98 Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen
Equivalents basically essentially fundamentally
PARTICULARIZERS
hoofdzakelijk (‘mainly’) x xx
in hoofdzaak (‘in the main’) x
vooral (‘especially’) x xx x
voornamelijk (‘mainly’) x x
grotendeels (‘largely’, ‘for the greater part’)) x
in eerste instantie (‘in the first place’) x
APPROXIMATORS
in het algemeen (‘in general’) x
ongeveer (‘appoximately’) x
over het geheel genomen (‘in general’) x
AMPLIFIERS
in grote mate (‘to a large extent’) x
grondig (‘thoroughly’) x
op grote schaal (‘on a large scale’) x
ZERO xx xxA comparison of Tables 1 and 2 shows a number of parallels. Firstly, the French
and Dutch equivalents belong to the same semantic categories. The category ‘truth
emphasizers’ is not represented in the Dutch data, but this may simply be due to
the small size of the database, and no conclusions can be drawn from this absence.
The parallels are an indication that these meanings are part of the semantic-prag-
matic make-up of the adverbs. Secondly, there is – as in French – more overlap
between basically and essentially than between either of these two and fundamen-
tally. The Dutch formal equivalent fundamenteel occurs only as a translation of
fundamentally, not of the others. In the semantic group ‘essence’ basically and
essentially share the cross-linguistic equivalent eigenlijk, whose core sense as an
adjective is ‘true, real, deserving the name, according to the essence, in a proper
sense’ (translated from van Dale 1992). As an adverb, however, it has developed
into a pragmatic marker which is the prototypical equivalent of English actually
(see Aijmer and Simon-Vandenbergen 2004) with which it shares the soften-
ing function. Thirdly, the semantic group of approximators is represented only
for basically. In French it also occurs once for essentially, but neither Dutch nor
French has such equivalents for fundamentally. Fourthly, only fundamentally has
equivalents which are amplifiers.
Here are some examples to illustrate some equivalents. Example (31) shows
the use of the particularizer vooral (‘especially’, ‘particularly’, ‘chiefly’) as an equiv-
alent of basically, and (32) shows its use as an equivalent of essentially.Table 2. (continued)