The syntax of progressive and ingressiveaanhet-constructions in Dutch

Abstract

AbstractThis paper presents a novel syntactic analysis of the much-debated Dutchaanhet-construction, e.g.Pieter is aan het opruimen‘lit. Peter is on the cleanup: Peter is cleaning up’. We show that the construction’s syntactic behavior varies with the matrix verb: progressivezijn‘be’ versus ingressivegaan‘go’ andslaan‘hit’. Based on this variation, we argue that there are twoaanhet-projections occupying different synchronic positions on a functional-to-lexical cline.