The Interplay Between the Speaker's and the Hearer's Perspective

Suppose you witnessed the killing of Harry by Frank and wish to report on that. To express this unfortunate event, you may consider using a sentence such as Frank killed Harry, or A man killed Harry, or He killed Harry, and perhaps even briefly consider the reverse word order Harry killed Frank. When choosing the form to be used, however, it is important that a hearer will understand the chosen form correctly. This means that the hearer should be able to identify the intended referents on the basis of the referring expressions used. If a pronoun is used, it should be clear to the hearer to whom this pronoun refers. In addition, the hearer should be able to distinguish between an interpretation according to which Frank is the killer and Harry the victim and an interpretation such that Harry is the killer and Frank the victim. In English, this distinction is made with the help of word order. That is, for an English hearer, the sentence Frank killed Harry can only mean that Frank is the agent and Harry the patient in the killing event, as Frank is mentioned first. If the speaker had wanted to express the meaning that Harry killed Frank, the speaker would have mentioned Harry first and thus would have said Harry killed Frank. In Dutch, like in English, agent-patient argument structure is generally reflected in word order, although in particular contexts and with special intonation the patient may sometimes appear first. Now suppose you did not witness the killing event but only saw Harry's body and would like to know the identity of his killer. In English, you would ask Who killed Harry? and in Dutch Wie heeft Harry vermoord? For someone hearing the English question, it would be perfectly clear what you are after. If you knew that Harry was the killer instead of the victim and were interested in the identity of Harry's victim, you would have asked Who did Harry kill? In Dutch, however, you would have asked the exact same question Wie heeft Harry vermoord? in the latter situation, too. The fact that the same form is used by Dutch speakers to inquire about the identity of the agent and about the identity of the patient makes this form ambiguous for Dutch hearers. Although differences in form generally signal differences in meaning, wh-questions in Dutch illustrate that in particular situations a …