Clustering and stranding in Dutch

Abstract

Abstract This paper has both a descriptive and a theoretical aim. The descriptive one is to demonstrate that the phenomenon of clustering is not limited to verbs, but that it also affects adpositions. The theoretical one is to develop a formal analysis that captures the common properties of verb clustering and adposition clustering. For that purpose we employ the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Both the descriptive and the theoretical part are backed up with quantitative data about the use of adposition clusters in a sample consisting of one million words of spoken Dutch and one million words of written Dutch.