Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Some Dutch manner adverbs are marked with diminutive morphology and ‘adverbial -s ’; cf. still-etje-s (quiet-DIM-S) ‘quietly’. This morphological material interacts with comparative/superlative formation: in Standard Dutch (SD), comparatives/superlatives of diminutive manner adverbs (DMAs) are ill-formed. Dialect reference grammars and novel questionnaire data reveal variation that is unaccounted for; some dialects allow comparative/superlative DMAs. I propose a unified analysis of SD and dialectal DMA patterns. Based on a discussion of morphosyntactic and semantic properties of the Dutch diminutive and prior analysis of -s , I propose that DMAs decompose into a phrasal category featuring a manner noun marked by diminutive morphology and a small clause headed by -s . This analysis of DMAs is comparable to that of Dutch blootshoofds ‘bare-headed’. Identified loci of variable affix ordering and variation between SD and dialects are PF/linearization and variation in the functional domain, respectively.
Source: Nota Bene
DOI: 10.1075/nb.00011.clo
Author: Lex Cloin-Tavenier
Institution: Utrecht University
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4406806128