Same formal pattern, different contact situation, different propagation: evidential vs. deontic NCI constructions in Dutch (contrasted with English)

Abstract

The grammars of both English and Dutch include nominative and infinitive (or NCI) patterns, consisting of a passive P-C-U verb complemented by a to/te-infinitive, e.g. Eng. be said to, be thought to, be found to, and Du. geacht worden te ‘be considered/supposed to’ and verondersteld worden te ‘be supposed to’. Both languages borrowed them from Latin in the Early Modern age, as loan translations of forms like dicitur and creditur, and introduced them as evidential constructions in scholarly writing. In English the evidential NCI could spread to other genres and become a productive schematic construction because it filled a semantic niche. In Dutch it faced competition from constructions already occupying that niche and as a result the Dutch evidential NCI withered away, disappearing almost completely. Much later, in the second half of the 20th century, two substantive vestiges of the Dutch evidential NCI, geacht worden te and verondersteld worden te, took on a deontic meaning after the model of the English cognate patterns be supposed to and be expected to, which helped to ensure the viability of these Dutch patterns. The difference between the attrition of the evidential construction and the acceptance of the deontic one may not just be attributable to the fact that the deontic construction could fill a functional niche while the evidential one did not. Different as well is the nature of the contact situation that led to the introduction of both constructions into Dutch. A far greater segment of Dutch speakers now has contact with English than was the case for contact with Latin during the Renaissance and the deontic NCI is less constrained by genre in both the model and the replica language.