Dutch modal particles maar and wel and their

English equivalents in different genres*

Sofie Niemegeers

This paper presents the results of a study on the use of the Dutch modal particles
(MPs) maar and wel and their translation equivalents in a translation corpus
containing both Dutch-English (DU-EN) and English-Dutch (EN-DU) texts. Al-
though a number of linguistic studies has dealt with modal particles, an in-depth
translation approach is still missing. Our first aim is to detemine frequency of
use from the corpus; the results point to some remarkable differences in the
behavior of the MPs maar and wel in DU-EN and EN-DU target texts and in
fiction versus non-fiction. These results can be evaluated against the background
of an established hypothesis of translation behavior, the Unique Items Hypoth-
esis (Tirkkonen-Condit 2004), which is relevant in the context of the translation
of Dutch MPs into English. The second aim is to present an in-depth analysis of
the translation of the MP wel in a number of contexts in order to determine: 1)
whether the English equivalents confirm our intuition regarding the category-
internal meaning variations of MP wel depending on its context of use (these
meaning variations have not been sufficiently dealt with in the literature on wel;
and 2) whether there are differences in the use of the English equivalents of MP
wel in the DU-EN and EN-DU subcorpora.

Keywords: modal particles, unique items hypothesis, parallel corpus, Dutch

modal particle wel, translation study

1. Introduction

There is a striking difference between Dutch and English in their use of modal
particles (MPs). According to some (Aijmer 2002), while English does have MPs,
such as just or now in particular uses, they occur with significantly less frequency
than do MPs in Dutch texts. The first aim of this study is to present the differences
in the use of MPs in original Dutch (OD) texts as compared to translated Dutch

Translation and Interpreting Studies 4:1 (2009), 47–66. doi 10.1075/tis.4.1.03nie

issn 1932–2798 / e-issn 1876–2700 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
48 Sofie Niemegeers

(TD) texts. Since English source texts contain fewer MPs, TD would be expected
to contain fewer MPs than OD. The observed frequencies will be related to the
Unique Items Hypothesis, put forward by Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit (2004).
The second aim of this study is to present an in-depth analysis of the meaning
of MP wel in certain contexts of use (i.e., in different verbal contexts). We perform
a contrastive analysis, comparing the various uses of MP wel with their English
equivalents in order to obtain additional information on the meaning(s) of this lin-
guistic item. There is some literature on MP wel, but the various accounts describe
its meaning from a purely monolinguistic point of view; moreover, researchers dif-
fer in the way they divide this MP into meaning categories (e.g., category-internal
classifications or categories based on context of use).
The first part of this study presents a description of the category of MPs, with
definitions and functional descriptions from the extensive literature in the field. The
second part offers a description of our data and the methodology used. The third
part contains our analysis of frequencies from the corpus in the form of a compari-
son of the use of MPs maar and wel in the DU-EN and EN-DU subcorpora and in
fiction and non-fiction. The fourth part contains the results of our analysis of the
use of MP wel (in some strictly defined contexts) in the translation corpus.

2. The category of MPs in dutch and english: A translation approach

In Dutch, MPs, such as wel, toch, maar, eens, even, nu/nou, are used extensively,
especially in spoken language. While English is said to have MPs (Aijmer 2002),
they are used with significantly less frequency in English than in Dutch. It is there-
fore particularly interesting to see how they are treated in translations from Dutch
into English and from English into Dutch. The examples below give an idea of the
nature of these linguistic items and of some possible translation choices (some of
these will be discussed in more detail in Section 6).
(1) Kom maar binnen. (MP maar)
[Come MAAR in.]
‘Please come in’
(2) Het is wel leuk. (MP wel)
[It is WEL nice.]
‘It was all right’
(3) Je zult het wel hebben gemerkt, ik voel me gewoon niet goed. (MP wel)
[You will WEL have noticed, I just don’t feel well.]
‘as you must have noticed, I’m not very well’
 Dutch modal particles maar and wel 49

Research has defined the category of MPs in various ways. The different labels
given to this linguistic category are as numerous as the definitions. Terms such
as “modal particles,” “pragmatic particles,” “modal markers,” “pragmatic mark-
ers,” “discourse particles,” and “discourse markers” are used by different authors
to denote similar or partly overlapping linguistic categories. Various authors have
drawn attention to this confusing situation (Foolen 1996; Hansen 1998; Aijmer
2002; Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen 2004; Vandenbergen and Aijmer 2006).
For the sake of brevity, I will provide a short description of what is meant by the
category of MPs in the present article.
In the extensive literature on MPs (Abraham 1984; Van der Auwera 1984; Do-
herty 1987; Abraham 1991; Foolen 1993), several authors have tried to define this
linguistic category. In my view, it is best defined using a combination of formal
(prosodic and syntactic) and functional characteristics, some of which are shared
by other linguistic categories, such as interjections or focus particles, while oth-
ers distinguish them from these related categories. Formal characteristics of MPs
include their position in the middle field (the position between the two verb poles
in a Dutch sentence), their inability to receive stress (Elffers 1997), the fact that
they tend to form clusters, and that the order of the MPs within these clusters is
fixed (De Vriendt and Vandeweghe et al. 1991; Thurmair 1991). There appears
to be unanimity among the different authors regarding these formal character-
istics. The description of the functional characteristics, on the other hand, is not
so straightforward. It is possible, nonetheless, to deduce one common aspect in
these different functional descriptions. All agree on the MPs functioning at the
non-propositional level of the utterance (Thurmair 1991), where MPs signal in-
terpersonal relations, that is, relations between speaker and hearer(s) in the com-
municational context. What they signal more concretely, however, is not clear:
the attitude of the speaker towards the propositional content (Nehls 1989), the
epistemic attitude of the speaker (Doherty 1987; Zimmermann 2007), the modifi-
cation/specification of the illocution (Jacobs 1991; Foolen 1993; Burkhardt 1994;
Burkhardt 1995; Waltereit 2001;) or the expression of politeness (Vismans 1994;
Brown and Levinson 1996).
In sentence 1 (above), MP maar turns the demand into a more polite invita-
tion. It does not add to the propositional content of the utterance but signals an
interpersonal relation. The examples with wel (2 and 3) do not appear to involve
politeness at all. In sentence 2, wel adds the attitude of the speaker to the propo-
sitional content in the form of a modification (a downtoning) of the evaluation
made by the speaker. In sentence 3, wel seems to be part of the epistemic expres-
sion wel zullen in Dutch, which expresses the speaker’s epistemic evaluation of the
propositional content.
50 Sofie Niemegeers

3. Data: A parallel corpus

Since there is no Dutch-English parallel translation corpus available, a new cor-

pus had to be composed for this research project. Because this project concerns
the behavior of MPs and the differences in their behavior between OD and TD,
only text types expected to contain a sufficient number of MPs were included. As
previous research (Rudolph 1991, Van der Wouden 2002) has shown, MPs appear
most frequently in conversations, plays, novels, speeches and newspaper articles.
In view of the availability of texts in translation, the corpus ultimately contains
plays (complete texts) and novels (a part of each text) to represent fiction, and
newspaper articles and political speeches to represent non-fiction.
The results of the study presented here are based on the data in this corpus.
Table 1 below shows the content of this corpus, with the number of words in-
cluded (in original and translated language). Unfortunately, non-fiction is under-
represented in the corpus, especially in the Dutch-English translation direction.
This is due to the fact that newspaper articles are not available in the translation
direction Dutch-English.
The text types included in fiction are as balanced as possible with respect to
the gender and geographical background of the authors. There are male and female
authors from Belgium and the Netherlands for the DU-EN subcorpus and from
the UK, Ireland and the USA for the EN-DU subcorpus. As for non-fiction, we
could not afford to be picky. We basically used all the material we could obtain. In
most cases, it was not even possible to determine the identity of the translator. We
hope in the future to extend the non-fiction part of the corpus with more political
speeches in order to reduce the problem of representativity as much as possible.

Table 1. The number of words in the corpus

Translation direction DU>EN EN>DU
Total no. of words 800,749 969,706
Subcorpus fiction 695,700 617,216
Subcorpus non-fiction 105,049 352,490

4. Methodology: Coding the MP wel in the corpus

4.1 Cross-categorical classification: Filtering the MP uses of wel

In the parallel corpus, the sentences were aligned at sentence level using the
Winalign software tool.1 We used Kwalitan (Peters 2004) to code the instances
of MP wel in the corpus for verbal context and for type of English equivalent in
order to locate regularities and differences in the translation process. First, all the
 Dutch modal particles maar and wel 51

MP uses of wel had to be separated from the propositional uses of wel. The propo-
sitional uses modify the propositional content of the sentence; they signal how
the propositional content of the sentence is to be interpreted in terms of possible
alternatives in the referential domain.
One propositional use of wel is its use in sentences where something from
the previous context is being contradicted, labeled ‘contrastive wel’ (CT wel). For
example, in sentences such as:
(4) Je hebt helemaal geen houten been. Ik heb wel een houten been. (CT wel)
[You have at all no wooden leg. I have WEL a wooden leg.]
‘You don’t have a wooden leg. I do have a wooden leg.’

Another propositional use of wel is as a focus particle (labeled “FP wel”), where
wel modifies a part of the propositional content by relating it to alternative values
in the referential domain. The grammatical category, which is called a “focus par-
ticle” in Dutch grammars (Haeseryn and Romijn et al. 1997), can be related to the
category of additive focusing subjuncts in English (Quirk and Greenbaum et al.
1997). Wel is used as an additive focus particle (~ additive focusing subjunct), as
in the sentence:
(5) Ik heb wel 20 huizen. (FP wel)
[I have Wel 20 houses.]
‘I have no less than 20 houses.’

Here wel indicates that the number (20 houses) can be seen as high in relation to
the possible alternatives (the number of houses a person normally owns in our
conception of the world).
The discourse particle use of wel (“DP wel”) is another pragmatic use of wel (~
MP use is also pragmatic). For example:
(6) wel, kom jij dan hier. (DP wel)
[WEL, come you then here.]
Well, you come out, then.

In the DP use, however, wel relates the propositional content to the discourse situ-
ation. The function of discourse markers (DMs) is to indicate coherence relations
within the discourse, signaling a relationship between the discourse segment that
hosts the DM and the preceding discourse segment (Fraser 2007). Modal markers
(MMs), on the other hand, have a function that is much more interpersonally ori-
ented, conveying the speaker’s attitude toward the propositional content or toward
the hearer(s).
52 Sofie Niemegeers

4.2 Category-internal classification: Coding the contexts of MP wel

An important characteristic of an MP is its context dependency: its meaning de-

pends on the (verbal) context in which it occurs. This can be illustrated by means
of MP wel. Although MPs have been the subject of many papers in the past, the
literature on the meaning of individual MPs, such as wel, is fairly limited (Abra-
ham 1984; Westheide 1985; and Hogeweg 2005). Because of the similarities in the
meaning of German wohl and Dutch wel, I have also taken into account some of the
literature on wohl, such as Zimmermann 2007 and Asbach-Schnitker 1977. These
different accounts describe the meaning of wel/wohl in different contexts, but they
differ in the way they subdivide the contexts in order to do this. I will try to show
that it is important to take into account the verbal context on a more detailed level,
rather than simply distinguishing the speech act type or the sentence type.
There seem to be two types of classifications in the literature on wel, each with
its own advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, there are the classifica-
tions of Zimmermann and Asbach-Schnitker, and on the other, the classifications
of Abraham, Westheide and Hogeweg. The first classification of wohl (Zimmer-
mann and Asbach-Schnitker) is based on its occurrence in a specific sentence type
or speech act type. Zimmermann distinguishes between wohl in declarative sen-
tences and wohl in questions. Asbach-Schnitker distinguishes between wohl in as-
sertive contexts, in commissive contexts, and in questions and orders. These seem
to be very reasonable criteria for such a category-internal classification since MPs
are said to function on the illocutionary level. However, for practical application,
what is lacking in this classification is a subdivision into more granular, detailed
contexts of use. The second type of classification (of Abraham, Westheide and Ho-
geweg) does distinguish more and very specific contexts for the use of wel. How-
ever, there are no objective criteria described for distinguishing these contexts.
The classification seems to have been done on a fairly intuitive basis, based on
the author’s interpretation of the meaning of wel in different contexts of use. For
example, Hogeweg distinguishes a category “wel surprise,” based on the argument
that wel in certain contexts of use expresses surprise. She groups all the uses of wel
that are found in a context in which the opposite of the sentence containing wel is
plausible or normal (Hogeweg 2005). For instance in sentences such as:
(7) Misschien draagt hij wel een jurk.
[Perhaps wears he WEL a dress.]
‘Maybe he wears a dress.’ (Hogeweg 2005: 39)
(8) Je lijkt wel een bejaarde.
[You seem WEL an elderly person.]
‘You look like an elderly person.’ (Hogeweg 2005: 40)
 Dutch modal particles maar and wel 53

Abraham does the same, distinguishing, for example, “wel advice,” “wel in ques-
tions of internal monologue,” etc., based on his own interpretation of the meaning
of wel in these contexts. However, as the meaning of an MP is very elusive and it
is far from clear whether meaning aspects such as surprise or advice are part of
the MP itself or of the context, it is advisable to avoid constructing a classification
on an intuitive, interpretative basis. Nevertheless, the meaning descriptions pro-
posed by the authors are valuable for the present analysis as they indicate certain
meaning aspects of (the context of) wel, which should be taken into account in the
present analysis.
In our coding (and grouping) of the instances of MP wel, we decided to take
into account all the exact verbal contexts and then try to determine whether there
are any functional (meaning) differences depending on these various contexts. Be-
low are the contexts of wel that have been distinguished in the corpus:
(9) Je voelt je toch wel goed, he? (wel in a suggestive question)
[You feel TOCH WEL fine, don’t you?]
‘You do feel all right, don’t you?’
(10) Wie denken jullie wel dat jullie zijn? (wel in a rhetorical question)
[Who think you WEL that you are?]
‘Just who do you think you are?’
(11) Besef je dat wel? (wel yes/no question)
[Realize you that WEL?]
‘Do you actually realise that?’
(12) Denkt u er wel aan de hond te voeren? (wel directive question)
[Remember you WEL the dog to feed?]
‘Please don’t forget to feed the dog.’
(13) Je mag wel eens naar de kapper gaan. (wel directive mogen)
[You can WEL EENS to the hairdresser go.]
‘You should go to the hairdresser.’
(14) Je moet wel luísteren. (wel directive moeten)
[You have to WEL listen.]
‘You really have to listen.’
(15) Ik ga wel naar de kapper. (wel commissive)
[I go WEL to the hairdresser.]
‘I will go to the hairdresser’
(16) Ik vind hem wel leuk. (wel in evaluative context)
[I like him WEL.]
‘I rather like him.’
54 Sofie Niemegeers

(17) Je zult het wel gemerkt hebben, ik voel me niet goed. (wel + epistemic zullen)
[You will WEL have noticed it, I feel not well.]
‘As you must have noticed, I’m not very well.’
(18) Hij komt wel naar huis. (wel with future)
[He comes WEL home.]
‘He will come home, I’m sure.’
(19) Als je ‘t kon ruiken moet je er wel tamelijk dichtbij
geweest zijn. (wel + moeten (must) evidential)
[If you could smell it you had to WEL pretty close
have been.]
‘You must’ve got pretty close if you could smell it.’
(20) Dat kan ik wel aan, denk ik. (wel + epistemic tag)
[That can take I WEL, I think.]
‘I think I can do this.’
(21) Ik denk wel dat ik het aankan. (wel + epistemic mental state predicate)
[I think WEL I can do this.]
‘I think I can do this.’
(22) Ze gingen wel eens stappen samen. (wel + adverbial of time eens)
[They went out WEL EENS together.]
‘They went out together sometimes.’

The next step is to determine which of these uses are related to each other and
which differ with respect to their function/meaning. We did this on the basis of
the English equivalents (see Section 6 for an illustration), which can give further
insight into the meaning of MP wel in these different contexts.
It is not our intention to discuss all of these contexts in detail in this article. In-
stead, I selected a few of these contexts (see Section 6), which have not previously
been discussed in the literature on wel/wohl, to see whether a detailed analysis of
these contexts and their English equivalents would reveal any functional differenc-
es. This would indicate that it is important to take the verbal context into account
in greater detail (than has been done so far in the literature on wel) before deciding
on a category-internal functional/meaning description of a given MP.
 Dutch modal particles maar and wel 55

5. Analysis of the occurrence of MPs maar and wel in the corpus: OD vs.
TD and fiction vs. non-fiction

5.1 MPs maar and wel in OD vs. TD

This section presents the frequencies from the corpus and their evaluation against
the background of Tirkkonen-Condit’s Unique Items Hypothesis. According to
this hypothesis:
Every language has linguistic elements that are unique in the sense that they lack
straightforward linguistic counterparts in other languages. These elements may be
lexical, phrasal, syntactic or textual, and they need not be in any sense untranslat-
able; they are simply not similarly manifested (e.g. lexicalised) in other languages.
Since they are not similarly manifested in the source language, it is to be expected
that they do not readily suggest themselves as translation equivalents, as there is
no obvious linguistic stimulus for them in the source text. Thus it might in fact
be a universal tendency in translations to manifest smaller proportions of such
language forms and functions which do not have similarly manifested linguistic
counterparts in the source language. In other words, linguistic elements that are
‘unique’ in this sense would have lower frequencies in translated texts than in
originally produced texts. (Tirkkonen-Condit 2004: 177–178)

Following this general translation hypothesis, our hypothesis with respect to MPs
in translation from Dutch into English (and vice versa) is that MPs could be ex-
pected to be used less often in TD as compared to OD (due to the lower number of
MPs in original English (OE) than in OD). But the results show something com-
pletely different. Tables 2 and 3 present the frequencies of MPs maar and wel in the
two translation directions, in fiction (Table 2) and in non-fiction (Table 3).
At first glance, both MP maar and MP wel seem to occur much more fre-
quently in TD as compared to OD. A chi square test to determine the significance
of the difference in the two translation directions with respect to MP use shows
that TD contains significantly more MPs maar and wel as compared to OD. MP
wel used in non-fiction (Europarl) is an exception to this trend; there it is used
Table 2. Frequency of MPs maar and wel in the two translation directions (fiction)
EN>DU DU>EN
MPs in TD MPs in OD
Total no. of words (Dutch 308,737 347,850
language only)
Total no. of MP maar 546 402
MP maar/10,000 words 18 12
Total no. of MP wel 718 468
MP wel/10,000 words 23 13
56 Sofie Niemegeers

Table 3. Frequency of MPs maar and wel in the two translation directions (non-fiction)
EN>DU DU>EN
MPs in TD MPs in OD
Newspaper articles Europarl Europarl
Total no. of words 127,032 49,213 52,525
(original language only)
Total no. of MP maar 42 14 0
MP maar/10,000 words 3 3 0
Total no. of MP wel 66 7 33
MP wel/10,000 words 5 2 7

with significantly greater frequency in OD as compared to TD. But there may be

too little material in this part of the corpus to draw a valid conclusion.
A possible explanation for the high number of MPs in TD as compared to OD
could be that translators make extensive use of characteristic features of the target
language in order to make the translated language sound as “natural” as possible,
which calls to mind “the law of growing standardization in translation,” as forum-
lated by Gideon Toury:
In translation, textual relations obtaining in the original are often modified, some-
times to the point of being totally ignored, in favour of [more] habitual options
offered by a target repertoire. (Toury 1995: 268)

English tends to use grammatical means other than MPs for the expression of
interpersonal meaning (see examples in Table 6). In Dutch, other grammati-
cal means can also be used, but MPs are more typical for Dutch (as compared to
English). It could be the case that the translator who translates from English into
Dutch will use proportionally more MPs compared to the use of alternative means
in order to sound “as Dutch as possible.”

5.2 MPs maar and wel in fiction vs. non-fiction

If we compare Tables 3 (fiction) and 4 (non-fiction), we see that MPs maar and
wel occur much more frequently in fiction as compared with non-fiction. In fic-
tion, MP maar has a frequency of 18 (in TD) and 12 (in OD) per 10,000 words,
while the frequency of MP wel is 23 (in TD) and 13 (in OD) per 10,000 words. In
non-fiction, MP maar has a frequency of only 3 (in TD) and 0 (in OD) per 10,000
words, while MP wel has a frequency of 3 (in TD) and 7 (in OD) per 10,000 words.
For newspaper articles, which purport to be objective news reports, the relative
low frequency of MPs is not surprising insofar as MPs express the subjectivity of
the speaker. MPs in political speech may also turn the argument into a less con-
vincing one by indicating the subjective point of view of the speaker rather than
 Dutch modal particles maar and wel 57

stressing the importance of this point of view for the community. The frequency of
MP wel in political speech in TD is much lower than in OD, but the total number
of words in the Europarl part of the corpus may be too low to support any valid
conclusions.

6. Analysis of the occurrence of some uses of MP wel in the corpus

In dealing with the corpus examples containing MP wel, we felt there was a func-
tional difference in at least two particular verbal contexts of wel (labeled “MP
wel 1” and “MP wel 2”; see description below), which has not been distinguished
so far in the literature on wel. Therefore, we analyzed these specific contexts of wel
in our translation corpus to see whether the English equivalents would highlight
this difference in meaning. As these two types of context were part of an assertive
speech act, both occurring in declarative sentences, this would indicate that a divi-
sion of contexts according to speech act or sentence type (as in the classification
of Zimmerman or Asbach-Schnitker) is not sufficient in dealing with the different
meaning aspects of MP wel.

6.1 MP wel 1 and MP wel 2: A description of the contexts

“MP wel 1” is the label given to those uses of wel in an epistemic modal context
with epistemic (zou) kunnen (could/can) or with epistemic zullen (will). Table 4
provides examples of sentences with “wel 1.”
“MP wel 2” is the label given to those uses of wel in an evaluative context,
where the speaker gives his evaluation of (a part of) the propositional content not
in terms of his assessment of the truth (epistemic evaluation) but in terms of his
appreciation of something. Table 5 gives an overview of the verbal contexts, illus-
trated with examples.

Table 4. MP wel1: verbal contexts

Contexts Examples
wel + zullen (will) in epistemic modal Hij zal nu wel al    thuis   zijn
sense He will now WEL already at home be
‘He ’ll probably be at home already’
Zou wel kunnen Iemand zou hem wel es dwars kunnen zitten
Somebody could him WEL ES thwart
‘Somebody’s liable to step on his foot.’
Wel kunnen in epistemic modal sense Ik kan ook wel acht geweest zijn.
I can also WEL eight have   been.
‘Maybe I was eight’
58 Sofie Niemegeers

Table 5. MP wel 2: verbal contexts

Contexts Examples
Wel in the context of evaluative predicates and/or verbs Ik vind het wel fijn.
I like it WEL
‘I rather like it.’
with mental state predicates (not epistemic) Ik begrijp    het wel
I understand it WEL
‘I quite understand it’

6.2 A comparison of MP wel 1 and MP wel 2 with their english equivalents

A translation corpus can provide support for our hypothesis that there is a func-
tional difference between MP wel 1 and MP wel 2. We analyzed the English equiva-
lents (EEs) of MP wel in these two contexts of use and noticed a striking difference.
Table 6 gives an overview of the frequencies of the various EEs for wel 1 and wel 2
in fiction (F) and non-fiction (NF) and in the two translation directions (EN-DU
and DU-EN).

Table 6. English equivalents of MP wel1 and MP wel2 in the two translation directions
(EN-DU and DU-EN), in fiction (F) and in non-fiction (NF)
Wel 1 Wel 2
EN>DU DU>EN EN>DU DU>EN
F NF F NF F NF F NF
68 11 22 / 109 10 55 /
Modal EEs 48 4 14 8 1 7
Modal verb (mv) 15 3 9 5 3
Mental state (ms) 18 1 2 2
predicate
Adv/adj 12 3 1 1 4
ms predicate + mv 2
Modal expression 1
Non-Modal EEs : 2 21 1 16
Adverb degree 1 20 1 16
Adverb focusing 1 1
subj
Miscellaneous 18 7 8 80 8 32
Modal + non- 2
modal
Zero 14 6 6 57 6 21
Singletons 2 1 5 2 8
Other 2 1 1 16 3
 Dutch modal particles maar and wel 59

We subdivided the EEs into three categories: “modal EEs,” “non-modal EEs” and
“miscellaneous.” In the category “miscellaneous,” there are zero equivalents, that is,
MP wel has no EE or the EEs deviate too much from the Dutch text to be regarded
as equivalents (labeled as “other”). “Singletons,” a label borrowed from Aijmer
(2007: 100), are those EEs with a low frequency of occurrence (usually one or two
instances). “Modal EEs” are expressions of epistemic modality. In the category of
modal EEs, we distinguished modal verbs, mental state predicates, epistemic ad-
verbs and adjectives and a few modal expressions. Nuyts 2001 discussed these dif-
ferent possibilities for expressing epistemic modality and the differences between
them (for a further description see Section 6.3). Non-modal EEs are adverbials of
degree and focusing subjuncts. In the analysis of the EEs for both wel 1 and wel 2,
we noticed striking differences in the frequency of modal and non-modal EEs for
these two types of wel.
If we ignore the “miscellaneous” category,2 the EEs for wel 1 seem to be pre-
dominantly expressions of epistemic modality while the larger part of the EEs for
wel 2 are non-modal. The EEs of MP wel seem to be epistemic expressions only
when wel occurs in an epistemic context. While some authors define MPs as ex-
pressions of epistemic attitudes (Doherty 1985; Zimmermann 2007), our observa-
tion is perhaps a very good indication that MPs are not independent epistemic
expressions, as these definitions seem to suggest, but have a merely “supportive”
role, modifying the epistemic expression. This idea has also been put forward by
Nuyts: “MPs are in large part “supportive” and not independent epistemic forms
of expression” (Nuyts 2001: 257–258; translation mine).
Another difference between wel 1 and wel 2 is the frequency of zero EEs. Wel 2
has many more zero EEs as compared to wel 1.

6.3 A comparison of MP wel 1/wel 2 with their English equivalents

If we were to compare wel 1 or wel 2 with their EEs, we would have to know some-
thing about the meaning aspects of these EEs and of both types of wel in order
to determine the similarities and differences between Dutch and English. For a
meaning description of wel, we took into account the meaning descriptions we
found in the literature (Asbach-Schnitker 1977; Abraham 1984; Westheide 1985;
Nuyts 2001; Hogeweg 2005; Zimmermann 2007).

6.3.1 The meaning of wel as described in the literature

Every account of wel in the literature presents its own meaning descriptions, both
for the basic meaning as well as for meanings in different contexts. We will not
take into account descriptions such as ‘reassurance,’ ‘surprise,’ ‘advice,’ or ‘warning’
because these seem rather intuitive and hard to distinguish from the meaning of
60 Sofie Niemegeers

the context of wel. Instead we will focus on more general meaning descriptions,
such as the one from Nuyts (2001), who describes MPs as “markers of subjectiv-
ity.” MPs indicate that the speaker’s point of view is involved in the utterance. This
is in line with the description of MPs as pragmatic items with an interpersonal
meaning.
Apart from “subjectivity marker” as a general meaning description for MPs
(Nuyts 2001: 305–306), the meaning of MP wel in the context we described for
wel 2 has been described as “moderation” (Hogeweg 2005: 22; 42), downtoning the
(positive) evaluation given by the speaker.

6.3.2 The meaning of the EEs of wel 1 and wel 2

6.3.2.1 The modal EEs: Expressions of epistemic modality
The grammatical means that can be used to express epistemic modality in Eng-
lish (and Dutch) are modal verbs, mental state predicates, adverbs, and adjectives.
Nuyts tries to explain the differences between these various grammatical types in
terms of several functional factors. Two of these factors are particularly useful for
our analysis of the EEs of wel: subjectivity and the semantic organization of the
different grammatical types in terms of their position on the epistemic scale.
With respect to the expression of subjectivity (the indication that the speaker’s
point of view is involved in the utterance), mental state predicates are the only
type that expresses epistemic evaluation explicitly from the point of view of the
speaker, referring to the speaker by the use of the subject (I), as, for example, in
the following sentences:
I guess you want to go now.
I suppose he is common.
I believe you are right about that.

Although other grammatical means can also be used in sentences that express sub-
jective epistemic evaluation, this subjectivity is not part of the epistemic expression
itself but is made clear through contextual indications (Nuyts 2001: 65–66, 205).
As a matter of fact, the corpus data (for both languages) reveal that in the
majority of expressions containing modal adverbs, there is no inherent suggestion
whatsoever as to whether the epistemic evaluation is subjective or intersubjective:
it is simply neutral. In cases where there does seem to be an (inter)subjectivity ef-
fect, this can be ascribed to purely contextual information, either derived from the
discourse itself (from other linguistic elements in the utterance or in the preceding
discourse), or based on our general knowledge of the world (Nuyts 2001: 65–66).
According to Nuyts, the grammatical means also differ with respect to the
semantic organization of their position on the epistemic scale. The different modal
 Dutch modal particles maar and wel 61

adverbs and adjectives can be placed on an epistemic scale ranging from (low)
possibility to (high) certainty:
The difference between alternative forms may sometimes be a matter of slight dif-
ferences in the strength of the epistemic evaluation: e.g., maybe seems somewhat
stronger than possibly (the same goes for the German and Dutch equivalents) and
Dutch wellicht is probably weaker, but allicht is rather stronger than waarschijn-
lijk. (Nuyts 2001: 56)

Some examples of modal adverbs/adjectives are:

He probably thinks I’m being sarcastic, but I’m not. (adverb)
Maybe you’re right. (adverb)
It is possible that he will come tomorrow. (adjective)

The category of modal verbs is also internally classified on the basis of the posi-
tion of these verbs on the epistemic scale. However, their position on this scale
is less precise than that of the modal adverbs and adjectives, according to Nuyts.
He distinguishes three internal categories for modal verbs with respect to their
epistemic position: will is very positive, may well is moderately positive, could and
may/might are neutral, although he claims the latter two are slightly more posi-
tive than could (Nuyts 2001: 171–172). Some examples of modal verbs expressing
epistemic modality are:
They might come in handy.
Something must have gone wrong with the formula.

Mental state predicates are described by Nuyts as inherently non-specific in rela-

tion to their position on the epistemic modality scale (Nuyts 2001: 110–111).
6.3.2.2 Non-modal EEs: Adverbials expressing (non-modal) degree.
This category of EE contains all non-modal expressions: adverbials of degree, such
as amplifiers and downtoners, and focusing subjuncts (additive or restrictive)
(Quirk, Greenbaum et al. 1997). In English, the adverbials can be divided into two
groups on the basis of their semantics: those that express modality and those that
express degree. Adverbials expressing degree are described as follows:
Though often similar to modality adverbials in their semantic effect, degree ad-
verbials are concerned with the assessment of gradable constituents in relation
to an imaginary scale. One of the subroles is amplification, which is concerned
with asserting a generalized high degree; and another is its opposite, diminution.
(Quirk, Greenbaum et al. 1997)

Some examples of this type of adverbial used as EE for MP wel are:

62 Sofie Niemegeers

Eigenlijk was ik wel gevleid.

[Actually was I WEL flattered.]
‘I was somewhat flattered.’ (downtoner)
Die oudste die is wel een beul, zeg.
[The older one he is WEL a bull, hey.]
‘That older one, he’s a regular bull.’ (amplifier)
Dat klopte indertijd ook wel min of meer.
[That was true previously also WEL more or less.]
‘Which was at least partly true, then.’ (restrictive focusing subjunct)

6.3.3 A comparison of wel 1/wel 2 with their EEs with respect to their
meaning aspects
With respect to the meaning aspects discussed above, a comparison can be made
of the two types of wel, on the one hand, and the various EEs, on the other, in
order to compare the different expressions both in Dutch and in English. Wel 1
is said to occupy a broad position on the epistemic scale because it is part of an
epistemic expression containing a modal verb (which indicates a broad position
on this epistemic scale) and its meaning is difficult to separate from the expression
as a whole.
What is striking is that the meaning aspect of subjectivity, which is inherently
part of an MP, has only been reflected in the use of a mental state predicate as EE
for MP wel. When an adverbial of degree or a modal adverb/adjective serves as EE
for MP wel, the meaning aspect of subjectivity is lost in translation.
The EE that is closest in meaning to MP wel 1 is the modal verb, as both share
a broad position on the epistemic scale. For MP wel 2, the adverbial of degree is the
EE closest in meaning, as both share the meaning aspect of gradation.

Table 7: Overview of the meaning aspects of the EEs and of wel1/wel2

Wel 1 Wel 2 Adv de- Ms pred Modal Adv/
gree Adj
Epistemic scale position: x
precise
Epistemic scale position: x x
broad
Epistemic scale position: x
vague
Gradation x x
Subjectivity x x x
 Dutch modal particles maar and wel 63

6.4 A comparison of the use of EEs of wel 1 and wel 2 in OE and TE

If we take a look at Tables 8 and 9 below, we notice some differences between

Original English (OE) and Translated English (TE) with respect to the EEs of wel 1
and wel 2.

Table 8. EEs for wel1 in the two translation directions: Percentages

WEL 1 Ms pred Modal Adv/Adj Zero Other Singletons
EN>DU 26% 22% 18% 21% 6% 3%
67
DU>EN 9% 41% 14% 27% 5% 5%
23

Table 9. EEs for wel2 in the two translation directions: percentages

WEL 2 Adv degree Modal Ms pred Adv/Adj Zero Other Singletons
EN>DU 20% 5% 2% 1% 52% 15% 7%
109
DU>EN 29% 5% 3% 9% 38% 5% 15%
55

In regard to the meaning corresponding to wel 1, original English (EEs for MP

wel 1 in the translation direction EN-DU) contains many more mental state predi-
cates (26% of all EEs) as compared to translated English (9% of all EEs). In the
translation of MP wel 1 from Dutch into English, translators predominantly chose
a modal (41% in TE compared to 22% in OE). No less than 32% of all the EEs of
MP wel 1 in TE is must, while this modal represents only 13% of the EEs in OE. OE
contains more epistemic expressions with a subjective meaning than TE. Transla-
tors appear to be more faithful to the meaning aspect “position on the epistemic
scale” (from the modal verb part of the expression in Dutch) than to the expres-
sion of subjectivity (from the MP part of the Dutch expression) in their translation
of MP wel 1.
As for the EEs of MP wel 2, the adverbials of degree occupy a greater share in
TE (29%) than they do in OE (20%). On the other hand, OE contains more zero
equivalents and EEs that are totally different from the Dutch sentences.
64 Sofie Niemegeers

7. Conclusion

As for the first aim of this study (to examine the differences in MP use in the two
translation directions and in the different genres), the observed frequencies clearly
indicate a difference between OD and TD with respect to MP use. TD seems to
contain significantly more MPs as compared to OD. This result contradicts the
Unique Items Hypothesis while confirming “the law of growing standardization.”
As for MP use in the different genres, fiction contains many more MPs than non-
fiction.
The second part of the analysis produced some interesting observations on the
meaning of MP wel in two well-defined contexts of use. The English equivalents
(EEs) in these two contexts revealed a difference in meaning. For MP wel 1, trans-
lators seem to prefer modal EEs, while the EEs of MP wel 2 were predominantly
non-modal. Furthermore, for both types of EEs (modal and non-modal), there
is no perfect equivalence between Wel 1/Wel 2 and their EEs. In most cases, the
meaning aspect of “subjectivity” is lost. Finally, there is a difference between OE
and TE with respect to this meaning aspect of subjectivity. OE seems to contain
more mental state predicates than TE and these are the only EEs that express sub-
jectivity (through the use of the subject form I). Therefore, TE loses subjectivity in
comparison both with OD and with OE.
The results from this pilot study can serve as the basis of further research on
the translation of MPs from Dutch into English and vice versa. Some results should
be tested on a larger data set in order to obtain more reliable results. All the differ-
ent contexts of MP wel and of the other MPs should be compared systematically to
their EEs in order to provide a more complete picture of the meaning of the MPs
in Dutch and of their EEs, and to ascertain the differences between OD and TD
and between OE and TE with respect to these MPs.

Notes

* The research reported on in this paper was made possible by the Fund for Scientific Research
— Flanders, in the framework of the project “Dutch Modal Particles in English Translation: A
Corpuslinguistic Study.”

1. http://www.translationzone.com/en/products/sdltradostools/winalign/

2. This category has not been ignored in the research project, but it is irrelevant for the present
article.
 Dutch modal particles maar and wel 65

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