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Conditional Constructions: The Special Case of Modern Dutch mits

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2009

Saskia Daalder
Saskia Daalder*
Affiliation:
VU University Amsterdam
*
Department of Language and Communication, VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands, [s.daalder@mdw.vu.nl]
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Abstract

As a contribution to research into conditional constructions, this article presents a novel analysis of the Modern Dutch construction defined by the conditional conjunction mits ‘provided that', a less frequent subordinating conjunction that differs in meaning from the main conditional conjunctions als and indien (both ‘if'). Using examples from a corpus of 300 text passages containing the construction, we discuss its syntactic and semantic characteristics. It is found that clauses introduced by mits are only appended as a condition to matrix expressions that imply the existence of some specific desirability. We discuss the general viability of the notion of desirability for grammatical analysis. In the interpretation of each instance of a mits-construction, the precise identity of the desirability concerned has to be determined, as well as its locus. This process makes knowledge available about a specific balance of interests of the communicators and other concerned parties. The Dutch mits-construction is thus found to lead the interpreter to understand details of configurations of diverging interests.*

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Type
ARTICLES
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Journal of Germanic Linguistics , Volume 21 , Issue 2: Special Issue in Honour of Martin Durrell , June 2009, pp. 231 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Germanic Linguistics 2009

1. Introduction

Modern Dutch has a special conditional conjunction mits ‘provided that', which has no cognate forms with conditional meaning in either German or English. Whereas conditional constructions in general have been the object of extensive modern research,Footnote 1 the literature on mits is scarce. This article aims to fill parts of the gap and analyse the use of modern constructions with mits. To give a first impression, we start with two examples.

  1. (1)

  1. (2)

Quotation 1 is from an interview with the Dutch painter and poet Lucebert. He claims that for a painter, no restrictions hold as to painting style, but he appends a mits-clause to the effect that under all circumstances, the result has to be startling to the observer. Otherwise, his general claim would not hold true after all. In quotation 2, the homely dish of omelette with onions and tomato is qualified as ‘very tasty'. However, the phrase with mits introduces the special condition that the cooking process is handled adequately. If that condition is not met, the high degree of tastiness will not be guaranteed. As a first approximation, we can state that the part with mits names a strict condition on the fulfilment of the state of affairs expressed by the other part of the construction.Footnote 2 We note the necessity of taking into account not only the mits-phrase itself but also the part to which it is appended, as is the case for conditional constructions generally.

From the Dutch grammatical literature, it would seem that modern mits is not much different in principle from the much more frequent conditional conjunctions als and indien. Most grammars call mits somewhat antiquated and formal in style, at best noticing the strict nature of the condition expressed (the condition is a “necessary” one) and the relative ease of using mits with incomplete clauses.Footnote 3 However, preliminary investigations of the occurrence of mits in current language use (on the basis of print media, Google searches and the Corpus of Spoken Dutch cgn) provide thousands of examples, which indicate that mits in Modern Dutch is less of a rarity than it is thought to be; so far, a pilot corpus of 300 quotations has been assembled. Even more interesting is the fact that the overall meaning configuration imposed by constructions with mits turns out to be quite specific. Before we enter into the detailed discussion of the syntactic and semantic characteristics, we give a brief historical overview.

2. A Short History of Dutch mits

The history of mits helps to appreciate some features of its modern use.Footnote 4 The historical dictionaries of Dutch (ewn, vmnw, mnw and wnt) reveal that conditional mits is related to the modern Dutch noun midden ‘middle’ and the element mid- in several compound words such as midscheeps ‘midships’ (referring to a local ‘middle’ part), and midzomer ‘midsummer’ and middernacht 'midnight’ (bearing on temporal ‘middle’ parts). Participating in the use of an all-Germanic stem, at least from the thirteenth century onwards Dutch dialects knew an adjective mit, mid and an adverb mids, mits with a local or temporal meaning ‘in the middle (of)'. The Middle Dutch adverbial form mids was already used as a preposition with instrumental or causal meanings as well. It is instructive to grasp the logic of a local and temporal preposition having a causal meaning from an example about a king Quintiaen:

  1. (3) Want du best soe in sinen loue / Mits der scoenheit van dinen liue / Dat hi di hebben wille te wive (East Flanders, dated 1290, cited from vmnw, 3130)

    ‘he admires you so much / because of the beauty of your body, / that he wants to have you as a wife’

Starting from a presupposed situation in which king Quintiaen was not yet aware of the beautiful woman, the fact of the beauty of her body and the king's setting eyes on it is the fact ‘in the middle', which leads to a subsequent situation in which he admires the woman so much that he wants to have her as a wife. It is not surprising that the fact ‘in the middle', with its causal role, may also be expressed by a full clause, which is then introduced by mits dat ‘because’ (dat ‘that’ being the most neutral subordinating conjunction), as in quotation 4.

  1. (4)

The “etymologizing” explanation of this quotation reads as follows. Starting from a normal state of affairs of positive prospects for the investment, there was the “middle” situation in which the investment turned out not to yield sufficient profit; this, then, was the reason for selling the voucher. A state of affairs that is temporally “in the middle” between two other states of affairs may thus be endowed with a causal role quite easily.Footnote 5

A relatively small formal change occurred from the 16th century onwards, when the subordinator dat was dropped sometimes and mits itself was left with the role of a subordinating conjunction with causal meaning ('because, as a result of the fact that'). A bigger step was taken when, from the eighteenth century onwards, the conjunction mits occasionally was employed to introduce non-factual states of affairs that expressed a means to be used to achieve some result—in other words as a condition on making the named result become a reality (WNT, vol. 9, 891). What remained the same in the new usage was the temporally “middle” position of the state of affairs expressed in the mits-clause. We need not say that causes and conditions are conceptually linked in a special way over and above the fact that causal and conditional clauses both express a state of affairs that is temporally ordered “in the middle” between two other states of affairs.

In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the conditional use of the conjunction mits gradually became the norm in the Dutch standard language. The mits-construction thus had become a truly different one. In quotation 2, for instance, it is certainly not stated as a fact that an omelette is “well prepared” per se. Rather, the mits-phrase names an adequate preparation as a condition which has to be fulfilled for the dish to be “very tasty.” The prepositional use of mits, which continued to be used in Flemish Dutch, likewise developed the conditional meaning (see quotations 9–10 in the next section). This brings us back to the details of the modern construction.

3. The Construction

3.1. Patterning

Following the custom of the study of conditionals, we use the variable letters p and q in the quotations to identify the different roles of the two parts of mits-constructions. The condition (the protasis, in traditional logical terminology) will be represented as p, while the expression to which the condition is appended (the apodosis) is represented as q. In the corpus, we find three patterns, as indicated in 5 (below): mits p may be in final position, which is by far the most frequent pattern (formula 5a), or it may interrupt q, of which then a part follows the mits-phrase (formula 5b), or it may precede q (formula 5c). Quotation 6 is an example of pattern 5a, which we also encountered in examples 1–2. Quotation 7 exemplifies pattern 5b; quotation 8 does the same for pattern 5c.

  1. (5)

    1. a. q, mits p

    2. b. q first part, mits p, q second part

    3. c. mits p, q

  1. (6)

  1. (7)

  1. (8)

Examples 6–8 also show a further important characteristic of mits-constructions: frequently, p is not a full clause but just a phrasal constituent, in particular some participial, adjectival or adverbial modifier that aligns with a constituent of q. In 6, voor eigen gebruik ‘for personal use’ is an adverbial modifier to the ‘copying’ of part q. The condition p which has to be fulfilled in order for copying to be allowed as it is stated in q, consists of the copying being done specifically for personal use. Similarly, in 7 the adjectival phrase nog leverbaar ‘still in print’ aligns as a secondary predication with alle uitgaven van de Stichting […] ‘all publications of the Society […]’ in part q. A fulfilment of that predication, that is, that the requested publications are still in print, forms a condition on the reality of their immediate availability in the shop. In quotation 8, niet anders vermeld ‘not stated differently’ is slightly different in the fact that is does not align grammatically with a constituent of q. It is a fixed phrase which stipulates that q will be verified unless it is the subject of an explicit exception.

Separate mention has to be made of a further constructional possibility, which is restricted to Flemish Dutch. As mentioned at the end of the last section, Flemish Dutch has retained the older use of mits as a preposition, that is with the part p defined by a noun. That noun normally is a nominalization, as in 9 and 10.

  1. (9)

  1. (10)

The meaning of this construction is not different from the construction with a full or reduced clause as p, thus making the distance to Netherlandic Dutch rather small. Mits goed gedrag ‘on condition of good behaviour’ in 10 with the nominalized form gedrag sets the same strict restriction on an early release becoming real as would be expressed by the corresponding clause mits hij zich goed heeft gedragen ‘on condition that he has been behaving well'.

3.2. Semantics

We now turn to the semantics of the construction. From the examples discussed, it has become clear that the part p names a condition which has to be satisfied for the fulfilment of whatever it is that q states. The condition is a necessary one—it is not a sufficient condition or a necessary-and-sufficient one. The recipe author of quotation 2 will agree immediately that an adequate cooking process is not in fact the only condition for the omelette to emerge ‘very tasty'. He has just picked out a necessary condition in relation to which he cares to instruct his readers. Similarly for quotation 6: apart from the condition that the copying is done for personal use, there are a host of other conditions to be met in order for it to be in fact allowed (as it is made clear on the relevant web page). The part p of a mits-construction constitutes no more than a necessary condition. It comes therefore as no surprise that quotations with multiple mits-clauses are indeed occasionally found. In quotation 11, reproducing a copyrighted work is said to be allowed, provided that only a small part is reproduced and provided that the condition of paying a reasonable fee is met:

  1. (11)

The mits-construction displays a further generalization, which relates to the part q. In all cases, q seems to name something desirable, something evaluated as positive. Of course tastes and opinions on just about everything differ wildly, and we may see this clearly in connection with some of our examples. Not everyone will be happy under all circumstances with the principle that a murderer may be released early, as it is formulated in quotation 10, and this includes in fact the author of the blog. Still, the quotation comprises the acknowledgment that this is a desirable state of affairs according to some, an evaluation that may be a favourite with convicted murderers first of all but is seen to extend to officials of the judicial system and further into society. However, for that desirability to become reality, there is still the condition of good behaviour to be fulfilled in any case. Similarly, in quotation 8 it is stated as q that the contents of the relevant web pages are subject to a so-called Creative Commons License, a recent invention based on the solidarity of creative minds. The applicability of that relatively lenient regime is to be interpreted as a desirable state of affairs, compared to the tight constraints and burdens of commercial copyright. Some more commercially inclined minds might not necessarily agree with that judgment. The author (in this case, an institutional author) only implies the desirability of that fact for some, including, presumably, the founders of the organization. And of course, there is a necessary condition p to be met for the Creative Commons License to be applicable to each of the organization's web pages: the absence of an explicit statement to the contrary.

We can now give a preliminary characterization of the semantic regularities involved in constructions with mits, as in 12.

  1. (12) Semantic import of mits-constructions q, mits p (first version):

    q expresses some specific desirability, for the fulfilment of which p names a strict ('necessary') condition

The question then arises: is this semantic import really due to mits? How about examples with als or indien, two standard conditional conjunctions, both comparable to ‘if'? The minimal sentence pair of examples 13 and 14 gives a clear answer.

  1. (13)

  1. (14)

The sentence with mits ‘provided’ (example 13) seems to be a quote from a devilish mind or at least a very cynical one, who presents the destruction of the world as a good thing. In order for this (perverse) desirability to become true, the world leaders have to stick to their present policies (of stoking the fires of war). For the same sentence with als or indien instead of mits, however, the interpretation need not take this specific direction. Sentence 14 might possibly, like 13, be attributed to a sinister person, but it could just as well stem from a pacifist without any hopes left. This means that constructions with mits are coupled to a special semantics involving the notion of a desirability, as in 12, whereas those with als or indien are not.

The idea that the part q of a mits-construction expresses something desirable is corroborated by the fact that negation is infrequent in that part.Footnote 6 It is, of course, possible to interpret the absence of an undesirable state of affairs as a desirability, in which case a negation is neutralised. That is precisely the configuration in quotation 15.

  1. (15)

Whatever the pros and cons of feudalism, the medieval Frisians are portrayed here as not having such undesirable feelings as strong objections to a feudal ruler, which amounted to a desirable outcome, if only in principle: because they did demand the fulfilment of their conditions for that desirable outcome to become reality.

In a similar way we can interpret a customary saying such as ik heb er geen moeite mee, mits … ‘I have no problem with it in principle, on condition that …', as can be seen from quotation 16.

  1. (16)

When somebody uses my Wi-Fi internet connection, I do not have such an undesirable thing as a problem, the chat participant states, which thus comes down to a desirable situation. In principle, that is, because for the desirability to become true the chat participant stipulates the strict condition that sharing the connection will not cause him or her any trouble.

A pure “no” of denial, however, seems impossible as contents of the part q. The corpus shows no instances of examples like 17.

  1. (17) ??nee [q], mits … [mits p]

    ‘??no [q], provided … [provided p]'

A consequence of the fact that a mits-phrase cannot modify a pure denial, can be seen in the make-up of well-known slogans with a mits-phrase and a tenzij-phrase ('unless') in elliptical form with the contents of the respective conditions left out, combined as in 18.

  1. (18) Liever “ja [q], mits” dan “nee, tenzij”!

    ‘“yes [q], provided” rather than “no, unless”!'

With regard all kinds of social issues, Dutch and Flemish speakers have over the last decades learnt to discuss the choice between the answers ja, mits and nee, tenzij; that is, the choice between ‘in principle yes, but under strict conditions’ and ‘in principle no, unless certain exceptional conditions hold'. For instance, of two alternatives in the domain of energy policy, one could be the continued production of nuclear energy under strict conditions ('ja, mits'), while the other would be to stop investing in nuclear power plants unless other energy sources would cease to be available altogether ('nee, tenzij'). Tenzij ‘unless’ on its own can be combined freely with ja or with nee, but in a combined slogan, tenzij always goes with nee, while mits is coupled to ja, as in 18. The reason must be that coupling mits to nee would be semantically incoherent.

In order to provide for cases like 18, in which q is just ja ‘yes’ and does not explicitly ‘name’ a desirability, we have to revise the preliminary formulation of the semantic import of mits-constructions, which we gave above (12). The generalization as to q is that it implies the existence of some desirability. This formulation will also be necessary for other, more complex cases in which the desirability has to be found interpretively (see section 5). We thus arrive at the revised characterization in 19.

  1. (19) Semantic import of mits-constructions q, mits p (revised version):

    q implies the existence of some specific desirability, for the fulfilment of which p names a strict (“necessary”) condition

4. Desirability as a Descriptive Concept

It might be objected that desirability would seem an implausible concept to be coded in the grammar of a language. However, desiderative and optative verbal morphology as well as optative clause constructions show that the coding of that kind of modification of actions and states of affairs is not uncommon in the languages of the world (Knobloch Reference Knobloch1986:555–556). In direct relation to these phenomena, grammars of many languages devote separate discussion to verbs expressing concepts of desire, hope and the like.Footnote 7 Conditional constructions themselves have also been related to the concept of desirability and its opposite. For instance, Akatsuka (Reference Akatsuka, Athanasiadou and Dirven1997) describes Japanese and Korean counterfactual conditionals in everyday adult discourse to children. In these constructions either two desirable states of affairs or two undesirable ones are connected to each other, resulting in expressions functioning as instructions, promises and permissions or threats and warnings, respectively. Akatsuka (Reference Akatsuka, Kamio and Takami1999) and Akatsuka & Strauss (Reference [Akatsuka] McCawley Akatsuka, Susan, Couper-Kuhlen and Kortmann2000) extend the idea to conditionals more generally and conclude that the meaning of conditional constructions in natural language is not the same as material implication (that is, the logicians’ computation from two independent truth values). This is because of the irreducible causal or epistemological connection that exists between the desirability or undesirability of the events expressed by p and q: their values are interdependent. Our description of the Modern Dutch mits-construction as encompassing an existing desirability q whose fulfilment is conditional on p, would appear to partake of the same semantic space as the analyses by Akatsuka & Strauss.

A notion of desirability has also come up in the description of certain constructions with adjectives. Elaborating on Leech & Svartvik (Reference Leech and Jan1975:102), Leech (Reference Leech1983:147) states that some Modern English degree adverbs, such as fairly and entirely, are restricted to modifying what he calls “evaluatively positive” adjectives, adjectives that are specifically used to commend something. For example, it's fairly warm today expresses that the temperature is moderately pleasant; it is not used in relation to a warmth that goes some way to being oppressive. Cruse (Reference Cruse1986:251) similarly discusses the relevance of “evaluative polarity” in the determination of the linguistic polarity of opposite terms. For Modern Dutch, Klein and Hoeksema (Reference Klein and Jack1994) and Klein (Reference Klein1998) conclude that the degree adverb bijster ‘very’ is virtually restricted to combinations with “evaluatively positive” adjectives, whereas the intensifier bar ‘very' is only combined with “evaluatively negative” adjectives.Footnote 8

Interestingly, Klein and Hoeksema found that in earlier stages of Dutch, bijster used to be more free in its distribution. Its modern status of an intensifier that modifies only evaluatively positive adjectives is said to reflect a process of lexical specialization. This is similar to what seems to have occurred in the case of the Dutch preposition/conjunction mits. In the Middle Dutch period, a mits-phrase could add a means, reason, motive, or cause to expressions of various interpretation, not just to expressions in which the existence of some desirability was implied (see Daalder Reference Daalder2007). In the seventeenth century, however, the usage of mits-phrases to indicate a strict condition on the fulfilment of some desirable state of affairs developed. In nineteenth and twentieth century standard Dutch, mits-constructions have come to be specialized to express such a configuration exclusively.

5. Desirability—For Whom?

If the existence of some desirability is a fixed aspect of the semantics of mits-constructions, determining the identity of the “desiring” party has to be an essential part of the interpretation of any utterance containing a mits-construction. It seems, however, doubtful that the interpretation process will always have an unambiguous outcome. We may review a couple of more complex cases.

The statement in 20, a regulation from the Dutch tax authorities, affirms a certain exemption from taxation, implying that this is a desirability.

  1. (20)

The desirability of the tax exemption from the point of the view of the tax paying care institutions is the most easily accessible assumption for any reader of 20, but of course the residents can themselves also be seen as beneficiaries of the regulation and thus as a further probable locus of the desirability. Furthermore, the legislator, in whose name the tax authorities speak, has judged the tax exemption to be justified and therefore can assumed to find it desirable. Thus, there does not seem to be one single answer to the question as to the ‘interested parties’ for whom the desirability exists.

In literary texts, desires may be attributed to fictional characters. This is the case in quotation 21, taken from a text by the melancholic Dutch humorist writer Simon Carmiggelt. The mits-construction here, following en ‘and', is the second coordinate part of a subordinate clause that explains the contents of the archive clerk's “nebulous” theory in words that could be his own.

  1. (21)

In 21, the part q is the statement that the Bible comprises a series of atheist mottos. The character's mits-construction leads the reader to understand that this is more than just neutral knowledge. Rather, the unmasking of the Bible constitutes a desirability for him: after all, this knowledge, about which other people do not have the faintest idea, is his hidden pride. The character is well aware that the desirable event might not soon become reality, because there is his vague condition p to fulfil: the Bible has first to be deciphered ‘properly'. To ask the question about the extent to which the author (when writing) and the readers (when reading) share the desire of the character would lead us into very deep waters. From a linguistic point of view, no general answer seems possible in such a case.

A further example of complex desirability ascription is provided by the following quotation from a newspaper contemplating the contents of a proposed new Rent Act, which will take no effect because of an expected change of government:

  1. (22)

In 22, a desirability is implied which in a situation that is said to be almost certainly nonreal would have existed for (unspecified) landlords. They would have been able to ask the rent they would like, conditional upon a sufficient regional building activity. The impression for the reader is that the Rent Act in question had itself come to embody at least some of the desirability judgments of the landlords. An involvement of the journalist describing the complex of interests is not clear in this case.

The upshot of our brief investigation of the locus of the desire implied by a mits-construction is that there seem to be few general constraints. The speaker may himself or herself be the one for whom the desirability implied in q exists. But a speaker may as well give voice to interests and desires of an addressee or one or more third parties, or indeed any combination of speaker, addressee and third parties. It may be expected that different text and discourse genres will show different quantitative use of those possibilities. The parties with a clear interest in relation to q—the convicted murderers (in quotation 10), the archive clerk (quotation 21) or the landlords (quotation 22)—are also seen as feeling motivated to effect a fulfilment of condition p, or to assess whether p applies. Parties who are concerned less immediately with the advantages implied in q may have an interest in the enforcement of p from their own perspective and are then understood to agree to q as a concession. For instance, in quotation 10, society has an interest in a murderer's subsequent good behaviour and may therefore make the conditional offer of an early release. In all cases it is the speaker who, with his use of a mits-construction, chooses to give expression to a configuration of the kind summarized in generalization 19.

6. Conclusion

Our analysis of the Modern Dutch conditional construction with the special conjunction mits ‘provided that’ (q, mits p) has resulted in a novel generalization as to its semantics. Central in this generalization is the notion of desirability: the member q implies the existence of some specific desirability. The fulfilment of this desirability is said to be conditional upon p. In the situated interpretation of each expression with the mits-construction, the locus of the desire has to be determined: speaker, addressee, third parties or a combination of one or more of those. The desiring parties in relation to q have a derived interest in the fulfilment of the condition p; other parties may have an interest in the enforcement of p from another perspective and are then understood to agree to q as a concession.

Far from being definable within the logical domain of truth functions, the Dutch conditional mits-construction is thus found to make knowledge available about the interests and desires of communicators and others, specifically about a balance of interests of several concerned parties. It is not to be expected that the standard conditional constructions als and indien can be characterized in a similar way. Still, it would seem worthwhile scrutinizing those constructions along the lines of the analysis of the mits-construction presented here.

Footnotes

* I am grateful for the perspicuous remarks and suggestions of two anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this article.

1 Some recent studies are Declerck & Reed Reference Declerck and Susan2001 and Dancygier & Sweetser Reference Dancygier and Eve2005.

2 Roughly equivalent Dutch expressions are als … tenminste, als … maar, op voorwaarde dat. The English translations of mits are provided/providing/ supposing/on condition/on the understanding (that), so long as, only if (Quirk et al. Reference Quirk, Sidney, Geoffrey and Jan1985:1089, 1093, 1103). As German equivalents may be cited (Durrell Reference Durrell1996:400–401): unter der Bedingung/Voraussetzung dass, vorausgesetzt dass with subordinate clause as well as wenn nur, vorausgesetzt with main clause; wofern and sofern are sometimes also mentioned.

3 Compare Den Hertog Reference Den Hertog and Hulshof1973, vol. 2:107, 110; Rijpma-Schuringa Reference Rijpma, Frans Gerhard and van Bakel1969:182, 218; ANS 1997:10.3.8.

4 A condensed summary can be found in Van Es Reference Van Es1953:83 and Van Es & Van Caspel Reference Van Es and Paulus1975:140. See also Daalder Reference Daalder2007.

5 In Traugott's (Reference Traugott and John1985:292) survey of the historical sources of conditional markers, Dutch mits can thus be ranged under the fifth category, which encompasses several kinds of temporal expressions. No temporal indications of “middle” periods are cited here, however, which makes Dutch conditional mits into something of an exception.

6 In the condition part p, negation may be used freely. See quotations 8, 15, 16, and 20.

7 For Dutch, see ANS 1997:18.5.4.16–18.

8 To complicate things, bijster and the evaluatively positive adjective together then function as a negative polarity expression, i.e. they demand a context with a special, logically negative character: zij is niet bijster onder de indruk ‘she is not very impressed'. With degree adverbs such as bar that rather take evaluatively negative adjectives, the situation is a mirror image. Together with an evaluatively negative adjective, bar forms a combination that expressly does not fit in a logically negative context: hij is bar teleurgesteld ‘he is very disappointed'; *hij is niet bar teleurgesteld ‘he is not very disappointed'.

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