Op weg naar een geschreven eenheidstaal

Towards a uniform written Dutch: The elimination of dialect features by Gheraert Leeu, printer in Gouda and Antwerp This study discusses the influence of the printing press on the gradual rise of standard Dutch on the basis of the language used in a selection of incunables, printed by Gheraert Leeu, one of the pioneers of early printing. Leeu was active in Gouda (Holland) from 1477 until 1484, but moved in 1484 to the city of Antwerp (Brabant), where he continued his printing activity until his sudden death in 1492. In three books from Gouda and five books originating from Antwerp, we determined the degree of dialecticity, classified the dialect variants according to their origin, interpreted the variation found between regional and non-regional variants and discussed their diachronic evolution. We found that both the Hollandic and the Brabantish dialect features were increasingly replaced by their non-regional equivalents. By rapidly diminishing the amount of dialect variants in his printed language, Gheraert Leeu contributed to the transition from dialectal Late Middle Dutch to more supraregional Early New Dutch, which was reflected in Hollandic and Antwerp printed books around 1500. So the traditional view that the standard Dutch is based on the Hollandic dialect of the 17th century, should be revised: a tendency towards more uniformity in written Dutch was already noticeable at the end of the 15th century among printers in Antwerp and Holland, who were striving for a more uniform language in order to enlarge the sales market for their printed books. The case of the famous printer Gheraert Leeu shows that the prosperous city of Antwerp played a leading role in the development of a uniform written language.

Twee problematische foneemopposities door de eeuwen heen: /s/-/z/ en /f/-/v/ in het Nederlands

Two problematic phoneme oppositions through the centuries: /s/-/z/ and /f/-/v/ in Dutch Dutch has a set of solid phoneme oppositions such as /t/-/d/, /p/-/b/ which manifest themselves in minimal pairs such as /p/ak-/b/ak, /t/ak-/d/ak, ra/t/en-ra/d/en which are quite numerous. This is different in the case of /s/-/z/ and /f/-/v/. There are not many minimal pairs and although it is generally accepted that /s/-/z/ and /f/-/v/ form phoneme oppositions, there are homonyms for many a speaker in cases such as /f/ier and /v/ier, /s/ein and /z/ijn, especially in the Dutch of the Netherlands. It will be argued that the phoneme opposition /s/-/z/ has been weak through the centuries and that the phoneme opposition /f/-/v/ only has become weak recently. In the latter case the recently formed labiodental [ʋ] out of bilabial [w] may have triggered the [v] to become [f]. Spelling forms in charters as well as statements and spellings of Renaissance grammarians are analysed, just as data from Modern Dutch dialects. This study shows how phoneme oppositions can become stronger and weaker over time.

Zur Diachronie der satzinternen Großschreibung im Niederländischen

On the history of sentence-internal capitalisation in Dutch – a corpus-based study on genre influence on the capitalisation practice Though sentence-internal capitalisation of nouns is – unlike in German – no hallmark of Modern Dutch orthography at all, initial studies on Early Modern Dutch writing practice have affirmed Maas’ (1995, 2007) claim that Dutch once exhibited at least a moderate tendency to uppercase nouns in sentence-internal position (cf. & 2020a): Since both studies were restricted on a corpus of bible prints, it remains an open question whether the capitalisation practice was restricted to this text type only. Therefore, the present paper aims at analysing the use of majuscules in other texts types to gain a more conclusive picture on the overall phenomenon. The contrastive analysis of bible prints with printed travel reports and sailing letters (1500-1800) confirms – on the one hand – previous findings, mainly the fact that the use of majuscules within common nouns was increasingly motivated by cognitive factors, mainly animacy and concreteness of the referent; on the other hand, however, the present study shows that sentence-internal capitalisation of common nouns was much more pronounced in non-biblical texts than expected by previous studies (cf. & 2020a). In contrast to bible prints, non-biblical texts did not abolish sentence-internal uppercase letters by the end of the 17th century, suggesting that this spelling convention was not abandoned due to religious reasons as suggested by & 2007).

Spellingonderzoek in ontwikkeling

Developments in orthography research This article, which serves as the editorial to the special T&T issue Spelling in ontwikkeling, consists of four parts. The first part is a brief introduction to spelling as a linguistic field. The second part provides a status quaestionis of this field within Dutch linguistics, especially from a diachronous point of view. The third part is an overview of the research articles in previous T&T issues which, to some extent, deal with spelling. Although the current issue is the first one in which historical spelling research is prominently exhibited, I thought it useful to provide an overview of research articles in the history of T&T that address the topic of spelling, as their titles do not always give this away. The publications listed in the second and third part may serve as a good vantage point for linguists with an interest in historical spelling research as part of language variation in the Low Countries. The fourth part introduces the articles that constitute this issue.

English and the use of the simple past in Dutch

The global dominance of English has resulted in contact-induced change in many of the world’s languages. While lexical influence is perhaps the most widespread and the most visible form of change, there are indications that English may also be influencing languages on a structural level. In this article, we investigate a case of potential contact-induced structural change in the verb tense system of Dutch. Non-standard use of the simple past (instead of the standard present perfect) has been noticed for some time, and often linked to English influence. Based on an acceptability judgment questionnaire, we show that there is little evidence for language change in this feature in apparent time, but that judgments do depend on raters’ exposure to English, with higher exposure correlating with more positive judgments. This suggests that contact-induced change through diffusion may be a factor in the use of this construction.

Ziej is a woman and het is a girl

In this paper, we report on a study of gender reference in Limburgian, specifically the use of the neuter subject pronoun het ‘she’ (lit. ‘it’) to refer to a female referent. This pronoun is used in addition to the feminine pronoun ze ‘she’. We investigate the role of the referent’s social and grammatical characteristics in the variation between grammatically feminine and ‘non-feminine’ (nf; i.e., neuter and masculine) pronouns in two experiments. First, we test the effect of a referent’s age in a language production study, in which 41 native speakers participated. The results of this study indicate that speakers use het more often to refer to younger than to older women. Second, we use an acceptability judgment task (N = 72) to assess whether the preference for non-feminine pronouns for younger women might be explained by grammatical agreement with non-feminine antecedent nouns (e.g., grammatically neuter maedje ‘girl’). The results indicate that this is not the case: het is preferred as a pronoun for younger but not older women, regardless of an antecedent noun’s grammatical gender. We conclude that the variation in pronoun gender in Limburgian is a socio-pragmatic phenomenon, and we offer suggestions for future research in this area.

Hoeveel dialecten werden er gesproken in negentiende-eeuws Amsterdam?

How many dialects were spoken in nineteenth-century Amsterdam? In his Algemeen Nederduitsch en Friesch Dialecticon (1874) Johan Winkler stated, after consultation with Jan ter Gouw, that in 19th-century Amsterdam 19 different dialects could be distinguished. This article investigates whether it is possible to find evidence for this assertion in the surviving language material. For this purpose all language phenomena mentioned in 57 sources up till the mid-twentieth century have been put into a database, with information on the neighbourhood where they were used, and other metadata. The resulting database contains 9000 language phenomena of which around 4000 could be linked to a specific neighbourhood. From this it appeared that the number of 19 dialects mentioned by Winkler and Ter Gouw is an exaggeration: on the basis of the available linguistic information, we can only distinguish 5 of the 19 dialects mentioned by them. Next to these, however, we can distinguish a dialect not mentioned by Winkler and Ter Gouw, that of the higher classes (spoken along the Herengracht and Keizersgracht), and 5 sociolects or technical jargons: the Bargoens of thieves and tramps, the jargons of diamond workers, dock-workers, street musicians and players of bingo. Around 1900 the variation is reduced and the dialects gradually merged into a more or less uniform Amsterdam city dialect, due to mobility of labour.

De vrouw in het Friese lexicon

Abstract1 This article discusses the semantic field in Frisian that is covered by the Dutch word vrouw and the German word Frau in the senses of 'woman' and 'wife'. Data are drawn mainly from the Nederlandse Volksverhalenbank, a large online collection of orally transmitted folk tales. The Frisian cognate frou has retained the semantic feature of respectability. This created semantic space for other lexical items, mainly frommes(ke) and minske. These forms were paradigmatically supported by the suppletive plural froulju. Furthermore, discourse pragmatics in Frisian demands for the transmission of more detailed information about the stages of life people are in than is required in Dutch and German. This demand also influences the lexical choices made by Frisian speakers and has led to the lexicalisation of terms for men and women of different age groups. In the sense of 'wife', frou is in competition with wiif.