Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T22:57:48.306Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Finite Comment Clauses in Dutch: A Corpus-based Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2004

Carla Schelfhout
Affiliation:
Radboud University, Nijmegen Radboud University, Nijmegen, Postbox 9103, 6500 HD, Nijmegen, The Netherlands [[email protected]]
Peter-Arno Coppen
Affiliation:
Radboud University, Nijmegen
Nelleke Oostdijk
Affiliation:
Radboud University, Nijmegen

Abstract

The present paper presents the results of a corpus-based study of the form and distribution of finite comment clauses in Dutch. More specifically, it was investigated where in the sentence such clauses can occur. For the analysis of the data, a topological descriptive model was used. While in the literature an extraction analysis has been suggested in order to account for finite comment clauses in English and German, our findings lead us to challenge this type of analysis and argue that a parenthetical analysis is to be preferred.Thanks are due to Antal van den Bosch and Hans van Halteren for their help in tagging the corpus, and to Toni Rietveld for his statistical advice.

Type
ARTICLES
Copyright
© 2004 Society for Germanic Linguistics

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Collins Chris, and Phil Branigan. 1997. Quotative inversion. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 15. 141.Google Scholar
Corver Norbert, and Craig Thiersch. 2002. Remarks on parentheticals. Progress in grammar, ed. by Marc van Oostendorp and Elena Anagnostopoulou. Available at http://meertens.library.uu.nl/progressingrammar/corver.pdf.
Van Dreumel Simon. 2000. The Amazon grammar and the last part of the middle field. Computational linguistics in the Netherlands 1998. Selected papers from the ninth CLIN meeting, ed. by Frank Van Eynde, Ineke Schuurman and Ness Schelkens, 93107. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Emonds Joseph. 1973. Parenthetical clauses. You take the high node and I'll take the low node. Papers from the comparative syntax festival. The differences between main and subordinate clauses, 12 April 1973. A paravolume to papers from the ninth regional meeting, ed. by Claudia Corum, T. Cedric Smith-Stark, and An Weiser, 333347. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
Gerrits Anouk. 2001. Het begin van het middenveld. Master's thesis, University of Nijmegen.
Grewendorf Günther. 1988. Aspekte der deutschen Syntax: Eine Rektions-Bindungs-Analyse. Studien zur deutschen Grammatik, 33. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
Haeseryn Walter. 1998. Achteropplaatsing van elementen in de zin. Nederlands 200 jaar later. Handelingen dertiende colloquium Neerlandicum, ed. by Hugo Brems, 303326. Woubrugge: IVN.
Haeseryn Walter, K. Romijn G. Geerts J. de Rooij, and M. C. van den Toorn (eds.). 1997. Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst. Groningen/Deurne: Martinus Nijhoff/Wolters Plantyn.
McCawley James D. 1982. Parentheticals and discontinuous constituent structure. Linguistic Inquiry 13. 91106.Google Scholar
Oostdijk Nelleke. 2000. The Spoken Dutch corpus: Outline and first evaluation. Proceedings of the second international conference on language resources and evaluation (LREC), ed. by M. Gravilidou, G. Caravannis, S. Markantonatou, S. Piperidis et al., 887894. Athens: ELDA.
Reis Marga. 1996. Extractions from verb-second clauses in German? On extraction and extraposition in German, ed. by Uli Lutz and Jürgen Pafel, 4588. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Ross John. 1972. Slifting. The formal analysis of natural languages. Proceedings of the first international conference, ed. by Maurice Gross, Morris Halle, and Marcel-Pau Schutzenberger, 133169. The Hague: Mouton.
Schelfhout Carla. 1999. DIP-constructies in AMAZON: Een onderzoek naar plaats en vorm van de reporting clause in parenthetische directe rede-constructies. Master's thesis, University of Nijmegen.
Schelfhout Carla. 2000. Corpus-based analysis of parenthetical reporting clauses. Computational linguistics in the Netherlands 1998. Selected papers from the ninth CLIN meeting, ed. by Frank Van Eynde, Ineke Schuurman, and Ness Schelkens, 147159. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Schelfhout Carla, Peter-Arno Coppen, and Nelleke Oostdijk. 2003a. Intercalaties? Dat zijn geloof ik van die tussendingen … Gramma/TTT 10. 2744.Google Scholar
Schelfhout Carla, Peter-Arno Coppen, and Nelleke Oostdijk. 2003b. Positions of parentheticals and interjections: A corpus-based approach. Linguistics in the Netherlands 2003, ed. by Leonie Cornips and Paula Fikkert, 155166. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Schelfhout Carla, Peter-Arno Coppen, and Nelleke Oostdijk. To appear. Transparent free relatives. Proceedings of CONSOLE XII. Staudacher, Peter. 1990. Long movement from verb-second-complements in German. Scrambling and barriers, ed. by Gunther Grewendorf and Wolfgang Sternefeld, 319339. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Sybesma Rint. 2002. Syntaxis: een generatieve inleiding. Bussum: Coutinho.
Wilder Chris. 1999. Transparent free relatives. Proceedings of the seventeenth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, ed. by K. N. Shahin, S. Blake and E-S. Kim, 685699. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Also published in ZAS Papers in Linguistics [1998]10. 191–199.)
Van Zonneveld Ron. 1994. Kleine syntaxis van het Nederlands. Dordrecht: ICG Publications.