Adri BreedNorth-West University | NWU · School of Languages (Faculty of Humanities)
Adri Breed
BA, Bbk, BTh, MA, PhD
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39
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Introduction
Adri Breed is a NRF-rated associate professor in Afrikaans descriptive linguistics at the North-West University's Potchefstroom Campus. She specialises in syntax and semantics, with a particular focus on the grammaticalisation of tense and aspect constructions in Afrikaans and Dutch. She is subject head of the Subject Group: Afrikaans and Dutch Studies on the Potchefstroom Campus. She was one of the authors of Taalportaal. Currently, she is the editor-in-chief of VivA's general Afrikaans grammar
Publications
Publications (39)
This paper investigates the so-called South African English busy progressive (for example, I’m busy working ). Linguistic literature on South African English (SAfE) often states that this construction is a typical feature of this variety of English. The use and the frequency of this construction is mostly attributed to the influence of the Afrikaan...
Views on constructionalisation and constructional change are at the forefront of construction grammar approaches to language change. In order to be able to talk about constructionalisation and constructional changes in a particular part of the constructicon, it is necessary to have both a diachronic and synchronic view of that network of constructi...
Lexical units that are identical in form and that are traditionally referred to as either adpositions, adverbs, or particles (based on their morphosyntactic properties), can also be grouped together (based on semantic properties) under the term P-items (see for example Fontaine 2017). Although it is for most linguistic endeavours sufficient to refe...
The topic of impersonalisation has received a lot of attention in the literature, but the focus has mostly been on a limited number of strategies, such as the use of personal and indefinite pronouns and passive constructions. Impersonal strategies have thus far been examined using: (i) grammars, (ii) corpora; and (iii) language-based questionnaires...
South Africa’s various multilingual communities – a mix of eleven official languages and many other, smaller languages – offer unique opportunities to study constructions in contact. The influence of two of the West Germanic languages on each other, English and Afrikaans, has been the subject of study for many years – see for example Bekker (2019),...
Abstract (English)
In many (West) Germanic languages we see that personal pronouns can be used in impersonal contexts. These pronouns are often referred to as Human Impersonal Pronouns (HIPs). This is also the case for Afrikaans with the personal pronouns ‘jy’ and ‘hulle’. Since ‘('n) mens’ as a HIP in written standard Afrikaans has already receive...
Hierdie artikel ondersoek die verskillende strategieë wat Afrikaanse sprekers gebruik om aan te dui dat 'n konstruksie onpersoonlik is. Onpersoonlike konstruksies is konstruksies waar die (soms implisiete) subjek geparafraseer kan word as "mense in die algemeen", " 'n onbekende persoon" of "sommige mense". Hierdie onderwerp het al baie aandag in di...
This article reports on an interdisciplinary, collaborative project grounded in linguistic theory on impersonalisation and visual communication theory on wordless visual narratives. The aims of this practice-based research project are to develop an alternative to existing methods of studying impersonalisation strategies through interdisciplinary co...
Die progressiewe perifrastiese konstruksies in Afrikaans en Nederlands is 'n tema wat heelwat aandag in resente taalkundeliteratuur geniet het. 'n Verskeidenheid sinchroniese studies het die drie ewekniekonstruksies van Afrikaans en Nederlands, naamlik die PREP-, besig-, en CPV-konstruksies al afsonderlik en vergelykend bestudeer, waaronder die ver...
Although a lot of research has been done on the use of pronouns to express impersonal meaning in West Germanic languages, relatively little is known about the use of other possible impersonalization strategies. This article therefore examines the agentless passive as a possible impersonalizing strategy in Afrikaans and Dutch. On the basis of corpus...
Within the blended learning environment, it is important to consolidate expert content and pedagogy inside and outside the classroom. Subject experts who serve as content developers play a vital role by contributing quality controlled subject content covered by the curriculum, which can be made available to students on digital platforms. However, i...
In this article, we examine and compare the main human impersonal pronouns in Afrikaans, Dutch and English. The second person singular, the third person plural and the 'man'-and 'one'-pronouns are studied by means of an acceptability judgment questionnaire and a completion questionnaire. The combination of the two methods reveals interesting descri...
This paper is the first in-depth study of the main human impersonal pronouns in Afrikaans: jy 'you', ('n) mens '(a) human' and hulle 'they'. It adopts a double questionnaire approach, consisting of an acceptability judgment task for one group of participants and a completion task for another group. On the theoretical side, we test the different dim...
Given the common ancestry of Dutch and Afrikaans, it is not surprising that they use similar periphrastic constructions to express progressive meaning: aan het (Dutch) and aan die/’t (Afrikaans) lit. ‘at the’; bezig met /( om ) te (Dutch) lit. ‘busy with/to’ and besig om te lit. ‘busy to’ (Afrikaans); and so-called cardinal posture verb constructio...
A general linguistic use of progressive aspect is to express some kind of subjective meaning. In other words, this aspectual construction is applied to postulate the speaker's attitude towards or emotional involvement with a particular situation. Although this practice occurs in all three Afrikaans progressive constructions, it is clear that the po...
A general linguistic use of progressive aspect is to express some kind of subjective meaning. In other words, this aspectual construction is applied to postulate the speaker's attitude towards or emotional involvement with a particular situation. Although this practice occurs in all three Afrikaans progressive constructions, it is clear that the po...
Eerstetaalverwerwing kan beskryf word as die aanleer van die fonologie, morfologie, leksikon, sintaksis, semantiek (en pragmatiek) van 'n taal. Daar kan dus afgelei word dat beide taaltipologiese en taalspesifieke faktore betrokke is by hierdie proses en derhalwe is taalspesifieke studies oor eerstetaalverwerwing wat taaltipologiese faktore aanwend...
This article compares the grammaticalizing human impersonal pronoun "('n) mens" in Afrikaans to fully grammaticalized "men" and non-grammaticalized "een mens" in Dutch. It is shown that "'n mens" and "een mens" can still be used lexically, unlike "mens" and "men", and that "('n) mens" and "een mens" are restricted to non-referential indefinite, uni...
A general linguistic use of progressive aspect is to express some kind of subjective meaning. In other words, this aspectual construction is applied to postulate the speaker’s attitude towards or emotional involvement with a particular situation. Although this practice occurs in all three Afrikaans progressive constructions, it is clear that the po...
A general linguistic use of progressive aspect is to express some kind of subjective meaning. In other words, this aspectual construction is applied to postulate the speaker’s attitude towards or emotional involvement with a particular situation. Although this practice occurs in all three Afrikaans progressive constructions, it is clear that the po...
The grammatical functions that postural verbs (specifically the verbs sit, stand, lie and walk) perform in
written Standard Afrikaans, is described quite extensively in existing Afrikaans linguistics research. The
postural verb is commonly used in Afrikaans – similar to Dutch – to express progressive meaning.
However, the question may, be asked whe...
This special issue of Literator, Themes in Southern African linguistics, complements the 2015 Linguistics Society of South Africa/Southern African Applied Linguistics Association/ South African Association for Language Teachers (LSSA/SAALA/SAALT) joint annual conference. This issue contains articles from the fields represented by all three linguist...
Die Digitale Bibliografie van die Afrikaanse Taalkunde (DBAT) is ʼn omvattende databasis van Afrikaanse taalkundebronne. Meer as 16 000 bronne is hierop gekatalogiseer, en ongeveer 9 500 bronne se voltekste is beskikbaar. Verder word daar vir ongeveer 1 500 bronne skakels na volteks aangebied. Uit ʼn ondersoek na die gebruikerspatrone van die DBAT, w...
Die Digitale Bibliografie van die Afrikaanse Taalkunde (DBAT) is 'n omvattende databasis van Afrikaanse taalkundebronne. Meer as 17 000 bronne is hierop gekatalogiseer, en die voltekste van ongeveer 9 500 bronne is beskikbaar. Verder word daar vir ongeveer 1 500 bronne skakels na die volteks aangebied. Uit 'n ondersoek na die gebruikerspatrone van...
Die Afrikaanse werkwoordstelsel onderskei tussen verlede, hede en toekoms (met ander woorde tussen verskillende tempusbetekenisse), maar is meerduidig met betrekking tot grammatikaal-aspektuele betekenis. Die Afrikaanse werkwoord spesifiseer nie op 'n verpligte wyse 'n onderskeid tussen perfektiewe, anterior- of imperfektiewe betekenis nie. Die ong...
Aan die and besig in Afrikaans progressive construction : a corpus investigation (2)
Progressive aspect is a grammatical category which signifies that an event is continuing or taking place (Comrie 1976:33-36; Bybee et al. 1994:126). In two articles, this article and (Breed & Van Huyssteen 2014), we investigate the manner in which two periphrastic...
Progressive aspect is a grammatical category which signifies that an event is continuing or taking place (Comrie 1976:33-36; Bybee et al. 1994:126). In two articles, this article and (Breed & Van Huyssteen 2014), we investigate the manner in which two periphrastic constructions, namely the Vam, besig om te V and the Vcop aan die V constructions, ar...
ʼn Onlangse tendens in die studie van Standaard Gemiddeld Europees (Standard Avarage European), is die sogenaamde “ekstra-territoriale perspektief”. Hiermee word gepoog om te bepaal tot watter mate tale van die Sprachbund en nie-Europese tale vanweë taalkontak op mekaar begin afstem. Die huidige artikel val binne die kader van hierdie navorsingsfoku...
Abstract This article discusses the way in which the VPOS+and+VINF-periphrastic construction is used in Afrikaans to express progressive aspectual meaning. The discussion is based on the results of a corpus based investigation which examined the specific ways in which the use of this construction differs from that of the other two Afrikaans periphr...
•Aan die and besig in Afrikaans progressive constructions: the origin and development
Progressive aspect is a grammatical category which signifies that an event is continuing or taking place (Comrie 1976:33-36; Bybee et al. 1994:126). In two articles, this article and Breed and Van Huyssteen (submitted), we investigate the manner in which two perip...
Die Digitale Bibliografie van die Afrikaanse Taalkunde bevat ’n databasis wat op die Bibliografie van de Nederlandse Taal- en Literatuurwetenschap (BNTL) geskoei is (Carstens, 2011; DBAT, 2013). Daar is kritiek teen die BNTL uitgespreek omdat dit net ’n katalogus van inligting is (Devlieghere & Vanhooren, 2008:6). Hierdie referaat gaan poog om te b...
The present is a thing of the past: Possible linguistic motivations for the ‘present tense
writing tradition’ in Afrikaans prose. There exists a long-standing tradition in Afrikaans
creative writing to present narrative prose in the present tense, and not in the simple past as
in English and Dutch. It is, however, difficult to prove the existence o...
An investigation into a methodology: the adaptation of a complex Afrikaans novel into a screenplay
Very few Afrikaans films are currently being produced. One of the possible reasons for this phenomenon could be that very few Afrikaans screenplays are written nowadays. There are, however, some good Afrikaans novels which could conceivably become com...
