Aspectual duality regained
The view that the four aspectual adverbials <not yet
(nog niet), already (al), still (nog), no longer (niet meer)> constitute a
duality square which runs parallel to the <not exists, ,exists, not for all,
for all > square of Predicate Logic has been criticised recently. Although
this paper bascially agrees with those criticisms, it argues that a much richer
notion of duality emerges in the case of Dutch when al is taken out of
the initial paradigm and related to other adverbials expressing focus meaning.
On this view, al has three different duals, two lexical ones, namely
eindelijk (finally) and nog altijd (still), and one
compositional, namely al bijna niet meer (already almost no longer).
Eight focus adverbials are analysed along five dimensions of polarity, and
the different kinds of internal, external and dual negation are modelled in
terms of switching operations on various polarity dimensions.
Hans Smessaert