Many languages have focus particles which link up with the minimal endpoint of a pragmatic scale in negative contexts (cf. Fauconnier 1975, Zwarts 1981, Rooth 1985, König 1991, Rullmann and Hoeksema 1997), cf. e.g. the italicized expressions in the following examples:

1. She did not so much as lift a finger. (English)
2. Keiner hat auch nur einen Finger gekrümmt. (German)
3. Niemand heeft ook maar een vinger uitgestoken. (Dutch)

Dutch in particular has a rich set of expressions which are sometimes or often used in this way:

4.    

maar	'but'	ook maar
zelfs	'even'	zelfs maar
ook	'also'	ook slechts
slechts	'just'	ook nog maar
nog	'yet'	zelfs ook maar

Besides the simple adverbs in the left-hand column, there are also a number of adverbial clusters, some of which are listed in the right-hand column, made up of the same elements that figure in the left-hand column. The complex clusters all contain one of the pejorative adverbs maar (cf. Foolen 1993) and slechts, which help to pin-point the minimal-endpoint character of these clusters. Whereas the simple forms are to be found in far more contexts than just the negative ones, the complex forms in (4) primarily occur in negative contexts (in the wider sense of Van der Wouden 1997).

The distributional differences among the combinations ook maar and zelfs maar were studied in Vandeweghe (1981) and Rullmann and Hoeksema (1997). These two adverbials are nowadays the most common among the above list in their use as negated focus particles. The adverbial cluster ook slechts is now obsolete but had some currency in the 19^th and early 20^th century. Medieval and 17^th century Dutch did not employ the adverbial clusters, but only the simple adverbs in the left-hand column of (4). The second half of the 18^th century saw the emergence of the clusters, which became dominant toward the latter half of the 19^th century. The use of the simple adverbs in negated positions declined accordingly. These developments will be demonstrated on the basis of a fairly large collection of examples from 1600 to 2000 (about 6000 occurrences altogether). In addition, the changing distributional patterns of the various focus adverbs in negative contexts are detailed.

The emergence of specialized clusters of focus particles is a very striking phenomenon in Dutch, and has counterparts in other domains of particle usage (e.g. temporal and modal particles, cf. Van der Wouden 2000). An important question is what drives this change. I will suggest that the change is due to a general trend toward greater lexical specialization in the adverbial part of the lexicon, a trend which can also be noted in other languages (Swan 1988 notes a strong increase among sentence adverbs throughout the history of English, in Dutch the class of degree adverbs has increased significantly since the Middle Ages). This trend toward ever greater special-ization, together with the slow and haphazard way in which new focus adverbs arise, made it preferable to coin new focus adverbials on the basis of existing ones, by combining them into clusters.

References

Fauconnier, Gilles

1975 ‘Polarity and the Scale Principle,’ CLS 11, Chicago, 188-199.

Foolen, Ad

1993 De betekenis van partikels. Dissertation, Catholic University of Nijmegen.

König, Ekkehard

1991 The Meaning of Focus Particles. Routledge, London.

Rooth, Mats

1985 Association with Focus. Dissertation, University of Massachusetts.

Rullmann, Hotze and Jack Hoeksema

1997 Ook maar en zelfs maar: een corpusstudie.’ In: Nederlandse Taalkunde, 2-4, 281-317.

Swan, Toril

1988 ‘The development of sentence adverbs in English’, Studia Linguistica 42, 1-15.

Vandeweghe, Willy

1981 ‘Ook maar X’, Studia Germanica Gandensia 21, 15-56.

Wouden, Ton van der

1997 Negative Contexts. Routledge, London.

2000 ‘Collocationeel gedrag bij partikels’, lecture Tabudag, U of Groningen.

Zwarts, Frans

1981 ‘Negatief Polaire Uitdrukkingen 1,’ GLOT 4-1, 35-132.