40 Jahre Partikelforschung/40 Years of Particle Research Bern, 11.-13. Februar 2009 Abstract |
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Willy Vandeweghe & Sofie Niemegeers (Gent) Particles and interaction management. The case of Dutch wel and maar It has been argued before (De Vriendt, Vandeweghe e.a. 1991) that the Dutch modal particles wel and maar are mutually incompatible: (1) a Ik zal het (dan) maar doen ‘OK, I’ll do it then’ b Ik zal het wel doen ‘Don’t worry, I’ll do it’ c *Ik zal het maar wel doen d *Ik zal het wel maar doen This mutual incompatibility has to do with a contradictory (semantic and pragmatic) meaning contribution of the etymologically restrictive maar (~EN ‘only’) and the basically affirmative, anti-restrictive meaning of wel (~ EN ‘well’). Both particles display aspects of complemen¬tary distribution as to the selection of sentence types with which they co-occur. Wel feels perfectly at ease in questions like (2) (2) Weet je wel / *maar hoe laat het is? but it is hardly possible in imperative or optative sentences where maar is the characteristic modifier: (3) Kom *wel / maar binnen ‘Do come in’ (4) Was ik *wel / maar thuisgebleven ‘Wish I had stayed at home’ Both are possible in declarative sentences, but they have a different impact on the interpersonal relationship: (5) A Ik zal het wel doen (promise, expression of engagement to Hearer) ‘I’ll do it, don’t worry’ B Ik zal het maar doen (Speaker accepts situation with tone of resignation) ‘(Sigh), OK, I’ll do it’ In the paper we will explore these hypotheses on the basis of a much larger corpus than was available in 1991, and try to relate the elusive meaning aspects of these modal particles to aspects of politeness and kinds of speaker-hearer relationship. Bibliography De Vriendt, Sera, Willy Vandeweghe en Piet Van de Craen. 1991. "Combinatorial aspects of modal particles in Dutch". Multilingua 10, 43-59. [Special issue guest-edited by W. Abraham] |
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