Daniel Van Olmen
Biographic Data
| ID | 1177206 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Daniel Van Olmen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Daniel |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Olmen |
| SIGNATURE | VAN OLMEN D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lancaster University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9289-9196 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
What We Can Learn from Using a Visual Questionnaire to Investigate Dutch and Afrikaans Impersonal Strategies
The topic of impersonalization has received a lot of attention in the literature, but the focus has mostly been on a limited number of strategies, such as the use of personal and indefinite pronouns and passive constructions. Impersonal strategies have thus far been examined using: (i) grammars, (ii) corpora, and (iii) language-based questionnaires. These methods suffer from several shortcomings if one wants to study the range of impersonal strat…
Een negende Germaanse sandwich
Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community
Specialization and finiteness (a)symmetry in imperative negation
This article focuses primarily on the claim in previous research that finiteness asymmetry occurs less often in imperative negation, due to its illocutionary dynamicity, than in standard negation, due to its stativity. Its secondary aim is to identify the languages suitable to test this hypothesis, with specialized imperatives as well as negative imperatives. The findings of this identification process in a balanced 200-language sample confirm th…
Adjectival intensification in West Germanic
This article investigates the forms and functions of adjectival intensification in West Germanic. With corpus data from different discourse types, we challenge claims that German tends to use synthetic means and Dutch is between German and English but more like English in its preference for analytic ones. Our results show that all three languages, and Afrikaans too, favor analytic intensifiers but also that only English employs synthetic ones to …
Inherent linguistic impoliteness
Getting attention in different languages
The present article examines the broad function of attention-getting embodied by parenthetical look in Chinese, Dutch, English and Italian. It analyzes a sample of the marker’s occurrences in corpora of spontaneous conversations and of interviews and discussions in terms of a systematic typology of parameters of interactional behavior and adopts a range of statistical methods to uncover patterns of (dis)similarity. The results include, inter alia…
Developing and validating a visual questionnaire for the study of impersonalisation strategies
This article reports on an interdisciplinary, collaborative project grounded in linguistic theory on impersonalisation and visual communication theory on wordless visual narratives. The aims of this practice-based research project are to develop an alternative to existing methods of studying impersonalisation strategies through interdisciplinary collaboration and to test its usefulness for identifying not only the range of possible linguistic str…
On order and prohibition
The present article examines the claim in the literature that the negative first principle, i.e. the preference for the order negation-verb to verb-negation, is stronger in negative imperatives (or prohibitives) than in negative declaratives. To test this hypothesis, we develop – in contrast to earlier research – a systematic, three-way classification of languages, which is also operationalized as a ranking capturing the overall level of strength…
The Passive as an Impersonalisation Strategy in Afrikaans and Dutch
Although a lot of research has been done on the use of pronouns to express impersonal meaning in West Germanic languages, relatively little is known about the use of other possible impersonalization strategies. This article therefore examines the agentless passive as a possible impersonalizing strategy in Afrikaans and Dutch. On the basis of corpus data, we show that the agentless passive is a productive strategy for impersonalization in both Afr…
A diachronic corpus study of prenominal zo’n ‘so a’ in Dutch
Like its English counterpart such , Dutch zo’n has identifying and intensifying uses. The established pathway from the former to the latter is found to constitute a proportional rather than a discrete shift here. The strong presence of intensifying uses from the start, as compared to the older Dutch marker zulk , is argued to be due to preexisting constructions that are alike formally and convey intensification. Zo’n is also found to have a recog…
Human impersonal pronouns in West Germanic
In this article, we examine and compare the main human impersonal pronouns in Afrikaans, Dutch and English. The second person singular, the third person plural and the ‘man’- and ‘one’-pronouns are studied by means of an acceptability judgment questionnaire and a completion questionnaire. The combination of the two methods reveals interesting descriptive facts about the three West Germanic languages. They include, among other things, the ‘man’-pr…
A three-fold approach to the imperative's usage in English and Dutch
Human impersonal pronouns in Afrikaans
Reproachatives and imperatives
This paper studies constructions dedicated to the expression of an after the fact reprimand to a second person in the languages of Europe. Taking a usage-based perspective, it argues against earlier analyses of these reproachatives as imperatives, optatives or conditionals, which fail to capture their idiosyncrasies and overpredict both their cross-linguistic frequency and the grammaticality of types of imperative in a language. Based on a closer…
The Imperative of Say as a Pragmatic Marker in English and Dutch
This article examines the imperative of say as a pragmatic marker in English and Dutch. Present-day say and zeg ‘say’ are contrasted on the basis of comparable corpus data. This comparison, together with additional diachronic data, serves as input for a study of the typical developments of the imperative of say as a pragmatic marker. Further-more, on the basis of a wider range of European and other languages, the article explores the possibility …
Describing and explaining the variation of Bantu imperatives and prohibitives
This paper describes Bantu imperatival and prohibitival speech acts. The study is set against the background of the formal instability of directives and grammaticalization theory. On the basis of a sample of 100 languages, we conclude that imperatival strategies are limited to imperatives, subjunctives, and indicatives while prohibitival strategies range from negative subjunctives and negative auxiliary constructions through constructions with pr…
Getting attention in different languages
The present article examines the broad function of attention-getting embodied by parenthetical look in Chinese, Dutch, English and Italian. It analyzes a sample of the marker’s occurrences in corpora of spontaneous conversations and of interviews and discussions in terms of a systematic typology of parameters of interactional behavior and adopts a range of statistical methods to uncover patterns of (dis)similarity. The results include, inter alia…
Inherent linguistic impoliteness
Human impersonal pronouns in Afrikaans
Reproachatives and imperatives
This paper studies constructions dedicated to the expression of an after the fact reprimand to a second person in the languages of Europe. Taking a usage-based perspective, it argues against earlier analyses of these reproachatives as imperatives, optatives or conditionals, which fail to capture their idiosyncrasies and overpredict both their cross-linguistic frequency and the grammaticality of types of imperative in a language. Based on a closer…
The Imperative of Say as a Pragmatic Marker in English and Dutch
This article examines the imperative of say as a pragmatic marker in English and Dutch. Present-day say and zeg ‘say’ are contrasted on the basis of comparable corpus data. This comparison, together with additional diachronic data, serves as input for a study of the typical developments of the imperative of say as a pragmatic marker. Further-more, on the basis of a wider range of European and other languages, the article explores the possibility …
Describing and explaining the variation of Bantu imperatives and prohibitives
This paper describes Bantu imperatival and prohibitival speech acts. The study is set against the background of the formal instability of directives and grammaticalization theory. On the basis of a sample of 100 languages, we conclude that imperatival strategies are limited to imperatives, subjunctives, and indicatives while prohibitival strategies range from negative subjunctives and negative auxiliary constructions through constructions with pr…
Human impersonal pronouns in West Germanic
In this article, we examine and compare the main human impersonal pronouns in Afrikaans, Dutch and English. The second person singular, the third person plural and the ‘man’- and ‘one’-pronouns are studied by means of an acceptability judgment questionnaire and a completion questionnaire. The combination of the two methods reveals interesting descriptive facts about the three West Germanic languages. They include, among other things, the ‘man’-pr…
A three-fold approach to the imperative's usage in English and Dutch
Human impersonal pronouns in Afrikaans
Reproachatives and imperatives
This paper studies constructions dedicated to the expression of an after the fact reprimand to a second person in the languages of Europe. Taking a usage-based perspective, it argues against earlier analyses of these reproachatives as imperatives, optatives or conditionals, which fail to capture their idiosyncrasies and overpredict both their cross-linguistic frequency and the grammaticality of types of imperative in a language. Based on a closer…
A diachronic corpus study of prenominal zo’n ‘so a’ in Dutch
Like its English counterpart such , Dutch zo’n has identifying and intensifying uses. The established pathway from the former to the latter is found to constitute a proportional rather than a discrete shift here. The strong presence of intensifying uses from the start, as compared to the older Dutch marker zulk , is argued to be due to preexisting constructions that are alike formally and convey intensification. Zo’n is also found to have a recog…
Developing and validating a visual questionnaire for the study of impersonalisation strategies
This article reports on an interdisciplinary, collaborative project grounded in linguistic theory on impersonalisation and visual communication theory on wordless visual narratives. The aims of this practice-based research project are to develop an alternative to existing methods of studying impersonalisation strategies through interdisciplinary collaboration and to test its usefulness for identifying not only the range of possible linguistic str…
On order and prohibition
The present article examines the claim in the literature that the negative first principle, i.e. the preference for the order negation-verb to verb-negation, is stronger in negative imperatives (or prohibitives) than in negative declaratives. To test this hypothesis, we develop – in contrast to earlier research – a systematic, three-way classification of languages, which is also operationalized as a ranking capturing the overall level of strength…
The Passive as an Impersonalisation Strategy in Afrikaans and Dutch
Although a lot of research has been done on the use of pronouns to express impersonal meaning in West Germanic languages, relatively little is known about the use of other possible impersonalization strategies. This article therefore examines the agentless passive as a possible impersonalizing strategy in Afrikaans and Dutch. On the basis of corpus data, we show that the agentless passive is a productive strategy for impersonalization in both Afr…
Getting attention in different languages
The present article examines the broad function of attention-getting embodied by parenthetical look in Chinese, Dutch, English and Italian. It analyzes a sample of the marker’s occurrences in corpora of spontaneous conversations and of interviews and discussions in terms of a systematic typology of parameters of interactional behavior and adopts a range of statistical methods to uncover patterns of (dis)similarity. The results include, inter alia…
Inherent linguistic impoliteness
Specialization and finiteness (a)symmetry in imperative negation
This article focuses primarily on the claim in previous research that finiteness asymmetry occurs less often in imperative negation, due to its illocutionary dynamicity, than in standard negation, due to its stativity. Its secondary aim is to identify the languages suitable to test this hypothesis, with specialized imperatives as well as negative imperatives. The findings of this identification process in a balanced 200-language sample confirm th…
Adjectival intensification in West Germanic
This article investigates the forms and functions of adjectival intensification in West Germanic. With corpus data from different discourse types, we challenge claims that German tends to use synthetic means and Dutch is between German and English but more like English in its preference for analytic ones. Our results show that all three languages, and Afrikaans too, favor analytic intensifiers but also that only English employs synthetic ones to …
What We Can Learn from Using a Visual Questionnaire to Investigate Dutch and Afrikaans Impersonal Strategies
The topic of impersonalization has received a lot of attention in the literature, but the focus has mostly been on a limited number of strategies, such as the use of personal and indefinite pronouns and passive constructions. Impersonal strategies have thus far been examined using: (i) grammars, (ii) corpora, and (iii) language-based questionnaires. These methods suffer from several shortcomings if one wants to study the range of impersonal strat…
Een negende Germaanse sandwich
Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community
Linguistics (14 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (10 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (10 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Mathematics (5 works)