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English summary This book investigates the diachrony of the Dutch noun phrase (NP). The conclu sion is that in the course of history NPs appear to ‘fold out’: the hierarchically lay ered structure of the NP in Present day Dutch, with three premodifiers (as exemplified in (11.1)), is argued to be the result of a long term syntactic change in volving expansion of adnominal modification slots of increasingly wider scope. (11.1) PRESENT DAY DUTCH (INL)353 zelfs de hogere inkomens ‘even the higher incomes’ [Peripheral modifier (M) zelfs [Determiner (D) de [Adjective (A) hogere [Noun (N) inkomens ] ] ] ]NP In Proto Indo European, NPs consisted of a single noun only. Attributive adjec tives did not appear before Proto Germanic, and a slot for determiners developed no sooner than Old Dutch. Early Modern Dutch saw the emergence of a slot for what Payne & Huddleston (2002:436 439) call peripheral modifiers, a kind of NP modi fiers that is often overlooked in reference grammars of Dutch. As time elapses, the slots are filled by ever more complex elements. Table 11.1: Expansion of the NP PERIOD STRUCTURE EXPANSION Proto Indo European [ N ]NP single noun Proto Germanic [ A [ N ] ]NP adjective slot Old Dutch [ D [ A [ N ] ] ]NP determiner slot Modern Dutch [ M [ D [ A [ N ] ] ] ]NP peripheral modification slot This diachronic state of affairs is remarkable in a number of ways. First, it goes against the widely held opinion that the underlying structure of the NP remains con stant over time, and that any changes in nominal syntax are due to shifts in individ ual lexemes. Second, the development is fairly regular: the higher the scope of a modifier, the later it evolves, and the more complex the form of the modifier, the later it arises as a potential slot filler. The former tendency ties in with the concept of subjectification (see Traugott 1989, 1995; Stein & Wright 1995; Traugott & Dasher 2002; De Smet & Verstraete 2006; Athanasiadou et al. 2006; Cornillie & Delbeque 2006), the latter is reminiscent of Harris & Campbell’s (1995) notion of extension. 353 Details about the corpora used can be found in table 0.2 in the introduction (Inleiding). English summary 372 Preceding the discussion of the supporting diachronic facts, there is first a chap ter dealing with the theoretical underpinnings of this study, and two chapters on the configuration of Dutch NPs from a synchronic perspective. These preliminary chapters provide the background against which the arguments in the subsequent chapters are developed. In chapter 1, a case is made for a sober view on grammar, that is to say, a grammar that assumes no more than form function pairs. Only grammatical mean ings (functions) that are consistently encoded in a particular form are taken to be long to the grammatical inventory of a certain language. While this is not in itself a revolutionary premise, as many, if indeed not all, current syntactic theories cham pion the importance of taking both form and function into account, it turns out that syntactic concepts are often rather loosely motivated. A case in point is the alleged grammatical significance of the order of adjectives as established by e.g. Dixon (1982). According to Dixon – and numerous other scholars (see §2.3) – the general tendency of dimension adjectives (e.g. large) preced ing colour adjectives (e.g. red), is to be attributed to the syntactic configuration of the NP premodifiers, with separate slots for different kinds of adjectives. However, since the regularity in adjective ordering is just a tendency, not a strict rule like e.g. the linear precedence of the definite article and the adjective, it is doubtful that this rule has to be stipulated in the syntax.354 Rather, it may simply be the outcome of more general, non linguistic behaviour (see Van der Horst 1995). Another case is the assumption that languages without an overt determiner still do have a DP projection. To be sure, speakers of Chinese355 can conceive of the difference between definite and indefinite reference, but apparently they do not bother to express it formally in their language. The existence of a DP in Chinese may then reasonably be called into question. The consequence of a more consistent form/function approach as advocated here is that some genuine effects of interpretation (e.g. semantic roles, syntactic functions, implicatures etc.) can be left outside syntax proper. Such an approach is not intended as a programmatic statement, but rather as a way to come to grips with diachronic...

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