Tracing the history of deontic NCI patterns in Dutch: A case of polysemy copying

Abstract

While the so-called "nominative-and-infinitive" (NCI) is no longer a productive construction in Dutch, the grammar of Present-day Dutch still contains a small set of lexically substantive NCI patterns, most notably geacht worden te and verondersteld worden te. Like their English formal equivalent be supposed to, these Dutch patterns can instantiate both evidential and deontic constructions, the latter being the most frequent one in Dutch. This paper focuses on the history of these deontic uses. We show that, with both patterns, the deontic use did not really take off until well into the second half of the 20th century and argue against an analysis in terms of grammaticalization along an (unlikely) 'evidential to deontic' path. Instead we present a language-contact hypothesis which attributes the development of the deontic uses of Dutch geacht worden te and verondersteld worden te to polysemy copying or distributional assimilation, English be supposed to providing the model. Additional evidence for the influence of English on this domain of Dutch grammar comes from the newly emerging lexically substantive NCI pattern verwacht worden te 'be expected to'.

The development of non-deontic be bound to in a radically usage-based diachronic construction grammar perspective

“…Working from the opposite assumption, however, I would like to propose "polysemy copying" in a dialect contact situation as a possible explanation (cf. Heine & Kuteva 2003: 555-561, 2005Gast & van der Auwera 2012: 392-393;Colleman & Noël 2014). Yorkshire speakers may have identified the form tied with what for convenience we could call "standard English" bound, since both were used for the expression of deontic necessity, and in consequence also started using tied for non-deontic necessity/epistemic purposes, "copying" the non-deontic necessity/epistemic use of standard bound.…”

For a radically usage-based diachronic construction grammar

“…Trousdale (2013); Van de Velde (2014); Torrent (2015);  the disappearance of constructions: Verhagen (2000), Trousdale (2008a); Colleman & Noël (2012); and  "constructional borrowing", a term first used in an early, unpublished, paper by Adele Goldberg (Goldberg 1990): Mithun (2008); Noël (2008) and Colleman & Noël (2014); Doğruöz & Backus (2009); Backus et al (2011); Backus (2014Backus ( , 2015. The second big strand, constructionist grammaticalization theory, encompasses the work in the grammaticalization theoretical tradition that followed a constructionist turn at the start of the century (for a discussion of the early contributions, see Noël 2007).…”

A reflection on constructionalization and constructional borrowing, inspired by an emerging Dutch replica of the ‘time’-away construction

“…the use of yapmak 'do' in contexts where Turkish would normally use a more specific verb, modelled on the prolific use of the corresponding verb doen in Dutch). Colleman and Noël (2014) argue that the development of a deontic meaning in the Dutch nominative-and-infinitive patterns geacht/verondersteld worden te is a case of polysemy copying or distributional assimilation, the equivalent English pattern be supposed to providing the model (also see Colleman to appear on distributional assimilation in Afrikaans three-argument constructions). Van de Velde and Zenner (2010), for a final example, discuss how the MTV show Pimp my ride gave rise to a productive [pimp POSS N] pattern in Dutch, where an increasingly diverse set of nouns can fill the N slot (e.g.…”