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Argument doubling with proper nouns in
spoken Dutch
A corpus study
Imke Wets, Michelle Suijkerbuijk, Maria den Hartog
& Helen de Hoop
Radboud University Nijmegen
Argument doubling, also known as (contrastive) le-dislocation, is
common in spoken Dutch, but it is unclear exactly what triggers it. Earlier
proposals in the literature showed that the construction is not used for
marking contrast, and suggested it is used for marking shied topics
instead. However, the results from a Spoken Dutch Corpus study on
argument doubling with proper nouns demonstrate that topic-shi does not
adequately characterize the construction’s function either. Further
examination of our corpus data shows that at least for proper nouns, Dutch
argument doubling mostly occurs when a new referent is introduced into
the discourse, but that this referent does not necessarily become the topic of
the discourse. We hypothesize that argument doubling is a way of giving
speakers and/or hearers some extra time to establish and/or process the
new discourse referent in the discourse, regardless of whether it will become
a discourse-topic aer its introduction.
Keywords: spoken Dutch, le dislocation, topic-shi, proper nouns,
discourse-new
. Introduction
Consider the following Dutch sentences:
() Gert die zei dat (…).
‘Gert he said that (…).’
() Gertie zei dat (…).
‘Gertie said that (…)’
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00090.wet
Linguistics in the Netherlands Volume 40 (2023), pp. 248–262. ISSN 0929-7332 |E‑ISSN 1569-9919
Available under the CC BY 4.0 license. © 2023 Algemene Vereniging voor Taalwetenschap
That () sounds exactly the same as () was discovered by one of the authors of the
present paper, whose partner has a colleague named Gertie and a friend named
Gert. It resulted in miscommunication, which piqued our interest in this con-
struction. The fact that () and () sound the same shows there need not be a
prosodic separation between the antecedent noun phrase and the anaphoric pro-
noun. This is indeed what de Vries (:) claims for Dutch, Shaer & Frey
(:) for German, and Shor (: ) for Israeli Hebrew. Because we are
dealing with an integrated construction here (Matić et al. ), the term subject
doubling would be more appropriate than le dislocation (Shor ).
Another example is presented in (). Unless indicated otherwise, the exam-
ples presented in this article are taken from the Spoken Dutch Corpus (Oostdijk
) (interpunction is added by us).
() Pauline die zegt altijd dat ze een appartement wil kopen aan de kust voor later.
‘Pauline (she) always says that she wants to buy an apartment on the coast for
(CGN: fv)later.’
The subject Pauline is realized twice in (), rst by the antecedent noun phrase,
and then by the demonstrative pronoun die ‘that’ in bold. Although the phenome-
non may be more common with subjects, it is oen illustrated with a case of object
doubling (e.g. de Vries :), as in ().
() Jeanette die ken je nog wel hè?
(CGN: fn)‘Jeanette you know (her), right?’
Since the antecedent noun phrase can be either a subject (as in ()) or an object
(as in ()), we use the term argument doubling to refer to these constructions.
De Vries () analyzes the construction in () as a case of topicalization, like
(), but with an additional demonstrative pronoun appositively connected to the
peripheral antecedent, which is not dislocated at all, but an integrated part of the
clause.
() Jeanette ken je nog wel hè?
‘Jeanette you know, right?’
This makes (contrastive) le dislocation crucially dierent from hanging topic le
dislocation, as in (), where the peripheral object is “clearly separated from the
intonational contour of the clause” (de Vries : ).
() Jeanette, je kent haar nog wel hè?
‘Jeanette, you know her, right?’
In () and (), the pronoun die ‘that’ is adjacent to its antecedent, consistent with
its status as appositive (de Vries ). This supports de Vries’s () claim that
Argument doubling with proper nouns in spoken Dutch
the construction is syntactically and prosodically similar to ordinary topicaliza-
tion, as in (). However, de Vries () points out that when the le peripheral
argument is a subject, there is a dierence between topicalization and argument
doubling. Because subjects are already sentence-initial in the canonical word
order in Dutch, they don’t have the properties of topicalized constituents. If these
properties nevertheless need to be marked, “the way to do it is to insert a demon-
strative pronoun, which results in a [contrastive le dislocation] construction” (de
Vries :). Thus, de Vries suggests that subject doubling takes over the dis-
course function from topicalization, in order to compensate for the gap in the par-
adigm. What this discourse function might be according to de Vries and others is
discussed below in Section .
Neither the prosodic nor the syntactic features of argument doubling in
Dutch will be further discussed here. Instead, we focus on the discourse proper-
ties of the construction, because in the literature so far there seems to be no unam-
biguous answer to the question of when argument doubling occurs. Section
discusses some previous studies on the functions of le dislocation constructions
in English and Dutch, whose hypotheses are tested by means of a Spoken Dutch
Corpus study in Section . Section discusses the results of this corpus study.
Section concludes.
. Previous literature on argument doubling in Dutch and English
De Vries () treats topicalization and argument doubling alike, as discussed
in the previous section, but argues that the le peripheral argument in neither
construction is necessarily a topic, i.e. what the sentence is about. Similarly,
Prince () argues that le dislocation in English has nothing to do with topic-
marking. This is illustrated with several examples, such as the following passage
(the indices are added by Prince :):
() My sisterigot stabbed. Sheidied. Two of my sisters were living together on 18th
Street. They had gone to bed, and this man, their girlfriend’s husband, came in.
He started fussing with my sisteriand sheistarted to scream. The landladyj, shej
went up, and he laid herjout. So sisteriwent to get a wash cloth to put on herj, he
stabbed heriin the back.
Prince argues that the landlady in () does not function as a topic, since it would
not make sense to consider the sentence an answer to the question What about
the landlady?, or to paraphrase it with a topic-marker such as As for the landlady.
Indeed, “the only relevance the landlady has in the story is that it was to help her
Imke Wets, Michelle Suijkerbuijk, Maria den Hartog & Helen de Hoop
that the sister turned away from the angry man, enabling him to stab her in the
back” (Prince :). Another example discussed by Prince (:) is ():
() Everybody talk about it all the time. Especially Aunt Katherine up herei, that’s
all me and heritalk about – what they done to us. My father and mother sold
their land out.
In () the le dislocated construction is used to introduce a new referent into the
discourse, whether the hearer already knows Aunt Katherine or not. Thus, both
in () and (), the le-dislocations crucially introduce new entities in “the current
segment of the discourse-model for the rst time, regardless of whether the hearer
is assumed to already know about them or not” (Prince :). Prince argues
that the function of le dislocation here is to remove the full noun phrases from
the subject position, which is a disfavoured position for discourse-new entities. By
creating a separate processing position, the pronouns have become discourse-old
when they are encountered in their canonical subject positions within the clause.
Prince identies two other functions of le dislocated constructions in Eng-
lish. The second function is to trigger an inference on the part of the hearer
that the referent represented by the le dislocated noun phase stands in a salient
poset (partially ordered set) relation to some entity or entities already present in
the discourse model. When there is an opposition in what is predicated of the
members of the poset, this gives rise to a contrast relation, but that is not neces-
sary. Prince (:) notes that the predicates may even give rise to a sort of
“counter-contrast”.
The third function of le dislocation constructions in English that Prince
distinguishes is actually a type of topicalization, but with a resumptive pronoun
instead of a gap. This happens when the “extraction site is dicult or impossible
for reasons having to do with grammatical processing and where the speakers
salvage the situation by leaving a resumptive pronoun in situ” (Prince :).
Prince considers such examples “topicalization in disguise”, and therefore an “illu-
sion of ” le dislocation (Prince : ). Apart from this third syntactically
motivated function of le dislocation in English, Prince () thus distinguishes
two discourse functions: (i) introducing a new discourse referent in le periph-
eral position; (ii) establishing a relationship with a previously introduced entity
or set of entities.
It is not clear whether these two discourse functions also apply to argument
doubling in Dutch. Prince argues that the relation between form and function is
language-specic. For example, she points out that Yiddish le dislocation con-
structions only serve to mark poset inference (the second function of English
le dislocation), but not to remove discourse-new noun phrases from subject
position (the rst function of English le dislocation), because unlike English,
Argument doubling with proper nouns in spoken Dutch
Yiddish already has another syntactic construction for that purpose, viz. subject
postposing.
Like Prince (), de Vries () claims that the le peripheral constituents
in Dutch argument doubling constructions need not be topics. However, while
Prince () explicitly argued against contrast as a characteristic function of
le dislocation in English, de Vries () claims contrast (dened as activated
presupposition of alternatives, plus a choice) to be the one and only necessary
condition for argument doubling. Thus, while ordinary subjects need not be con-
trastive, subjects in argument doubling are, which in his view makes the term con-
trastive le dislocation appropriate as far as it concerns the term contrastive (albeit
not the part le dislocation). Thus, according to de Vries’s () own intuition,
sentences such as () and () above can only be used in a contrastive context.
However, as shown in later research (Stoop ; Veeninga et al. ), con-
trast is not a necessary condition for argument doubling in Dutch. () constitutes
an explicitly non-contrastive example (Prince’s “counter-contrast”), as indi-
cated by the marker of avoiding contrast ook ‘too’ (Schmitz et al. ). Note that
() could still be characterized in terms of a poset relation, in the sense that a rela-
tionship is established with a previously introduced entity (Prince ).
() Daar hee ze nu dus ook vrede mee hè. En Kees die hee d’r ook vrede mee.
‘So now she is at peace with that. And Kees (he) is at peace with it too.’
(CGN: fn)
Stoop () conducted a small corpus study in the Spoken Dutch Corpus, and
found that argument doubling is indeed frequent in spoken Dutch, since out
of occurrences of the pronoun die ‘that’ (almost ) were used for argument
doubling. Stoop rejects de Vries’s () claim that argument doubling is a vari-
ant of topicalization, arguing, among other things, that personal pronouns can be
topicalized while they cannot be the antecedent in argument doubling. We will
return to this later.
In order to test de Vries’s () hypothesis on the role of contrast in argu-
ment doubling, Stoop () investigated a sample of randomly chosen
instances of argument doubling in Dutch, in cases of which there was no pre-
supposed set of alternatives, hence no relation of contrast. We provide the dis-
course in () from our own corpus study as an example of the absence of contrast
in argument doubling.
() A: Ja dat hee ze nou minder gedaan.
B: Waarom?
A: Ja omdat niet alle mannen vinden dat lekker. Blijkbaar zit daar iets in wat
mannen niet zo lekker vinden.
B: Mannen?
Imke Wets, Michelle Suijkerbuijk, Maria den Hartog & Helen de Hoop
A: Ja, want, ja dat is echt zo, want Carlo die kwam later naar mij toe. Hij zegt:
“Het is hartstikke lekker maar d’r zit iets in wat ik niet lekker vind.”
A: ‘Yes she used less of that now.’
B: ‘Why?’
A: ‘Yeah, because not all men like that. Apparently, there’s something in there
that men don’t like as much.’
B: ‘Men?’
A: ‘Yes, because, yes that’s true, because Carlo (he) came to me later. He says:
“It’s very tasty but there’s something in it that I don’t like.”’
(CGN: fn)
Although one might argue that () contains a contrastive relation between men
who don’t like it (i.e. oregano) and a presupposed set of women who do, the argu-
ment doubling does not refer to this contrast. Instead, it refers to Carlo who came
to the speaker later, and there is no presupposed set of alternative people who
came or did not come to the speaker. While de Vries () assumed that con-
trast is a necessary condition for both topicalization and argument doubling, he
also noticed a dierence between the two, namely that argument doubling has a
“colloquial avor”. This characteristic is emphasized by Stoop (), who argues
that the main dierence between argument doubling and topicalization is that the
former is restricted to spoken language. In order to mark shied topics, topicaliza-
tion may be used in written language, and argument doubling in spoken language.
Stoop concludes that in spoken language the discourse function of argument dou-
bling is twofold: a shied topic is marked, indicating what the speaker is talking
about (sentence topic) and what the speaker wishes to talk about from that point
on (discourse topic).
Veeninga et al. () conducted a corpus study and an experiment to investi-
gate what the discourse function of argument doubling in Dutch might be. Their
corpus study consisted of production data from dierent groups of participants
who narrated four stories based on pictures. Each story contained exactly two ani-
mate discourse referents (the stories also contained inanimate discourse referents
such as a balloon or an ice cream cone, but these did not play a role in argu-
ment doubling or were not checked for it). The argument doubling constructions
in their data set were annotated for discourse-newness and contrast. An argu-
ment was coded as discourse-new if there was no earlier reference to it, and as
discourse-old if there was. A referent was coded as contrastive if the other refer-
ent in the story had already been introduced, and as non-contrastive if that was
not the case. Veeninga et al. () found that in most cases of argument dou-
bling the referent was discourse-old, although in almost half of the cases ()
it was discourse-new, and that in most cases () it was non-contrastive. How-
ever, their notion of contrast is dierent from what is normally understood by
Argument doubling with proper nouns in spoken Dutch
contrast. In their study, a contrastive referent is the second referent in a narrative
with two referents, while a non-contrastive referent is the rst referent. Whether
or not a contrastive relation is established between the two referents remains an
open question. We therefore suppose that the number of occurrences of contrast
in argument doubling is even smaller than assumed in Veeninga et al. () (see
also Stoop ).
It is notable that most of the referents referred to in argument doubling in
Veeninga et al.’s () corpus study are discourse-old, that is, they were men-
tioned in the discourse before. Both denite and indenite descriptions can be
used in argument doubling, as witnessed in () and () from our own corpus
study.
() The Black Diva. Die lm die zou ik dus ook nooit willen zien hè.
(CGN: fn)‘The Black Diva. That movie I would never want to see (it).’
() Want een goeie vriend van Lies die woont in Londen.
(CGN: fv)‘Because a good friend of Lies (he) lives in London.’
For indenite but not denite descriptions, an alternative, i.e. existential, con-
struction is available for the introduction of a discourse-new referent, hence we
predict argument doubling to occur more frequently with denite descriptions
than with indenite descriptions, and therefore more frequently with discourse-
old referents than with discourse-new referents.
Under the assumption that argument doubling is mainly used with discourse-
old referents, Veeninga et al. () conducted an experiment to nd out whether
shied topics result in argument doubling more oen than continuing topics.
They presented participants with stories that contained two discourse referents
represented by denite descriptions. One example of such a story is ().
() De barman gaat ijs kopen in het plantsoen. De barman vraagt de prins om mee
te gaan naar de ijskraam. De barman beschrij de prins de verschillende
smaken onderweg. De barman/prins die _
‘The bartender goes to buy ice cream in the park. The bartender asks the
prince to join him to the ice cream stand. The bartender describes to the
prince the dierent avors along the way. The bartender/prince who/he _’
The task of the participants was to complete the last sentence of (), in which
the pronoun die ‘that’ is ambiguous between a demonstrative and a relative pro-
noun. Veeninga et al. () hypothesized that the continuing topic the bartender
would result in less argument doubling than the shied topic the prince. However,
when participants performed the task orally, they produced argument doubling
in of the cases, compared to when they performed the task in writing.
A dierence between shied and continuing topics was found when participants
Imke Wets, Michelle Suijkerbuijk, Maria den Hartog & Helen de Hoop
performed the auditory task aer performing the written task. Only then partici-
pants produced signicantly more argument doubling aer a shied topic ()
than aer a continuing topic (). Veeninga et al. () suggest that argument
doubling is used to facilitate that a discourse-old referent which was not yet the
topic becomes the topic of the discourse (shied topic). However, the evidence for
this hypothesis is largely lacking.
Veeninga et al. () used only denite descriptions for the referents in their
stories. Notoriously, however, denite descriptions are prototypically used for
anaphoric, hence discourse-old referents. Moreover, the dierence between a
shied and a continuing topic in stories such as () comes across as highly
unnatural, because continuing topics are normally realized by pronouns, not by
a repetition of denite descriptions. A personal pronoun, which is a prototypical
continuing topic, can never be the antecedent in argument doubling (Stoop ).
The next section will test the hypothesis of Veeninga et al. (), according to
which argument doubling is mainly used with discourse-old referents to mark a
shied topic. To avoid the issues we identied with Veeninga et al.’s () studies,
we investigate the discourse features of argument doubling only for proper nouns.
In contrast to denite descriptions, proper nouns are never anaphoric and thus
can refer to both discourse-new and discourse-old referents. That is to say, even
if proper nouns refer to individuals known to the hearer, they can be new in “the
current segment of the discourse-model” (Prince :).
. Argument doubling in the Spoken Dutch Corpus
. Method
We searched the whole Spoken Dutch Corpus for sentences in which a proper
noun was combined with the demonstrative pronoun die ‘that’, and extracted
these occurrences with the words preceding the proper noun and the
words following the demonstrative pronoun, in order to be able to make use of the
context in our analysis. For the occurrences we found, we rst determined
whether it was a case of argument doubling or not. This excluded cases in
which, for example, the pronoun die was used attributively (e.g. Controleert Inge
die gesprekken helemaal? ‘Does Inge check those calls completely?’), or as a rel-
ative pronoun (e.g. Dat bijgeluid was Saskia die chips aan het pakken was ‘That
background noise was Saskia who was grabbing chips’).
For the remaining cases of argument doubling, we annotated whether
the argument was (i) a proper noun, to check whether our search criteria correctly
yielded proper nouns only; (ii) animate, in line with Veeninga et al.’s () choice
Argument doubling with proper nouns in spoken Dutch
for animate discourse referents in their corpus study; (iii) a subject, and (iv)
discourse-new. All annotations were made independently by two couples of two
annotators each. An initial check of inter-annotator agreement yielded a reliability
level of Cohen’s κ=. (p< .). Any disagreements between the two teams were
discussed, and in all cases consensus was reached. To determine whether a refer-
ent was new in the discourse or not, the referent was considered discourse-old in
the discourse if it had already been mentioned before in the preceding -word
context. We annotated the proper noun as discourse-old when the proper noun’s
referent was present in the preceding discourse, regardless of how it was referred
to, e.g. by a proper noun or a pronoun.
In addition to these four dimensions, we indicated which predicate was used
with argument doubling in case of subject argument doubling. We did not have a
specic hypothesis to do so, but Shor () for example found predicates in sub-
ject doubling in Israeli Hebrew to be mostly nominal.
For a smaller subset of cases in our dataset, we coded the discourse-topic
of the preceding context, and the discourse-topic of the subsequent context. In
this way, we could determine whether argument doubling signaled a topic-shi.
Note that the argument doubling construction itself did not count towards mark-
ing the referent as a discourse-topic or not, because this would be a vacuous de-
nition of topicality. The annotated data set is available in a repository.1
In our analyses, we only used argument doubling cases in which the proper
noun referred to an animate entity, because this made it easier to compare our
results with the results of Veeninga et al. (), who also only considered argu-
ment doubling in the case of animate referents. This means that we excluded
cases in which the argument was not a proper noun, e.g. when the proper noun
was part of a bigger constituent as in de kinderen van Thea ‘Thea’s children’, as
well as cases where the referent was inanimate. Our nal set thus consisted of
occurrences of argument doubling with an animate proper noun.
. Results
We found that in of the cases, argument doubling occurred in the
parts of the Spoken Dutch Corpus containing spontaneous spoken language
production (rather than written material read aloud), specically spontaneous
commentaries including sports broadcast on radio and television, spontaneous
conversations, and telephone dialogues, thus conrming that argument doubling
is a spoken-language phenomenon (de Vries ; Stoop ; Veeninga et al.
. Link to the Radboud Data Repository collection with data and analyses: https://doi.org/
./spe–.
Imke Wets, Michelle Suijkerbuijk, Maria den Hartog & Helen de Hoop
). The frequencies of subject and object doubling, and the referent’s oldness
or newness in the discourse are shown in Table .2
Table . Contingency table of argument doubling for subjects and objects, and for
arguments that are discourse-new and discourse-old
Position
Discourse status
New Old Total
Subject Observed count
Expected count – – –
Object Observed count
Expected count – – –
Total Observed count
Expected count –
Table shows that argument doubling occurs far more oen when the argu-
ment is the subject of the sentence ( vs. ), and when the argument is new in
the discourse ( vs. ). If argument doubling is unrelated to whether an argu-
ment is new in the discourse, we expect . (i.e. cases) to be discourse-
new and . (i.e. cases) to be discourse-old based on the proportions
of discourse-new and discourse-old arguments in our subcorpus of telephone
dialogues. A chi-square goodness-of-t test showed a signicant relationship
between argument doubling and discourse status (χ(,N=) =., p< .),
with doubled arguments more oen occurring with discourse-new referents than
expected in spontaneous conversations.
The discourse topic of the preceding and following contexts was annotated
for a subset of our data, to nd out whether argument-doubling facilitates a topic-
shi, as assumed by Veeninga et al. (). The results are summarized in Table .
In the vast majority of the cases, the argument was not the topic in the pre-
ceding discourse (in of the cases, i.e. .), which is not surprising
because most proper nouns in argument doubling referred to discourse-new enti-
ties, which could not have been a topic yet in the discourse. While the argument
became the topic in the following discourse in occurrences, more oen the
argument did not become topic of the discourse following the doubling construc-
tion, namely in occurrences.
. Cases without argument doubling, with arguments other than proper nouns and with inan-
imate proper nouns were excluded from the nal set. Based on the subcorpus of telephone
dialogues in which out of animate proper nouns (.) concerned discourse-new ref-
erents, cases should be expected to be discourse-new.
Argument doubling with proper nouns in spoken Dutch
Table . Frequency of argument doubling signaling a topic-shi
Preceding context Following context Topic-shi Frequency
Argument ≠ discourse-topic Argument ≠ discourse-topic no (.)
Argument ≠ discourse-topic Argument = discourse-topic yes (.)
Argument = discourse-topic Argument ≠ discourse-topic no (.)
Argument = discourse-topic Argument = discourse-topic no (.)
Total ()
. Discussion
The results of our corpus study reported in the previous section make a clear
contribution to the discussion in the literature about the discourse properties of
argument doubling in spoken Dutch. Veeninga et al.’s () nding that most ref-
erents in argument doubling are discourse-old was not conrmed in our data set.
In fact, we found that the referent was discourse-new in the vast majority of cases,
similar to the rst discourse function of le dislocation in English, according to
Prince ().
As shown in Table above, in less than of the cases argument doubling
induces a topic-shi, which can therefore not be a main function of argument
doubling (contra Stoop and Veeninga et al. ). An example of topic-shi
is presented in (), where Merle becomes the topic aer her introduction in an
argument doubling construction.
() A: Hij doet dat hekje open. Zeg “Joh gek, doe dat hekje dicht.” Hij dat hekje
weer dicht. Weer praten en praten en praten, dus hekje weer open. Nou daar
ga ik dan. Maar ik had dus geluk dat ik nummer twee was, want Merle die
was echt heel erg bang, nog banger dan ik die ze was dus als een van de
laatsten en daar had die kerel helemaal geen geduld meer dus die doet dat
hekje open.
B: Douw.
A: Hekje dicht.
A: ‘He opens that gate. Say “Gee dude, close that gate.” He closes the gate
again. Again talking and talking and talking, so the gate is open again.
Well, there I go. But I was lucky that I was number two, because Merle
(she) was really, really scared, even more scared than me. She was one of
the last ones and this guy had no more patience, so he opens the gate.’
B: ‘Push.’
A: (CGN: fn)‘Gate closed.’
Imke Wets, Michelle Suijkerbuijk, Maria den Hartog & Helen de Hoop
In of the cases, a referent who was not the topic in the preceding discourse
did not become the topic in the following discourse either. This is illustrated
in ().
() A: Nou ja, dan zouden ze wel andere richtingen kunnen uitvliegen maar ja, ze
willen speciaal naar Zuid-Afrika.
B: Ja nee, Vincent die zegt ook dat ie wel naar wel naar Zuid-Afrika zou
willen. Ja, omdat de contacten met de mensen daar worden erg
aangetrokken hè, met universiteiten. Dus dan kun je jezelf laten uitnodigen.
Dat doen heel veel Nederlanders, de taalkundigen laten zich dan uitnodi-
gen.
A: ‘Well, they could y in other directions, but yes, they want to go to South
Africa especially.’
B: ‘Yeah no, Vincent (he) also says that he would like to go to South Africa.
Yes, because the contacts with the people there are very strong, with the
universities. So, you can let yourself be invited. Many Dutch people do so,
(CGN: fn)the linguists have themselves be invited.’
As can be seen in Table above, there are even cases (less than ) where a topic
ceases to be a topic aer being used in argument doubling. () is a case in point.
() A: Ronald zo heette die, een hele irritante jongen met die oranje haren.
B: Oh Ronald ja. Oh Ashley uh Eshwin Eshwin. Nee is een andere jongen.
A: Eshwin nee nee Eshwin die hee bij mij op de basisschool gezeten. Daar
weet ik nog wel alle namen van maar da’s ook mensen met wie je meer
optrekt dan.
A: ‘Ronald was his name, a very annoying boy with that orange hair.’
B: ‘Oh Ronald yes. O Ashley ehm’
A: ‘Eshwin Eshwin. No, that’s another boy. Eshwin, no no, Eshwin (he) went
to primary school with me. I still remember all their names, but those are
(CGN: fn)the people you hang out more with.’
In (), Eshwin is already the topic of the discourse before he appears in the argu-
ment doubling construction. Aer that, he is no longer the topic, as the topic
of the discourse switches to people with whom the speaker went to elementary
school.
Clearly, although argument doubling is mostly used to introduce a new refer-
ent into the discourse, it is certainly not only used in such a context. One of the
factors that could play a role and should be investigated further in future research
is the type of predicate that appears in argument doubling. Shor () found that
argument doubling in Israeli Hebrew mostly occurs with nominal predicates. We
also seem to nd more predicates referring to properties or states than to activ-
ities, with verbs such as zijn ‘to be’, hebben ‘to have’, zitten ‘to sit’, but also gaan
Argument doubling with proper nouns in spoken Dutch
‘to go’, and doen ‘to do’. Besides, we noticed a frequent use of predicates such as
zeggen ‘say’, where usually what is said is more important than who says it, as in
the case of reportative evidentiality (Foolen et al. ). Such an example is (),
where Thomas is only introduced in the discourse as the source of information,
while another person is the (continuing) topic, referred to by the pronouns hij ‘he’
and hem ‘him’.
() A: Wat hee ie dan?
B: Weer?
A: Hij … Ja of lag die in het ziekenhuis?
B: Nee hij hee erin gelegen. Hij had eh ik weet ook niet precies hoe het zit,
maar Thomas die had hem aan de telefoon. En hij schijnt in elkaar gezakt
te zijn. Hij had al een tijdje een beetje spierpijn op z’n borst.
A: ‘What does he have?’
B: ‘Again?’
A: ‘He … Yes, or is he in the hospital?’
B: ‘No, he has been there. He had ehm I don’t know exactly but Thomas (he)
had him on the phone. And he seems to have collapsed. He had a little
(CGN: fn)muscle pain on his chest.’
. Conclusion
The aim of this paper was to shed light on the function of argument doubling, a
phenomenon which is very common in spoken Dutch. We hope to have shown
that argument doubling in Dutch is primarily used to introduce a new discourse
referent (contra Veeninga et al. ), and not to mark or facilitate a topic-shi
(contra Stoop ; Veeninga et al. ). Introducing a new discourse referent was
also argued to be one of the main functions of English le dislocation, in par-
ticular for subjects, which usually do not encode new discourse referents (Prince
). Since Dutch argument doubling almost exclusively occurs with subjects
too, we follow Prince () in her explanation. Because the subject position is
dispreferred for the introduction of a new referent into the discourse, argument
doubling is used to facilitate processing, for the speaker or the hearer, or both.
Funding
Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with
Radboud University Nijmegen.
Imke Wets, Michelle Suijkerbuijk, Maria den Hartog & Helen de Hoop
Acknowledgements
We thank two anonymous reviewers and the editors for their helpful comments on an earlier
version of this article.
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Address for correspondence
Imke Wets
Centre for Language Studies
Radboud University
P.O. Box
HD Nijmegen
The Netherlands
imke.wets@ru.nl
Argument doubling with proper nouns in spoken Dutch
Co-author information
Michelle Suijkerbuijk
Centre for Language Studies
Radboud University
michelle.suijkerbuijk@ru.nl
Maria den Hartog
Centre for Language Studies
Radboud University
maria.denhartog@ru.nl
Helen de Hoop
Centre for Language Studies
Radboud University
helen.dehoop@ru.nl
Publication history
Date received: April
Date accepted: May
Imke Wets, Michelle Suijkerbuijk, Maria den Hartog & Helen de Hoop
