Lecture | Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
The syntax of Dutch (non-clausal) manner PPs
- Date
- Thursday 26 February 2026
- Time
- Serie
- Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
- Address
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 2.37
Abstract
The rich empirical field of Dutch adpositional constructions has captured the attention of syntacticians since Van Riemsdijk’s 1978 seminal study. However, the strong tradition of studies of Dutch adpositional syntax it engendered, including Koopman 2010 and Den Dikken 2010, has focused chiefly on the domain of spatial PPs. In this talk, I turn my attention to manner PPs – analysing their inner structure and clausal distribution against the backdrop of the literature on spatial PPs to see how they are similar and/or different.
Adopting Collins & Kayne’s 2023 Morphology as Syntax framework, and building on Collins 2007 as well as Cloin-Tavenier 2025, I examine data from Standard Dutch, as well as spoken and dialectal Dutch to answer questions such as: Why do the manner PPs in (1) not distribute uniformly across the embedded clause? Why are some manner PPs prepositional, while some are postpositional, as in (2)? Some manner expressions have an (overt) adposition, while others do not (3), (how) are they related structurally? Why are some adpositions in manner PPs optional, as in (4)?
- …dat Reinder zich <op deze manier/te voet> verplaatst <op die manier/*te voet>.
…that R. himself on this manner/on foot displaces
“…that Reinder moves in this way/on foot.”
- Reinder spreekt op harde toon/hard-op.
R. speaks on hard tone/hard-on
“Reinder spreaks loudly/out loud.”
- Reinder spreekt zacht-je-s/hard.
R. speaks soft-DIM-S/hard
“Reinder speaks softly/loudly.”
- Ik doe het (op) mijn manier!
I do it on my manner
“I’ll do it my way!
I argue that the answer to each of these questions is related to the variable size of the functional projections of the main building blocks of PP: nouns and adpositions. While these are shared between the domains of manner and spatial PPs, I argue that the internal structure of the Dutch (extended) manner PP differs substantially from the structure of the Dutch spatial PP – demonstrating the value of taking into consideration the less studied domain of manner in Dutch adpositional syntax.
References:
- Cloin-Tavenier, L. (2025). Tread lightly: Deriving distributional differences in Dutch manner adverbials. Nota Bene, 2(2), 269–288.
- Collins, C. (2007). Home Sweet Home. NYU Working Papers in Linguistics, 1.
- Collins, C., & Kayne, R. (2023). Towards a Theory of Morphology as Syntax. Studies in Chinese Linguistics, 44(1), 1–32.
- Den Dikken, M. (2010). On the Functional Structure of Locative and Directional PPs. In G. Cinque & L. Rizzi (Eds), Mapping Spatial PPs: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Volume 6 (pp. 75–126). Oxford University Press.
- Koopman, H. (2010). Prepositions, Postpositions, Circumpositions, and Particles: The Structure of Dutch PPs. In G. Cinque & L. Rizzi (Eds), Mapping Spatial PPs: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Volume 6 (pp. 26–73). Oxford University Press.
- Van Riemsdijk, H. (1978). A Case Study in Syntactic Markedness.