The emergence of modification patterns in the Dutch noun phrase

Abstract

This article gives a diachronic account of adnominal modification from Proto-Indo-European to present-day Dutch. The main conclusion is that through the ages, noun phrases appear to “fold out”: they acquire their layered structure for different lexical modifiers over time. The latest stage in this process is the fairly recent development of a specific slot for interpersonal modification of the whole noun phrase. The different stages in the diachronic development are described with the layered and modular representation of functional discourse grammar (FDG).