Parentheticals revisited: The case of Dutch denken

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents an investigation into the diachrony of the parenthetical uses of the mental state verb denken ‘think’ in Dutch. It reviews the literature on the emergence of parentheticals, which predominantly focuses on English. Supported by a systematic diachronic corpus study, it argues that the facts of Dutch (in particular: its word order properties, which are quite different from those in English) are not obviously in line with the most important traditional views (including the well know hypothesis that the parentheticals are the result of a reduction of the full complementing use of the relevant verbs). Instead, the data offer arguments for an alternative hypothesis: the parentheticals may originate in a combination of two main clauses, of the kind present in direct quote expressions (as in I thought: Oh no, he is doing it again).