The development of Dutch connectives : change and acquisition as windows on form-function relations

Abstract

The Dutch language displays a variety of connectives, words that instruct readers and listeners about the nature of the coherence relation between two clauses. These words (e.g. omdat 'because', maar 'but', and dus 'so') not only differ in the exact relation they explicate, but also in their syntactic characteristics. The first aim of this thesis is to unravel the very subtle ways in which Dutch speakers and writers exploit the syntactic possibilities of their connectives to support the exact meaning they want to convey. To this end, the author adopts a developmental approach to the investigation of form-function relations. This approach is related to the second aim of this thesis, which is to present and explain empirical data on both the historical developments of several Dutch connectives, and the first language acquisition of these words.

This thesis consists of four parts. Part I (Chapters 1-3) introduces the necessary theoretical background. Chapter 1 introduces the main research question, the method and the Dutch connectives selected for investigation. Chapter 2 presents a definition of 'connectives', and treats the conceptual and syntactic primitives that are generally used to characterize and classify connectives. Chapter 3 shows the plausibility of interactions between the conceptual and syntactic properties of connectives, and introduces several hypotheses on form-function relations concerning connectives.

Part II (Chapters 4-8) treats the diachronic development of connectives. It starts with a chapter containing several methodological considerations (Chapter 4) and follows a top-down approach. Chapters 5-8 each provide a first test of particular form-function hypotheses put forward in Chapter 3. Chapter 5 and 6 focus on the diachrony of the complementizers want 'because/for' and omdat 'because'; Chapter 5 presents a first test of a hypothesis on the interaction between word order and the hierarchical structure of discourse segments, Chapter 6 investigates the relation between word order and domains of use (cf. Sweetser 1990). Chapter 7 discusses the diachrony of dus 'so' and daarom 'that's why', providing data to test a hypothesis on the interaction between positioning and conceptual properties of connectives. The diachronic data in Chapters 5-7 are also used to gain insight into the occurrence of subjectification (cf. Traugott 1995) in connective development and its relation to syntactic changes (Chapter 8).

Part III (Chapters 9-13) treats the acquisition of connectives, and follows a bottom-up approach. Following the methodological considerations in Chapter 9, the acquisition of the selected Dutch connectives is studied in three ways. Chapter 10 introduces acquisition orders based on first emergence; Chapter 11 treats the overall developments of the same connectives, showing quantitative analyses and developmental curves; Chapter 12 focuses on qualitative changes during the acquisition process. Chapter 13 explicitly re-addresses the main questions of this thesis, and pays special attention to the acquisition of causal connectives in terms of domains of use.

Part IV (Chapter 14) presents a summary of the findings in Part II and III, thus providing a basis for conclusions on the hypotheses on form-function relations in the use of Dutch connectives. The studies in this thesis indicate that several form-function mappings can be distinguished, but that these mappings are often not one-to-one.