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Causative sentences; argumentative sentences; verb-second; verb-final; Dutch language; corpus linguistics
Abstract:
In Dutch and German, the canonical order of subject, object(s) and finite verb is
‘verb-second’ (V2) in main but ‘verb-final’ (VF) in subordinate clauses. This occasionally
leads to the production of noncanonical word orders. Familiar examples are
causative and argumentative clauses introduced by a subordinating conjunction (Du.
omdat, Ger. weil ‘because’): the omdat/weil-V2 phenomenon. Such clauses may also
be introduced by coordinating conjunctions (Du. want, Ger. denn), which license V2
exclusively. However, want/denn-VF structures are unknown. We present the results
of a corpus study on the incidence of omdat-V2 in spoken Dutch, and compare them
to published data on weil-V2 in spoken German. Basic findings: omdat-V2 is much
less frequent than weil-V2 (ratio almost 1:8); and the frequency relations between
coordinating and subordinating conjunctions are opposite (want >> omdat; denn <<
weil). We propose that conjunction selection and V2/VF selection proceed partly independently,
and sometimes miscommunicate—e.g. yielding omdat/weil paired with
V2. Want/denn-VF pairs do not occur because want/denn clauses are planned as
autonomous sentences, which take V2 by default. We sketch a simple feedforward
neural network with two layers of nodes (representing conjunctions and word orders,
respectively) that can simulate the observed data pattern through inhibition-based
competition of the alternative choices within the node layers.
