PP-internal particles in Dutch as evidence for PP-internal discourse structure

Drawing on evidence from Dutch, this paper presents the new observation that discourse particles can not only appear at the level of CP, but also inside the PP domain. In particular, we demonstrate that Dutch dan can receive a non-temporal interpretation, and in this reading dan can appear as a functional head inside a complex PP constituent. After having established a detailed structural analysis of this phenomenon, we look beyond Dutch and compare the discourse function that dan has inside the PP to the role that its German cognate denn plays at the level of CP. We conclude that both cases can be analyzed along the same lines because they express the same abstract discourse function: Both PP-internal dan and German denn are discourse-navigating devices that link ‘a ground’ to ‘a figure’, only differing in their semantic domains of application.

ISBN:9789027257673

Jaar van publicatie:2022

Toegankelijkheid:Closed