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Perfect Auxiliary Doubling in Cape Dutch and Afrikaans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2025

Paul T. Roberge
Paul T. Roberge*
Affiliation:
Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
*
Email: ptr@email.unc.edu
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Abstract

The doubling of auxiliaries ‘have’ and ‘be’ in perfect tense constructions is a European areal phenomenon. It is present in languages of different filiations that have been in contact for a long time. In Dutch its distribution is largely restricted to the southeastern part of Dutch-speaking Belgium and some communities of North Brabant in the Netherlands. Double perfects are attested in contemporary Afrikaans, which is contrary to what we should expect, given that its metropolitan dialectal base is Hollandic, not southern Netherlandic. The Cape Dutch and Afrikaans evidence, sparse as it is, suggests that the range of this feature was significantly broader in vernacular Early Modern Dutch than one might infer from contemporary metropolitan norms.*

Keywords

periphrastic tense constructionsauxiliary doublingDutchAfrikaans

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Type
Articles
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Journal of Germanic Linguistics , Volume 37 , Special Issue 3: Special Issue on Afrikaans , September 2025 , pp. 287 - 307
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© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for Germanic Linguistics

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Footnotes

*

I have benefitted enormously from comments and critical remarks from Frans Hinskens and two anonymous referees. Responsibility for remaining inadequacies is, of course, mine alone.

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