Mits wroeginge der conscientien: het voorwaardelijk voorzetsel ‘mits’ al in de zestiende eeuw

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Mits wroeginge der conscientien: het voorwaardelijk voorzetsel ‘mits’ al in de zestiende eeuw
 
The old Dutch mits ‘if and only if’ seems to experience a revival in usage: conjunction, preposi­tion, autonomous, elliptical. In this article we analyse two participle constructions, one old Bible verse translated into Dutch in the 16th century, one over 200 year old French sentence about spara­grass, translated in a Flemish newspaper in 2016. Mits seems to come in handy to steer the meaning of participle constructions, which aren’t that common anymore in contemporary Dutch. Here, too, the ‘semantic regularity’ in ‘mits’-constructions Daalder wrote about, is kept intact.