It is Imperative: The Complex Case of Do-support in Dutch.
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2025-08-25
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en
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We report the results of a two-part corpus study on the format(s) and function(s) of the non-standard, yet frequently used phenomenon do-support. As there is no consensus in the literature on its actual function(s), we have proceeded in a non-variationist fashion by collecting Netherlandic Twitter data with a total of 672 do-support tokens. In the first part, three previously proposed motivations for the use of do-support are investigated by means of univariate and bivariate analyses. A series of multiple correspondence analyses conducted in the second part of the study, revealed four subformats of do-support for which we could – in some cases tentatively – infer a function from the feature clusters. Although we have not been able (yet) to pinpoint the exact function of these subformats beyond the suggestions we provided, our finding furnish the groundwork necessary for the next stage of do-support research; a series of variationist analyses.
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Faculteit der Letteren