Taalportaal - the digital language portal

Dutch
Frisian
Saterfrisian
Afrikaans

Show all

10.2. Verbal (X+V) collocations and verb-first/second

quickinfo

Verb-first/second is normally obligatory in main clauses, but there are cases in which it seems only marginally possible. A typical example is (25), with the N+V collocation touwtje springen'to (rope) skip'.

a.	dat	Peter op straat	touwtje	springt.
	that	Peter in the.street	rope	skips
	'that Peter is skipping in the street.'

Peter springt op straat touwtje.

Peter touwtje springt op straat.

Collocations like touwtje springen denote conventionalized activities and have word-like status, as is clear from the fact illustrated in (26) that this collocation can be placed as a whole in the verbal position of a progressive aan het + Vinfinitive phrase. However, the fact that the nominal part touwtje can also be separated from the verbal part springen suggests that wecannot analyze this collocation as a regular compound. For this reason, we will diverge from the orthographic convention to write such N+V collocations as a single word in order not to bias the discussion below towards a compound analysis for such collocations.

dat	Peter	<touwtje>	aan het <touwtje>	springen	is.
that	Peter	rope	aan het	skip	is
'that Peter is skipping.'

Examples such as (25) can be approached in several ways. One possibility is to deny that collocations like touwtje springen have finite forms, as is claimed for a large set of such N+V collocations at taaladvies.net/taal/advies/vraag/703, probably on the basis of information provided by the Van Dale Dictionary. For many of these verbs, this cannot be maintained given that their finite forms are easy to find on the internet. A Google search (11/11/2013) on [touwtje springt] resulted in more than 300 hits, and a cursory inspection of these results showed that most of them indeed involve embedded clauses such as (25a). Actually, it is not difficult either to find past-tense examples: our Google searches on the strings [touwtje sprong] and [touwtje sprongen]resulted in more than 200 hits, two of which are given in (27).

a.	de buurmeisjes	waarmee	ik	touwtje	sprong	of hinkelde
	the girls.next.door	with.whom	I	rope	skipped	or played.hopscotch
	'the girls next door with whom I skipped or played hopscotch'

b.	Er	waren [...]	een paar meisjes	die	touwtje	sprongen.
	there	were	a couple [of] girls	who	rope	skipped
	'There were a couple of girls who were skipping.'

A second possibility is to deny that the contrast between examples like (25a&b) is real and to assume that both types of examples are equally acceptable. This position can be supported by the fact that verb-second examples such as (25b) can indeed be found on the internet. The number of such examples is relatively small, however: our Google searches on [springt touwtje] and [springt * touwtje] resulted in, respectively, 136 and 56 hits, many of which were irrelevant or duplicates. Verb-second constructions with touwtje springen are especially popular in headlines, headers, captions of pictures and movies, etc. In regular texts, verb-second seems relatively frequent in sentences with a habitual reading and in sentences in which the collocation is used as part of a list (often in brief summaries of certain events); two typical examples are given in (28).

a.		Sylvia Goegebuur (sic) [...]	springt	touwtje	als	de beste ter wereld.
		Sylvia Goegebuur	skips	rope	like	the best in.the world

b.	Hij	kruipt	over de piano,	trekt	zijn hemd	uit	en	springt	touwtje	met de microfoon.
	he	crawls	over the piano	takes	his shirt	off	and	jumps	rope	with the microphone
	'He crawls all over the piano, takes off his shirt and skips with the mike.'

The past tense strings [sprong touwtje]and [sprong* touwtje]resulted in 95 hits in total, many of which were again irrelevant or duplicates: our estimate is that there were about 20 genuine cases of verb-second. Sentences in which the collocation is used as part of a list, as in Hij liep, hij rende en sprong touwtje'he walked, (he) ran and skipped', again seem to be relatively frequent.
The results of our Google searches suggest a third possibility: for most speakers, verb-second of the finite form of the verbal part of N+V collocations like touwtje springen is disfavored, and since non-finite forms do not occur in second position, this verb is normally used in clause-final position only. Since these collocations express conventionalized activities, verb-second can easily be avoided in many cases by employing the progressive aan het + Vinfinitive construction in (29a) instead of the verb-second construction in (29b).

a.	Peter is/was	<touwtje>	aan het <touwtje>	springen.
	Peter is/was	rope	aan het	skip
	'Peter is/was skipping.'

b.	??	Peter springt/sprong	touwtje.
		Peter skips/skipped	rope

A similar conclusion was drawn by Booij (2010:114) for the N+V collocation stijl dansen, despite the fact that some speakers seem to be able to treat this collocation as a true (inseparable) compound: examples such as (30b) can again normally be avoided by using the progressive construction Hij is/was met zijn nichtje aan het stijldansen'He is/was ballroom dancing with his niece'.

a.	dat	hij	met zijn nichtje	stijl	danst/danste.
	that	he	with his niece	ballroom	dances/danced
	'that he is/was ballroom dancing with his niece.'

Hij stijldanst/stijldanste met zijn nichtje.

Hij danst/danste met zijn nichtje stijl.

Certain particle verbs have also been reported to disfavor verb-second. Such particle verbs are characterized by the fact that their particles are complex, like voor-aan in vooraanmelden'to preregister', or preceded by the prefix her-, as in herinvoeren'to reintroduce'; see Koopman (1995), Den Dikken (2003), and Vikner (2005), who discusses similar cases for German. In (31), we provide examples with the verb (her)invoeren. Bennis (1993) reports that some speakers consider examples like (31b'&c') marginally acceptable, and taaladvies.net/taal/advies/vraag/377 reports that the split patterns occurs in Belgium.

a.	dat	hij	die regel	invoert.
	that	he	that rule	prt.-introduces
	'that he introduces that rule.'

a'.	dat	hij	die regel	herinvoert.
	that	he	that rule	reintroduces
	'that he reintroduces that rule.'

Hij voert die regel in.

b'.

Hij voert de regel herin.

Hij invoert die regel.

c'.

Hij herinvoert die regel.

The discussion above strongly suggests that there is a set of verbal (X+V) collocations that resist verb-second; following Vikner (2005), we will refer to such collocations as immobile verbs. The fact that it is not difficult to find cases such as (29b) and (30b) on the internet suggests, however, that collocations like touwtje springen and stijl dansen are sometimes also treated as separable or compound verb forms. This raises the question as to whether we are dealing with a syntactic/morphological restriction or whether some other restriction is involved. For example, it might be the case that verb-second is syntactically possible but restricted for some reason to cases in which the speaker cannot resort to the aan het + Vinfinitive construction, as might be the case in the examples in (28), or that verb-second is restricted to sports jargon, that is, used by individual speakers who are involved with the activity denoted by the collocation in question on a more regular basis.
In order to shed more light on this issue, the following subsections will investigate the properties of verbal collocations in more detail. Our point of departure will be that such collocations can be divided into the three main types in (32): inseparable collocations are compounds that undergo verb-second as a whole, separable collocations are phrase-like constructions that split under verb-second, and immobile collocations tend to resist verb-second.

Inseparable verbal collocations (compounds): bekN + vechten 'to squabble'

Separable verbal collocations: ademN + halen 'to breathe'

Immobile verbal collocations: touwtjeN + springen 'to (rope) skip'

Subsections I-V investigate the properties of inseparable and separable verbal collocations. We will show that the set of verbs that are traditionally assumed to be separable is in fact not a unitary class but falls apart in at least two subgroups, one of which is separable under verb-second and another which is not; the latter group will be shown to be immobile in the sense of Vikner (2005), subsection V concludes this part of the discussion with an attempt at an analysis. The results of the investigation in Subsection I-V will be applied to various types of immobile verbs: Subsections VI-VIII focus on three different subtypes of immobile N+V collocations while Subsection IX investigates inseparable complex particle verbs; Subsection X concludes with a brief discussion of a type of immobile verb that has received relatively little attention in the literature so far.

I. Separable and inseparable verbal collocations
II. Differences between separable and inseparable verbal collocations
III. Similarities between separable and inseparable N+V collocations
IV. Immobile verbal collocations (1): introduction
V. Immobile verbal collocations (2): a theoretical excursion
VI. Immobile verbal collocations (3): type touwtje springen'to skip'
VII. Immobile verbal collocations (4): type stijl dansen'to ballroom dance'
VIII. Immobile verbal collocations (5): type gedachtelezen'to mind-read'
IX. Immobile verbal collocations (6): particle verbs (vooraanmelden'to preregister')
X. Immobile verbal collocations (7): type voorverkopen'to sell in advance'
XI. Summary

[+] I. Separable and inseparable verbal collocations

This subsection discusses verbal collocations with a noun, adjective or a verb as their first member. Generally speaking, we find two syntactically relevant types: inseparable and separable collocations. It seems that this distinction weakly correlates with the semantic/syntactic status of the left-hand member, as Ackema (1999) notes that in separable collocations the left-hand member is normally an argument of the verbal part. This is illustrated in (33). The verb vechten'to fight' in (33a) is intransitive and N-part bek'mouth' is interpreted as having the semantic role of instrument; cf. met de bek vechten'to fight with the mouth'. The verb halen'to get' in (33b) is transitive and the N-part adem'breath' is interpreted as a theme argument. The primed examples show that only in the latter case can the N+V collocation be split.

a.	dat	deze jongens	voortdurend	bek	vechten.	inseparable/compound
	that	these boys	continuously	mouth	fight
	'that these boys squabble continuously.'

a'.		Deze jongens	<bek>	vechten	voortdurend <*bek>.
		these boys	mouth	fight	continuously

b.	dat	de patiënt	moeilijk	adem	haalt.	separable
	that	the patient	with.difficulty	breath	takes
	'that the patient is breathing with difficulty.'

b'.		De patiënt	<*adem>	haalt	moeilijk <adem>.
		the patient	breath	takes	with.difficulty

In (34), we provide a sample of the two types of N+V collocation, based on De Haas & Trommelen (1993) and Booij (2010). We do not include inseparable verbs such as voetballen'to play soccer' that are (potentially) derived via conversion from complex nouns (here: voetbal'football') or formations like raadplegen'to consult' with a non-transparent or non-compositional meaning for present-day speakers because these are expected to be inseparable anyway. Recall that we diverge from the orthographic convention to write the N+V collocations in (34b) as a single word in order not to bias the discussion below towards a compound analysis for these collocations.

Inseparable: beeldhouwen'to sculpture', bekvechten'to squabble', rangschikken'to group', redetwisten'to argue', slaapwandelen'to walk in oneʼs sleep', zegevieren'to triumph'Inseparable: beeldhouwen'to sculpture', bekvechten'to squabble', rangschikken'to group', redetwisten'to argue', slaapwandelen'to walk in oneʼs sleep', zegevieren'to triumph'

Separable: adem halen'to breathe', auto rijden'to drive a car', brand stichten'to raise a fire', deel nemen'to participate', dienst weigeren'to refuse conscription', feest vieren'to celebrate', kaart lezen'to read maps', koffie zetten'to make coffee', les geven'to teach', piano spelen'to play the piano', recht spreken'to administer justice', ruzie maken'to quarrel', televisie kijken'to watch television'Separable: adem halen'to breathe', auto rijden'to drive a car', brand stichten'to raise a fire', deel nemen'to participate', dienst weigeren'to refuse conscription', feest vieren'to celebrate', kaart lezen'to read maps', koffie zetten'to make coffee', les geven'to teach', piano spelen'to play the piano', recht spreken'to administer justice', ruzie maken'to quarrel', televisie kijken'to watch television'

Note that we used the notion "weak correlation" in order to characterize Ackema's hypothesis. The reason is that it is not the case that N+V collocations are always separable if the N-part functions as a theme. This can be readily illustrated by means of the collocation stof zuigen'to vacuum', which can be used either as a separable or as an inseparable collocation by many speakers. There is reason, however, for assuming that the N-part has lost its argument status in the inseparable form; see Ackema (1999) and the discussion of the examples in (44) in Subsection II.

a.	dat	Jan	elke week	stof	zuigt.
	that	Jan	every week	dust	sucks
	'that Jan vacuums every week.'

b.		Jan	<stof>	zuigt	elke week <stof>.
		Jan	dust	sucks	every week

We should further raise a warning flag and note that there are a number of cases of separable N+V collocations for which it is less clear that the N-part functions as a (direct) argument of the V-part. This holds for, e.g., piano spelen'to play the piano' and televisie kijken'to watch television', given that spelen and kijken select a PP-complement in examples such as (36). In order to maintain the claim that the N-part is an argument of the V-part, we have to assume that the PP-complement is reduced in the separable N+V collocations piano spelen and televisie kijken; see Ackema (1999) and Booij (2010) for a discussion of these forms.

a.	Jan speelt	*(op) een Steinway.
	Jan plays	on a Steinway
	'Jan is playing on a Steinway.'

b.	Jan kijkt	*(naar) de televisie.
	Jan looks	at the television
	'Jan is looking at the television.'

The examples in (37) illustrate that the two main types can also be found in the case of A+V collocations: (37a) is an example with the inseparable (compound) verb liefkozen'to fondle' and (37b) with the separable collocation bekend maken'to make known'.

a.	dat Jan zijn hond vaak	liefkoost.	inseparable/compound
	that Jan his dog often	fondles
	'that Jan often fondles his dog.'

a'.		Jan	<lief>koost	zijn hond	vaak <*lief>.
		Jan	fondles	his dog	often

b.	dat	Jan zijn besluit	morgen	bekend	maakt.	separable
	that	Jan his decision	tomorrow	known	makes
	'that Jan will make his decision public tomorrow.'

b'.		Jan	<*bekend>	maakt	zijn beslissing	morgen <bekend>.
		Jan	known	makes	his decision	tomorrow

When we exclude examples such as blinddoeken'to blindfold', which is derived from the complex noun blinddoek'blindfold', and cases such as dwarsbomen'to thwart' with a non-transparent or non-compositional meaning for the present-day speaker, there are very few inseparable A+V collocations; the examples in (38a) are again taken from De Haas & Trommelen (1993). For the separable A+N collocations in (38b), Ackema's hypothesis that the left-hand member of the collocation is normally an argument of the verbal part of the collocation seems too strict, but we can easily repair this by loosening the statement slightly by requiring that the left-hand member must be a complement of the verbal part, as this will also include complementives. Again, we diverge from the orthographic convention to write separable A+V collocations as separate words in order not to bias the discussion below towards a compound analysis for these collocations.

Inseparable: fijnproeven'to test the taste of something', liefkozen'to fondle'

Separable: dood zwijgen'to hush up/smother', droog leggen'to reclaim/impolder', dwars liggen'to be contrary', fijn malen'to grind', goed keuren'to approve', groot brengen'to bring up', klaar komen'to complete oneʼs work/have an orgasm', los breken'to break loose', stuk lezen'read to pieces', vol gieten'to fill up', vreemd gaan'to be unfaithful', wit wassen'to launder (black money)', zwart maken'to blacken'Separable: dood zwijgen'to hush up/smother', droog leggen'to reclaim/impolder', dwars liggen'to be contrary', fijn malen'to grind', goed keuren'to approve', groot brengen'to bring up', klaar komen'to complete oneʼs work/have an orgasm', los breken'to break loose', stuk lezen'read to pieces', vol gieten'to fill up', vreemd gaan'to be unfaithful', wit wassen'to launder (black money)', zwart maken'to blacken'

The proposed revision of Ackema's hypothesis, which we will from now on refer to as Ackema's generalization, also accounts for the fact that particle verbs (P+V collocations) like opbellen'to call up' and overstromen'to run over' in (39) are normally separable because Section 2.2 has shown that verbal particles also function as complementives. Although there are a number of inseparable P+V collocations, we will not digress on this here, as this would simply repeat the discussion in Section P1.2.4, sub IV. We will in fact ignore P+V collocations altogether until we return to them in Subsection IX.

a.		Jan belde	me op.
		Jan called	me up

b.	De emmer	stroomde	over.
	the bucket	ran	over
	'The bucket overflowed.'

There are very few inseparable V+V collocations like hoesteproesten'to cough and splutter' in (40a); more transparent cases such as zweefvliegen'to glide (in a sailplane)' belong to the set of immobile collocations, which will be discussed in Subsection IV. Separable V+V collocations are also rare and may in fact not exist at all: a potential case is laten vallen'to drop' in (40b), but the fact that the dependent verb vallen'to fall' does not precede but follows the causative verb laten'to make/let' suggests that we are not dealing with a verbal collocation but with a regular causative laten-construction. We therefore will not discuss such cases here but in Section 5.2.3.4.

a.	dat	Jan voortdurend	hoesteproest.	inseparable/compound
	that	Jan continuously	splutters
	'that Jan is continuously coughing and spluttering.'

a'.		Jan hoesteproest	voortdurend.
		Jan splutters	continuously

b.	dat	Jan de theepot	liet	vallen.	causative laten-construction
	that	Jan the teapot	let	fall
	'that Jan dropped the teapot.'

b'.		Jan liet	de theepot	vallen.
		Jan let	the teapot	fall

This subsection has shown that separable verbal collocations require their first member to function as a complement of the verbal part: the N-part in N+V collocations has the function of a direct (and sometimes prepositional) object of the V-part, and the A-part in A+N collocations functions as a complementive, that is, a predicative complement of the V-part. Since there are no clear cases of separable V+V collocations and since particle verbs are discussed separately in Subsection IX, the following subsections will be concerned with N+V and A+V collocations.

[+] II. Differences between separable and inseparable verbal collocations

On the assumption that inseparable X+V collocations are true compounds, their syntactic behavior can be accounted for by appealing to the lexical integrity constraint, according to which syntactic operations cannot apply to subparts of words. An inseparable N+V collocation like bekvechten'to squabble' should then be analyzed as [Vº bekvechten], in which the label Vº stands for a word boundary. By the same logic, separable N+V collocations cannot be analyzed as compounds but should be phrasal in nature: a separable N+V collocation like adem halen should then be analyzed as [V' adem [Vº halen]], in which the label V' stands for some phrasal projection of the verb that contains a direct object.
There is morphological and syntactic evidence in favor of this distinction. First, we would expect inflectional material to attach at the Vº- and not at the V'-level, and thus we predict that the nominal part follows preverbal inflectional material in the case of (inseparable) compound verbs but precedes such material in the case of (separable) phrasal collocations. The examples in (41) shows that this prediction is correct: the preverbal part of the participial circumfixge-...-d/t and the infinitival prefix te must precede the nominal part in bekvechten but must follow it in adem halen for most speakers.

a.	De jongens	hebben	de hele dag	gebekvecht/*bekgevecht.
	the boys	have	the whole day	squabbled
	'The boys have squabbled all day.'

a'.	De jongens	liepen	de hele dag	te bekvechten/*bek te vechten.
	the boys	walked	the whole day	to squabble
	'The boys were squabbling all day.'

b.	Jan heeft	twee keer	diep	adem	gehaald/*geademhaald.
	Jan has	two time	deep	breath	taken
	'Jan has taken a deep breath twice.'

b'.	Jan	probeerde	diep	adem	te halen/*te ademhalen.
	Jan	tried	deep	breath	to take
	'Jan tried to take a deep breath.'

Note in passing that there seems to be some variation among speakers, especially with regard to the infinitival marker te. For example, a Google search (11/5/2013) showed that the form bek te vechten is occasionally used on the internet (perhaps in jest), whereas we did not get any hits for the strings [heb bekgevecht] and [heb * bekgevecht], in which the asterisk functions as a wild card. Similarly, the form te ademhalen is not difficult to find (albeit with a far lower frequency than adem te halen), whereas we found only a handful of genuine cases with the form geademhaald. The judgments in (41) reflect our own acceptability judgments and may thus be an idealization of the actual situation in Standard Dutch.
The form of the past participle gebekvecht in (41a) constitutes an additional argument in favor of a compound analysis, given that the participle of the simplex verb vechten has the irregular form gevochten. De Haas & Trommelen (1993:441) claim that a hallmark of compounds is that they have a regular declension; this is illustrated again in (42), in which glimlachen is an inseparable N+V compound and paard rijden is separable phrasal N+V collocation; only in the former case does the collocation have the regular declension ge-...-d/t.

a.		lachen —	gelach-en	inseparable
		laugh	laughed

a'.		glimlachen —	geglimlach-t
		smile	smiled

b.		rijden —	gered-en	separable
		ride	ridden

b'.		paard	rijden —	paard	gered-en
		horseback	ride	horseback	ridden

A rather spectacular illustration of De Haas & Trommelen's claim is stof zuigen. The examples in (35) have shown that this collocation exhibits mixed behavior for many speakers: the N+V collocation can be split under verb-second, but it can also be moved as a whole. The simplex verb zuigen'to suck' has an irregular declension: zuig-zoog-gezogen. The predictions made by De Haas & Trommelens hypothesis are clear. First, we predict that stof zuigen'to vacuum' is associated with two past participial forms, depending on the position of the nominal part. The primeless examples in (43) illustrate that this prediction is indeed correct. Second, we predict that the split under verb-second is possible only if the finite verb has the irregular declension; the primed examples show that this predication is also correct.

a.	Jan heeft	gisteren	stof	gezogen/*gezuigd.
	Jan has	yesterday	dust	sucked
	'Jan vacuumed yesterday.'

a'.		Jan zoog/*zuigde	gisteren	stof.
		Jan sucked	yesterday	dust

b.	Jan heeft	gisteren	gestofzuigd/*gestofzogen.
	Jan has	yesterday	dust.sucked
	'Jan vacuumed yesterday.'

b'.		Jan stofzuigde/*stofzoog	gisteren.
		Jan dust.sucked	yesterday

Note in passing that we have ignored the fact that the form stofzoog is occasionally found in second position on the internet, which is in fact to be expected given that speakers are quite uncertain about the "correct" form of the past tense, as is clear from the fact that it is a recurring topic of discussion on the internet. Note that there is also normative pressure to use the inseparable form, as is clear from the fact that taaladvies.net/taal/advies/vraag/755 and the Van Dale Dictionary only give the regular declension.
The claim that stof zuigen allows two different analyses is also confirmed by the examples in (44), adapted from De Haas & Trommelen (1993:442). These examples show that this collocation can be used with the direct object de kamer'the room' when it has a regular declension, but not when it has an irregular declension.

a.	dat	Jan de kamer	stofzuigt/*stof zoog.
	that	Jan the room	dust.sucks/dust sucks
	'that Jan is vacuuming the room.'

b.	dat	Jan de kamer	heeft	gestofzuigd/*stof	gezogen.
	that	Jan the room	has	dust.sucked/dust	sucked
	'that Jan has vacuumed the room.'

This contrast follows immediately on the analysis proposed above: if stof zuigen is phrasal, the bare noun stof functions as a direct object, and thus blocks the addition of another direct object such as de kamer'the room': if it is a compound, however, it might simply be stored in the lexicon as a transitive verb, and, consequently, the use of a direct object such as de kamer is fully licit. Other cases of such transitive, inseparable N + V collocations mentioned by Ackema (1999) are: beeldhouwen'to sculpture' (lit: statue + chop) stand hersenspoelen'to brainwash'.
In (45) we provide similar examples for A+V collocations: liefkozen'to fondle' (lit.: sweet + caress) is a compound and the adjectival part lief must therefore follow the preverbal part of the participial circumfix ge-...-d/t and the infinitival prefix te; bekend maken'to make public', on the other hand, is phrasal and the adjectival part must therefore precede these elements.

a.	Jan heeft	zijn hond	de hele dag	geliefkoosd/*liefgekoosd.
	Jan has	his dog	the whole day	fondled
	'Jan has fondled his dog all day.'

a'.	Jan zit	zijn hond	de hele dag	te liefkozen/*lief te kozen.
	Jan sits	his dog	the whole day	to fondle
	'Jan has been fondling his dog all day.'

b.	Jan heeft	zijn beslissing	bekend	gemaakt/*gebekendmaakt.
	Jan has	his decision	known	made
	'Jan has made his decision public.'

b'.	Jan weigert	zijn	beslissing	bekend	te maken/*te bekend maken.
	Jan refuses	his	decision	known	to make
	'Jan refuses to make his decision public.'

This subsection has shown that there are reasons for assuming that inseparable verbal collocations are compounds whereas separable verbal collocations are phrasal in nature. The reasons for assuming this are mainly morphological in nature. The first involves the placement of the (preverbal part of) the inflectional affixes ge-...-d/t and te. The second is that the inseparable verbal collocations always have a regular declension, which has been claimed to be a hallmark of compounds; the declension of the verbal part of separable verbal collocations, on the other hand, is fully determined by the verbal part.

Table 1: Differences between inseparable and separable verbal collocations

	inseparable	separable
participial affix	ge-X+V-d/t	X ge-V-d/t
infinitival prefix	te X+V	X te V
declension	always regular	depends on verbal part

[+] III. Similarities between separable and inseparable N+V collocations

Although the discussion in Subsection II strongly suggests that separable N+V collocations are phrasal and that the N-part normally functions as a direct (or, perhaps, a prepositional) object of the V-part, the collocation has a number of properties normally not found with verb phrases consisting of a verb and an object. With regard to these peculiarities, separable N+V collocations rather behave like N+V compounds. We will illustrate this compound-like behavior of separable N+V collocations by comparing the separable collocations adem halen'to breathe' and piano spelen'to play the piano' with the regular verb phrase iets halen'to fetch something' and iets spelen'to play something (e.g., a sonata)'.
A first property is that the N-part of a separable N+V collocation is normally bare, that is, not accompanied by a determiner, whereas singular regular direct objects are normally not bare, that is, they require a determiner. Notice that this difference is not observable if the N-part is plural, as in aardappels schillen'to peel potatoes', given that indefinite plurals take a phonetically empty article.

a.	dat	Jan	(*een) adem	haalt.
	that	Jan	a breath	gets
	'that Jan is breathing.'

a'.	dat	Jan	*(een) boek	haalt.
	that	Jan	a book	gets
	'that Jan is fetching a book.'

b.	dat	Marie	(*de) piano	speelt.
	that	Marie	the piano	plays
	'that Marie is playing the piano.'

b'.	dat	Marie	*(de) sonate	speelt.
	that	Marie	the sonata	plays
	'that Marie is playing the sonata.'

Related to this difference concerning the determiner is the fact that the nominal part of the N+V collocation is not referential. This can be shown by comparing the examples in (47): example (47a) cannot be uttered out of the blue given that the reference of the deictic pronoun hij cannot be properly determined by the bare noun piano; example (47b) with the regular direct object de sonate'the sonata', on the other hand, is fine since the pronoun can take this object as its antecedent.

a.	$	dat	Jan niet	graag	piano speelt,	want	hij is vals.
		that	Jan not	gladly	piano plays,	because	he is off-key
		'that Jan doesnʼt like to play the piano, because it is off-key.'

b.	dat	Jan niet	graag	de sonate	speelt,	want	hij is te moeilijk.
	that	Jan not	gladly	the sonata	plays	because	he is too difficult
	'that Jan doesnʼt like to play the sonata, because it is too difficult.'

For the same reason it is normally impossible to modify the nominal part of an N+V collocation by an attributively used adjective, whereas this is, of course, possible with regular direct objects, as shown by the examples in (48).

a.		dat	Jan niet	graag	(*nieuwe)	piano speelt
		that	Jan not	gladly	new	piano plays

b.	dat	Jan niet	graag	de (nieuwe) sonate	speelt.
	that	Jan not	gladly	the new sonata	plays
	'that Jan doesnʼt like to play the new sonata.'

In passing, it should be noted that attributive modification of the nominal part of a separable N+A collocation is marginally possible if the modifier-noun combination has a type reading: Booij (2010), for example, provides examples such as dat Jan klassieke piano speelt. However, the fact that Booij translates this example as "that John plays classical piano music" suggests that we may simply be dealing with a regular direct object in the form of a mass noun, comparable to Hij speelt klassieke muziek/jazz'He plays classical music/jazz'. We will leave this issue for future research and simply conclude from the examples above that nominal parts of N+V collocations are not referential. In this respect they are similar to the first members of N+V compounds like beeldhouwen'to sculpture', N+A compounds like boterzacht'soft as butter', and N+N compounds like huissleutel'latchkey', but unlike regular direct objects.
A second property of the N-part of separable N+V collocations is that speakers allow them to permeate clause-final verb clusters. This is, of course, obligatory for the nominal parts of N+V compounds, but for regular direct objects this is allowed by a subset of Flemish speakers only; see Sections 5.2.3 and 6.2, and Barbiers (2008:ch.2).

a.	dat	Jan diep	<adem>	moet <adem>	halen.
	that	Jan deeply	breath	must	get
	'that Jan must breathe deeply.'

a'.	dat	Jan	<een boek>	moet <%een boek>	halen.
	that	Jan	a book	must	get
	'that Jan must fetch a book'

b.	dat Marie	graag	<piano>	wil <piano>	spelen.
	that Marie	gladly	piano	want	play
	'that Marie is eager to play the piano.'

b'.	dat Marie	graag	<de sonate>	wil <%de sonate>	spelen.
	that Marie	gladly	the sonata	want	play
	'that Marie is eager to play the sonata.'

A third property of the N-part of a separable N+V collocation is that it can be left-adjacent to the main verb in the progressive aan het + Vinfinitive construction; regular direct objects, on the other hand, must precede the aan het + Vinfinitive phrase.

a.	Jan is verkeerd	<adem>	aan het <adem>	halen.
	Jan is wrongly	breath	aan het	get
	'Jan is breathing in the wrong way.'

a'.	Jan is	<een boek>	aan het <*een boek>	halen.
	Jan is	a book	aan het	get
	'Jan is fetching a book.'

b.	Marie is <piano>	aan het <piano>	spelen.
	Marie is piano	aan het	play
	'Marie is playing the piano.'

b'.	Marie is	<de sonate>	aan het <*de sonate>	spelen.
	Marie is	the sonata	aan het	play
	'Marie is playing the sonata.'

A final property in which N-parts of separable N+V collocations differ from regular direct objects is that they cannot easily occur as part of a postnominal van-PP in nominalizations, as is illustrated in (51).

a.	[Het halen van een boek/??adem]	is gemakkelijk.
	the getting of a book/breath	is easy
	'Getting a book is easy.'

b.	[Het spelen van een sonate/??piano]	is niet gemakkelijk.
	the playing of a sonata/piano	is not easy
	'Playing of a sonata isnʼt easy.'

The discussion above has shown that the N-part of N+V collocation has various properties that are unexpected for regular direct objects but resemble the properties of the N-part of a N+V compound: (i) it is not referential, (ii) it is allowed to interrupt clause-final verb clusters, and (iii) it can be left-adjacent to the main verb in the progressive aan het + Vinfinitive construction. The first property is, of course, inapplicable to A+V collocations, but the examples in (52) show for fijn malen'to grind' that the latter two properties can also be established for such cases.

a.	dat	Jan de peper	<fijn>	moet <fijn>	malen.
	that	Jan the pepper	to.a.powder	must	grind
	'that Jan must grind the pepper.'

b.	that Jan de peper	<fijn>	aan het <fijn>	malen	is.
	that Jan the pepper	to.a.powder	aan het	grind	is
	'that Jan is grinding the pepper.'

The findings from our discussion above are summarized in Table 2.

Table 2: Similarities between inseparable and separable verbal collocations

	inseparable	separable
N is referential	no	no
verbal clusters	V X Vmain	V X VmainorX V Vmain
aan het-construction	aan het X Vmain	aan het X Vmain or X aan het Vmain

[+] IV. Immobile verbal collocations (1): introduction

Table 2 shows that separable X+V collocations like (34b) and (38b) exhibit variable behavior with respect to the placement of the X-part vis-à-vis the verbal part in constructions with a clause-final verb cluster or a progressive aan het-phrase. This raises the question as to whether it is justified to consider separable X+V collocations as a single class, or whether we should distinguish two subtypes. This question has been investigated for N+V collocations, and it seems that there is reason for assuming the latter; see Booij (2010: Section 4.3). The argument is based on the morphological expression of sentence negation. In Dutch, sentence negation can be expressed by means of the independent negative adverb niet'not', as in (53a), but it is often obligatorily merged with some existentially quantified element in the clause, as is illustrated in (53b&c). Here, negation is expressed on, respectively, a frequency adverb (neg + ooit → nooit'never') and an indefinite direct object (neg + een auto → geen auto'no car').

a.	Peter kan	niet	komen.
	Peter is.able	not	come
	'Peter canʼt come.'

b.	Peter kan	nooit/*niet	ooit	komen.
	Peter is.able	never/not	some.time	come
	'Peter is never able to come.'

c.	Peter kan	geen auto/*niet een auto	kopen.
	Peter is.able	no car/not a car	buy
	'Peter canʼt buy a car.'

The examples in (54) further show that the merger of sentence negation is optional in the case of N+V collocations like auto rijden'to drive a car' and piano spelen'to play the piano'; it can either be expressed by means of the adverb niet'not' or be expressed by the negative article geen'no'.

a.	Peter kan	niet/geen	auto	rijden.
	Peter be.able	not/no	car	drive
	'Peter isnʼt able to drive a car.'

b.	Peter kan	niet/geen	piano	spelen.
	Peter be.able	not/no	piano	play
	'Peter isnʼt able to play the piano.'

The examples in (55) show that the choice between the two options depends on the placement of the N-part of the collocation in clauses with a verb cluster: negation seems preferably expressed by means of the negative article geen, but if the N-part remains adjacent to the V-part the negative adverb niet must be used. Although Booij considers the options marked with a number sign acceptable, there may be reasons for rejecting his claim; we postpone the discussion of this to Subsection V.

a.	dat	Peter	geen/#niet	auto	kan	rijden.
	that	Peter	no/not	car	be.able	drive
	'that Peter isnʼt able to drive a car.'

a'.	dat	Peter	niet/*geen	kan	auto	rijden.
	that	Peter	not/no	be.able	car	drive
	'that Peter canʼt drive a car.'

b.	dat	Peter	geen/#niet	piano	kan	spelen.
	that	Peter	no/not	piano	be.able	play
	'that Peter isnʼt able to play the piano.'

b'.	dat	Peter	niet/*geen	kan	piano spelen.
	that	Peter	not/no	be.able	piano play
	'that Peter canʼt play the piano.'

The same seems to hold for the progressive aan het + Vinfinitive constructions in (56). Although such negated examples are extremely rare on the internet, they seem to be fully acceptable in contrastive contexts. The options marked with the number sign also occur on the internet in contrastive contexts; this need not surprise us given that the merger of sentence negation is normally not obligatory in contrastive contexts: cf. Ik heb niet een auto, maar een fiets gekocht'I have not bought a car, but a bicycle'.

a.	Peter is geen/#niet	auto	aan het	rijden	(maar	aan het	fietsen).
	Peter is no/not	car	aan het	drive	but	aan het	cycle
	'Peter isnʼt driving (but heʼs gone cycling).'

a'.	Peter is niet/*geen	aan het	auto	rijden	(maar	aan het	fietsen).
	Peter is not/no	aan het	car	drive	but	aan het	cycle
	'Peter isnʼt driving (but heʼs gone cycling).'

b.	Peter is geen/#niet	piano aan het	spelen	(maar	aan het	lezen).
	Peter is no/not	piano aan het	play	but	aan het	read
	'Peter isnʼt playing the piano (but heʼs reading a book).'

b'.	Peter is niet/*geen	aan het	piano	spelen	(maar	aan het	lezen).
	Peter is not/no	aan het	piano	play	but	aan het	read
	'Peter isnʼt playing the piano (but heʼs reading a book).'

As such, the examples in (55) and (56) do not shed any light on the question as to whether separable verbal collocations form a single class, or whether we should distinguish two subtypes: the merger of sentence negation may simply be subject to some adjacency restriction, which would effectively block the formation of geen in the primed examples. However, these examples are quite revealing in combination with the examples in (57), in which the N+V collocations are split by means of verb-second and sentential negation must be expressed by means of the negative article geen; the use of the adverb niet leads to ungrammaticality.

a.	Peter rijdt	geen/*niet	auto
	Peter drives	no/not	car
	'Peter doesnʼt drive a car.'

b.	Peter speelt	geen/*niet	piano.
	Peter plays	no/not	piano
	'Peter doesnʼt play the piano.'

The fact that sentence negation cannot be expressed by means of the adverb niet but must be expressed by means of the merged form geen suggests that these verb-second examples are more akin to the primeless than to the primed examples in (55) and (56); merger of negation is restricted to those cases in which the N+V collocation can be split by syntactic operations like verb clustering and verb-second. This suggests that separable verbal collocations like (34b) and (38b) actually have two uses: they may be separable in all syntactic and morphological contexts or they may be separable in morphological contexts only. It is the latter set of separable verbs that we have characterized as immobile in the sense that they resist verb-second. This line of reasoning would result in the three groups of X+V collocations in Table 3; we have illustrated the clustering of properties on the basis of N+V collocations only, but it seems reasonable to assume that they also hold for A+V collocations.

Table 3: Types of verbal collocations

		mobile		immobile
		inseparable (compound)	separable (split pattern: X ... V)
A	participial affix	ge-X+V-d/t	X ge-V-d/t	X ge-V-d/t
	infinitival prefix	te X+V	X te V	X te V
B	verbal clusters	V X Vmain	X V Vmain	V X Vmain
	aan het-phrase	aan het X Vmain	X aan het Vmain	aan het X Vmain
	negation	niet'not'	geen'no'	niet'not'
C	verb-second	+ (non-split pattern)	+ (split pattern)	—

The morphological properties given in the A-rows of Table 3 distinguish the inseparable verbal compounds from the separable verbal collocations; whereas the former require that the X- and the V-part be adjacent in past/passive participles and te-infinitives, the latter do not allow this. The properties in the B-rows are the crucial ones for distinguishing the two types of separable verbal collocations. The C-row indicates the verb-second behavior of the three types of verbal collocations we have distinguished on the basis of the properties in A and B.
The discussion in this subsection involved separable V+X collocations that are ambiguous between a mobile and an immobile form, subsections VI-IX will discuss cases of verbal collocations that are (normally) of the immobile type: we will successively discuss immobile verbs of the type touwtje springen'to skip' (lit: to rope skip), stijl dansen'to ballroom dance' (lit.: to style dance), and herinvoeren'to reintroduce'. In subsection V, however, we first attempt to sketch a theoretical account of the clustering of the properties in Table 3.

[+] V. Immobile verbal collocations (2): a theoretical excursion

The first group of X+V collocations in Table 3 is the class of compounds, which differs from the other two groups in that the X+V collocations form an indissoluble morphological and syntactic unit. In short, they function as complex words of the form [Vº X V]: inflectional material is added externally to Vº, which accounts for their properties in the two A-rows in Table 3, and syntactic movements may only affect Vº as a whole, which accounts for their properties in the B- and C-rows.
      The original class of separable X+V collocations is now divided into two subgroups which have in common that the X-part can be separated from the verbal part by inflectional morphemes. This strongly suggests that we are dealing with a regular verb phrase, [V' X Vº], in which N functions as a direct object and A functions as a complementive: inflectional material is consequently added to Vº, which again accounts for their properties in the A-rows in Table 3.
      The claim that separable X+V collocations involve regular verb phrases of the form [V' X Vº] also accounts for the properties of the first subgroup of separable verbs in the B- and C-rows in Table 3: (i) the fact that the X-part is syntactically independent from the verbal part of the collocation predicts that these parts need not remain adjacent in syntax but can be split by syntactic operations like movement (especially those involved in the formation of verb clusters and the derivation of verb-second), and (ii) the fact that the N-part is in the regular object position accounts for the fact that the merger of sentence negation and the indefinite article (geen'no') is obligatory.
      This leaves us with the second group of separable verbs, which do behave as a unit for syntactic purposes. It has been proposed that these involve incorporation, a syntactic operation creating a syntactic unit by means of so-called head adjunction. This changes the phrase structure [V' X V] via head movement of the X into the structure [V'tX [V* X V]], in which V* stands for a syntactically derived complex head. In some languages noun incorporation is much more productive than in Dutch, and Baker (1988) has shown for such languages that incorporation is restricted to complements; this provides a natural cross-linguistic rationale for Ackema's generalization. The incorporation analysis also derives the properties in the (B)-columns in Table 3: (i) although the collocation can be split by morphological operations, this cannot be done by syntactic operations involved in the creation of verb clusters or aan het-phrases, and (ii) the premise that the N-part is no longer in object position after incorporation can now be held responsible for the impossibility of the merger of sentence negation. It remains mysterious, however, why this type of separable X+V collocation cannot undergo verb-second. It has been suggested that the reason for this is that verb-second can only affect words, that is, Vº's: since Vº cannot be extracted from V* and V* cannot undergo verb-second itself, the impossibility of verb-second follows. What is, of course, still needed in such an approach is a believable account of the observation that V*'s cannot undergo verb-second; this is currently under investigation and we refer the reader to Koopman (1995), Vikner (2005) and Booij (2010) for various attempts to provide an explanation for this.
      If the discussion above is on the right track, we can identify the three types of verbal collocation by their different kinds of verbal element: true compounds ([Vº X V]), phrasal projections ([V' X Vº]), and word-like V*-units ([V* X Vº]) derived by incorporation. This makes it possible to replace Table 3 by Table 4.

Table 4: Types of verbal collocations

		[VºXV]	[V'X Vº]	[V* X Vº]
A	participial affix	ge-X+V-d/t	X ge-V-d/t	X ge-V-d/t
	infinitival prefix	te X+V	X te V	X te V
B	verbal clusters	V X Vmain	X V Vmain	V X Vmain
	aan het-phrase	aan het X Vmain	X aan het Vmain	aan het X Vmain
	negation	niet'not'	geen'no'	niet'not'
C	verb-second	+ (non-split pattern)	+ (split pattern)	—

In order to make the incorporation proposal watertight we should say something about the negation data in the primeless examples in (55), repeated here as (58). Given that the N+V collocation is split, we cannot assume that the N-part is incorporated in the V-part of the collocation. We therefore expect the N-part to be in the regular object position and, consequently, the merger of sentence negation to be obligatory; the use of niet should thus lead to ungrammaticality.

a.	dat	Peter	geen/#niet	auto	kan	rijden.
	that	Peter	no/not	car	be.able	drive
	'that Peter isnʼt able to drive a car.'

b.	dat	Peter	geen/#niet	piano	kan	spelen.
	that	Peter	no/not	piano	be.able	play
	'that Peter isnʼt able to play the piano.'

That the examples with niet are not (fully) acceptable may find support in the fact that such examples are rare on the internet. Our Google searches (3/12/2015) on the strings [niet auto kan rijden] and [niet piano kan spelen] resulted in 54 hits. Moreover, the results include many cases in which the adverb niet is coordinated with the affirmative marker wel: given that examples such as (59) show that such coordinations block the merger of negation, these cases should be excluded, and this leaves us with no more than 20 relevant cases.

a.	Heb	je	wel of niet	een auto	gekocht?
	have	you	aff or not	a car	bought
	'Did you or did you not buy a car?'

Heb je wel of geen auto gekocht?

Given that the corresponding search string [geen auto kan rijden] and [geen piano kan spelen] resulted in 213 hits, we might have to conclude that the uses of niet can be dismissed as writing errors as the relevant cases constitute about 10% of the attested cases. This would be in line with our own judgment that under neutral intonation the use of niet in examples such as (58) is marked compared to the use of geen. Recall that the restriction to neutral intonation is needed because the discussion of (56) has shown that the use of niet is possible in contrastive contexts.
If one considers the 20 attested cases with niet sufficient for maintaining that the use of niet leads to a grammatical result, a coherent incorporation analysis must state that the X-part can not only be incorporated in the verbal part of the collocation but also in larger verb clusters; cf. Booij (2010). This result would be relatively easy to obtain under the traditional verb-raising analysis of verb clustering: verb raising is assumed to create an adjunction structure (similar to that resulting from noun incorporation) as the result of verb movement. If we assume that the base structure of an example such as (58a) is as given in (60a), verb raising may derive a structure such as (60b) with the syntactically derived complex head [V* kan rijden], and subsequent N-incorporation would lead to (60c). Since we have seen that N-incorporation is optional, we can now account for the fact that both geen and niet are possible in (58): in structure (60b) negation must merge with the indefinite N-part in direct object position, whereas in structure (60c) this is blocked by the fact that the N-part is part of an adjunction structure.

... NEG [V'.... [V' auto rijden] kan]

... NEG [V'.... [V' auto trijden] [V* kan rijden]]

verb raising

... NEG [V'.... [V'tautotrijden] [V* auto [V* kan rijden]]]

noun incorporation

Independent support of the claim that N-incorporation is possible into larger verb clusters may be found in the fact that examples such as (61) are at least marginally acceptable for some (but certainly not all) speakers of Dutch.

a.	?	dat	Peter graag	zou	auto	willen	rijden.
		that	Peter gladly	would	car	like	drive
		'that Peter would like to drive a car.'

b.	?	dat	Peter	graag	zou	piano	willen	spelen.
		that	Peter	gladly	would	piano	want	play
		'that Peter would like to play the piano.'

Under a verb-raising approach, example (61a) is derived as follows: starting from the structure in (62a) verb raising first creates the verb cluster [V* willen rijden] in (62b); subsequent N-incorporation in this cluster results in the structure [V* auto [V* willen rijden]] in (62c); finally, this complex is incorporated into the finite verb by means of verb raising, resulting in [V* zou [V* auto [V* willen rijden]]] in (62d). We refer the reader to Bennis (1992) for a similar derivation of verb clusters containing a particle verb in the order Vfinite–prt-Vinf–Vmain.

... NEG [V' ... [V'.... [V' auto rijden] willen] zou]

... NEG [V' ... [V'.... [V' auto trijden] [V* willen rijden]] zou]

... NEG [V' ... [V'.... [V'tautotrijden] [V* auto [V* willen rijden]]] zou]

... NEG [V' ... [V'.... [V'tautotrijden] tauto willen rijden [V* zou [V* auto [V* willen rijden]]]]]

There are, however, also a number of potential problems for an approach based on noun incorporation and verb raising. A minor problem is that the rules determining the word order of the complex V* are quite complicated: while incorporation of nouns and adjectives involves left-adjunction, incorporation of verbs would (normally) involve right-adjunction. A more serious problem is related to the account of the primeless examples in (57), one of which is repeated here as (63a).

a.	Peter rijdt	geen/*niet	auto
	Peter drives	no/not	car
	'Peter doesnʼt drive.'

... rijdt ... NEG [V'.... [V' auto trijdt]]

.. rijdt ... NEG [V'.... [V'tauto [V* auto trijdt]]]

The fact that negation must be expressed by means of geen in verb-second structures such as (63a) was argued to result from a constraint prohibits extraction of Vº from V*-units: since (63c) violates this constraint, (63a) muing have the structure in (63b), which correctly predicts that the merger of negation with the direct object is obligatory. However, the claim that N-incorporation may also target verb clusters, needed to account for the examples in (58) marked by a number sign, presupposes that verb clusters are V*-units ([V* V V]) themselves. This raises the question as to how we can derive verb-second at all, given that this would always involve extraction of Vº from a V*-unit (at least under the traditional standard assumption that verb raising is obligatory). We will leave the question as to whether or not the use of the adverb niet gives rise to a grammatical result in examples such as (58) undecided and, consequently, it likewise remains open whether the assumption that noun incorporation into verb clusters is possible is really needed.

[+] VI. Immobile verbal collocations (3): type touwtje springen'to skip'

This subsection discusses X+V collocations of the type touwtje springen'to skip'. The examples in (64) show that the verb springen'to skip' is normally intransitive; this means that the N-part does not function as a theme of the verbal part (it has an adverbial interpretation instead).

a.	*	Jan springt	het rode touwtje.
		Jan skips	the red rope

b.	Jan springt	met het rode touwtje.
	Jan skips	with the red rope
	'Jan is skipping with the red rope'

Ackema's generalization that separable X+V collocations allow verb-second only if the X-part functions as a complement of the V-part thus predicts that touwtje springen is immobile. Our Google searches discussed in the introduction to this section have revealed that this prediction is not entirely correct. Verb-second can be found with this type of collocation but seems restricted to a number of specific contexts; it frequently occurs in headlines, headers, captions of pictures and movies, etc. Verb-second also occurs in sentences in which the collocation is used as part of a list, often in brief written reports of certain happenings. In other texts, verb-second seems relatively common in sentences with a generic or a habitual reading. In many cases, the three uses go together. Some typical examples from the internet are given in (65).

a.		Auto	springt	touwtje.	caption of a video
		car	skips	rope

b.		Madonna zit op een troon en toont zich als koningin aan het publiek, de diva springt touwtje, is in een stoeipakje heerseres van de dansvloer en [...].Madonna zit op een troon en toont zich als koningin aan het publiek, de diva springt touwtje, is in een stoeipakje heerseres van de dansvloer en [...].
		'Madonna is sitting on a throne and shows herself as queen to the audience; the diva skips, dominates the dance floor in a sexy outfit, and [...]." [Algemeen Dagblad, September 2, 2008]'

c.	Maxwell springt	touwtje	zoals	een rechtshandige	met links	gooit.	generic
	Maxwell skips	rope	like	a right-handed	with left	throw
	'Maxwell skips like a right-handed person throws with his left hand.'

These cases are somewhat special and may therefore follow somewhat different rules. Captions such as (65a) require a certain brevity, and thus disfavor the more usual but lengthier progressive aan het + Vinfinitive construction. The phrase de diva springt touwtje in (65b) is part of a numeration of events, and verb-second may therefore be forced (or at least be favored) by some parallelism constraint on the structure. For cases such as (65a), we can certainly make a case for assuming that it should not be part of Dutch core grammar (= the automatically acquired part of grammar) but of its periphery (= the consciously learned part of it), and perhaps the same holds for cases such as (65b). If so, the claim that verb-second of collocations like touwtje springen is part of core grammar should rest on generic examples such as (65c), which do not allow the progressive aan het + Vinfinitive construction, and some more incidental cases (often from poems, stories and novels).
The discussion above suggests that it would be justified to assign a special status to verb-second structures with N+V collocations like touwtje springen in (65); in fact, this would also follow from the hypothesis proposed in subsection V that the split pattern is only compatible with the phrasal structure [V' X Vº], in which N functions as a direct object. But this is not sufficient to exclude verb-second; if touwtje springen were a compound, we would wrongly expect verb-second of the full collocation [Vº X V]. The only remaining option therefore would be to assume that we are dealing with a word-like V*-unit ([V* X Vº]). We should note, however, that these V*-units are unlikely to be the result of syntactic incorporation given that X does not function as a complement of the verb, and this again would lead us to the conclusion that N+V collocations like touwtje springen are not part of core syntax. We will assume therefore that these quasi-incorporation structures are simply learned on an item-to-item basis, and listed as V*-units in the lexicon; see Booij (2010), who argues that all V*-units are lexically specialized and should therefore be listed in the lexicon. Other proposals that are in line with this view can be found in Koopman (1995) and Vikner (2005). If N+V collocations of the type touwtje springen are indeed listed in the lexicon as V*-units, we expect them to exhibit the properties indicated in the final column of Table 4.
Let us broaden the empirical scope of our investigation and investigate this phenomenon on the basis of the four N+V collocations in (66). These were more or less randomly chosen from the earlier-mentioned list of (mainly) N+V collocations found at taaladvies.net/taal/advies/vraag/703, although we made sure that they satisfied the following three criteria: (i) the N-part of the collocation normally precedes the past/passive participial form of the verbal part as a whole (X + ge-V-d/t), (ii) the N-part cannot be interpreted as the theme argument of the verbal part, and (iii) the Van Dale dictionary states that the collocations as a whole are used in their infinitival form only. Cases that do not fit these criteria will be discussed in the following subsections.

a.	ballon	varen
	balloon	sail
	'to balloon'

b.	parachute	springen
	parachute	jump
	'to parachute/skydive'

c.	stelt	lopen
	stilt	walk
	'to walk on stilts'

d.	wad	lopen
	mud.flats	walk
	'to cross the mud flats'

[+] A. Past/passive participles and te-infinitives

That Van Dale is wrong in claiming that these collocations only occur in their infinitival form is clear from our Google searches (11/13/2013) for past/passive participial forms. For each collocation we looked for two participial forms: X + ge-V-d/t and ge-X-V-d/t. Our search string did not have a space between the two words so as to exclude cases in which X is part of some preverbal constituent; this resulted in a lower number of hits for the form X + ge-V-d/t than if we had also searched for cases with a space. Duplicates or irrelevant cases were not extracted from the results, but we did check whether the desired passive/perfect-tense construction was included. As for the results for ge-X-V-d/t, it is often clear that either the writer was not sure which form to use or that he was joking: writers often provide both options and/or comment on the "correctness" of the form(s)—some of the attestations of gewadloopt and geparachutespringd (sometimes misspelled with a t) are found in the writer's reflections on the use of the two forms.

	X + ge-V-d/t	ge-X-V-d/t
ballon varen	ballongevaren: 92	ballongevaard:1
parachute springen	parachutegesprongen: 87	geparachutespringd: 9
stelt lopen	steltgelopen: 11	gesteldloopt: 1
wad gelopen	wadgelopen: 244	gewadloopt: 37

The results in (67) show that the participial form can be used fairly easily provided that the X-part precedes the preverbal part of the participial circumfix, which is also in line with our own intuitions. We are thus led to the conclusion that we are not dealing with compounds here, which in its turn predicts that the X-part should precede the infinitival marker te. In order to test this prediction, we also searched for the two strings [om X te V] and [om te X V] (in the latter case with and without a space between X and V). We included the infinitival complementizer om in our search string in order to exclude cases in which X is part of some preverbal constituent.

	om X te V	omte X V
ballon varen	om ballon te varen: 67	om te ballonvaren: 85
parachute springen	om parachute te springen: 113	om te parachute springen: 76
stelt lopen	om stelt te lopen: 7	om te stelt lopen: 13
wad lopen	om wad te lopen: 32	om te wad lopen: 85

Interestingly, the results are now far less clear: both orders seem possible and there is sometimes even a preference for the second order. This leads us to the contradictory conclusion that the X+V collocations can be used as compounds after all.

[+] B. Progressive aan het + Vinfinitive constructions and verb clusters

In (69) we provide the results of our Google searches concerning the progressive aan het + Vinfinitive, which we have checked manually (although the larger numbers are estimates); for the form aan het X V we included cases with and without a space between X and V. As is to be expected on the assumption that we are dealing with a word-like V*-unit ([V* X Vº]), the verbal collocations normally cannot be split.

	aan het X V	X aan het V
ballon varen	aan het ballonvaren: 14	ballon aan het varen: 1
parachute springen	aan het parachutespringen: 45	parachute aan het springen: 12
stelt lopen	aan het steltlopen: 16	stelt aan het lopen: 0
wad lopen	aan het wadlopen: 40	wad aan het lopen: 4

Note in passing that the manual check was only possible after filtering out several frequently occurring substrings in the results (e.g., by means of the search [[ballon aan het varen] and [-de ballon]], which resulted in potentially relevant cases without the definite noun phrase de ballon; this may of course have led to the improper exclusion of cases such as Jan was ballon aan het varen toen de ballon in brand vloog'Jan was making a balloon flight, when the balloon caught fire'). The same holds for some of the other manual searches discussed below.
Testing whether or not the X-part can precede clause-final verb clusters is not easy. As could be expected, our searches for the string [X modal V] with the singular simple present form of the modals kunnen'can', willen'want', moeten'must' and zullen'will' did not yield any results for the collocations ballon varen and stelt lopen. We found 4 cases of [wad modal lopen], which does not seem sufficient to warrant robust conclusions. There were many hits for the string [parachute modal springen], with about 55 cases of the intended construction. Unfortunately, we cannot compare absolute numbers as the results for strings of the form [modal X V] contain a large number of verb-second constructions.

	modal X V	X modal V
ballon varen	relatively frequent	0 cases
parachute springen	relatively frequent	relatively frequent
stelt lopen	relatively frequent	0 cases
wad lopen	relatively frequent	4 cases

[+] C. Sentence negation

It is not easy to apply the negation test to sentences with an infinitival form because the X+V collocations under discussion can readily be nominalized (cf. het parachutespringen, which may refer to parachuting as such or lessons in parachuting) and such nominalizations can be preceded by the negative article geen'no': cf. We hebben vandaag geen parachutespringen'We will not have lessons in parachuting today'. We therefore used the search strings [niet X + participle] and [geen X + participle] with and without a space between X and the participle; the results are given in Table (71). For completeness' sake, we note that we found cases of the form [niet/geen X te Vinf] for parachute springen only: we found 4 cases with niet and 2 with geen.

	niet X participle	geen X participle
ballon varen	niet ballon gevaren: 7	geen ballon gevaren: 1
parachute springen	niet parachute gesprongen: 13	geen parachute gesprongen: 9
stelt lopen	niet stelt gelopen: 0	geen stelt gelopen: 0
wad lopen	niet wad gelopen: 7	geen wad gelopen: 5

[+] D. Conclusion

What we have seen in the previous subsections is that the collocations in (66) exhibit a rather mixed behavior. The results in Table (67) clearly show that they do not count as compounds when it comes to participle formation. However, the results in Table (68) concerning the formation of te-infinitivals are more equivocal with regard to compound status. It seems nevertheless safe to conclude that we are not dealing with true compounds and this may explain that the collocations cannot undergo verb-second as a whole. Tables (69)-(71) show that the collocations tend to behave as word-like V*-units ([V* X Vº]), as shown by the second column of these tables; this could be the reason why these collocations tend not to undergo verb-second. However, some of the more frequently used forms like parachute springen and (to a lesser extent) wad lopen occasionally exhibit a more phrasal structure [V' X Vº] behavior, as evidenced by the third columns in (69) to (71). This may perhaps be held responsible for the fact that verb-second is possible under more restricted circumstances. What remains mysterious from a theoretical point of view is that the collocations of the type touwtje springen'to skip' cannot be analyzed as compounds: Subsection V has shown that the X-part normally functions as a complement of the verbal part in structures like [V' X Vº] and [V* X Vº], while the nominal part of the type touwtje springen rather receives an adverbial interpretation.

[+] VII. Immobile verbal collocations (4): type stijl dansen'to ballroom dance'

This subsection discusses collocations like stijl dansen, which differ from the collocations discussed in the previous sections in that the N-part can remain adjacent to the verbal part in the corresponding past/passive participial form. We will investigate forms that satisfy the following three criteria: (i) the N-part of the collocation normally remains left-adjacent to the verbal part in past/passive participial forms (ge-X-V-d/t), (ii) the N-part cannot be interpreted as the theme argument of the verbal part, and (iii) the Van Dale dictionary states that the collocation occurs in its infinitival form only.
There are in fact not many collocations that satisfy these criteria. Booij (2010: 112) provides eight potential cases (only three of which can also be found in the list found at Taaladvies.net). We omitted steengrillen'stone grilling' as it does not satisfy criterion (iii). We also omitted buikspreken'to ventriloquize' and mastklimmen'to pole climb', because for these verbs we did not find any cases that satisfied criterion (i); gebuikspreekt was only used in discussions on the correct form of the past participle and gemastklimd did not occur at all. This leaves us with the four forms in (72) besides stijldansen (although it is certainly possible to find more cases like, e.g., mond schilderen'to paint with the mouth', windsurfen'to be windsurfing' and watertrappelen'to tread water').

a.	koord	dansen
	rope	dance
	'to walk a tight rope/high wire'

b.	vinger	verven
	finger	paint
	'to finger-paint'

c.	zak	lopen
	sack	walk
	'to run a sack race'

d.	zee	zeilen
	sea	sail
	'to sail the ocean'

Note in passing that it is not clear whether stijl dansen itself satisfies criterion (ii) given that examples such as Kaylah danst voornamelijk de Egyptische stijl'Kaylah mainly dances the Egyptian style' are quite frequent on the internet. Although we consider this use marked, it might indicate that we are actually dealing with a collocation in which the N-part is a theme argument of the verbal part; see Subsection VIII. We will not elaborate on this issue here.

[+] A. Past/passive participles and te-infinitives

Let us first look at the past/passive participle form of the collocations in (72). For each collocation a search was made for two forms: X + ge-V-d/t and ge-X-V-d/t. We spelled the first form without a space in order to exclude cases in which X is part of some preverbal constituent; this may have resulted in a lower number of hits for the form X + ge-V-d/t than we would have had if we had also searched for cases with a space. Duplicates or irrelevant cases were not weeded out but we did check whether the desired construction was included. The results in Table (73) show us that three of the four collocations tend to be treated like true compounds (especially since many of the hits in the second column must be dismissed as irrelevant for various reasons). It seems likely that zaklopen should be dismissed from this set: if we take into account that many more cases can be found if we include cases with a space between the N-part zak and the V-part gelopen, the collocation seems rather to belong to the type touwtje springen discussed in the previous subsection than to the type under discussion here.

	X + ge-V-d/t	ge-X-V-d/t
koord dansen	koord gedanst: 12	gekoorddanst: 37
vinger verven	vinger geverfd: 18	gevingerverfd: 216
zaklopen	zak gelopen: 103	gezakloopt: 22
zeezeilen	zee gezeild: 6	gezeezeild: 17

The overall picture that emerges from Table (73) seems to be confirmed by the results of our Google searches on te-infinitival forms in Table (74), although again there are cases in which the collocations are split.

	om X te V	omte X V
koord dansen	om koord te dansen: 11	om te koord dansen: 29
vinger verven	om vinger te verven: 0	om te vinger verven: 33
zaklopen	om zak te lopen: 13	om te zak lopen: 19
zeezeilen	om zee te zeilen: 0	om te zee zeilen: 27

[+] B. Progressive aan het + Vinfinitive constructions, verb clusters and negation

The tendency to construe the collocations as compounds makes it very likely for them to exhibit the behavior of a syntactic unit. This is fully confirmed by the results in Table (75). A manual check of the results for the string [X aan het V] showed that there is not a single case in which the collocations are split in the progressive aan het + Vinfinitive constructions. Given this result, we did not bother to apply the verb clustering and the negation test.

	aan het X V	X aan het V
koord dansen	aan het koorddansen: 85	koord aan het dansen: 0
vinger verven	aan het vingerverven: 90	vinger aan het verven: 0
zaklopen	aan het zaklopen: 69	zak aan het lopen: 0
zeezeilen	aan het zeezeilen: 23	zee aan het zeilen: 0

[+] C. Conclusion

Given the discussion in the previous subsections, it will not be surprising that in the relatively rare cases of verb-second the collocations in (72) will be treated as true compounds. Whereas it is fairly easy to find verb-second of the full collocation, we did not succeed in finding cases of the split pattern in sentences with third person singular simple present verb forms. This was checked manually after filtering out several frequently occurring substrings in the results, e.g., by means of the Google search [[zeilt * zee] and [-op zee]], which results in potentially split verb-second constructions without the adverbial phrase op zee'at sea'.
The fact that the collocations in (72) can be treated as regular compounds does raise a question, however: why do these verbs tend to not undergo verb-second at all. The answer to this problem seems to be related to the fact that speakers are somewhat uncertain about the compound analysis of the collocations in question, as is clear from the results in Tables (73) and (74). This may result in a tendency to avoid verb-second in favor of constructions involving the progressive aan het + Vinfinitive construction. If correct, this suggests that we are dealing with a performance restriction, which unfortunately would imply that no further light can be shed on this issue from a syntactic point of view.

[+] VIII. Immobile verbal collocations (5): type gedachtelezen'to mind-read'

This subsection discusses collocations like gedachte lezen'to mind-read', which differ from the collocations in the previous subsections in that the N-part does function as a theme of the V-part. There need be no a priori expectations concerning the question as to whether such collocations are compounds ([Vº X V]), syntactically derived V*-units ([V* X Vº]), or phrasal structures ([V' X Vº]). We therefore simply selected cases from the earlier-mentioned list of N+V collocations found at taaladvies.net/taal/advies/vraag/703 satisfying the van Dale dictionary criterion that they occur in their infinitival form only. We included one clearly idiomatic case, lijn trekken'to slack off/to malinger', and one case in which the N-part corresponds to the nominal part of a PP-complement, spoor zoeken'to trace'; cf. zoeken naar sporen'to search for traces'.

a.		hand lezen
		hand read
		'to palm read'

b.	kogel	stoten
	ball	shoot
	'to shot-put'

c.		lijn trekken
		line draw
		'to malinger'

d.	spoor	zoeken
	trace	search
	'to track'

[+] A. Past/passive participles and te-infinitives

For each collocation we looked for two participial forms: X + ge-V-d/t and ge-X-V-d/t. We spelled the forms without a space in order to exclude cases in which X is part of some preverbal constituent; this resulted in a lower number of cases of the form X + ge-V-d/t than we would have harvested if we had also searched for cases with a space. The results in (77) were checked manually and the numbers refer to attested cases of the looked-for construction.

	X + ge-V-d/t	ge-X-V-d/t
hand lezen	hand gelezen: 9	gehandleesd: 0
kogel stoten	kogel gestoten: 26	gekogelstoot: 18
lijn trekken	lijn getrokken: 10	gelijntrekt: 0
spoor zoeken	spoor gezocht: 10	gespoorzoekt: 3

Table (78) shows the results for our Google searches for the strings [om X te V] and [om te X V], the latter with and without a space between X and V. The results were checked manually and the numbers again refer to attested cases of the intended construction.

	om X te V	omte X V
hand lezen	om hand te lezen: 4	om te hand lezen: 5
kogel stoten	om kogel te stoten: 13	om te kogel stoten: 37
lijn trekken	om lijn te trekken: 9	om te lijntrekken: 2
spoor zoeken	om spoor te zoeken: 13	om te spoorzoeken: 15

The results in Tables (77) and (78) are ambivalent: whereas (77) suggests that speakers seem to disfavor a compound analysis for the collocations in (76), we cannot draw such a conclusion from (78).

[+] B. Progressive aan het + Vinfinitive constructions, verb clusters and negation

The results in Table (79) suggest that a phrasal analysis is excluded; given the large number of irrelevant hits for the string [aan het X-V], we stopped counting after we found 10 instantiations of the construction we were looking for.

	aan het X V	X aan het V
hand lezen	aan het handlezen: 6	hand aan het lezen: 3
kogel stoten	aan het kogelstoten: > 10	kogel aan het stoten: 1
lijn trekken	aan het lijntrekken: > 10	lijn aan het trekken: 0
spoor zoeken	aan het spoorzoeken: > 10	spoor aan het zoeken: 0

That the phrasal analysis is at best marginally available seems to be confirmed by the results of the verb-clustering test. Given the results in (79), we applied this test only to the collocations hand lezen and kogel stoten. The string [hand kan lezen] resulted in 4 instantiations and the string [kogel kan stoten] in just one instantiation of the construction. This contrasts sharply with the strings [kan handlezen] and [kan kogelstoten], which resulted in many relevant hits. The search strings [geen hand * kan lezen] and [geen kogel kan stoten] resulted in just one relevant case for hand lezen.

[+] C. Conclusion

The previous subsections show that the collocations in (76) are preferably analyzed as V*-units and consequently correctly predict that verb-second is strongly disfavored. The results in the third column of Table (79) show first of all that these collocations cannot readily be analyzed as phrasal ([V' X Vº]), so that the split pattern does not easily appear either. The results in Table (77) show that they cannot readily be analyzed as compounds ([Vº X V]), so that they cannot undergo verb-second as a whole either. As was also observed for collocations like touwtje springen, discussed in Subsection IV, it seems that the results in Table (78) are problematical for this account of the immobility of collocations like hand lezen because they suggest that a compound analysis is also possible.

[+] IX. Immobile verbal collocations (6): particle verbs (vooraanmelden'to preregister')

This section discusses a type of X+V collocation that has probably received most attention in the linguistic literature, namely particle verbs. Particle verbs are verbs preceded by a preposition-like element, that is, P+V collocations. Such collocations are like other types of X+V collocation in that there are various subtypes when it comes to verb-second: there are collocations that undergo verb-second as a whole, collocations that are split under verb-second, and collocations that resist verb-second in any form.

a.	dat	Jan de mogelijkheden	overweegt.	inseparable P+V collocation
	that	Jan the possibilities	considers
	'that Jan is considering the possibilities.'

a'.		Jan overweegt	de mogelijkheden.
		Jan considers	the possibilities

b.	dat	Marie zich	voor het examen	aanmeldt.	separable P+V collocation
	that	Marie refl	for the exam	prt.-registers
	'that Marie registers for the exam.'

b'.		Marie	meldt	zich	voor het examen	aan.
		Marie	registers	refl	for the exam	prt.

c.	dat	Marie zich	voor het examen	vooraanmeldt.	immobile P+V collocation
	that	Marie refl	for the exam	pre-prt.-registers
	'that Marie preregisters for the exam.'

c'.	*	Marie	vooraanmeldt	zich	voor het examen.
		Marie	pre.-prt.-registers	refl	for the exam

c''.	*	Marie	meldt	zich	voor het examen	vooraan.
		Marie	registers	refl	for the exam	prt.-prt.

Inseparable and separable P+V collocations differ as to the placement of word stress. Inseparable collocations are normally considered compounds, and are characterized by the fact that they have main stress on the second member: the P+V collocation in (80a) is pronounced as overwegen, not as overwegen. Separable collocations, on the other hand, exhibit a stress pattern that is typical of verb phrases consisting of a verb and a complementive, that is, they have stress on the preverbal element: the P+V collocation in (80b) is pronounced as aanmelden, not as aanmelden. The examples in (81) illustrate this again for the ambiguous verb voorkomen, and we refer to Section P1.2.4, sub IV for a more detailed comparison of the two types of P+V collocations. In what follows we will follow the general practice of restricting the term particle verb to separable (and immobile) P+V collocations.

a.	dat	het gebruik van een helm	serieuze ongelukken	voorkomt.	compound
	that	the use of a helmet	grave accidents	prevents
	'that the use of a helmet will prevent grave accidents.'

a'.		Het gebruik van een helm	voorkomt	serieuze ongelukken.
		the use of a helmet	prevents	grave accidents

b.	dat dit soort serieuze ongelukken	vaak	voorkomt.	particle verb
	that this type [of] grave accidents	often	prt.-occurs
	'that this type of grave accidents occurs often.'

b'.		Dit soort serieuze ongelukken	komt	vaak	voor.
		this type [of] grave accidents	occurs	often	prt.

A typical property of immobile particle verbs like voor aan melden'to preregister' in (80c) is that there are two independent particles involved, that is, that we are dealing with the structure [voor [aan melden]]. That the two particles are independent of each other is crucial in view of the fact that a particle verb like vooraanplaatsen'to place in front', in which vooraan is a complex preposition, counts as a regular, separable particle verb with the structure [[voor+aan] plaatsen]: We plaatsen de kinderen vooraan'we place the children in front'. The two cases can again be distinguished by their stress pattern: the complex preposition has stress on the second member (vooraanplaatsen), whereas in the double particle case main stress is on the first particle (voor aan melden).
There are in fact not many double particle verbs like vooraanmelden. This is to be expected as verbal particles generally have the syntactic function of complementive, and clauses cannot normally have more than one complementive; cf. Section 2.2. The collocation vooraanmelden is the example normally used as an illustration in the linguistic literature, but in (82) we provide a number of other cases that can be found in the Van Dale dictionary or on the internet. Note that we have not been able to find any cases in which a verbal particle forms a collocation with a P+V compound; we did find vooronderstellen'to presuppose' but this complex form behaves as a compound itself.

onderaanbesteden'to assign a commission to a subcontractor'

onderaannemen'to accept a commission as a subcontractor'

vooraanmelden'to preregister'

voor af beelden/spiegelen'to foretell in metaphorical form'

voorinschrijven'to preregister/presubscribe'

voorintekenen'to presubscribe'

Immobile particle verbs also arise when a separable particle verb like aanmelden'to register' in (80b) is prefixed with the prefix her-'re-'. Prefixation with her- of inseparable P+V compounds like overwegen'to consider' in (80a), on the other hand, does not affect the verb-second property; the prefixed form will undergo verb-second as a whole. This is illustrated in (83).

a.	dat	Jan de mogelijkheden	heroverweegt.	inseparable compound verb
	that	Jan the possibilities	reconsiders
	'that Jan is reconsidering the possibilities.'

a'.		Jan heroverweegt	de mogelijkheden.
		Jan reconsiders	the possibilities

b.	dat	Marie zich	voor het examen	heraanmeldt.	immobile particle verb
	that	Marie refl	for the exam	re-prt.-registers
	'that Marie is reregistering for the exam.'

b'.	*	Marie	heraanmeldt	zich	voor het examen.
		Marie	re-prt.-registers	refl	for the exam

b''.	*	Marie	meldt	zich	voor het examen	heraan.
		Marie	registers	refl	for the exam	re-prt.

In (84), we provide some examples of P+V compounds and particle verbs prefixed with her-, taken from the Van Dale dictionary; as P+V compounds are relatively rare, it need not surprise us that inseparable cases such as (84a) are heavily outnumbered by immobile cases such as (84b).

Inseparable: heronderzoeken'to reinvestigate', heroverwegen'to reconsider'

Immobile: heraanbesteden'to contract out again', heraanstellen'to re-appoint', herindelen'to reclassify', herindijken'to re-embank', herinvoeren'to reintroduce', heropbouwen'to rebuild', heropleven'to revive anew', heropnemen'to restart', heroprichten'to re-establish', heropvoeden to re-educate', heropvoeren'to perform again', heruitrusten'to re-equip'Immobile: heraanbesteden'to contract out again', heraanstellen'to re-appoint', herindelen'to reclassify', herindijken'to re-embank', herinvoeren'to reintroduce', heropbouwen'to rebuild', heropleven'to revive anew', heropnemen'to restart', heroprichten'to re-establish', heropvoeden to re-educate', heropvoeren'to perform again', heruitrusten'to re-equip'

The previous subsections have shown that many immobile N+V collocations exhibit properties that we have attributed to syntactically derived or lexically listed V*-units ([V* X Vº]). From a theoretical point of view, a similar analysis seems possible for particle verbs since verbal particles are often analyzed syntactically as predicative complements of the verb (i.e., complementives) and are thus expected to be able to undergo incorporation; we refer the reader to Subsections I and V for further discussion. Recall from our discussion above example (82) that we have not been able to find any cases in which a P+V compound is combined with a verbal particle, which explains the empty cell in this table.

	compound	particle verb
P+V collocation	overwegen	aanmelden
double particle verb	—	vooraanmelden
prefixed with her-	heroverwegen	heraanmelden

In the remainder of this subsection we will investigate from this perspective the double particle verb and the prefixed P+V collocation from Table (85). We will follow the list of relevant properties in Table 4; the expression of sentence negation is of course irrelevant given that it applies specifically to N+V collocations.

[+] A. The formation of past/passive participles

P+V compounds like overwegen are somewhat special in that they do not get the regular participial circumfixge-...-d/t. The preverbal part ge- is obligatorily truncated, which results in the (irregular) form overwogen in (86a) instead of the expected form *geoverwogen; as is expected for a compound, *overgewogen is also impossible. Example (86b) shows that separable particle verbs like aanmelden do get the preverbal ge- part of the regular circumfix and that, as expected for a separable X+V collocation, the verbal particle must precede it: *geaanmeld.

a.	Jan heeft	de mogelijkheden	overwogen.
	Jan has	the possibilities	considered
	'Jan has considered the possibilities.'

b.	Jan heeft	zich	aangemeld.
	Jan has	refl	prt.-registered
	'Jan has registered.'

The examples in (87) show that double particle verbs essentially behave like regular particle verbs: the full circumfix ge-...-d/t is used and the ge- part must be adjacent to the verbal part of the collocation, that is, it is obligatory and placing it in front of the first or the second particle results in unacceptability. This is also clear from our Google searches; the past/passive participles vooraangemeld and vooringetekend occur frequently (> 100 hits) on the internet, whereas the forms *gevooraanmeld, *voorgeaanmeld, *gevoorintekend and *voorgeïntekend are not found at all. Note in passing that we placed the simplex reflexive in (87b) between parentheses because constructions like these can be found on the internet both with and without it, that is, some but not all speakers make the collocation inherently reflexive.

a.	Jan heeft	zich	vooraangemeld.
	Jan has	refl	prt.-prt.-registered
	'Jan has preregistered.'

b.	Jan heeft	(zich) vooringetekend	voor het boek.
	Jan has	refl prt-subscribed	to the book
	'Jan presubscribed to the book.'

The examples in (88) show that the use of her- leaves the properties of the input unaffected: heroverwegen behaves like overwegen in that it does not allow the preverbal ge- part of the participial circumfix, and heraanmelden behaves like aanmelden in that the ge- part is obligatory and must be adjacent to the verb.

a.	Jan heeft	zijn beslissing	heroverwogen.
	Jan has	his decision	re-considered
	'Jan has reconsidered his decision.'

b.	Jan heeft	zich	heraangemeld.
	Jan has	refl	re-prt.-registered
	'Jan has reregistered.'

It should be pointed out that it has been claimed for certain particle verbs that the form prefixed with her- has a certain flexibility in its participial form. One case is heropvoeden. Bennis (1993) notes that his informants accept the first three forms in (89); the only form rejected categorically is the one in (89d). We tested this by means of a Google search on each form; duplicates or irrelevant cases were not filtered out from the results, but we did check whether the intended construction was included. We use the indication <201 in (89a) because the form heropvoed is frequently used as a finite, first person singular form, as a result of which the precise number of participial uses could not be determined. The em-dash in (89d) indicates that a cursory look immediately revealed that all cases of hergeopvoed were of dubious origin. We also searched for the following strings: [heeft * V], [heeft V] and [V heeft] in order to get an impression of the use of the strings as past participles; as the numbers were generally low, we checked the results manually. We stopped counting the past participle heropgevoed after we had found 20 occurrences (which happened after we checked the first 30 of 60 hits in total).

heropvoed

[participle: <201]

[past participle: 3]

geheropvoed

[participle: 39]

[past participle: 0]

heropgevoed

[participle: 486]

[past participle: >20]

hergeopvoed

[participle: —]

[past participle: 0]

The results in (89) suggest that some speakers may indeed feel that heropvoeden is a compound verb. It is doubtful, however, whether this can be generalized to other cases such as heraanmelden: whereas a search for heraangemeld resulted in 70 hits, there were only two relevant cases with geheraanmeld and none with heraanmeld.

[+] B. The formation of te-infinitives

The examples in (90) show that the compound verb overwegen cannot be split, whereas the particle verb aan melden must be split in certain contexts. Note again that the orders marked with a star can be found on the internet, but since the numbers are small and the results sound extremely bizarre, we have decided to simply ignore them.

a.	Jan zit	de mogelijkheden	te overwegen/*over te wegen.
	Jan sits	the possibilities	to consider
	'Jan is considering the possibilities.'

b.	Jan probeert	zich	aan	te melden/*te aanmelden.
	Jan tries	refl	prt.	to register
	'Jan is trying to register.'

Our Google search on the string [vooraan te melden] resulted in 28 hits, only three of which involved the construction aimed at. However, the results for the string [vooraan te melden] (with a space between the two particles) include an uncertain number of relevant cases: in the majority of the results, voor seems to function as the prepositional part of a pronominal PP (e.g. Hij probeert zich hier tijdig voor aan te melden'He is trying to register for this in time'), but we managed to find a small number of cases of the intended construction while browsing through the first 100 results. Since the string [te vooraan melden] resulted in just one relevant case, it seems safe to conclude that vooraanmelden behaves as a (separable) particle verb. The string [voor in te tekenen] resulted in 60 hits, but not all hits involved the construction looked for; we stopped our manual count after we found 20 relevant cases; the string [voorin te tekenen] resulted in four more relevant hits. Our search on [te voorintekenen], with various placements of extra spaces, resulted in just two hits, so that we can again conclude that we are dealing with a (separable) particle verb.

a.	Jan heeft besloten zich voor	aan te melden.
	Jans has decided refl pre	prt. to register
	'Jan has decided to preregister.'

b.	Jan heeft	besloten	(zich)	voor	in	te tekenen	voor het boek.
	Jans has	decided	refl	pre	prt.	to subscribe	to the book
	'Jan has decided to presubscribe to the book.'

The results of our Google searches for similar examples with her- are far from unequivocal. The numbers in square brackets in (92) are the combined results of searches for various variants of the strings [te her-P-V] and [her-P te V], e.g., with or without a space between her and the P-element. Naturally, the results for the (a)-examples are in line with our earlier conclusion that the use of her- does not affect the separability of the input collocation, but the results for the (b)-examples are surprising in that they show that heraanmelden sometimes behaves like a compound.

a.	Jan heeft	besloten	zijn beslissing	te heroverwegen.	494
	Jan has	decided	his decision	to reconsider
	'Jan decided to reconsider his decision.'

a'.

Jan heeft besloten zijn beslissing herover te wegen.

b.	Jan heeft	besloten	zich	te heraanmelden.	5
	Jan has	decided	refl	to re-prt-register
	'Jan has decided to reregister.'

b'.

Jan heeft besloten zich heraan te melden.

For completeness' sake, (93) shows that the result is even more spectacular in the case of heropvoeden: (89) has shown that it is sometimes treated as a compound in the case of participle formation. The results of our Google searches show that in the majority of te-infinitives this collocation is treated as a compound.

a.	te heropvoeden	511
	to re-prt.-educate
	'to re-educate'

herop te voeden

314

her te opvoeden

[+] C. Word order in progressive aan het + Vinfinitive constructions

Our Google searches on progressive constructions like [vooraan aan het melden] and [aan het vooraanmelden], with various placements of extra spaces, did not result in any cases of the construction we are investigating, and we therefore simply provide our own judgments in (94). Examples such as (94a) are also discussed in Blom (2005), who assigns them a question mark. Unfortunately, she does not discuss the order in (94b), which to our ears sounds far more degraded. Blom also notes that separating the two particles, as in (94c), is impossible.

a.	dat	Jan zich	aan het	voor	aan melden	is.
	that	Jan refl	aan het	pre	prt. register	is
	'that Jan is preregistering.'

dat Jan zich vooraan aan het melden is.

dat Jan zich voor aan het aanmelden is.

For completeness' sake, note that (94b) is fully acceptable if vooraan is construed as an adverbial phrase of place, which requires the compound stress pattern vooraan. In (94c), voor can readily be interpreted as a locational adverbial phrase. This is, of course, irrelevant to our present discussion.
Example (95) contains similar cases with voorintekenen. Since we were not able to find any relevant cases on the internet, our own judgments must suffice. Although (95a) may be considered somewhat marked by some speakers, it sharply contrasts with (95b&c), which seem severely degraded. Example (95c) is again acceptable with the irrelevant adverbial reading of voor.

a.	dat	Jan	(zich)	aan het	voor	in	tekenen	is.
	that	Jan	refl	aan het	pre	prt.	subscribe	is
	'that Jan is presubscribing.'

dat Jan (zich) voorin aan het tekenen is.

dat Jan (zich) voor aan het intekenen is.

We now proceed to similar examples for cases with her-. Example (96) shows first that heroverwegen, in accordance with our findings above that it exhibits compound behavior, cannot be split; cases like (96b&c) do not occur on the internet.

a.	Jan is zijn beslissing	aan het	heroverwegen.
	Jan is his decision	aan het	reconsider
	'Jan is reconsidering his decision.'

Jan is zijn beslissing herover aan het wegen.

Jan is zijn beslissing her aan het overwegen.

Although verbs like heraanmelden can be optionally split by the infinitival marker te, our judgments on the examples in (97) indicate that the split is not possible in the progressive aan het + Vinfinitive construction.

a.	Jan is zich	aan het	heraanmelden.
	Jan is refl	aan het	re-prt.-register
	'Jan is reregistering'

Jan is zich her aan aan het melden.

Jan is zich her aan het aanmelden.

Although there are no relevant cases of heraanmelden on the internet, our judgments seem to be confirmed by similar Google searches for the verbs herindelen'to reclassify', herinvoeren'to reintroduce', heropbouwen'to rebuild', and heropvoeden 'to re-educate': all these verbs frequently occur in the string [aan hether + particle + Vinfinitive] but virtually never in the string [her + particle + aan het + Vinfinitive]. The conclusion we can draw from the discussion above is that verbs like vooraanmelden and heraanmelden cannot be analyzed as phrasal ([V' X Vº]), but must be seen as word-like V*-units ([V* X Vº]); see Table 4.

[+] D. Word order in verb cluster constructions

Our judgments on the word order in the verb clusters in (98) lead to the same conclusion as in the previous subsection. The search strings [moet vooraanmelden] and [kan voorinschrijven] in the primeless examples can be found on the internet, albeit scantily sometimes; our Google searches resulted in 2 relevant hits for the former and 10 for the latter. We were not able to find any instances of the orders in the primed examples. It stands to reason that we have ignored cases in which the P-elements were used with an adverbial meaning or where they were part of a split pronominal PP.

a.	Zoek	uit	of	je	je	moet vooraanmelden	via Blackboard.
	find	out	whether	you	refl	must pre-prt.-register	via Blackboard
	'Find out whether you have to preregister via Blackboard.'

a'.

Zoek uit of je je vooraan moet melden via Blackboard.

a''.

Zoek uit of je je voor moet aanmelden via Blackboard.

b.	Ik	lees	net	dat	ik	niet meer	kan	voorinschrijven.
	I	read	just	that	I	no longer	can	pre-prt-subscribe
	'Iʼm just reading here that I can no longer preregister.'

b'.

Ik lees net dat ik niet meer voorin kan schrijven.

b''.

Ik lees net dat ik niet meer voor kan inschrijven.

Our judgments on the examples in (99) again lead to the same conclusion. The search strings [moet heraanmelden] and [moet voorinschrijven] in the primeless examples are easy to find on the internet; our Google searches resulted in 3 relevant hits for the former and 46 for the latter. We were not able to find any instances of the orders in the primed examples.

a.	dat	je	je	bij het opstarten	moet	heraanmelden.
	that	one	refl	with the booting	must	re-prt.-register
	'During booting one has to reregister.'

a'.	*	dat	je	je	bij het opstarten	her	aan	moet	melden.
		that	one	refl	with the booting	re-	prt	must	register

b.	Ik	weet	niet	goed	hoe	ik	mij	moet	herinschrijven.
	I	know	not	well	how	I	refl	must	re-prt.-write
	'Iʼm not certain how to reregister.'

b'.

weet

niet

goed

hoe

mij

her

moet

schrijven.

know

not

well

how

refl

re-

prt.

must

write

[+] E. Conclusion

The discussion above has shown that double particle verbs like voor aan melden'preregister' and particle verbs prefixed with her- behave like V*-units; they can be separated when the formation of past/passive participles or te-infinitives is involved, but not in progressive aan het + Vinfinitive or verb-cluster constructions. The fact that they resist verb-second is therefore expected; see Table 4.

[+] X. Immobile verbal collocations (7): type voorverkopen'to sell in advance'

This subsection concludes with a brief discussion of a type of immobile verb that has received relatively little attention in the literature so far; see Den Dikken (2003) for some preliminary remarks. Consider the examples in (100), in which a verb prefixed with ver- is preceded by some particle-like element.

100

a.	dat	Jan	de oven	voorverwarmt.	separable
	that	Jan	the oven	prt-ver-heats
	'that Jan is preheating the oven.'

a'.

Jan verwarmt de oven voor.

b.	dat	Jan de motor	oververhit.	inseparable/compound
	that	Jan the engine	prt.-ver-heats
	'that Jan is overheating the engine.'

b'.

Jan oververhit de motor.

c.	dat	Jan	de kaartjes	voorverkoopt.	immobile
	that	Jan	the tickets	prt.-ver-sells
	'that Jan is selling the tickets in advance.'

c'.

Jan voorverkoopt de kaartjes.

c''.

Jan verkoopt de kaartjes voor.

The (a)-examples behave more or less as expected given that particle verbs are normally separable, so nothing much needs to be said about these cases. The (b)-examples are also as expected since over with the meaning component "too much" normally behaves as a prefix and is thus expected to be pied-piped under verb-second; cf. Jan overvoedt zijn kat'Jan is giving his cat too much food'. The (c)-examples are the unexpected, immobile cases, which allow neither pied piping nor stranding, and simply resist verb-second altogether.
Since verbs prefixed with ver- block the realization of the preverbal part of the participial circumfix ge-...-d/t, we can only determine whether or not the P+V collocations are compounds by investigating the te-infinitives in (101). As expected, the inseparable P+V collocation in the (b)-examples must appear as a unit after the inflectional element te, whereas the two other collocation types cannot; although some speakers may feel uncomfortable with example (101c), they will agree that it is much better than its primed counterpart.

101

a.	Jan belooft	de oven	voor	te verwarmen.	separable
	Jan promises	the over	prt.	to ver-heat
	'Jan promises to preheat the oven.'

a'.

Jan belooft de oven te voorverwarmen.

b.	Jan belooft	de motor	niet	te oververhitten.	inseparable/compound
	Jan promises	the engine	not	to over-ver-heat
	'Jan promises not to overheat the engine.'

b'.

Jan belooft de motor niet over te verhitten.

c.	?	Jan probeert	de kaartjes	voor	te verkopen.	immobile
		Jan tries	the tickets	prt	to sell
		'Jan is trying to sell the tickets in advance.'

c'.

Jan probeert de kaartjes te voorverkopen.

We expect the separable collocation voor verwarmen to differ from the immobile collocation voor verkopen in that only the former can be split in the progressive aan het + Vinfinitive constructions. Our judgments given in (102) indicate that this is indeed borne out. These judgments seem to be confirmed by a Google search (11/2/2015): the split form [voor aan het verwarmen] indeed occurs on the internet a couple of times while the string [voor aan het verkopen] could not be found.

102

a.	Jan is de oven	<(?)voor>	aan het <voor>	verwarmen.	separable
	Jan is the over	prt.	aan het	heat
	'Jan is preheating the oven.'

b.	Jan is de kaartjes	<*?voor>	aan het <voor>	verkopen.	immobile
	Jan is the tickets	prt.	aan het	sell
	'Jan is selling the tickets in advance.'

For completeness' sake, we also provide our judgments on the verb-clustering constructions. Unfortunately, we were not able to find support for our judgments by unequivocal internet data given that there was too much interfering data. Again [voor zal verwarmen] does occur on the internet, while the search for [voor zal verkopen] did not result in any relevant case.

103

a.	dat	Jan	de oven	<(?)voor>	zal <voor>	verwarmen.	separable
	that	Jan	the oven	prt.	will	heat
	'that Jan will preheat the oven.'

b.	dat	Jan	de kaartjes	<??voor>	zal <voor>	verkopen.	immobile
	that	Jan	the tickets	prt.	will	sell
	'that Jan will be selling the tickets in advance.'

The data discussed in this subsection confirm our expectation that the immobile P+V collocation voorverkopen is a V*-unit. Many questions remain, however, such as what determines whether we are dealing with a separable or an inseparable collocation. We will leave this for future research.

[+] XI. Summary

This section has discussed various verb types that resist verb-second in main clauses. Verb-second resistance was found in certain X+V collocations like touwtje springen'to skip', in double particle verbs like voor aan melden'to preregister', and in particle verbs preceded by the prefix her- like heraanmelden 'to reregister'. In order to provide sufficient background information for the discussion of these so-called immobile verbs, Subsections I-III provided evidence that there are at least three types of X+V collocations with the distinguishing properties indicated in Table 5. The first type, [Vº X Vº], is made up of true compounds; the constituent parts X and V cannot be targeted individually by the morphological and syntactic processes indicated in the rows A to C. The second type, [V' X Vº], consists of phrasal constituents; the constituent parts X and V can be targeted individually by the morphological and syntactic processes indicated in the rows A to C. The third type, [V* X Vº], is a kind of in-between category; the constituent parts of the V*-unit can be targeted individually by the morphological processes in the A-row but not by the syntactic processes in the B-row. Moreover, V*-units are special in that they are immobile; verb-second can neither affect the verbal part in isolation nor the collocation as a whole.

Table 5: Types of verbal collocations

		[VºXV]	[V'X Vº]	[V* X Vº]
A	participial affix	ge-X+V-d/t	X ge-V-d/t	X ge-V-d/t
	infinitival prefix	te X+V	X te V	X te V
B	verbal clusters	V X Vmain	X V Vmain	V X Vmain
	aan het-phrase	aan het X Vmain	X aan het Vmain	aan het X Vmain
	negation	niet'not'	geen'no'	niet'not'
C	verb-second	+ (non-split pattern)	+ (split pattern)	—

The immobile V*-units seem to fall apart in at least two subtypes. First, Subsection IV has shown that (optional) syntactic incorporation into the verb of (i) a bare nominal object, (ii) a bare adjectival complementive or (iii) a bare adposition (=verbal particle) can create an immobile V*-unit. Second, Subsection VI has shown that there are also V*-units like touwtje springen'to skip' which cannot have a syntactic source and must therefore be listed as such in the lexicon. Although much is still unclear about the nature of these V*-units, Subsection V suggested that there may be a syntactic reason for the fact that V*-units like touwtje springen resist verb-second.
      Subsections VII and VIII dealt with two additional types of V+X collocations that resemble touwtje springen in that they resist verb-second: typical examples are vinger verven'to do finger painting' and hand lezen'to palm read'. It turned out, however, that it is far more difficult to establish their type as the tests in the A- and B-column of Table 5 do not provide unequivocal results: speakers seem to be quite uncertain about how to use these collocations.
      Subsection IX continued the discussion of immobile verbs with an investigation of complex particle verbs. Although such P+V collocations can normally be analyzed either as a phrasal V'-unit or as a V*-unit, the former analysis is excluded for double particle verbs or particle verbs preceded by the prefix her-. Their V*-status correctly predicts that they cannot undergo verb-second.
      Subsection X concluded with a brief discussion of immobile particle verbs of the type voorverkopen'to sell in advance' that have received relatively little attention in the literature so far. The discussion has shown that this type of immobile particle verbs exhibits the behavior typical of V*-units.

References:

Ackema, Peter1999The non-uniform structure of Dutch N-V compoundsBooij, Geert & Marle, Jaap van (eds.)Yearbook of Morphology 1998DordrechtKluwer127-158
Ackema, Peter1999The non-uniform structure of Dutch N-V compoundsBooij, Geert & Marle, Jaap van (eds.)Yearbook of Morphology 1998DordrechtKluwer127-158
Ackema, Peter1999The non-uniform structure of Dutch N-V compoundsBooij, Geert & Marle, Jaap van (eds.)Yearbook of Morphology 1998DordrechtKluwer127-158
Ackema, Peter1999The non-uniform structure of Dutch N-V compoundsBooij, Geert & Marle, Jaap van (eds.)Yearbook of Morphology 1998DordrechtKluwer127-158
Baker, Mark C1988Incorporation. A theory of grammatical function changingChicago/LondonUniversity of Chicago Press
Barbiers, Sjef, Bennis, Hans, Vogelaer, Gunther de, Devos, Magda & Ham, Margreet van de2008Syntactic atlas of the Dutch dialectsAmsterdamAmsterdam University Press
Bennis, Hans1992Long head movement: the position of particles in the verbal cluster in DutchBok-Bennam, Reineke & Hout, Roeland van (eds.)Linguistics in the Netherlands 1992Amsterdam/Philadephia37-49
Bennis, Hans1993Morfologie bestaat niet? Over de verhouding tussen zinsbouw en woordvormingTabu2315-28
Bennis, Hans1993Morfologie bestaat niet? Over de verhouding tussen zinsbouw en woordvormingTabu2315-28
Blom, Corrien2005Complex predicates in Dutch. Synchrony and diachronyAmsterdamFree University AmsterdamThesis
Booij, Geert2010Construction morphologyOxford/New YorkOxford University Press
Booij, Geert2010Construction morphologyOxford/New YorkOxford University Press
Booij, Geert2010Construction morphologyOxford/New YorkOxford University Press
Booij, Geert2010Construction morphologyOxford/New YorkOxford University Press
Booij, Geert2010Construction morphologyOxford/New YorkOxford University Press
Booij, Geert2010Construction morphologyOxford/New YorkOxford University Press
Booij, Geert2010Construction morphologyOxford/New YorkOxford University Press
Booij, Geert2010Construction morphologyOxford/New YorkOxford University Press
Booij, Geert2010Construction morphologyOxford/New YorkOxford University Press
Dikken, Marcel den2003When particles don't part
Dikken, Marcel den2003When particles don't part
Haas, Wim de & Trommelen, Mieke1993Morfologisch handboek van het Nederlands. Een overzicht van de woordvormingSDU Uitgeverij
Haas, Wim de & Trommelen, Mieke1993Morfologisch handboek van het Nederlands. Een overzicht van de woordvormingSDU Uitgeverij
Haas, Wim de & Trommelen, Mieke1993Morfologisch handboek van het Nederlands. Een overzicht van de woordvormingSDU Uitgeverij
Haas, Wim de & Trommelen, Mieke1993Morfologisch handboek van het Nederlands. Een overzicht van de woordvormingSDU Uitgeverij
Koopman, Hilda1995On verbs that fail to undergo V-secondLinguistic Inquiry26137-163
Koopman, Hilda1995On verbs that fail to undergo V-secondLinguistic Inquiry26137-163
Koopman, Hilda1995On verbs that fail to undergo V-secondLinguistic Inquiry26137-163
Vikner, Sten2005Immobile complex verbs in GermanicThe Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics883-115
Vikner, Sten2005Immobile complex verbs in GermanicThe Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics883-115
Vikner, Sten2005Immobile complex verbs in GermanicThe Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics883-115
Vikner, Sten2005Immobile complex verbs in GermanicThe Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics883-115
Vikner, Sten2005Immobile complex verbs in GermanicThe Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics883-115

⇑ Back to top

About this article

Author(s): Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver

Category: Dutch Syntax

Keywords: ArticleBare NounCollocationCompoundingConstructionImmobile Verbal CollocationIncorporationInfinitival MarkerInseparable Verbal CollocationLexical Integrity ConstraintNegationNegative ArticleNounParticle VerbReferentialitySeparable Verbal CollocationVerbVerb-SecondVerbal Collocation

Version: 1.0, January 2016

Version history:

version	editor(s)	date	remarks
1.0	Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver	January 2016

report errorprintcite

Jump to:

introduction
references
related articles