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The emergence of periphrastic verb constructions in Dutch. A construction grammar approach to language change

Research project
Inactive research
Project size
3,135,000 kr
Project period
2011 - 2014
Project owner
Department of Languages and Literatures

Financier
Swedish Research Council

Short description

The project aims to generate:
• New empirical knowledge on the history of the Dutch language
• A more comprehensive account of emerging periphrastic verb constructions in Germanic and Romance languages
• Discussion of fundamental mechanisms of language change
• Critical reflection on the explanatory power of grammaticalization theory
• Theoretical contribution to the framework of diachronic construction grammar

A major topic in the historical study of grammar is the emergence of periphrastic verb constructions in the Germanic and Romance languages. A classic example is the emergence of the periphrastic 'have' perfect (a) out of a possessive construction as in (b).

  1. I have packed my suitcase.
  2. I have my suitcase packed and ready.

This development is traditionally considered to be a typical case of grammaticalization, a unidirectional process whereby a lexical item (e.g. the possessive verb 'have') gradually loses its lexical meaning and starts to fulfill a grammatical function (e.g. the auxiliary 'have').

The project develops an alternative approach within the innovative framework of diachronic construction grammar, tackling formal and/or semantic changes within both the auxiliary and the past participle. To this purpose, the emergence of three periphrastic verb constructions in Dutch (i.e. the perfect/passive with auxiliaries 'have', 'be' and 'become') are studied empirically in a corpus of historical Dutch texts from the period 1250-2000.