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7 - The verb phrase

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2009

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Summary

Introduction

English and Dutch verb phrases (or VP's) exhibit a number of similarities and differences. Both languages express time and aspect distinctions through the morphological marking of lexical items referring to actions, states and events (i.e., verbs). In addition to the affixing of bound morphemes to these verbs (cf. Dutch ‘speel’ <play> vs. ‘speelde’ <played>), separate free morphemes which themselves are renditions of verbs are relied upon heavily in order to further encode time, aspect and mood distinctions (cf. English ‘The child washed his doll’ vs. ‘The child had washed his doll’). Another similarity between English and Dutch is that there exists a system of person and number agreement between the grammatical subject (typically not a verb) of the sentence and one part of the verb phrase. This part has traditionally been labelled the ‘finite’ verb (see e.g. Palmer 1974, Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik 1985) and we shall follow this tradition here. All other components of the verb phrase are by definition non-finite. Both languages make use of the copula, time, mood and aspect auxiliaries, modal auxiliaries and ‘full’ or lexical verbs (the functions of the auxiliaries are not always equivalent in both languages, though).

English and Dutch differ widely, however, in the way and extent to which they map time and aspect distinctions onto specific verb phrases.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1990

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  • The verb phrase
  • Annick de Houwer
  • Book: The Acquisition of Two Languages from Birth
  • Online publication: 17 August 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511519789.007
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  • The verb phrase
  • Annick de Houwer
  • Book: The Acquisition of Two Languages from Birth
  • Online publication: 17 August 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511519789.007
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The verb phrase
  • Annick de Houwer
  • Book: The Acquisition of Two Languages from Birth
  • Online publication: 17 August 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511519789.007
Available formats
×