On the Interaction of the Dutch Pragmatic Particles hoor and hè with the Imperative and Infinitivus Pro Imperativo

Abstract

"The purpose of the present paper is to discuss two such phenomena and to explain the hitherto undescribed interaction between them. First we consider the utterance-final pragmatic particles hoor (literally ‘hear’) and hè (‘isn’t it’): cf. Kirsner & Deen (1990), Kirsner & van Heuven (1997). Next we survey two imperative structures of Dutch: the bare verb stem (STM), used with finite clause word-order, and the ‘infinitive used as imperative’ (infinitivus pro imperativo), or IPI, primarily used with verb-final word order; cf. Kirsner, van Heuven & Caspers (1998), van Heuven & Kirsner (1999). Because English does not have an equivalent of either the hoor-hè contrast or the STM-IPI contrast, we provide illustrative examples"