Comparing degrees of constructionalization. Reduplicative coordination constructions with an emphatic meaning in Dutch and French
(2013) Taal & Tongval colloquium: “Constructions in variation and change” — Location: Gent (6.December.2013)
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- Dutch and French share a construction in which an element X occurs in a reduplicative coordination pattern: [X maar dan ook X] (lit. 'X but then also X') in Dutch and [X mais alors X] (lit. 'X but then X') in French (for Dutch, see Hoeksema (2001) and Cappelle (2012)). In both languages, this pattern can be used to put emphasis on X: (1) wij hebben alles maar dan ook alles gedaan om die mensen goed te begeleiden (... ) (CGN, shortened) 'lit. We have done everything but then also everything to guide these people appropriately' (2) je ne comprends pas les Wallons mais alors pas-du-tout (Valibel, shortened) 'lit. I do not understand the Walloons but then really not' Since these patterns combine a fixed sequence (maar dan ook / mais alors) with a variable element X (a (universal) quantifier, a degree adverb, an adjective, etc.) and since their emphatic meaning is not (entirely) predictable from their components, they seem to act like constructional idioms in the Construction Grammar sense (Croft & Cruse 2004, Goldberg 2006, Hoffmann and Trousdale 2013). These constructions should then clearly be distinguished from other instances of the sequences maar dan ook and mais alors with a true compositional (contrastive + consequential) meaning ('but then (also)'): (3) Je kunt dan verbinden tegen lagere kosten maar dan ook lagere bandbreedte natuurlijk (COW) 'Then you can connect at lower costs, but then also (with) lower band width of course' (4) Pour éviter de souffrir, on ne doit pas aimer, mais alors on souffre de ne pas aimer (web) 'To avoid suffering, one should not love, but then one suffers from the lack of love' The parallel between the Dutch construction and its French counterpart, however, is not as perfect as it at first sight might seem to be. For instance, the [X mais alors X] construction cannot only be used to emphasize X, but can also focus on a specific subtype of X, as in (5). In this case, the sequence mais alors cannot be translated by Dutch maar dan ook, but corresponds to maar dan wel (lit. 'but then well'). (5) lui il a: édifié aussi une ville mais alors une ville d'acier (...) (Valibel) 'lit. he also built a city, but then a city of steel' Hence, the question rises if in French, and possibly also in Dutch, different (sub)constructions should be distinguished, each with specific semantic-pragmatic effects. This question should not only be addressed at the semantic, but also at the formal level. Our corpus study, mainly based on web corpora (COW) and the databases Valibel for spoken French and Corpus Gesproken Nederlands for spoken Dutch, indicates, for instance, that, compared to Dutch, the French [X mais alors X] sequence allows more categorial variation of X and presents more cases without literal reduplication (6), which may suggest a less advanced degree of constructionalization. (6) j'en avais vraiment rien à foutre des cheveux blancs de Marie- Antoinette... Mais alors … rien à taper (web) 'lit. I couldn’t care less about the white hair of Marie-Antoinette… But then couldn’t give a fig.’ In sum, the present paper describes in more detail the extent to which the [X maar dan ook X] and the [X mais alors X] patterns are comparable and how their synchronic (syntactic and semantic-pragmatic) properties allow us to compare their degree of constructionalization. References Cappelle, B. 2012. Alles- maar dan ook allesbehalve grammaticaal, of hele- maar dan ook helemaal niks mis mee? Over Taal 51:3. 66-67. Croft, W. & Cruse, D. A. 2004. Cognitive linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goldberg, A. 2006. Constructions at Work: the nature of generalization in language. Oxford University Press. Hoeksema, J. 2001. X maar dan ook echt X! : een geval van emfatische reduplicerende nevenschikking. Tabu 31:3/4. 119-140. Hoffmann, T. and G. Trousdale (eds.). 2013. The Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Corpora CGN (Corpus Gesproken Nederlands): http://lands.let.kun.nl/cgn/ COW (Corpora from the Web): http://hpsg.fu-berlin.de/cow/colibri/ Valibel: http://www.uclouvain.be/valibel-corpus.html
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Van Goethem, K., Dugas, E., Amiot, D., Cappelle, B., Lemmens, M., Patin, C., & Tayalati, F. (2013). Comparing degrees of constructionalization. Reduplicative coordination constructions with an emphatic meaning in Dutch and French. Taal & Tongval colloquium: “Constructions in variation and change”, Gent. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/201793