Between VP Adjuncts and Second Pole in Dutch. A corpus based survey regarding the complements between VP adjuncts and second pole in Dutch

In Dutch, verbs are situated at fixed places in the sentence. Those places are called the first and second pole. VP adjuncts seem to function as some kind of pivot place in between these poles. This article investigates, by means of corpus research in the Spoken Dutch Corpus (CGN), which elements are intervening between these VP adjuncts and the second pole. Attention is particularly paid to the reasons and principles that make elements end up between VP adjuncts and second pole. First of all, these elements will often be syntactically and semantically linked to the main verb. Secondly, the functional sentence perspective will be important for the placement of elements before or behind the VP adjuncts. The results will show that the functional sentence perspective is one of the main information dividing principles in Dutch sentences. The functional sentence perspective is then implemented in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, extending Van Eynde’s theory about Argument Realization in Dutch. Being able to handle focus information in an adequate way is important for contemporary issues such as coreference resolution. A better understanding of the principles that order the complements of the Dutch verb will also be helpful in correctly analyzing and parsing Dutch sentences. 1 Concepts 1.1 The Structure of Dutch Clauses The Dutch grammar ANS (Haeseryn, Romijn et al. 1997) describes a Dutch main clause on the basis of a first and second pole, occupied by the verbs. The Mittelfeld, in between these two poles, contains three parts. The central part of the Mittelfeld is occupied by different kinds of VP adjuncts. The structure of a Dutch subclause is quite different. The first pole is occupied by a conjunction, that connects the subclause to the main clause. The actual subclause starts with the Mittelfeld. All the verbs are put on the second pole. 1st sentence 1st MITTELFELD 2nd last sentence position pole 1 2 VP Adjuncts 3 pole position a Ik heb Jan gisteren een boek gegeven I have Jan yesterday a book given I’ve given a book to Jan yesterday b – (...dat) ik Jan gisteren een boek gegeven heb – (...that) I Jan yesterday a book given have ...that I’ve given a book to Jan yesterday Table 1: The structure of a Dutch main clause (a) and subclause (b)