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In:Particles in German, English, and Beyond
Edited by Remus Gergel, Ingo Reich and Augustin Speyer
[Studies in Language Companion Series 224] 2022
► pp. 297–322

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Chapter 11
PP-internal particles in Dutch as evidence for PP-internal discourse structure

 | Universität Konstanz
 | Universiteit Gent
Published online: 16 August 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.224.11tro
Abstract
Drawing on evidence from Dutch, this paper presents the new observation that discourse particles can not only appear at the level of CP, but also inside the PP domain. In particular, we demonstrate that Dutch dan can receive a non-temporal interpretation, and in this reading dan can appear as a functional head inside a complex PP constituent. After having established a detailed structural analysis of this phenomenon, we look beyond Dutch and compare the discourse function that dan has inside the PP to the role that its German cognate denn plays at the level of CP. We conclude that both cases can be analyzed along the same lines because they express the same abstract discourse function: Both PP-internal dan and German denn are discourse-navigating devices that link ‘a ground’ to ‘a figure’, only differing in their semantic domains of application.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Co-constituency of dan and PPs
  • 3.The extended adpositional projection and dan
    • 3.1R-pronouns and the functional structure of PPs in Dutch
    • 3.2Locating non-temporal dan in the functional structure of Dutch PPs
      • 3.2.1A first proposal
      • 3.2.2Complications: An alternative analysis
      • 3.2.3Applying the analysis
  • 4.Beyond non-temporal dan: Navigating the discourse
    • 4.1Particles as discourse partitioners: From PP particles to clause-level particles
    • 4.2Discourse partitioning and the figure-ground relation
    • 4.3Discourse navigation and temporal adjuncts
    • 4.4German denn and the figure-ground relation
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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Cited by one other publication

Trotzke, Andreas
2023. Non-Canonical Questions, DOI logo

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