one case a wrong prediction reflects his dual role as both linguist and student of Dutch as a foreign language.
[Studies in Functional and Structural Linguistics, 67] 2014. xi, 239 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 7 February 2014
Published online on 7 February 2014
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
- | pp. v–5
- Acknowledgements | pp. xi–11
- 1. Introduction | pp. 1–6
- 2. The Dutch demonstrative adjectives: Analyses and responses | pp. 7–42
- 3. The Afrikaans demonstratives and instructional meanings | pp. 43–84
- 4. On imperatives and pragmatic particles | pp. 85–120
- 5. What it takes to understand how one Dutch idiom works | pp. 121–162
- 6. Further explorations | pp. 163–212
- 7. Afterword | pp. 213–220
- References and Corpora
- Name index | pp. 235–236
- Subject index | pp. 237–239
“Professor Kirsner combines the perceptive amazement of a non-native speaker with analytic skills fed by the Columbia School of linguistics, by Californian functionalism, and by Cognitive Grammar. The result is a fascinating series of studies on Dutch and Afrikaans: aspects of the grammar that seem obvious to the native speaker turn out to be puzzles on closer scrutiny - but in Kirsner's able hands, they do come with a solution.”
Dirk Geeraerts, KU Leuven
“Are linguistic items typically monosemous or rather polysemous? Do lexical items and grammatical constructions behave the same or differently in this respect? And how can quantitative analysis of utterance data help decide such questions? In this book, Kirsner analyzes Dutch and Afrikaans demonstrative pronouns, Dutch modal particles and imperative and progressive constructions as test cases for these theoretical and methodological questions, and reflects on the implications of his findings for theoretical models like Columbia School and Cognitive Grammar. The present volume provides an inspiring insight in Kirsner’s life long fascination with languages, linguistic theories and methodological dilemmas.”
Ad Foolen, Radboud University Nijmegen
Cited by (6)
Cited by six other publications
de Hoop, Helen & Gijs Mulder
2022. Claiming common ground with utterance-final particle hoor in Dutch. Linguistics in the Netherlands 39 ► pp. 88 ff.
Lin, Lin
Breed, Adri, Frank Brisard & Ben Verhoeven
van Rooy, Bertus & Haidee Kruger
2016. The innovative progressive aspect of Black South African English. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 2:2 ► pp. 205 ff.
Kirsner, Robert S.
2014. Doing grammatical semantics as if it were phonetics. In Above and Beyond the Segments, ► pp. 165 ff.
[no author supplied]
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