The prepositional phrase in de richting vanin the direction of in (58b) has a similar function to that of naarto in (58a). We will therefore call sequences like these phrasal prepositions. Occasionally, phrasal prepositions tend to be reduced; the (originally nominal) element richtingdirection in (58c) performs the same function as the complex phrase in (58b); cf. Loonen (2003). It is clear that this kind of reduction results in an extension of the class of prepositions, which is why we cannot say that prepositions constitute a completely closed class category.

The reduction of phrasal prepositions is not syntactically innocuous, since the phrasal and the reduced phrasal prepositions can impose different selection restrictions on their complement. For example, the phrasal preposition in (59a) takes a noun phrase obligatorily introduced by an article, while the reduced phrasal preposition in (59b) seems to prefer a bare noun phrase.

In (60) we see that the reduction requires various other modifications of the nominal complement: while (60a) takes two conjoined noun phrases as its complement, the complement in (60b) is juxtaposed.

Many phrasal prepositions are historical relics. The preposition te in the examples in (61), for example, is fused with a case-marked article resulting in the forms ter and ten, whereas overt case marking of the article is usually not possible in contemporary Dutch. Another reason for assuming that these phrasal prepositions are relics is that the “nominal part” is sometimes obsolete.

In (62) examples are given of phrasal prepositions that are semantically transparent from a synchronic point of view. However, these phrasal prepositions are syntactically special in that the “nominal parts” in these expressions are often not preceded by a determiner.

If we rely on orthographic conventions, the examples in (63) seem to be phrasal prepositions reanalyzed as single words. The case-marked pronoun dien, which seems to have originated as the complement of the prepositional parts aangaande and tengevolge in (63c&d), seems to have been reanalyzed as part of the complex forms, which the dictionaries give as adverbs. The complex forms in (63a&b) function as regular prepositions, but can also be combined with case-marked pronouns, resulting in the adverbial forms desniettegenstaandenevertheless and dienovereenkomstigaccordingly. Given the use of these case-marked pronouns, it is not surprising that the forms in (63) all belong to the formal register.

The hallmark of phrasal prepositions seems to be that their “nominal part” usually resists modification, e.g. by an attributive adjective; this suggests that the phrasal prepositions in (62), although semantically transparent to the contemporary speaker, are lexicalized. An exception to this generalization is onder leiding van in (62l): the absence of a determiner in (64a) suggests that we are dealing with a phrasal preposition, but nevertheless many cases with the attributive adjective bezielendinspiring can be found on the internet. This was overlooked in the previous edition of this work, where the use of the modifier was marked as unacceptable on the basis of our own intuition (hence the present use of the percentage sign). In fact, the frequency of the two formations in (64) turned out to be more or less the same in our Google search (March 15, 2023), with only a small margin in favor of the (b)-example. This shows that the line between phrasal prepositions and run-of-the-mill PPs is not always easy to draw.

There are also other syntactic properties that seem to contradict the claim that phrasal prepositions are fully lexicalized. For example, the “nominal” part of these phrasal prepositions is usually followed by a preposition and the nominal complement of the phrasal preposition. The latter two, italicized in the (a)-example in (65), seem to form a regular PP in view of the fact that they can undergo R-pronominalization; this is shown in the primed examples in (65). -

The primed examples thus convincingly show that we are not dealing with lexical units but with syntactically structured constituents that can undergo regular syntactic processes.

This chapter will mainly discuss adpositions that are simple (at least from a synchronic point of view). It should be noted, however, that, in addition to these simple adpositions, Dutch has a large number of morphologically complex prepositions, which are mainly spatial in nature. An example is bovenopon top of in (66). When used as prepositions, compounds like these can easily be confused with cases like (66b&c): example (66b) involves the modification of the preposition voor by the adverb vlakright and example (66c) is a case in which the preposition voorfor takes a PP-complement.

The cases in (67) show that the three constructions can be easily distinguished by looking at how they behave under R-pronominalization: the compound bovenop in (67a) must follow the R-word daar. If we are dealing with modification, as in in (67b), the R-word daar can precede either the preposition or the modifier. If we are dealing with complementation, as in (67c), the R-word must follow the preposition that selects the PP-complement. -

This R-pronominalization test will be used in Chapter 33 on complementation and Chapter 34 on modification as a test to determine the status of prepositional phrases in unclear cases.