Van Huyssteen, Gerhard B. 2018. “The ‘hulle’ and ‘goed’ constructions in Afrikaans.” In The construction of words: Advances in construction morphology, edited by Geert Booij, 399-437. New York: Springer.
Van Huyssteen 2018a
English: Afrikaans, associative plural, cognitive grammar, construction morphology, compounding
Afrikaans: Afrikaans, assosiatiewe meervoud, kognitiewe grammatika, konstruksiemorfologie, samestelling
English: Over the past more than 100 years; Afrikaans associative plural constructions – especially constructions with hulle (‘they’) and goed (‘things/stuff; good’) as right-hand components – have been studied from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives; but with the main interest in their origins; and what they could tell us about the genesis of Afrikaans. One school of thought claims that they both have Germanic roots; while the other school maintains that both are creole constructions. No definitive conclusions have been reached. Moreover; there is no consensus on whether these constructions should be regarded as noun phrases; compounds; or derived words. The most recent synchronic description of the hulle construction was published in 1969; and the last synchronic description of the goed construction in 1989. In the absence of corpus data; unsubstantiated claims about these constructions abound in the literature. This article presents a synchronic; corpus-based; constructionist description of these two Afrikaans constructions. They are characterised as hybrid constructions on a scale between compounds and derivations; while some remarks on their productivity are made. Based on detailed analyses of their right- and left-hand components; the article concludes with a categorisation network of the schemas and subschemas of these constructions.
Afrikaans:
In: English
On: Afrikaans