Resumen

VAN ROOY, Bertus  y  KRUGER, Haidee. Factors that determine the omission of the Afrikaans complementiser dat "that". Tydskr. geesteswet. [online]. 2016, vol.56, n.1, pp.102-116. ISSN 2224-7912.  http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2224-7912/2016/v56n1a7.

Verb complement clauses in written Afrikaans have two formal variants. One form has an overt complementiser dat "that", followed by dependent word order (dat+SXV), while the other form has no complementiser and independent word order (0+SVX). Previous research on Afrikaans has not yielded conclusive findings about the factors that influence the choice between the variants, although the factors conditioning the alternation have been studied extensively in English and German. Based on that research, a number ofpotential conditioning factors are identified, which relate to the syntactic complexity of the main clause (its subject, modification of tense and modality features of the main verb, passivisation, negation or additional modifiers between the main clause and the complement clause); the semantics, lexical choice and frequency of the verb of the main clause; and the formality of the register. This article adopts corpus linguistics as method to determine which factors best predict the choice between the variants. The data are drawn from the Taalkommissiekorpus ("Corpus of the Language Commission"), which is a 57 million word corpus of contemporary written Afrikaans. A sample of 10 084 instances of the declarative complement clause were extracted from the corpus by using 104 different verb lemmas (see Appendix A) as extraction terms. These were classified manually for their complementation pattern, and all the potential features identified as potential conditioning factors in the literature review were annotated for every valid instance in the sample. The classified data were then subjected to decision tree modelling, to yield a classification tree that identifies the most important factors related to the choice between the two variants of the declarative complement construction in Afrikaans. The results indicate that the verb of the main clause is the most important factor. A few very general verbs with high frequency, such as sê "say", weet "know" and dink "think" are strongly associated with the variant Ø+SVX. Verbs that are more specific in their meaning and less frequent tend to take the variant dat+SXV In addition, register is an important conditioning factor for verbs that allow combination with both variants. More formal registers, such as academic writing, study guides and published popular books are more likely to make use of the variant dat+SXV, while the less formal registers of newspapers, magazines and fiction make more frequent use of the variant without a complementiser (Ø+SVX). The findings are interpreted as support for the view that thematic prominence is the underlying force behind the variability. When the main clause is very general and low in informativity, the most prominent information is contained in the complement clause, which is therefore presented without an overt complementiser and with main clause word order (0+SVX). However, when the main clause is thematically prominent, carries a higher information load, and demands the attention of the reader, the complement clause is overtly marked as subordinate by means of an overt complementiser and the use of dependent word order (dat+SXV).

Palabras clave : Afrikaans; syntax; word order; variation; complement clause; subordinator; complementiser; dependent word order; register; verb lemma; informativity; corpus linguistics.

        · resumen en Africano     · texto en Africano     · Africano ( pdf )