Mapping the Left Periphery of Similative Constructions: Dutch Dialects as a Case Study

The left periphery of non-standard Dutch similative clauses hosts a variety of different elements (such as gelijk “like”, zo “so”, als “as”, and hoe “how”) that can sometimes co-occur following a strict hierarchy that seems to hold in other (non-standard) Germanic varieties as well. The present contribution aims to show that the fixed ordering of these elements as well as their function in the structure can be accounted for if similative clauses are taken to be prepositional relative clauses with a complex complementizer domain involving at least three CP-projections. Specifically, I show that these elements lexicalize different parts of the relative construction, including the head complex raising to the edge of the similative in line with a head-raising analysis. To support this idea, I will mostly provide data from Dutch and Dutch dialects, although the analysis can (and should) be extended to other Germanic varieties.