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Preface and acknowledgments

[+] I. General introduction

Dutch is an official language in the Netherlands, Belgium-Flanders, Surinam, Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles. With about 22 million native speakers it is one of the worldʼs greater languages. It is taught and studied at more than 175 universities around the world (source: taalunieversum.org). Furthermore, Dutch is one of the most well-studied living languages; research on it has had a major, and still continuing, impact on the development of formal linguistic theory, and it plays an important role in various other types of linguistic research. It is therefore unfortunate that there is no recent comprehensive scientifically based description of the grammar of Dutch that is accessible to a wider international audience. As a result, much information remains hidden in scientific publications: some information is embedded in theoretical discussions that are mainly of interest for and accessible to certain groups of formal linguists or that are more or less outdated in the light of more recent findings and theoretical developments, some is buried in publications with only a limited distribution, and some is simply inaccessible to large groups of readers given that it is written in Dutch. The series Syntax of Dutch (SoD) aims at filling this gap for syntax.

[+] II. Main objective

The main objective of SoD is to present a synthesis of currently available syntactic knowledge of Dutch. It gives a comprehensive overview of the relevant research on Dutch that not only presents the findings of earlier approaches to the language, but also includes the results of the formal linguistic research carried out over the last four or five decades that often cannot be found in the existing reference books. It should be emphasized, however, that SoD is primarily concerned with language description and not with linguistic theory; the reader will generally look in vain for critical assessments of theoretical proposals made to account for specific phenomena. Although SoD addresses many of the central issues of current linguistic theory, it does not provide an introduction to current linguistic theory. Readers interested in such an introduction are referred to one of the many existing introductory textbooks, or to handbooks like The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, edited by Martin Everaert & Henk van Riemsdijk, or The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax, edited by Marcel den Dikken. A recent publication that aims at providing a description of Dutch in a more theoretical setting is The Syntax of Dutch by Jan-Wouter Zwart in the Cambridge Syntax Guides series.

[+] III. Intended readership

SoD is not intended for a specific group of linguists, but aims at a more general readership. Our intention was to produce a work of reference that is accessible to a large audience that has some training in linguistics and/or neighboring disciplines and that provides support to all researchers interested in matters relating to the syntax of Dutch. Although we did not originally target this group, we believe that the descriptions we provide are normally also accessible to advanced students of language and linguistics. The specification of our target group above implies that we have tried to avoid jargon from specific theoretical frameworks and to use as much as possible the lingua franca that linguists use in a broader context. Whenever we introduce a notion that we believe not to be part of the lingua franca, we will provide a brief clarification of this notion in a glossary.

[+] IV. Object of description

The object of description is aptly described by the title of the series, Syntax of Dutch. This title suggests a number of ways in which the empirical domain is restricted, which we want to spell out here in more detail by briefly discussing the two notions syntax and Dutch.

[+] A. Syntax

Syntax is the field of linguistics that studies how words are combined into larger phrases and, ultimately, sentences. This means that we do not systematically discuss the internal structure of words (this is the domain of morphology) or the way in which sentences are put to use in discourse: we only digress on such matters if this is instrumental in describing the syntactic properties of the language. For example, Chapter N1 contains an extensive discussion of deverbal nominalization, but this is only because this morphological process is relevant for the discussion of complementation of nouns in Chapter N2. And Section N8.1.3 will show that the word order difference between the two examples in (1) is related to the preceding discourse: if pronounced with neutral (non-contrastive) accent, the object Marie may only precede clausal adverbs like waarschijnlijk'probably' if it refers to some person who has already been mentioned in (or is implied by) the preceding discourse.

a.	Jan	heeft	waarschijnlijk	Marie	gezien.	Marie = discourse new
	Jan	has	probably	Marie	seen
	'Jan has probably seen Marie.'

b.	Jan heeft	Marie	waarschijnlijk	gezien.	Marie = discourse old
	Jan has	Marie	probably	seen
	'Jan has probably seen Marie.'

Our goal of describing the internal structure of phrases and sentences means that we focus on competence (the internalized grammar of native speakers), and not on performance (the actual use of language). This implies that we will make extensive use of constructed examples that are geared to the syntactic problem at hand, and that we will not systematically incorporate the findings of currently flourishing corpus/usage-based approaches to language: this will be done only insofar as this may shed light on matters concerning the internal structure of phrases. A case for which this type of research may be syntactically relevant is the word order variation of the verb-final sequence in (2), which has been extensively studied since Pauwels (1953) and which has been shown to be sensitive to a large number of interacting variables, see De Sutter (2005/2007) for extensive discussion.

a.	dat	Jan dat boek	gelezen	heeft.
	that	Jan that book	read	has
	'that Jan has read that book.'

b.	dat	Jan dat boek	heeft	gelezen.
	that	Jan that book	has	read
	'that Jan has read that book.'

This being said, it is important to point out that SoD will pay ample attention to certain aspects of meaning, and reference will also be made to phonological aspects such as stress and intonation wherever they are relevant (e.g., in the context of word order phenomena like in (1)). The reason for this is that current formal grammar assumes that the output of the syntactic module of the grammar consists of objects (sentences) that relate form and meaning. Furthermore, formal syntax has been quite successful in establishing and describing a large number of restrictions on this relationship. A prime example of this is the formulation of so-called binding theory, which accounts (among other things) for the fact that referential pronouns like hem'him' and anaphoric pronouns like zichzelf'himself' differ in the domain within which they can/must find an antecedent. For instance, the examples in (3), in which the intended antecedent of the pronouns is given in italics, show that whereas referential object pronouns like hem cannot have an antecedent within their clause, anaphoric pronouns like zichzelf'himself' must have an antecedent in their clause, see Section N5.2.1.5, sub III, for more detailed discussion.

a.	Jan denkt	dat	Peter hem/*zichzelf	bewondert.
	Jan thinks	that	Peter him/himself	admires
	'Jan thinks that Peter is admiring him [= Jan].'

b.	Jan denkt	dat	Peter	zichzelf/*hem	bewondert.
	Jan thinks	that	Peter	himself/him	admires
	'Jan thinks that Peter is admiring himself [= Peter].'

[+] B. Dutch

SoD aims at giving a syntactic description of what we will loosely refer to as Standard Dutch, although we are aware that there are many problems with this notion. First, the notion of Standard Dutch is often used to refer to written language and more formal registers, which are perceived as more prestigious than the colloquial uses of the language. Second, the notion of Standard Dutch suggests that there is an invariant language system that is shared by a large group of speakers. Third, the notion carries the suggestion that some, often unnamed, authority is able to determine what should or should not be part of the language, or what should or should not be considered proper language use. See Milroy (2001) for extensive discussion of this notion of standard language.
SoD does not provide a description of this prestigious, invariant, externally determined language system. The reason for this is that knowledge of this system does not involve the competence of the individual language user but “is the product of a series of educational and social factors which have overtly impinged on the linguistic experiences of individuals, prescribing the correctness/incorrectness of certain constructions” (Adger & Trousdale 2007). Instead, the notion of standard language in SoD should be understood more neutrally as an idealization that refers to certain properties of linguistic competence that we assume to be shared by the individual speakers of the language. This notion of standard language deviates from the notion of standard language discussed earlier in that it may include properties that would be rejected by language teachers, and exclude certain properties that are explicitly taught as being part of the standard language. To state the latter in more technical terms: our notion of standard language refers to the core grammar (those aspects of the language system that arise spontaneously in the language learning child by exposure to utterances in the standard language) and excludes the periphery (those properties of the standard language that are explicitly taught at some later age). This does not mean that we will completely ignore the more peripheral issues, but it should be kept in mind that these have a special status and may exhibit properties that are alien to the core system.
A distinguishing property of standard languages is that they may be used among speakers of different dialects, and that they sometimes have to be acquired by speakers of such dialects as a second language at a later age, that is, in a similar fashion as a foreign language (although this may be rare in the context of Dutch). This property of standard languages entails that it is not contradictory to distinguish various varieties of, e.g., Standard Dutch. This view is also assumed by Haeseryn et al. (1997: Section 0.6.2), who make the four-way distinction in (4) when it comes to geographically determined variation.

Standard language

Regional variety of Standard Dutch

Regional variety of Dutch

Dialect

The types in (4b&c) are characterized by certain properties that are found in certain larger, but geographically restricted regions only. The difference between the two varieties is defined by Haeseryn et al. (1997) by appealing to the perception of the properties in question by other speakers of the standard language: if the majority of these speakers do not consider the property in question characteristic of a certain geographical region, the property is part of a regional variety of Standard Dutch; if the property in question is unknown to certain speakers of the standard language or considered to be characteristic of a certain geographical region, it is part of a regional variety of Dutch. We will not adopt the distinction between the types in (4b) and (4c) since we are not aware of any large-scale perception studies that could help us to distinguish the two varieties in question. We therefore simply join the two categories into a single one, which leads to the typology in (5).

Standard Dutch

Regional variety of Dutch

Dialect of Dutch

We believe it to be useful to think of the notions in (5) in terms of grammatical properties that are part of the competence of groups of speakers. Standard Dutch can then be seen as a set of properties that is part of the competence of all speakers of the language. Examples of such properties in the nominal domain are that non-pronominal noun phrases are not morphologically case-marked and that the word order within noun phrases is such that nouns normally follow attributively used adjectives but precede PP-modifiers and that articles precede attributive adjectives (if present); cf. (6a). Relevant properties within the clausal domain are that finite verbs occupy the co-called second position in main clauses whereas non-finite verbs tend to cluster in the right-hand side of the clause (see (6b)), and that finite verbs join the clause-final non-finite verbs in embedded clauses (see (6c)).

a.		de	oude	man	in de stoel	word order within noun phrases
		the	old	man	in the chair

b.	Jan	heeft	de man	een lied	horen	zingen.	verb second/clustering
	Jan	has	the man	a song	hear	sing
	'Jan has heard the man sing a song.'

c.	dat	Jan	de man	een lied	heeft	horen	zingen.	verb clustering
	that	Jan	the man	a song	has	hear	sing
	'that Jan has heard the man sing a song.'

Regional varieties of Dutch arise as the result of sets of additional properties that are part of the competence of larger subgroups of speakers—such properties will define certain special characteristics of the variety in question but will normally not give rise to linguistic outputs that are inaccessible to speakers of other varieties; see the discussion of (7) below for a typical example. Dialects can be seen as a set of properties that characterizes a group of speakers in a restricted geographical area—such properties may be alien to speakers of the standard language and may give rise to linguistic outputs that are not immediately accessible to other speakers of Dutch; see the examples in (9) below for a potential case. This way of thinking about the typology in (5) enables us to use the language types in a more gradient way, which may do more justice to the situation that we actually find. Furthermore, it makes it possible to define varieties of Dutch along various (e.g., geographical and possibly social) dimensions.
The examples in (7) provide an example of a property that belongs to regional varieties of Dutch: speakers of northern varieties of Dutch require that the direct object boeken'books' precede all verbs in clause-final position, whereas many speakers of the southern varieties of Dutch (especially those spoken in the Flemish part of Belgium) will also allow the object to permeate the verb sequence, as long as it precedes the main verb.

a.	dat	Jan <boeken>	wil <*boeken>	kopen.	Northern Dutch
	that	Jan books	wants	buy
	'that Jan wants to buy books.'

b.	dat	Jan <boeken>	wil <boeken>	kopen.	Southern Dutch
	that	Jan books	wants	buy
	'that Jan wants to buy books.'

Dialects of Dutch may deviate in various respects from Standard Dutch. There are, for example, various dialects that exhibit morphological agreement between the subject and the complementizer, which is illustrated in (8) by examples taken from Van Haeringen (1939); see Haegeman (1992), Hoekstra & Smit (1997), Zwart (1997), Barbiers et al. (2005) and the references given there for more examples and extensive discussion. Complementizer agreement is a typical dialect property as it does not occur in (the regional varieties of) Standard Dutch.

a.	Assg	Wim	kompsg,	mot	jə	zorgə	dat	je	tuis	ben.
	when	Wim	comes	must	you	make.sure	that	you	at.home	are
	'When Wim comes, you must make sure to be home.'

b.	Azzəpl	Kees en Wim	komməpl, mot	jə	zorgə	dat	je	tuis	ben.
	when	Kees and Wim	come	must	you make.sure	that	you	home	are
	'When Kees and Wim come, you must make sure to be home.'

The examples in (9) illustrate another property that belongs to a certain set of dialects. Speakers of most varieties of Dutch would agree that the use of possessive datives is only possible in a limited set of constructions: whereas possessive datives are possible in constructions such as (9a), in which the possessee is embedded in a °complementive PP, they are excluded in constructions such as (9b), in which the possessee is a direct object. Constructions such as (9b) are perceived (if understood at all) as belonging to certain eastern and southern dialects, which is indicated here by means of a percentage sign.

a.	Marie zet	Peter/hempossessor	het kind	op de kniepossessee.
	Marie puts	Peter/him	the child	onto the knee
	'Marie puts the child on Peterʼs/his knee.'

b.	%	Marie wast	Peter/hempossessor	de handenpossessee.
		Marie washes	Peter/him	the hands
		'Marie is washing Peterʼs/his hands.'

Note that the typology in (5) should allow for certain dialectal properties to become part of certain regional varieties of Dutch, as indeed seems to be the case for possessive datives of the type in (9b); cf. Cornips (1994). This shows again that it is not possible to draw sharp dividing lines between regional varieties and dialects and emphasizes that we are dealing with dynamic systems; see the discussion of (5) above. For our limited purpose, however, the proposed distinctions seem to suffice.
It should be stressed that the description of the types of Dutch in (5) in terms of properties of the competence of groups of speakers implies that Standard Dutch is actually not a language in the traditional sense; it is just a subset of properties that all non-dialectal varieties of Dutch have in common. Selecting one of these varieties as Standard Dutch in the more traditional sense described in the beginning of this subsection is not a linguistic enterprise and will therefore not concern us here. For practical reasons, however, we will focus on the variety of Dutch that is spoken in the northwestern part of the Netherlands. One reason for doing this is that, so far, the authors who have contributed to SoD are all native speakers of this variety and can therefore simply appeal to their own intuitions in order to establish whether this variety does or does not exhibit a certain property. A second reason is that this variety seems close to the varieties that have been discussed in the linguistic literature on “Standard Dutch”. This does not mean that we will not discuss other varieties of Dutch, but we will do this only if we have reason to believe that they behave differently. Unfortunately, however, not much is known about the syntactic differences between the various varieties of Dutch and since it is not part of our goal to solve this problem, we want to encourage the reader to restrict the judgments given in SoD to speakers of the northwestern variety (unless indicated otherwise). Although in the vast majority of cases the other varieties of Dutch will exhibit identical or similar behavior given that the behavior in question reflects properties that are part of the standard language (in the technical sense given above), the reader should keep in mind that this cannot be taken for granted as it may also reflect properties of the regional variety spoken by the authors of this work.

[+] V. Organization of the material

SoD is divided in four main parts that focus on the four lexical categories: verbs, nouns, adjectives and adpositions. Lexical categories have denotations and normally take arguments: nouns denote sets of entities, verbs denote states-of-affairs (activities, processes, etc.) that these entities may be involved in, adjectives denote properties of entities, and adpositions denote (temporal and locational) relations between entities.
The lexical categories, of course, do not exhaust the set of word classes; there are also functional categories like complementizers, articles, numerals, and quantifiers. Such elements normally play a role in phrases headed by the lexical categories: articles, numerals and quantifiers are normally part of noun phrases and complementizers are part of clauses (that is, verbal phrases). For this reason, these functional elements will be discussed in relation to the lexical categories.
The four main parts of SoD are given the subtitle Xs and X phrases, where X stands for one of the lexical categories. This subtitle expresses that each part discusses one lexical category and the ways in which it combines with other elements (like arguments and functional categories) to form constituents. Furthermore, the four main parts of SoD all have more or less the same overall organization in the sense that they contain (one or more) chapters on the following issues.

[+] A. Characterization and classification

Each main part starts with an introductory chapter that provides a general characterization of the lexical category under discussion by describing some of its more conspicuous properties. The reader will find here not only a brief overview of the syntactic properties of these lexical categories, but also relevant discussions on morphology (e.g., inflection of verbs and adjectives) and semantics (e.g., the aspectual and tense properties of verbs). The introductory chapter will furthermore discuss ways in which the lexical categories can be divided into smaller natural subclasses.

[+] B. Internal syntax

The main body of the work is concerned with the internal structure of the projections of lexical categories/heads. These projections can be divided into two subdomains, which are sometimes referred to as the lexical and the functional domain. Taken together, the two domains are sometimes referred to as the extended projection of the lexical head in question; cf. Grimshaw (1991). We will see that there is reason for assuming that the lexical domain is embedded in the functional domain, as in (10), in which LEX stands for the lexical heads V, N, A or P, and F stands for one or more functional heads like the article de'the' or the complementizer dat'that'.

[functional ... f ... [lexical .... lex .....]][functional ... f ... [lexical .... lex .....]]

The lexical domain of a lexical head is that part of its projection that affects its denotation. The denotation of a lexical head can be affected by its complements and its modifiers, as can be readily illustrated by means of the examples in (11).

a.		Jan leest.
		Jan reads

b.		Jan leest	een krant.
		Jan reads	a newspaper

c.		Jan leest	nauwkeurig.
		Jan reads	carefully

The phrase een krant lezen'to read a newspaper' in (11b) denotes a smaller set of states-of-affairs than the phrase lezen'to read' in (11a), and so does the phrase nauwkeurig lezen'to read carefully' in (11c). The elements in the functional domain do not affect the denotation of the lexical head but provide various sorts of additional information.

[+] 1. The lexical domain I: Argument structure

Lexical heads function as predicates, which means that they normally take arguments, that is, they enter into so-called thematic relations with entities that they semantically imply. For example, intransitive verbs normally take an agent as their subject; transitive verbs normally take an agent and a theme that are syntactically realized as, respectively, their subject and their object; and verbs like wachten'to wait' normally take an agent that is realized as their subject and a theme that is realized as a prepositional complement.

a.		JanAgent	lacht.	intransitive verb
		Jan	laughs

b.		JanAgent	weet	een oplossingTheme.	transitive verb
		Jan	knows	a solution

c.		JanAgent	wacht	op de postbodeTheme.	verb with PP-complement
		Jan	waits	for the postman

Although this is often less conspicuous with nouns, adjectives and prepositions, it is possible to describe examples such as (13) in the same terms. The phrases between straight brackets can be seen as predicates that are predicated of the noun phrase Jan, which we may therefore call their logical subject (we use small caps to distinguish this notion from the notion of nominative subject of the clause). Furthermore, the examples in (13) show (a) that the noun vriend may combine with a PP-complement that explicates with whom the subjectJan is in a relation of friendship, (b) that the adjective trots'proud' optionally may take a PP-complement that explicates the subject matter that the subjectJan is proud about, and (c) that the preposition onder'under' may take a nominal complement that refers to the location of its subjectJan.

a.		Jan is [een vriend	van Peter].
		Jan is a friend	of Peter

b.		Jan is [trots	op zijn dochter].
		Jan is proud	of his daughter

c.		Marie stopt	Jan [onder	de dekens].
		Marie puts	Jan under	the blankets

That the italicized phrases are complements is somewhat obscured by the fact that there are certain contexts in which they can readily be omitted (e.g., when they would express information that the addressee can infer from the linguistic or non-linguistic context). The fact that they are always semantically implied, however, shows that they are semantically selected by the lexical head.

[+] 2. The lexical domain II: Modification

The projection consisting of a lexical head and its arguments can be modified in various ways. The examples in (14), for example, show that the projection of the verb wachten'to wait' can be modified by various adverbial phrases. Examples (14a) and (14b), for instance, indicate when and where the state of affairs of Jan waiting for his father took place.

a.	Jan wachtte	gisteren	op zijn vader.	time
	Jan waited	yesterday	for his father
	'Jan waited for his father yesterday.'

b.	Jan wacht	op zijn vader	bij het station.	place
	Jan waits	for his father	at the station
	'Jan is waiting for his father at the station.'

The examples in (15) show that the lexical projections of nouns, adjectives and prepositions can likewise be modified; the modifiers are italicized.

a.		Jan is een vroegere vriend	van Peter.
		Jan is a former friend	of Peter

b.		Jan is erg trots	op zijn dochter.
		Jan is very proud	of his daughter

c.		Marie stopt	Jan diep	onder de dekens.
		Marie puts	Jan deep	under the blankets

[+] 3. The functional domain

Projections of the lexical heads may contain various elements that are not arguments or modifiers, and thus do not affect the denotation of the head noun. Such elements simply provide additional information about the denotation. Examples of such functional categories are articles, numerals and quantifiers, which we find in the nominal phrases in (16).

a.		Jan is de/een	vroegere	vriend	van Peter.	article
		Jan is the/a	former	friend	of Peter

b.		Peter heeft	twee/veel	goede vrienden.	numeral/quantifier
		Jan has	two/many	good friends

That functional categories provide additional information about the denotation of the lexical domain can readily be demonstrated by means of these examples. The definite article de in (16a), for example, expresses that the set denoted by the phrase vroegere vriend van Peter has just a single member; the use of the indefinite article een, on the other hand, suggests that there are more members in this set. Similarly, the use of the numeral twee'two' in (16b) expresses that there are just two members in the set, and the quantifier veel'many' expresses that the set is large.
Functional elements that can be found in verbal projections are tense (which is generally expressed as inflection on the finite verb) and complementizers: the difference between dat'that' and of'whether' in (17), for example, is related to the illocutionary type of the expression: the former introduces embedded declarative and the latter embedded interrogative clauses.

a.	Jan zegt [dat Marie ziek	is].	declarative
	Jan says that Marie ill	is
	'Jan says that Marie is ill.'

b.	Jan vroeg [of	Marie ziek	is].	interrogative
	Jan asked whether	Marie ill	is
	'Jan asked whether Marie is ill.'

Given that functional categories provide information about the lexical domain, it is often assumed that they are part of a functional domain that is built on top of the lexical domain; cf. (10) above. This functional domain is generally taken to have an intricate structure and to be highly relevant for word order: functional heads are taken to project, just like lexical heads, and thus to create positions that can be used as landing sites for movement. A familiar case is wh-movement, which is assumed to target some position in the projection of the complementizer; in this way it can be explained that, in colloquial Dutch, wh-movement may result in placing the interrogative phrase to the immediate left of the complementizer of'whether'. This is shown in (18b), in which the trace t indicates the original position of the moved wh-element and the index i is just a convenient means to indicate that the two positions are related. Discussion of word order phenomena will therefore play a prominent role in the chapters devoted to the functional domain.

a.	Jan zegt	[dat	Marie een boek van Louis Couperus	gelezen	heeft].
	Jan says	that	Marie a book by Louis Couperus	read	has
	'Jan said that Marie has read a book by Louis Couperus.'

b.	Jan vroeg	[wati	(of)	Marie ti	gelezen	heeft].
	Jan asked	what	whether	Marie	read	has
	'Jan asked what Marie has read.'

Whereas (relatively) much is known about the functional domain of verbal and nominal projections, research on the functional domain of adjectival and prepositional phrases is still in its infancy. For this reason, the reader will find independent chapters on this issue only in the parts on verbs and nouns.

[+] C. External syntax

The discussion of each lexical category will be concluded with a look at the external syntax of their projections, that is, an examination of how such projections can be used in larger structures. Adjectives, for example, can be used as complementives (predicative complements of verbs), as attributive modifiers of noun phrases, and also as adverbial modifiers of verb phrases.

a.		Die auto	is snel.	complementive use
		that car	is fast

b.		een	snelle	auto	attributive use
		a	fast	car

c.	De auto reed	snel	weg.	adverbial use
	the car drove	quickly	away
	'The car drove away quickly.'

Since the external syntax of the adjectival phrases in (19) can in principle also be described as the internal syntax of the verbal/nominal projections that contain these phrases, this may give rise to some redundancy. Complementives, for example, are discussed in Section V2.2 as part of the internal syntax of the verbal projection, but also in Sections N8.2, A6 and P4.2 as part of the external syntax of nominal, adjectival and adpositional phrases. We nevertheless have allowed this redundancy, given that it enables us to simplify the discussion of the internal syntax of verb phrases in V2.2: nominal, adjectival and adpositional complementives exhibit different behavior in various respects, and discussing all of these in Section V2.2 would have obscured the discussion of properties of complementives in general. Of course, a system of cross-references will inform the reader when a certain issue is discussed from the perspective of both internal and external syntax.

[+] VI. History of the project and future prospects

The idea for the SoD project was initiated in 1992 by Henk van Riemsdijk. In 1993 a pilot study was conducted at Tilburg University and a steering committee was installed after a meeting with interested parties from Dutch and Flemish institutions. However, it took five more years until in 1998 a substantial grant from the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO) was obtained. In 2010, the SoD project became part of a broader project initiated by Hans Bennis and Geert Booij, called Language Portal Dutch/Frisian. At this moment we have completed the following parts of SoD.

Noun and noun phrases (Hans Broekhuis, Evelien Keizer and Marcel den Dikken)
Adjectives and adjective phrases (Hans Broekhuis)
Adpositions and adpositional phrases (Hans Broekhuis)
Verbs and Verb phrases (Hans Broekhuis and Norbert Corver and Riet Vos)

In addition to the three main parts in 1-4, we have planned a separate part in which topics like coordination and ellipsis (conjunction reduction, gapping, etc.) that cannot be done full justice within the main body of this work are discussed in more detail.

[+] VII. Acknowledgments

Over the years many Dutch linguists have commented on parts of the work presented here and since I do not want to tire the reader by providing long lists of names, I simply thank the whole Dutch linguistic community; this will also safeguard us from the embarrassment of forgetting certain names. Still, I do want to mention a couple of persons and institutions without whom/which this project would never have been started or brought to a good end. The pilot study for the project, which was performed from November 1993 to September 1994, was made possible by a subsidy from the Center for Language Studies and the University of Tilburg. This pilot study resulted in a project proposal that was eventually granted by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in 1998 and which enabled us to produce the main body of work mentioned as 1-3 in the previous subsection, during the period from May 1998 to May 2001; I like to thank the members of the steering committee (chaired by Henk van Riemsdijk) consisting of Hans Bennis, Martin Everaert, Liliane Haegeman, Anneke Neijt, and Georges de Schutter, who all provided us with comments on substantial parts of the resulting manuscripts. The work that resulted form this project could be prepared for publication in the period from April 2008 to October 2010 thanks to a subsidy from the Truus und Gerrit vanRiemsdijk-Stiftung. Since November 2010 the work on SoD is continued at the Meertens Institute (KNAW) in Amsterdam. SoD has become part of the project Language Portal Dutch/Frisian, which is again financed by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). I gratefully acknowledge the financial and moral support of these institutions and thank them for the opportunity they have given us to develop SoD.

December 2015

Hans Broekhuis. Co-author and editor of Syntax of Dutch

References:

Hoekstra, Eric & Smit, Caroline (eds.)1997Vervoegde voegwoordenCahiers van het P.J. Meertens-InstituutAmsterdamP.J. Meertens-Instituut
Adger, David & Trousdale, Graeme2007Variation in English syntax: theoretical implicationsEnglish Language and Linguistics11261-278
Barbiers, Sjef, Bennis, Hans, Vogelaer, Gunther de, Devos, Magda & Ham, Margreet van de2005Syntactic atlas of the Dutch dialectsAmsterdamAmsterdam University Press
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Author(s): Hans Broekhuis

Category: Dutch Syntax

Keywords: AgreementArgumentArgument structureCompetenceComplementizerComplementizer AgreementComplementizer agreementDativeDutchDutch dialectModificationPerformancePossessive DativeRegional variety of DutchStandard DutchSyntaxVerbVerb clusterVerb-Second

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