How to Cite

Bouma, Gosse: Corpus-Evidence for True Long-Distance Dependencies in Dutch, in Fuß, Eric et al. (Eds.): Grammar and Corpora 2016, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2018, p. 337–356. https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.361.c4710

License (Chapter)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Identifiers (Book)

ISBN 978-3-946054-84-9 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-946054-82-5 (Softcover)
ISBN 978-3-946054-83-2 (Hardcover)

Published

05/16/2018

Authors

Gosse Bouma

Corpus-Evidence for True Long-Distance Dependencies in Dutch

Abstract Long-distance dependencies have been studied extensively in syn­tactic theory. Yet, true long-distance dependencies, spanning more than a single predicate, appear to be rare in actual use. In this paper, we present the results of searching for such dependencies in a large, automatically annotated, tree­bank for Dutch, concentrating on phenomena that have recently been subject to debate, and where conflicting claims have been made regarding their producti­vity and existence.

Our results suggest that in Dutch, true long-distance dependencies are rare and have limited productivity. We also show that a popular strategy for avoiding such dependencies, resumptive prolepsis, is much more frequent and produc­tive. Finally, we demonstrate that the annotation also facilitates searching for parasitic gaps, even though the construction itself is outside the scope of the computational grammar.

Keywords Long-distance dependencies, corpora, Dutch, resumptive prolepsis, parasitic gaps