Lexical preferences in Dutch verbal cluster ordering

This study discusses lexical preferences as a factor affecting the word order variation in Dutch verbal clusters. There are two grammatical word orders for Dutch two-verb clusters, with no clear meaning difference. Using the method of collostructional analysis, I find significant associations between specific verbs and word orders, and argue that these associations must be encoded in the lexicon as lexical preferences. In my data, the word orders also show some semantic associations, indicating that there might be a meaning difference after all. Based on these findings, I conclude that both word orders are stored in the lexicon as constructions.