Semantic scope restrictions in complex verb constructions in Dutch

2.1 Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst

One source of information on combinatorial patterns is the discussion in the ANS (1997: Section 18.5.7) on word order in long verb clusters in Dutch. As opposed to verb clusters consisting of two or three verbs, which are known for their intricate verb order variation in Dutch, longer verb clusters show a remarkably fixed word order. Example (2) illustrates an excessively long verb cluster, stacking no fewer than seven verbs on top of the main verb wachten ‘wait’.

What is interesting for our purposes is that the ANS (1997: 1057) suggests that the word order in (2) is determined by the “meaning of the sentence”; more specifically, each verb “says something” about the verb immediately to the right of it. Indeed, progressive staan ‘stand’ expresses that the main verb wachten ‘wait’ to the right of it is ongoing, while continuative blijven ‘stay’ adds that this ongoing state remains unchanged. In our terminology, the ANS thus relates the particular ordering of verbs in long verb clusters to their relative semantic scope. We suggest that this relationship is an iconic one, in that word order in long verb clusters iconically reflects the underlying semantic scope relationships of the verbs in this cluster.

Let us have a closer look at the word order restrictions described in the ANS, as a way of coming closer to the underlying scope restrictions. The most rigid word order patterns can be found in a group of verbs called plaatsgebonden werkwoorden ‘fixed position verbs’. The ANS (1997: Section 18.5.7.2.I) groups these verbs into seven plaatscategorieën ‘positional categories’ on the basis of their relative placement to the left of the main verb. Table 1 summarizes these seven categories of verbs.^[2]

Table 1 can be read as a topological schema with seven positional slots to the left of the main verb. What is of more interest to us, however, are the semantic scope relations that underlie this word order schema. We just mentioned that verbs in long verb clusters have semantic scope over the verbs to the right of them. As such, the verbs in category 3 have scope over the verbs in category 2, but not the other way round. This implies that Table 1 can also be read as a semantic scope hierarchy, specifying which verbs may have scope over the others. The scope hierarchy gives insight into why the combinatorial pattern in sentence (1) was so peculiar. It turns out that progressive zitten ‘sit’ is located at a lower position in the hierarchy than modal willen ‘want’ (categories 2 and 4 respectively) and as such cannot take scope over the modal verb.^[3]

Not only can the relative ordering of the verb categories in Table 1 be cast in semantic terms, but the categories themselves also allow for a semantic approach. Closer inspection of the verbs in the different positional categories shows that they form semantically coherent verb classes. Vandeweghe (2014: 20) suggests that each of these verb classes corresponds to one of the functional categories tense, aspect or modality, distinguished in the typological work of, for instance, Bybee et al. (1994). Indeed, the verbs in categories 2 and 3 all express some type of aspect, like the progressive aspect in stand ‘stand’ and the continuative aspect in blijven ‘stay’, discussed earlier under Example (2). Vandeweghe (2014: 21, 23) makes a further semantic distinction between the two groups of aspectual verbs, arguing that the verbs in position 2 express “internal aspect”, referring to the internal temporal structure of the state of affairs, whereas the verbs in position 3 express “external aspect”, denoting the transition from one state into another. The verbs in categories 4 and 7 express some flavor of modality. The ANS (1997: 1065–1066) points out that modal verbs placed to the right of the perfect auxiliary, in position 4, are oneigenlijk modaal ‘quasi modal’, like willen ‘want’ in (2), whereas modal verbs placed to the left of the perfect auxiliary, in position 7 are eigenlijk modaal ‘actual modal’, like kan ‘can’ in (2). The quasi-modal verbs in the ANS express meanings such as ability, capacity, necessity, obligation, permission and volition. These meanings are known in the international literature as root modality, deontic modality or dynamic modality (we will use “dynamic modality” for some of these meanings; see below). The actual modal verbs discussed in the ANS express meanings such as epistemic modality, evidentiality, counterfactuality, mitigation, concessive and conditional uses (some of which we will not consider to be modal meanings; see below). The verbs in the remaining categories express either tense (category 5) or evidentiality (category 6).

2.2 Syntax of Dutch

Another more direct source on combinatorial patterns in complex verb constructions is the SoD (2015: Section 7.2). This reference grammar explores the combinatorial potential of nine verbs, each representative of a larger group of verbs triggering verb clustering. The nine verbs are listed in Table 2.

The SoD systematically stacks these verbs in pairs on top of the same main verb in varying configurations. This introspective method gives rise to 81 different three-verb constructions, of the type illustrated in (3) and (4).

The constructed example in (3) represents the same type of verb combination as in (1). The finite verb zit ‘sits’, stacked on top of the nonfinite modal verb moeten ‘must’, is judged in the SoD as an unacceptable reading, marked by an asterisk. The opposite scope relationship, in (4), is however judged fully acceptable.

Table 3 summarizes the acceptability judgments provided in the SoD for all verb combinations. The rows in this data matrix list the finite verbs (fin) and the columns the nonfinite ones (nf). Every cell thus represents one unique finite - nonfinite verb combination stacked on top of the same main verb. The white cells are judged acceptable, whereas grey cells represent several types of unacceptable or degraded judgements.^[4]

Presenting the acceptability judgments from the SoD in a matrix reveals an interesting clustering. The white cells are predominantly found in the upper right corner whereas the grey cells seem to cluster in the lower left corner. It is possible to separate most of the white cells from the grey cells, that is, the acceptable verb combinations from the less than acceptable ones, by drawing a diagonal line from the upper left corner to the lower right corner. This asymmetric pattern is most clear for the verbs schijnen, moeten, hebben, gaan, zitten and worden.^[5] We isolate these verbs in Table 4 to make the asymmetric pattern more prominent.

Table 4 reveals that each of these verbs shows a rather strict asymmetric combinatorial pattern. The subject raising verb schijnen ‘appear’, on the one hand, appears only as a finite verb with scope over all other verbs, but not the other way round. The passive auxiliary worden ‘be’, on the other hand, is only found as a nonfinite verb in the scope of other verbs. The remaining verbs are in between. Note that the modal verb moeten ‘must’ and the perfect auxiliary hebben ‘have’ show a somewhat divergent pattern. The table suggests that they can be combined in both ways. However, the SoD (2015: 1072) points out that the modal moeten gets a “conspicuous difference in interpretation” depending on whether it has scope over perfect hebben or falls within its scope. The table does not capture this meaning difference as it only represents combinatorial patterns of verbs and not verb meanings.

Tables 3 and 4, in sum, show that some verbs (and by extension the verb classes they represent) systematically have scope over each other while others do not show such hierarchical scope relationships. What is it, then, that differentiates the verbs in Table 4 from the others in Table 3? It appears that all of them, except for the passive auxiliary worden ‘be’, are verbs used to express functional meanings within the domain of tense, aspect, modality and evidentiality.^[6] This observation echoes the semantic take of Vandeweghe (2014) on the positional categories in the ANS, which he defines in terms of functional categories. Indeed, it seems that functional categories, and, more particularly, hierarchies of functional categories play an important role in the hierarchical scope relationships distilled from the ANS and the SoD. This theoretical connection is also suggested by Vandeweghe (2014: 20), who notices in passing the resemblance between the order of the positional categories in semantic terms and what he calls the “layered structure of the sentence”, referring in a footnote to functionalist literature such as Dik (1989), Hengeveld (1989), and Hengeveld and Mackenzie (2010). Let us explore this idea further.

2.3 Hierarchies of functional categories

The insight that functional categories are organized in a hierarchical way is not restricted to one particular framework. Both functional and generative approaches have pointed out that grammatical elements expressing meanings such as tense, aspect or modality differ in their scope over (parts of) the clause. They can therefore be arranged according to their relative scope in a hierarchy of functional categories. Within the functionalist tradition, a so-called layered model of functional categories has been elaborated in Functional Grammar (Dik 1989, 1997; Hengeveld 1989), Role and Reference Grammar (Foley and Van Valin 1984; Van Valin and LaPolla 1997) and Functional Discourse Grammar (Hengeveld and Mackenzie 2008, 2010). In generative grammar, especially in the tradition of Syntactic Cartography, large efforts have been made to spell out fine-grained hierarchical sequences of functional projections (Cinque 1999). We now present in some more detail the hierarchy of functional categories elaborated in Nuyts (2001, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2017 – he himself speaks of “qualificational categories” – which primarily builds on functionalist work but aims to elaborate its cognitive foundation.^[7]

The categories in the hierarchy in (5) are organized in such a way that categories higher up in the hierarchy have semantic scope over categories lower in the hierarchy, but not the other way round. More specifically, evidentiality in this hierarchy has scope over all other qualificational categories but does not fall under the scope of any of them. ‘Phasal aspect’, conversely, has very low semantic scope, only qualifying the state of affairs. Climbing up the hierarchy implies a gradual widening of perspective on the state of affairs.

The modal categories in this hierarchy need a proper introduction, as definitions of modality vary widely in the literature. We will make use of Nuyts’ terminology in the remainder of the article, for reasons of consistency. Nuyts (2017: 63) makes a principled distinction between three types of modality:

1. dynamic modality: “marking ability/possibility/potential or need/necessity/inevitability of/for the first-argument participant or the state of affairs as a whole”

2. deontic modality: “marking the degree of moral acceptability of the state of affairs”

3. epistemic modality: “marking the degree of likelihood of the state of affairs”

Note that the definition of deontic modality does not include the traditional notions of permission and obligation, which Nuyts subsumes under the label directivity. Nuyts (2008) argues that directivity is not a qualificational category but rather an illocutionary one. It is therefore not part of the hierarchy above.

The category of ‘evidentiality’ in the qualificational hierarchy only pertains to inferential evidentiality. Nuyts (2017: 69) defines

1. inferential evidentiality: as “marking that what the speaker is talking about has not been perceived as such, but has been inferred or deduced through logical reasoning”, and considers it a qualificational category in its own right rather than a type of modality.

Now, how do the semantic scope hierarchies, distilled from the observations in the ANS and the SoD, relate to the above qualificational hierarchy? Some of the verb categories can easily be mapped onto the qualificational categories in (5). Aspectual verbs may be subsumed under the category of phasal aspect and evidential verbs link to the category of evidentiality in (5). Other verb categories, however, present us with some challenges. We have already raised the issue that modal verbs have different readings depending on their relative scope to a perfect auxiliary. The perfect auxiliaries themselves also turn out to be compatible with several readings in combination with a modal verb. In this respect, Vandeweghe (2014: 24) notices that perfect auxiliaries not only have scope over quasi modals, as was argued in the ANS and illustrated for willen ‘want’ in (2) but adds that they may also appear in their scope in specific contexts, as in (6) and (7).

Vandeweghe does not discuss these examples further. They are interesting as they do not refer to an event in the past but rather indicate that the event needs to be finished by a specific point in time. As such, we can argue that perfect auxiliaries are used to express aspect rather than tense in this context. Both observations indicate that modal verbs and perfect auxiliaries come with multiple readings which interact in complex ways. This raises the more general question of how verbs expressing multiple meanings should be mapped onto the hierarchy of qualificational categories in (5).

2.4 Byloo and Nuyts (2013)

This issue has been explored for a small sample of modal verbs and tense markers in Byloo and Nuyts (2013). This study looks more particularly into the combinatorial behavior of modal verbs and tense markers in a corpus of spoken and written present-day Dutch as a window into the interaction of modality and tense in actual language usage. Their fine-grained semantic analysis shows that modal verbs and tense markers are actually not only used as markers of modality and tense. They find, for instance, that the perfect auxiliary hebben ‘have’ is used as an aspectual marker expressing “completeness”, rather than a marker of past tense in contexts similar to the ones in (6) and (7). The future tense marker zullen ‘will’ turns out to be predominantly used as a marker of counterfactuality when it appears in its preterite form zou(den) ‘should’. The modal verbs in their study (moeten ‘must’, mogen ‘may’ and kunnen ‘can’), finally, are not only found with one of the three modal readings in (5), but also express inferential evidentiality and some meanings which Nuyts considers non-qualificational, such as directive (mentioned earlier), conditional and concessive uses. This wide array of qualificational and non-qualificational readings gives rise to a multitude of potential combinatorial patterns. Nevertheless, Byloo and Nuyts (2013: 97) find that these verb meanings on the whole are combined in accordance with the hierarchy of qualificational categories given in (5). The qualificational hierarchy, as such, “shines through” in the scope patterns observed in actual language usage.

Byloo and Nuyts (2013) do report some scope restrictions that cannot be explained by the hierarchy. One such example relates to the combinatorial patterns of modal verbs and perfect auxiliaries we discussed earlier. Byloo and Nuyts (2013) find that modal verbs with a deontic, epistemic and inferential evidential reading may have scope over perfect auxiliaries, as deontic mogen in (8) and epistemic inferential moeten in (9) illustrate.^[8]

The perfect auxiliary is in principle compatible with its past tense and completive reading in both constellations, as tense and aspect fall under the scope of all three categories of deontic modality, epistemic modality and evidentiality in the hierarchy in (5). However, the corpus data show that the perfect auxiliary only gets an aspectual reading under the deontic modal verb, and only a temporal reading under the scope of an epistemic or evidential verb. Byloo and Nuyts (2013: 96) suggest that in such cases other, more local, elements are at play, such as “the inherent semantic features of singular semantic categories or elements” but leave these elements for future research.

This brings us to the research questions for this study. The literature review has shown that a group of verbs triggering verb clustering systematically have scope over each other. Their semantic scope relationships could be insightfully related to hierarchies of functional categories known from both functional and generative grammar. However, some issues need further investigation. On the empirical side, the hierarchies of semantic scope relations, distilled from the reference grammars ANS and SoD, are at this point not much more than semantic labels given to entire verb categories. We will verify these hierarchies by systematically exploring the potential meanings of individual verbs in context and how these verb meanings are combined in actual language usage. As such, this study expands the corpus study of Byloo and Nuyts (2013) on some combinations of modal verb and tense markers to all verbs triggering verb clustering. On the theoretical side, we will further explore the explanatory value of hierarchies of functional categories, as well as their limits. One open issue in this regard is how the combinatorial behavior of verbs not expressing a qualificational meaning should be accounted for.

4.1 Evidential verbs

Let us first consider the verbs blijken, lijken and schijnen, which all express nuances of ‘appear’ or ‘seem’. These verbs are part of a larger group of evidential verbs selecting a te-infinitive (see ANS 1997: Section 18.5.4.5; Mortelmans 2017; SoD 2015: Section 5.2.2.2.II.A; and references therein). These verbs express both reported evidentiality, also known as ‘hearsay’ (typically blijken, but also schijnen), and inferential evidentiality (mainly lijken, but also schijnen), although in practice these meanings are hard to distinguish. We follow the SoD by also including dreigen ‘threaten, appear’ with a non-thematic subject in this group, as it expresses related evidential meanings (ANS 1997: Section 18.5.4.19; Cornilie 2014; SoD 2015: Section 5.2.2.2.II.B.2; and references therein).^[10]

The literature review shows that evidential verbs have very high scope. Both the ANS and the SoD indicate that they have the potential to have scope over modal verbs, perfect auxiliaries, (external and internal) aspectual verbs and passive auxiliaries. The SoD shows that they may also have scope over perception verbs and causative verbs. The reference grammars have divergent opinions on the use of evidentials as nonfinite verbs in the scope of other verbs. The SoD claims that evidential verbs in general resist nonfinite use, whereas the ANS allows “actual modal” verbs and the future auxiliary zullen (in position 7) to have scope over evidential verbs (in position 6). Now, what combinatorial patterns do the evidential verbs in our corpora show?

The corpus data in Table 6 indicate that evidential verbs are predominantly used as finite verbs in three-verb constructions (the 95% confidence interval for the binomial proportion of finite evidential verbs is 0.90–1.00; a two-sided Fisher test shows no signs of interaction in the three-verb data, p = 0.307).^[11] They are mainly found to have scope over passive and perfect auxiliaries, as in (12) and (13), and to a lesser extent also over modal verbs, the external aspect verbs gaan ‘go’ and komen ‘come’, and one case each of the causative verb laten ‘let’ and the perception verb zien ‘see’. The modal verbs seem to be restricted to dynamic and directive readings. We found no evidence of epistemic or deontic modal readings in the scope of evidential verbs.

The Lassy Small Corpus also provides three examples of nonfinite evidential verbs.

These examples are in line with the positional schema of the ANS. The evidential verb blijken falls under the scope of future zullen ‘will’ in (14) and (15) and under the modal mogen ‘may’ in (16). The modal verb in (16) is used in a conditional context, where it appears in its preterite form mochten and is placed sentence-initially in the protasis. The ANS (1997: Section 18.5.4.4.II.D.2a) considers conditional mocht(en) as an “actual modal”. We prefer to refer to this usage as non-qualificational, to highlight the fact that it is not part of the hierarchy in (5).

Our corpus observations confirm the general picture from the literature that evidential verbs have high scope. They are found to have scope over a wide range of verbs, but hardly ever appear in the scope of other verbs.

4.2 Modal verbs

Let us now look at the modal verbs in our corpora. We include both the core modal verbs kunnen ‘can’, moeten ‘must’, mogen ‘may’, willen ‘want’ and zullen ‘will’, which select a bare infinitive (ANS 1997: Section 18.5.4.4; SoD 2015: Section 5.2.3.2), and other modal verbs (be)hoeven ‘must’, (be)horen ‘must’ and dienen ‘must’, which select a te-infinitive (ANS 1997: Section 18.5.4.4, Section 18.5.4.6). In accordance with their name, these verbs express different flavors of modal meaning, but are also compatible with other meanings, as was shown in the literature review. The literature review also revealed that these meanings engage in intricate scope relationships, notably in relation to tense markers. We take a closer look at the interaction between modal verbs and perfect auxiliaries in Section 4.3. This section focuses on the combinatorial potential of the modal verbs themselves when they combine as “double modals”. However, before we delve into the data on modal combinations, let us first get a general overview of the combinatorial behavior of modal verbs in our corpora in Table 7.

Table 7 shows that all modal verbs are used as finite and nonfinite verbs in three-verb constructions to varying extents. Zullen stands out among the core modal verbs by its almost exclusive use as a finite verb (95% CI for the binomial proportion of finite zullen, after Bonferroni correction for 8 comparisons: 0.99–1.00; the point estimate for the overall proportion of finite modal verbs is 0.76). The only example of nonfinite zullen in our data is found in the scope of irrealis had(den) ‘had’ (see also ANS 1997: Section 18.5.4.4.I).

Dienen, a formal variant of moeten expressing obligation, is also predominantly used as a finite verb (95% CI, 8 comparisons, finite dienen: 0.85–1.00). Its usage in three-verb constructions is largely restricted to passive constructions with worden ‘be’ in formal administrative written language.

The modal verbs kunnen and especially willen stand out because of the relatively low frequency with which they are used as finite verbs in three-verb constructions (95% CI, 8 comparisons, finite kunnen: 0.56–0.63; finite willen: 0.38–0.54).

Now, let us have a closer look at double modals in three-verb constructions. The reference grammars only provide us with broad generalizations. The positional schema of the ANS predicts that the actual-modal verbs (in position 7) scope over the quasi-modal ones (in position 4). The ANS (1997: 1064) also explicitly mentions that two quasi-modal verbs may be combined. Vandeweghe (2014: 23–24) indicates that in that case volitive and deontic modality, as expressed by willen and moeten respectively, has scope over facultative modality, expressed by kunnen. The SoD (2015: 1088) provides a few more examples of how modal verbs “can co-occur in various kinds of combinations”, including epistemic moeten having scope over dynamic kunnen and the combination of dynamic moeten and kunnen.

How do these general findings translate into our corpus data? We first explore the combinatorial patterns of the core modals in Table 8. This is a data matrix built following the conventions of Tables 3 and 4. An important difference is that the grey shading of the cells marks the absence of corpus observations rather than degraded acceptability judgements.

Table 8 first of all shows that no modal verb is found selecting itself. One should thus keep in mind that the term “double modal” does not imply the doubling of one and the same modal verb in our corpus but rather involves two different modal verbs stacked on top of a main verb.^[12] The table also shows a near-perfect asymmetric scope pattern among the core modals. On the one hand, zullen only appears as the finite verb in double modal combinations and is never found in the scope of another modal. On the other hand, kunnen and willen are predominantly found as nonfinite verbs, except for a few cases where they have scope over each other, illustrated in (28) and (29) below. The remaining core modals, mogen and moeten, take an in-between position. Finally, the table reveals that not all modal combinations are equally frequent.

Double modals headed by finite zullen are the most frequent overall, constituting 905 out of 1,026 cases (Table 8). Byloo and Nuyts (2013) have scrutinized a small sample of these patterns to find out how future tense interacts with modality.^[13] They find that only the present tense form of zullen is routinely used to express future tense (with varying degrees of epistemic overtones, they admit). Its preterite form zou(den) rarely denotes future in the past but rather expresses non-temporal functions such as counterfactuality or mitigation. Harmes (2014: 369–370, 374) similarly finds that zou(den) predominantly expresses hypotheticality (which includes counterfactuality) and to a less extent mitigation, temporality or reported evidentiality when having scope over other modal verbs. All these non-temporal meanings are non-qualificational, that is, they are not part of the hierarchy of qualificational categories (recall that only inferential evidentiality is part of the hierarchy – not reported evidentiality). Given these large differences in meaning, we differentiate between finite zullen in its present tense form (represented by the singular form zal) and in its preterite form (represented by the singular form zou) in Table 9.

Table 9 shows that finite zal mainly has scope over moeten and kunnen, when it takes scope over another modal (163 out of 177 cases). Byloo and Nuyts (2013) find that the modals in this context are used to express dynamic modality and directivity. This seems to be confirmed by our corpus data. The following examples illustrate the two most frequent combinations, that is, zal kunnen in (19), which here expresses future ability, and zal moeten in (20), expressing future necessity.

The examples show an interesting difference in the epistemic evaluation of the future event. Whereas (19) is a fairly neutral statement of future ability, (20) contains an element of personal assessment on the degree of likelihood of the future necessity. Examples like (20) are typical of journalistic prose where an expert is asked to give an opinion on future events. The difference in epistemic strength between zal kunnen and zal moeten suggests that the reading of finite zal is affected by the type of modal qualification it has scope over.

The modals in the scope of finite zou are compatible with a wide range of readings. Byloo and Nuyts (2013) report not only dynamic and directive readings but also deontic and epistemic modality. The frequent pattern zou kunnen (388 out of 728 cases with zou, Table 8) has been identified by Nuyts (2001: 201) as a context that “clearly improves the chances for an epistemic reading of kunnen, even if it does not exclude a dynamic reading”. This finding has been confirmed in corpus research by Van Ostaeyen and Nuyts (2004), Byloo and Nuyts (2013), and Harmes (2014, 2017, and our data likewise contain cases of epistemic kunnen in the scope of zou, as illustrated in (21). Mortelmans et al. (2009) point out that such cases provide an exception to the observation that epistemic modals tend to resist nonfinite usage in Germanic languages; also known as the “epistemic nonfiniteness gap” (Abraham 2001).

Notice that zou in this example expresses mitigation, and as such “does not have a specific meaning but serves as a hedging device in order to weaken the illocutionary force of the utterance” (Harmes 2017: 154). This is also the meaning of zou in Example (22), illustrating the frequent combination zou willen (211 out of 728 cases with zou, Table 8).

In this example, not only the meaning of finite zou but also of nonfinite willen seems to be watered down. The combination zou willen as a whole serves here to hedge the following statement as part of a politeness strategy. This ties in with the observation of Harmes (2014: 374) that mitigating zou typically combines with other modal verbs (in particular kunnen and willen) and as such tends to occur in fixed expressions. Indeed, one gets the impression that mitigating zou forms a construction with the nonfinite modal, especially in (22), where the meaning of the whole does not fully correspond to the sum of the parts.

We now come into less well-charted waters as we turn to the remaining double modal combinations in Table 8. Moeten is shown to be the second most frequent finite modal after zullen. It is predominantly used in its present tense form (103 of 108 cases, not tabulated) and mostly has scope over kunnen (103 out of 108 cases, Table 8). Finite moeten is used with its full meaning range (as described in Nuyts et al. 2010) in combination with kunnen, including both dynamic and deontic modality, as illustrated in (23) and (24).

In both examples, moeten adds a layer of need/necessity onto kunnen, expressing ability/opportunity in a rather straightforward way. Yet the combination of these two modal verbs is not fully compositional, as the meaning contribution of kunnen seems to be attenuated in this context, especially in (23).

The rest of the modal verbs only appear rarely as the finite verb in double modals (only 13 out of 1026 cases, Table 8). What sets these verbs apart from finite zullen and moeten is that they are not used with their full meaning potential. Finite mogen, for instance, is found in a conditional construction, as in (25), and as a marker of a concessive clause, as in (26), two minor non-qualificational usages of this modal verb (ANS 1997: Section 18.5.4.4.II.D; Byloo and Nuyts 2011).

The only instance of finite kunnen in double modals, given in (27), appears in a similar concessive context, which is unusual for this modal verb (ANS 1997: Section 18.5.4.4.II.A). Likewise, two of the four attestations of finite willen are found in conditional constructions of the type illustrated in (28) (ANS 1997: Section 18.5.4.4.II.E).

Our discussion of double modals confirms the general picture from the literature that modal verbs and their meanings are combined in various ways. An intriguing finding that emerges from our corpus survey is that some of the finite modals in double modals are predominantly used with non-qualificational meanings, in particular zou (which has few other uses in general), but also kunnen, mogen and willen (which do have a wider meaning potential). As such, a considerable proportion of the double modal constructions in our sample do not stack modal meanings on top of each other, but rather a non-qualificational meaning on top of a modal meaning. All finite modal verbs predominantly have scope over dynamic modal verbs or modal verbs with directive uses, except for zou, which was also found to have scope over deontic and epistemic modal verbs.

4.3 Perfect auxiliaries

^[14]The next verbs up for discussion are the perfect auxiliaries hebben ‘have’ and zijn ‘be’ (ANS 1997: Section 18.5.2.1; SoD 2015: Section 6.2.1). Perfect auxiliaries take an in-between position in terms of their scope relationships with other verbs. Both the ANS and SoD show that perfect auxiliaries may have scope over modal verbs, (external and internal) aspectual verbs and passive auxiliaries, whereas they appear in the scope of evidential and modal verbs. The SoD moreover indicates that perfect auxiliaries have scope over perception verbs and causative verbs. Table 10 gives the frequency of perfect auxiliaries in our corpora.

Table 10 shows that both perfect auxiliaries are commonly used as finite and nonfinite verbs in three-verb constructions, although not quite with the same tendencies (95% CI, 2 comparisons, finite hebben: 0.67–0.75; finite zijn: 0.52–0.64). As a finite verb, perfect auxiliary hebben mainly has scope over modal verbs, perception verbs, causative verbs and internal aspect verbs. Perfect auxiliary zijn has scope over a much smaller range of verbs, mainly external aspect verbs, which translates into a lower overall frequency. The largely complementary distribution of these two verbs follows, by and large, their selection restrictions in two-verb constructions (ANS 1997: Section 2.3.2.8.IV.E). As nonfinite verb, the perfect auxiliaries hebben and zijn are found in the scope of evidential verbs, modal verbs and gaan ‘go’. The scoping properties of the perfect auxiliaries correspond closely with the patterns found in previous research, except for their use in the scope of gaan ‘go’. This unexpected pattern will be discussed in more detail in Section 4.4 on aspectual verbs.

Note that perfect auxiliaries may both take scope over modal verbs and appear in their scope. The literature review shows that these varying scope relationships come with a difference in meaning of both the modal verb and the perfect auxiliary. The ANS points out that a modal verb taking scope over a perfect auxiliary is actual modal whereas a modal verb in the scope of a perfect auxiliary is quasi modal. The SoD (2015: 1072) likewise points out that the two combinatorial patterns “exhibit a conspicuous difference in interpretation” of the modal verb. Byloo and Nuyts (2013) go beyond this broad characterization and provide a detailed semantic analysis of a small sample of modal verbs and perfect auxiliaries combined in actual usage data.^[15]

Let us first consider the patterns in which the perfect auxiliary hebben has scope over a modal verb (leaving aside the few cases of zijn having scope over a modal). Byloo and Nuyts (2013) show that the meaning of the perfect auxiliary in this context largely depends on its tense marking. In its present tense form, the perfect auxiliary primarily functions as a tense marker situating the state of affairs in the past. The preterite form had(den) only rarely expresses the temporal function of a past in the past but, rather, predominantly acts as a marker of counterfactuality. Recall from our discussion of counterfactual zou that this is a non-qualificational meaning. In the light of these large meaning differences, we differentiate between the present tense form of hebben (represented by the third person singular form heeft) and its preterite form (represented by the singular form had) in Table 11.

Table 11 shows that finite heeft mainly has scope over moeten and kunnen, when it takes scope over a modal (169 out of 200 cases). Byloo and Nuyts (2013: 88–91) report that perfect auxiliaries in the present tense only take scope over modal verbs expressing dynamic modality (but not inherent dynamic modality) and directivity. This observation is corroborated by our corpus data. Examples (29) to (31) illustrate dynamic mogen, moeten and kunnen in the scope of finite heeft.

The modal verbs under the scope of counterfactual had come with a wider range of meanings. Byloo and Nuyts (2013) find modal verbs expressing dynamic and deontic modality as well as directive readings in this context. They do not come across epistemic readings, and also judge such readings to be “intuitively impossible” (2013: 92). This dismissive judgement does not fit with a corpus example such as (32), which, in our opinion, does allow for an epistemic reading, in which the speaker judges the proposition that ‘things turned out differently’ to be likely but counter to the fact. The ANS (1997: Section 18.5.4.4.II.A) likewise provides an example of epistemic kunnen in the scope of counterfactual had in (33).

These examples of nonfinite epistemic kunnen provide an additional exception to the epistemic nonfiniteness gap, introduced earlier in our discussion of double modals. A similar exception has been observed for epistemic (inferential) modals in the scope of subjective hätte ‘have’ in German (Mortelmans 2008; Mortelmans and Smirnova 2010; Reis 2001).

Let us now turn to the inverse pattern, with a modal verb taking scope over a perfect auxiliary. Table 12 provides the combinatorial patterns of the five core modals with scope over the perfect auxiliaries hebben and zijn.

The frequency distribution of finite modals having scope over perfect auxiliaries is very similar to that of finite modals in double modal constructions. Finite zullen is by far the most frequent among the finite modals, with 326 out of 432 cases (Table 12). In this subset, the preterite form zou(den) is far more frequent than the present tense forms (that is, 277 cases of zou hebben/zijn versus 49 cases of zal hebben/zijn – not tabulated). Byloo and Nuyts (2013) do not cover this pattern, but Harmes (2017: 162) points out that zou having scope over a perfect auxiliary is only found with temporal, hypothetical (including counterfactuality) and reported evidential meanings. This implies that the mitigation meaning of zou associated with double modals is absent here. Harmes (2017) argues that, instead, the evidential reading of zou is particularly associated with perfect auxiliaries. The following Example (34) illustrates the reported evidential meaning of zou in this context, with an explicit marking of the source of information (naar verluid ‘reportedly’).

Finite zal quite straightforwardly expresses the future of a perfect, as illustrated in (35). Such a neutral expression of future, however, is difficult to come by in this context. Finite zal more commonly has a strong epistemic connotation, which may even come without a future reading altogether, as in (36).

A similar preference for an epistemic reading is also observable for present tense moeten and kunnen, as illustrated in (37) and (38).^[16]

Byloo and Nuyts (2013) report that other readings are not ruled out for present tense modals with scope over perfect auxiliaries (except for participant-internal dynamic modality), but that dynamic and deontic modality, as well as directivity, are restricted or marked. What is more, these meanings also seem to trigger an aspectual reading of the perfect auxiliary. Take Example (39). The perfect auxiliary in the scope of deontic moeten is not used with its ordinary past tense reading but to express completeness before a reference point. This particular aspectual interpretation is highlighted by the time adverbial eerst ‘first’.

This observation ties in with the finding of Byloo and Nuyts (2013: 95–96), reported earlier in the literature review, that dynamic and deontic modal verbs trigger an aspectual reading of the perfect auxiliary in their scope, whereas epistemic modal verbs only allow a temporal reading of such a perfect auxiliary.

We also want to draw attention to the fact that some finite modals are found with meanings that are put aside as “other” by Byloo and Nuyts (2013). This includes concessive mogen and conditional mocht and moest (the latter is a regional variant based on the preterite form of moeten), two types of non-qualificational meaning that we also came across in double modals.

Our discussion shows that we need to take into account the various meanings of perfect auxiliaries to accurately describe their scope relations with modal verbs. Only as tense markers do perfect auxiliaries take a genuine in-between position, having scope as finite verbs over dynamic modal verbs and modal verbs with directive use, and appearing as nonfinite verbs in the scope of modal verbs with epistemic and non-qualificational meanings. As aspectual markers, perfect auxiliaries are restricted to nonfinite use in the scope of dynamic and deontic modals, pointing to a much lower semantic scope. As a counterfactual marker, had is restricted to finite use, with scope over a wide range of modal meanings, including deontic modality and arguably even epistemic modality.

4.4 Aspectual verbs

We now turn to two groups of verbs which express aspectual meanings. The first group consists of gaan ‘go’ and komen ‘come’, expressing inchoative aspect, and blijven ‘stay’, denoting continuative aspect. We have been calling them external aspect verbs, following Vandeweghe (2014), to differentiate them from internal aspect verbs, which we will discuss below. The ANS (1997: Section 18.5.4.3) argues that gaan may also be used as a future auxiliary, especially in spoken Belgian Dutch. All three verbs select a bare infinitive. Inchoative komen also has an alternative selection pattern with a te-infinitive (ANS 1997: Section 18.5.4.3.IV; SoD 2015: Section 6.6.2.IV). The literature review shows that this group of verbs has a low position on the semantic scope hierarchy, only systematically having scope over internal aspect verbs and passive auxiliaries. The SoD also reports that gaan may have scope over causative and perception verbs.

Table 13 shows that the three aspectual verbs are primarily used as nonfinite verbs in the scope of another verb in three-verb constructions. In fact, only gaan appears to be easily used as a finite verb in this context (95% CI, 3 comparisons; finite gaan: 0.12–0.19; finite blijven: 0.00–0.08; finite komen 0.00–0.06).

The nonfinite aspectual verbs appear mainly in the scope of modal verbs and the perfect auxiliary zijn ‘be’, as illustrated in (40) and (41) respectively.

As mentioned, gaan is also readily used as the finite verb in three-verb constructions. Finite gaan is typical of spoken language (127 out of 136 instances are found in the Spoken Dutch Corpus, not tabulated), and particularly of spoken Belgian Dutch (89 out these 127 instances are produced by Belgian speakers, not tabulated). This can be related to the fact that finite gaan is used with a wider scope by Belgian speakers (B) in comparison to speakers from the Netherlands (NL), confirming earlier observations of the ANS (1997: Section 18.5.4.3.III.4a) and Colleman (2000). NL speakers predominantly use finite gaan with scope over internal aspect verbs, causative verbs and passive worden ‘be’, illustrated in (42) to (44).

This scoping behavior corresponds neatly to the pattern described in the ANS and the SoD for external aspect verbs in general. The B speakers likewise use finite gaan with scope over causative verbs and passive auxiliaries, but also over external aspect verbs (especially gaan, which implies a “doubling” of gaan), perfect auxiliaries and modal verbs, illustrated in (45) to (47).

This wider scope poses a challenge to the low position of gaan as an aspectual verb on the semantic scope hierarchies discussed in the literature review. The question is whether gaan is to be considered an aspectual verb with this wide scope use. The ANS suggests that finite gaan in spoken Belgian Dutch is a future auxiliary rather than an aspectual verb (but see the SoD 2015: Section 6.4.1 for an alternative view). As a future auxiliary, it is expected to have a wider scope, in line with other tense auxiliaries such as perfect hebben ‘have’ or future zullen ‘will’.

The second group of aspectual verbs are posture and motion verbs which are used with a progressive meaning (ANS 1997: Section 18.8.4.2; SoD 2015: Section 6.3.1). We call them progressive verbs but also refer to them as internal aspect verbs in order to be able to differentiate them from external aspect verbs. The progressive verbs include the posture verbs zitten ‘sit’, liggen ‘lie’, staan ‘stand’, hangen ‘hang’ and the motion verb lopen ‘go’. All of these verbs select a te-infinitive. The literature review revealed that these verbs are situated at the low end of the semantic scope hierarchy. The ANS (1997: 1061) mentions that progressive verbs (in position 2) and passive auxiliaries (in position 1) are hardly ever combined. Vandeweghe (2014: 22) and the SoD (2015: 1069), seemingly independently, do conjure up a few constructed examples of progressive verbs having scope over passive worden ‘be’, but admit that these examples are rare and farfetched. Anthonissen et al. (2019: Section 4) provide us with more details on the semantics of progressive verbs in the scope of other verbs. Their corpus data reveal that progressive verbs are used in the scope of modal verbs, perfect auxiliaries or gaan ‘go’. These contexts are argued to reinforce the inherent tendency of progressive verbs to express (inter)subjective meanings such as surprise, irritation and intensity.

As shown in Table 14, progressive verbs in three-verb constructions are predominantly found in the Spoken Dutch Corpus (87 out of 93 instances, not tabulated). This is consistent with the observation of the ANS (1997: Section 18.8.4.2) that the progressive use of these verbs is typical of spoken language. The progressive verbs are never used as the finite verbs in three-verb constructions in our data. This finding confirms the observations of previous research that, while progressive verbs in principle may have scope over passive auxiliaries, this scoping pattern is rarely found in actual language. Progressive verbs mainly appear in our data under the scope of the perfect auxiliary hebben ‘have’, as in (48), modal verbs, as in (49), and the external aspect verbs gaan ‘go and blijven ‘stay’.

These findings are perfectly in line with Anthonissen et al. (2019).

4.5 Perception and causative verbs

We now discuss two groups of verbs which are not included in the semantic scope hierarchy. Perception verbs express different types of sensory perception (ANS 1997: Section 18.5.4.8; SoD 2015: Section 5.2.3.3). They include zien ‘see’, horen ‘hear’, voelen ‘feel’. The causative verbs laten ‘let’ and doen ‘do’ express causative and permissive meanings (ANS 1997: Section 18.5.4.10; SoD 2015: Section 5.2.3.4). Both groups of verbs select a bare infinitive. The literature review shows that both types of verbs may appear in the scope of evidential verbs, modal verbs, perfect auxiliaries and external aspect verbs. They have the potential to take scope over external aspect verbs, internal aspect verbs and passive auxiliaries. Note that causative verbs and perception verbs in the introspective data of SoD engage in a symmetric scope pattern with external aspect verbs, rather than an asymmetric one, since they may both have scope over and appear in the scope of them.

Our corpus data (Table 15) show that perception and causative verbs are overwhelmingly used as nonfinite verbs in three-verb constructions (point estimate proportion for finite perception/causative verbs 0.04; 95% CI, 5 comparisons, finite zien: 0.04–0.30, which means that zien is somewhat more commonly finite than the other perception/causative verbs, according to our data). We found them mainly in the scope of modal verbs, as in (50) and (51), and under the perfect auxiliary hebben ‘have’, as in (52).

The more frequent verbs zien and laten also show a minor usage pattern as finite verbs with scope over the external aspect verbs gaan ‘go’ and komen ‘come’, illustrated in (51), and over passive worden ‘be’ and zijn ‘be’. This pattern is in line with the observations in the literature.

4.6 Passive auxiliaries

The last group of verbs left for discussion are the passive auxiliaries worden ‘be’, zijn ‘be’ (ANS 1997: Section 18.5.2.2; SoD 2015: Section 6.2.2) and the semi-passive auxiliaries krijgen ‘get’ and zien ‘see’ (ANS 1997: Section 18.5.2.4.II), which all select a past participle. The ANS and the SoD both indicate that passive auxiliaries do not have scope over other verbs.^[17]

The corpus counts for the passive auxiliaries are in in Table 16. Passive auxiliaries are exclusively used as nonfinite verbs in three-verb constructions in our material. Passive worden is the most frequent verb in three-verb constructions on the whole (found in 2,348 out of 6,082 three-verb constructions in the corpus). It is almost exclusively selected by a modal verb, as illustrated in (53) to (54).

Passive zijn is strikingly less frequent in three-verb constructions, despite its relatively high frequency in two-verb constructions (147 out of 2,506 cases, or 6%, of the three-verb data contain passive zijn, whereas as many as 4,411.5 out of 13,532.5 cases, or 33%, in the two-verb data do, Table 16). Although it predominantly appears in the scope of modal verbs, these modals appear to have a more restricted meaning potential, quite along the lines of the modals with scope over perfect auxiliaries (Section 4.3). The present tense form of the modal verbs kunnen ‘can’, moeten ‘must’ and zullen ‘will’ typically comes with an epistemic reading, as illustrated for kunnen in (55).

Non-epistemic modals do occur with passive zijn but usually with time adverbials indicating the time point before which the event needs to be completed, such as vóór half tien ‘before half past nine’ in (56).

This particular context is reminiscent of the aspectual use of perfect auxiliaries in the scope of dynamic and deontic modal verbs, illustrated in (40).

4.7 Other verbs

Our sample of three-verb constructions also contains a number of verbs which cannot straightforwardly be classified in the above verb classes in terms of meaning and the verbal complement they select. These verbs are listed in Table 17. Their scope behavior has not been described in the literature yet, except for the verbs weten ‘know’ and durven ‘dare’, which the ANS puts in position 4, together with the quasi-modal verbs. We will not dwell on these verbs too long but provide their combinatorial patterns for the sake of completeness.

Despite their differences in meaning and complementation, all of these verbs show very similar scope patterns in three-verb constructions. They turn out to be exclusively used as nonfinite verbs, and thus pattern with the verbs discussed earlier in Tables 14–16.