What is it about?
It is well known that languages like Dutch and German have verb clusters, i.e. sequences of verbs at the end of a sentence, as in the Dutch '... dat ze dat beter niet zou hebben gezegd'. A consequence of this clustering is that the main verb ('gezegd') is separated from its subject and its direct object by other verbs ('zou' and 'hebben'). The article demonstrates that Dutch also has adposition clusters, i.e. sequences of adpositions, in which the main adposition is separated from its complement by other adpositions. The phenomenon is less common than verb clustering but it does occur in corpora of both written and spoken Dutch and its properties are similar to those of verb clustering.
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Why is it important?
It is the first description of the phenomenon of adposition clustering.
Perspectives
Building on the descriptive work in this article I have developed a formal analysis that is about to be published in 'Linguistics' under the title 'Clustering and stranding in Dutch'.
Frank Van Eynde
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
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This page is a summary of: Chapter 5. Adposition clusters in Dutch, March 2017, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/z.210.05van.
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