English constructions from a Dutch perspective

where are the differences?

Arie Verhagen

In construction grammar, specific constructions are daughters of more general patterns, the former inheriting properties of the latter, besides providing specifications of their own. Therefore, differences and similarities between languages may differentially involve lower and higher levels of generality. This paper demonstrates this by comparing three construction types in Dutch and English: the way construction, the time-away construction, and causative constructions. The first instantiates a productive pattern in English, but not in Dutch. The second is syntactic in English, and morphological in Dutch. The third inherits more properties from general clause syntax in Dutch than in English. The grammatical properties of each case nevertheless show important similarities. Low-level constructions may strongly determine cross-linguistic similarity, due to similarity of form-meaning pairing.

Published online: 29 March 2007
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.83.15ver

Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Colleman, Timothy

2016. A reflection on constructionalization and constructional borrowing, inspired by an emerging Dutch replica of the ‘time’-away construction. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 30 ► pp. 91 ff.

Jansen, Henrike

2017. “You Think That Says a Lot, but Really it Says Nothing”: An Argumentative and Linguistic Account of an Idiomatic Expression Functioning as a Presentational Device. Argumentation 31:4 ► pp. 615 ff.

Toivonen, Ida

2020. In The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics, ► pp. 516 ff.

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