Nouns and Noun Phrases - University of Macau Library

1058 Syntax of Dutch: nouns and noun phrases
be assumed to occupy the regular subject position, we may conclude that the subject
trace does not occupy the regular subject position of the clause in (15b); see Section
8.1.4 for more discussion. If this is a general property of non-D-linked interrogative
personal pronouns, the same must hold for (14b). When we now reformulate the
generalization given earlier such that it expresses that a complementizer cannot be
followed by a trace in the regular subject position, we can conclude that Dutch
behaves in accordance with this generalization. Since this chapter is clearly not the
place to exhaustively discuss all intricacies of (long) wh-movement, we will end our
discussion at this point.
8.1.2.2. Topicalization
The notion of topicalization refers to the movement process that places some
constituent into the clause-initial position of the main clause. The name was
probably invented to express that topicalization plays a role in determining the
information structure of the clause by moving the discourse topic (the entity the
discourse is about) into the first position of the clause. Although this idea might be
on the right track, it may not be entirely correct for Dutch since the constituent that
fills this position may perform several functions, the pragmatic function of
expressing the discourse topic being only one of these. In the following we will
discuss some questions concerning topicalization. We start with the question
whether clause-initial subjects occupy the same position as other topicalized noun
phrase, then continue with the information-structural function of topicalization, and
conclude with a short discussion of long topicalization.
I. Topicalization of subject and object pronouns
In the unmarked case, the initial constituent of a main clause is the subject. As we
have already seen in the discussion of example (1) in Section 8.1.1, nearly all noun
phrase types can function as the clause-initial subject, the only exception being
°weak noun phrases, which normally occur in the expletive construction, in which
case it is not the subject itself but the expletive that fills the clause-initial position.
A noteworthy property of clause-initial subjects is that they may also surface as
weak (phonetically reduced) pronouns, with the exception of the third person
singular masculine form -ie, which always follows the finite verb in second
position, and the second person plural pronoun, which simply lacks a weak subject
form in most varieties of Dutch.
(16) Clause-initial subject pronouns
SINGULAR PLURAL
1 ST PERSON Ik/’k ben ziek. ‘I am ill.’ Wij/We zijn ziek. ‘We are ill.’
2 ND PERSON Jij/Je bent ziek. ‘You are ill.’ Jullie/ % Je zijn ziek. ‘You are ill.’
3 MASCULINE Hij/*-ie is ziek. ‘He is ill.’
FEMININE Zij/Ze is ziek. ‘She is ill.’
RD
Zij/Ze zijn ziek. ‘They are ill.’
PERSON
NEUTER Het/’t is ziek. ‘It is ill.’
In this respect, clause-initial subjects differ from topicalized object pronouns, which
must always be realized in their strong form. Note that the neuter object pronoun het