In these sections I have put together my research into Comp-agreement, or inflected subordinated conjunctions. This is a fascinating phenomenon, because nearly all aspects of linguistics are involved: morphology, phonology (inclusive phonetic processes that normally do not distinguish meaning), syntax and semantics.
◊ Shortly…..
nearly all the linguistic wiring that every ordinary speaker has at her/his disposal .
Those special subordinators are sometimes used at the beginning of subordinative sentences; which then show a verbal affix that normally only occurs on inflected verbs.
Datteme/we toffe jongens zijn dat willen we weten
(that+e+we) (we know+e(n))
That we are smart boys we (will) know
Ik willen nie weten ank ziek zijn
(a+n+I) (I go+n)
I do not want that I am sick
The research is important because as Barbiers&Goeman (to appear) put it:
“…these phenomena are relevant for theoretical issues that have been central in the syntactic research of the past fifty years, such as the issue of the fine structure of the left periphery, i.e. the number, type and order of syntactic positions that are cross-linguistically available in the beginning of a clause.” (Barbiers&Goeman, to appear). (bold by me)
The publications stem from the period 1979-1997.
A workshop was organised in the nineties, with talks on this subject (Hoekstra&Smit 1997), after Haegeman (1992) in her book on Westflemish syntax and Zwart (1993) in his thesis had put Comp-agreement in the Government-and-Binding and in the Minimalist theoretical framework respectively.
Hereafter, two important theses appeared; Van Koppen (2005) in a generative theoretical framework, and De Vogelaer (2008) in a cognitive-typological framwork. Both are based on the SAND-database. The first Volume of the SAND (Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects) has three chapters that are relevant (maps and commentaries): on Comp-agreement, on subject pronouns -enclitics included- and on enclitics after yes/no. There appeared also many articles amongst which I mention Postma (2006), De Vogelaer, Devos & van der Auwera (2006), and Haegeman & Van Koppen (2012)
And I am not even talking about the many articles and papers of linguists from outside the Netherlands and Belgium.
October 17. 2012, there was a workshop at Ghent University on Comp-agreement in several languages.
You may find the articles on the following web pages for downloading. The order is for the most part the date of publication. Most of them are in Dutch, but summaries in English are added.
Barbiers, Sjef & Ton Goeman. (to appear). Chapter 34: Research results from on-line dialect databases and dynamic dialect maps. Taeldeman&Hinskens (eds.). Berlin: De Gruyter-Mouton
De Vogelaar, Gunther, Magda Devos & Johan van der Auwera. 2006. Voegwoordvervoeging: Morfologisch of Syntactisch verschijnsel. Taal en Tongval Themanummer 19, 212-230.
De Vogelaer, Gunther. 2008. De Nederlandse en Friese subjectsmarkeerders: geografie, typologie en diachronie. Gent: Kon. Acad. voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde.
MAND II=Goeman, Ton, Marc van Oostendorp, Pieter van Reenen, Oele Koornwinder, Boudewijn van den Berg & Anke van Reenen. 2008. Morphological Atlas of the Dutch Dialects, Volume II. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Haegeman, Liliane. 1992. Theory and Description in Generative Grammar. A Case Study in West Flemish. Cambridge: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Haegeman, Liliane & Marjo van Koppen. 2012. Complementizer Agreement and the Relation between C0 and T0. Linguistic Inquiry 43/3, 441-454.
Hoekstra, Erik & Caroline Smits (eds.). 1997. Vervoegde voegwoorden. Lezingen gehouden tijdens het Dialectsymposion 1994. Cahiers van het P.J. Meertens-Instituut 9. Amsterdam: P.J. Meertens-Instituut.
Koppen, Marjo van, 2005. One Probe-Two Goals: Aspects of agreement in Dutch dialects. Diss. Universiteit Leiden. Utrecht: LOT dissertations 105.
Postma, Gertjan. 2006. Uitwendige syntaxis van voegwoordvervoeging en werkwoordelijke inversievormen. Taal en Tongval Themanummer 19, 135-152.
SAND= Barbiers, Sjef, Hans Bennis, Gunther de Vogelaer, Magda Devos & Margreet van der Ham. 2005. Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects. Volume I. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Zwart, Jan-Wouter. 1993. Dutch Syntax: A Minimalist Approach. Dissertation Groningen University.