Doorkruisingen van het Links-Rechtsprincipe.

Abstract

The order of constituents in the Dutch sentence is conditioned by the information value of the constituents: they are ordered from left (low) to right high information status, according to an influential text advice book and the Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst. One may assume that this so-called left right principle is widely applicable to Dutch sentences. In this article we want to question this assumption by presenting nine other principles that can be demonstrated to thwart the LRP. After that the results of a small-scale quantitative investigation are presented to assess the relative importance of the LRP. In the last paragraph we advise how to apply the principle in writing courses.