The pragmatic and rhetorical function of perfect doubling in the work of D. V. Coornhert

The Early Modern Dutch writer D. V. Coornhert (1522–1590) was an influential figure in the key religious and linguistic developments of his times. Bringing together these two facets and combining both a linguistic (pragmatics/discourse studies and semantics) and a literary studies (rhetoric) approach, this intra-author variation study examines Coornhert’s use of have-doubling constructions (e.g., have had written) alongside simple perfects (e.g., have written). At the macro-level, we show that have-doubling was restricted to Coornhert’s argumentative and predominantly moral – theological prose... Mehr ...