De benefactiefconstructie in de zuidelijk-Nederlandse dialecten.

This paper investigates the geographical distribution of the benefactiveditransitive construction in the southern Dutch dialects. Whereas modern standard Dutch allows the benefactive construction with a handful of verbs of food preparation only, e.g. inschenken ('to pour') and bereiden ('to prepare'), the constructional possibilities are reported to be much wider in several regionally coloured varieties of standard Dutch, most notably in Belgian Dutch. This is mostly attributed to dialect interference, but up until now, the distribution of the construction across the Dutch dialects has hardly been investigated, the exception being Van Bree (1981). Van Bree's study presents some interesting facts and figures regarding the distribution of the construction, but also suffers from a number of drawbacks, which is why we thought it fit to partially complement his investigation with a new questionnaire-based examination of the southern Dutch dialects. Our findings reveal huge geographical differences. The strongholds of the construction prove to be East Flanders, Limburg and (to a somewhat lesser extent) the southern Brabantine area: in these regions, benefactives are allowed by a wide range of verbs. Within the area displaying the construction, its acceptibility is influenced by a number of linguistic conditions, including the semantics of the main verb and the category status of the benefactive NP (pronominal or lexical). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]