Form-function change and the rise of the Dutch auxiliary system.

The class of Dutch auxiliary verbs is subject to constant change, not only in the sense that new verbs keep entering the class, or that new auxiliaries change their grammatical behaviour to conform to other, more venerable auxiliaries, but also in the sense that the grammatical characteristics themselves change. In this project, I want to take a look at these characteristics in Dutch, especially if they diverge from what has happened in English. The two most important characteristics are so−called infinitivus pro participio (IPP) and clustering, but other morphological characteristics are included in the inquiry as well. By using state−of−the−art techniques for corpus study, I want to shed new light on the emergence of the Dutch auxiliary class and on the main mechanisms in language change in general.