De rol van semantische, pragmatische en sociolinguïstische factoren bij de grammaticalisatie van zitten/staan + te-infinitief

Abstract

The role of semantic, pragmatic and sociolinguistic factors in the grammaticalization of zitten/staan + te-infinitive/ Posture progressives Based on corpus studies, it has been shown that the posture progressive in Dutch (involving a posture verb and an infinitive) is currently going through a process of grammaticalization whereby the verb is losing its postural meaning. This study investigates the role of semantic-pragmatic and sociolinguistic factors in this grammaticalization process. Using an online acceptability test, native speakers of Dutch were asked to indicate whether the presented posture progressive matched a given pictured context. The results showed that young Dutch listeners tended to accept the progressive constructions more often than older listeners, which was expected in a context of language change. The degree to which progressives were accepted depended mostly on the posture verb, on the physical relation between the posture verb and the reported action and on the intended pragmatic context. The study shows the importance of combining semantic-pragmatic and sociolinguistic factors in the study of language change.