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Texts about fictional characters are often written in a third person singular (3SG) perspective. In a self-paced reading study, Child et al. (2018) found that emotional information is processed more easily when the narrative uses second person singular (2SG) rather than 3SG. In the current study, we explore how 2SG and 3SG are processed in Dutch. Because Dutch is a language with a formal-informal distinction in 2SG, we also contrast formal 2SG-V (e.g., u, 'you') to informal 2SG-T (e.g., jij, 'you') forms. We find a main effect of perspective on target processing, with 2SG read faster than 3SG. In contrast, spillover regions (three words following the target) are read slower following 2SG than 3SG, and spillover regions were read slower following 2SG-V than following 2SG-T. This means that processing emotional narratives through a 2SG perspectives induces a processing cost compared to 3SG perspectives, and this increases with formal 2SG.

Does it matter whether charitable organizations address potential donors with an informal or formal second-person pronoun in their appeal to donate money? This study shows that it does indeed make a difference. Using an informal pronoun of address can have a positive effect on intentions to donate money. An online experiment (n = 220) found that a charitable appeal to potential donors was more effective when an informal rather than a formal second-person pronoun was used in Dutch, particularly for altruistic people. We discuss the potential explanations of this effect, concentrating on the association between the informal pronoun of address and perceived closeness, and the generic versus deictic reference of informal pronouns of address in Dutch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show by means of a corpus study that the language used by the inanimate first person narrator in the novel Specht en zoon deviates from what we would expect on the basis of the fact that the narrator is inanimate, but at the same time also differs from the language of a human narrator in the novel De wijde blik on several linguistic dimensions. Whereas the human narrator is associated strongly with action verbs, preferring the Agent role, the inanimate narrator is much more limited to the Experiencer role, predominantly associated with cognition and sensory verbs. Our results show that animacy as a linguistic concept may be refined by taking into account the myriad ways in which an entity’s conceptual animacy may be expressed: we accept the conceptual animacy of the inanimate narrator despite its inability to act on its environment, showing this need not be a requirement for animacy.

We find a general, language-independent pattern in child language acquisition in which there is a clear difference between subject and object noun phrases. On one hand, indefinite objects tend to be interpreted nonreferentially, independently of word order and across experiments and languages. On the other hand, indefinite subjects tend to be interpreted referentially in most contexts, even in contexts where adults would favor a nonreferential reading. In this article we offer an explanation for this pattern within the framework of bidirectional Optimality Theory. This explanation focuses on clarifying in what sense children's interpretations deviate from the adult interpretations and clarifying the nature of the linguistic knowledge that the 4-year-old child will need to acquire to become a competent, adultlike speaker and hearer of her language.

In this article we conduct a pragmatic analysis of the Dutch utterance-final particle hoor (lit. 'hear'). Apparently, hoor has contradictory uses. It ex-presses politeness (involvement, togetherness), but it can also contribute to the face-threatening force of an utterance. We argue that there is a core meaning that all uses share, which is that by adding hoor, speakers claim a proposition at issue to be part of the common ground. This core meaning will be shown to account for hoor's key characteristics. Hoor expresses involvement and is often attached to speech acts that are intrinsically polite, such as apologizing and giving compliments. Also, while hoor never occurs in interrogative sentences, it can be used with a certain type of directive speech acts, namely those that are in the interest of the hearer or are presented as having shared interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate whether non-native speakers of Dutch use the interpersonal discourse particle eigenlijk differently than native speakers of Dutch. Particles such as eigenlijk are considered to be very difficult to learn for non-native speakers. Eigenlijk might be even more difficult to learn than other particles, because of its complex effect on the discourse. We tested whether non-native speakers of Dutch used eigenlijk differently than native speakers of Dutch by means of an online cloze test in which native speakers (control group, N = 109) and non-native speakers (N = 73) had to choose between eigenlijk and an adverb in a variety of contexts. Results indicated that non-native speakers used eigenlijk differently than native speakers, but non-native speakers did somewhat understand that eigenlijk marks a contrast with a contextually raised expectation. Moreover, more proficient native speakers were more similar to native speakers in their use of eigenlijk than less proficient native speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper characterizes the difference in evidentiality between two parenthetical constructions in Dutch, denk ik ‘I think’ and dacht ik ‘I thought’. On the basis of a qualitative corpus study of spoken Dutch, in which we systematically compare utterances with evidential denk ik ‘I think’ to their counterparts with dacht ik ‘I thought’ and vice versa, we argue that the difference between the two constructions can be analyzed as a difference between inferential and assumed evidentiality, respectively (Aikhenvald 2004). We argue that it is not a mere coincidence that the difference between inferential and assumed evidentiality is captured by the grammatical difference between two tenses. There is a straightforward relation between the two types of indirect evidentiality and the two tenses. The tenses reflect the times at which the evidence that the inference or assumption is based on has become available to the speaker. The present tense variant denk ik ‘I think’ is used when the speaker infers something on the basis of sensory evidence in the present, whereas the past tense variant dacht ik ‘I thought’ is used when the speaker assumes something on the basis of reportative or sensory evidence obtained in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imperatives are usually thought of as direct and therefore impolite. However, imperatives such as Have some coffee, Enjoy your holiday, or Sleep well are not considered impolite. The reason seems to be that these imperatives refer to actions that are beneficial to the hearer only. We make a distinction between two types of imperatives, those referring to actions that are beneficial to the speaker and those that are beneficial to the hearer. We have conducted an experiment in order to examine the relation between the two types of imperatives and how they are perceived by speakers of Dutch. The results show that there is indeed a significant difference in interpretation between the two types of imperatives in Dutch. In addition, we have tested the effects of adding a politeness marker alsjeblieft 'please' or discourse particles to the imperatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bij het lezen van de novelle Heldere hemel van Tom Lanoye, het Boekenweekgeschenk van 2012, viel ons een bijzondere passage op in het begin van deel 4. Deze passage is geheel geschreven in de tweede persoon. Omdat de rest van de novelle niet in de tweede persoon is geschreven, rijst de vraag wat het effect is van dit gebruik van de tweede persoon in het verhaal. In dit artikel willen we deze vraag nader onderzoeken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]