Based on a comparative corpus study, the present paper contrasts conditionals containing the modal verbs sollte in German, should in English, and mocht/moest in Dutch. The conditionals are examined with respect to the linkage levels between protasis and apodosis, the tense/mood patterns in the two clauses, and the degree of syntactic integration of the protasis into the apodosis. We argue that sollte, should, mocht, and moest are undergoing a process of grammaticalization as markers of conditionality, understood as upwards reanalysis in the hierarchy of functional projections. We show that this grammaticalization process is at different stages in the different languages, not showing any “sandwich”-like pattern.

All West Germanic languages possess periphrastic verb constructions in which a finite dummy auxiliary ‘do’ combines with an infinitival thematic verb (compare do-support in English and tun-periphrasis in German). In Frisian, periphrastic verb constructions are not very common. It is all the more surprising, therefore, to find a general periphrastic verb construction in Karrharde North Frisian that seems to go beyond the typology of these constructions in West Germanic to some extent: The construction is rather unconstrained, it features a mysterious dummy auxiliary wer- and, most strikingly, both the dummy auxiliary and the thematic verb are finite. In this article, the basic data on finite verb doubling in Karrharde North Frisian is presented, and the origin of the dummy auxiliary wer- is tracked down. A synchronic analysis of the construction is proposed that relates it to the periphrastic verb constructions in other West Germanic languages. It is shown that finite verb doubling is in most respects a garden variety periphrastic verb construction, and that its special properties can be traced back to the fact that the dummy auxiliary developed from the complementizer wer ‘if, whether’ (possibly under language contact with Danish).

This paper investigates three verbs expressing necessity in the three West Germanic languages: Dutch hoeven, English need, and German brauchen. These three verbs are all categorized as negative polarity items (npis). However, there are differences in their distribution as NPIs, which posit German brauchen between English need and Dutch hoeven. By analyzing two factors that may influence acquisition, namely, opacity and input frequency, this paper moreover presents a similar pattern for the acquisition of these NPIs: The Dutch NPI hoeven emerges earlier in child language than its German counterpart, which in turn arises earlier than the English NPI need.

This study discusses copy raising in English, German, and Dutch from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective. Synchronically, copy raising has the same purpose in all three languages: to mark direct evidence. However, the languages differ in whether they allow their ‘seem’-verbs to appear in copy-raised constructions: English seem can copy raise, German scheinen cannot, whereas the status of Dutch lijken is undecided. This difference is explained by the diachronic development of these verbs: English seem has developed the furthest along the grammaticalization cline of ‘seem’-verbs, German scheinen is the most conservative in its development, and Dutch lijken has developed quite late, but is quickly catching up to English seem. Even though it is too early to tell, this distribution hints at a Van Haeringen pattern.*

Present-day Dutch shows an alternation reflecting a transition from the use of the comparative particle dan ‘than’ toward the particle als ‘as’ in comparisons of inequality. We argue that this transition—as well as the replacement of denn/dann by als in Early New High German, and als ‘as’ by wie ‘how’ in present-day German—results from a conflict between two competing principles, Economy and Iconicity. The conflict between these two constraints in German and Dutch gives rise to a cycle, in which having two particles—one for each construction—and having one particle for both, comparatives and equatives, alternate over time.*