Does iconicity shape Dutch verb-particle constructions? A multimethod study on the semantics of verb separability

Abstract

In Dutch, verb-particle constructions are traditionally classified as either separable or inseparable. While the formal distinctions between these two types are straightforward, their semantic differences remain contested. This study investigates whether iconicity plays a role in distinguishing between separable and inseparable verbs. Using both a synchronic corpus study and an experimental forced-choice task using nonce verbs, we test two existing hypotheses that link separability to either concreteness (Booij, Geert. 2002. The morphology of Dutch . Oxford: Oxford University Press) or resultativity (Blom, Corrien. 2004. On the diachrony of complex predicates in Dutch: Predicative and nonpredicative preverbs. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 16. 1–75; Blom, Corrien. 2005. Complex predicates in Dutch: Synchrony and diachrony . Utrecht: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics dissertation), two notions that can be associated with the principle of iconicity of independence (Haiman, John. 1983. Iconic and economic motivation. Language 59(4). 781–819). While our corpus-based analysis did not yield any significant patterns, the experimental results do reveal a significant relationship between concreteness and separability for the particles over- and om- . For the particle door- , the findings point to a slight tendency toward resultativity, but this effect did not reach statistical significance. Overall, the findings provide empirical support for the claim that language users associate morphosyntactic separability with iconic meaning distinctions.