Counterexpectational Translations: The Dutch Markers Toch and Eigenlijk Contrasted with Their English Correspondents

Abstract

Abstract The Dutch particle toch and modal adverb eigenlijk both belong to the broad domain of ‘contrast’: their prototypical functions have been described as ‘concession’ and ‘counterexpectation’, respectively, and both have been attributed emphatic discourse uses (e.g. toch as a common ground reminder and eigenlijk as a reinforcement marker). This study analyses the multifunctional scope of toch and eigenlijk in Dutch and maps their translation equivalents in English through an in-depth analysis of the Dutch-English component of the Europarl corpus. For eigenlijk the most common correspondents (in fact, really, actually) belong to the core of the semantic domain of (counter)expectation, whereas none of the English correspondents of toch is able to capture the marker’s duality as both a concessive and a common ground marker. The high degree of zero correspondences in English source texts suggests the translators’ strong awareness of the markers’ pragmalinguistic contribution.