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Title: Van als markeerder van zinnen in de directe en indirecte rede in het Fries en het Nederlands
Author(s): HOEKSTRA, Eric
Journal: Leuvense Bijdragen - Leuven Contributions in Linguistics and Philology
Volume: 96    Date: 2007-2010   
Pages: 169-188
DOI: 10.2143/LB.96.0.2071287

Abstract :
Dutch and Frisian possess a marker of direct speech, the word van (Dutch), fan (Frisian). In the literature little attention has been paid to this marker, especially when it introduces complete sentences. In this article we will uncover some of its grammatical properties, basing ourselves both on informants' judgments and on corpus research. The fact that this function of van/fan has not been noticed very often is probably related to the fact that it is largely absent in formal registers. It is characteristic of informal spoken language, but it can also be found in informal written language, such as may be found on the internet. It is argued that van/fan is a preposition which is undergoing a process of grammaticalisation by which it is changing into a complementiser. This article focuses both on Frisian and on Dutch.

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