Control, causation and Google counts

This contribution is a review of Chapter 5.2 of Broekhuis & Corver’s (2015) Syntax of Dutch (pp. 765-935). The chapter describes Dutch infinitival constructions from a formal perspective. In this review I share several theoretical, descriptive and methodological considerations, which relate to the status of control as a purely syntactic phenomenon, the semantic and geographic variation of Dutch causative constructions, and the problems with using Google counts from the World Wide Web when writing a (formal) grammar.