Speaker: Jolien Scholten (Utrecht University)
Title: Split possession in dialects of Dutch
Date: Thursday February 12th
Venue: Huizinga 4
Time: 15:15 – 16:30
Abstract
It has been argued that European languages do not grammatically distinguish different groups of nouns in possessive structures (Lødrup 2014, Dixon 2010, Nichols & Bickel 2011). However, as is clear from the literature, there are languages spoken in Europe in which kinship nouns trigger different syntactic behavior in possessive DPs (see Lødrup 2014 for Norwegian, Thraínsson 2007 for Icelandic, Delsing & Egerland 2002 for Italian and Scandinavian). These examples show that European languages do entertain strategies to make a distinction between different semantic types of nouns, which could be analyzed as an alienable-inalienable distinction. In this talk, I will present data from three Dutch dialects that point in the same direction. In Vriezenveen Dutch, Wambeek Dutch and colloquial Flemish, kinship nouns trigger divergent syntactic behavior in a possessive DP when compared to non-kinship nouns. Those varieties have number and gender agreement on possessive pronouns, as is illustrated for Vriezenveen Dutch in (1) and (2).
mien-n hoond
my-m dog.m
mien-e auto
my-f car.f
However, when the possessed noun is a kinship term, there is no agreement, as shown in (3) and (4).
mien-ø va
my father
mien-ø moe
my mother
The semantic nature of the possessed noun determines the structure of the possessive DP, i.e. agreement in the case of non-kinship nouns, absence of agreement in the case of kinship nouns. As I will show for Vriezenveen Dutch, the latter is only true when the kinship noun is introduced by a possessive pronoun. I will argue, at least for Vriezenveen Dutch, that the internal structure of a DP including a kinship noun is different from a DP with a non-kinship noun. Their different structures can account for the agreement morphology that we find on possessive pronouns and adjectives in these structures and for the particular environment in which the divergent behavior is observed (possessive pronoun in combination with a kinship noun).