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The present paper revisits Neuckermans's (2008) proposal concerning the geographic distribution and diachronic genesis of different functions of the particle en, a remnant of Jespersen's Cycle in the Southern Dutch dialects, and addresses van der Auwera's (2009) claim that en may in some dialects of Dutch have developed into a non-negative marker of clausal subordination at the end of the cycle. Based on a 400,000-word corpus of spontaneous dialect speech data from 65 locations in the southern Dutch dialect area (with an emphasis on West and East Flemish ones) as well as on historical data from the literature, it is concluded that Neuckermans's implicational hierarchy (a) needs to be revised and (b) cannot not be a reflex of a diachronic retraction scenario, and that (c) an analysis of non-negative en as a marker of subordination as proposed by van der Auwera cannot be confirmed for the Southern Dutch dialects more generally. Instead, it is argued that the observable distribution points to the synchronic coexistence of several layers of change that have affected en since Middle Dutch, and have led to it having become co-opted as a mirative strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper discusses gender marking, i.e. the morphological marking of masculine, feminine and neuter lexical gender in the adnominal domain, in Brabantish dialects spoken in the southern Dutch province North-Brabant. Gender markers belong to the most salient features of North-Brabantish, but with a process of dialect levelling well on its way for at least fifty years, knowledge of lexical gender is fading away. This study delves into these variation patterns. The results of a quantitative analysis of written questionnaires (mainly filled out by elderly dialect speakers, N=700) triggered us to conduct a small in-depth study of speech data from adolescents in the Eindhoven region (N=15). Based on these data, we argue that there is a high level of heterogeneity when it comes to adnominal gender marking. In this paper, we aim at describing and categorizing the various types of variation. The data includes omissions of the traditional Brabantish masculine gender marking, indicating that speakers are converging towards Standard Dutch. However, the data also reveals that in 30% of all utterances speakers apply gender marking in multiple ways. We find three types of variation: 1) masculine gender marking is only partly applied in comparison to the traditional rules of dialect grammar (compromise-constructions), 2) masculine gender markers appear in noun groups where they should not appear according to the dialect grammar (e.g. feminine, neuter, plural), so-called hyperdialectisms, and 3) speakers use innovative gender marking constructions: accumulate forms with two masculine suffixes, so-called hypermarkings. Based on previous research, we argue that typical dialect features, such as gender markers, are part of a regional speech style and play an important role in identity formation. As shibboleths of such a speech style, gender markers are over-generalized by speakers who want to profile themselves as 'genuinely' Brabantish. Also, individual patterns of gender marking indicate that salience in non-canonical sentence structures (e.g. focus) might be an important factor when it comes to emphasizing a deviation from the standard language, in line with (regional) identity construction through the use of shibboleths. Future research is necessary to validate these initial findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On etwat, etwuk and iets: geography and dynamics of the indefinite pronoun (for things) in West-Flanders This paper focuses on the geography and dynamics of indefinite pronoun variants in West-Flanders (Belgium). Whereas traditional dialect data show etwat ('something') as being the traditional West-Flemish dialect variant, recent studies have attested a new variant in the area: etwuk. This paper addresses the questions (1) where this new dialect variant is used, (2) by whom, (3) how it relates to other variants of the indefinite pronoun and to the interrogative pronoun variants and (4) whether the grammatical context in which it occurs is of any influence. To answer these questions, we analyse 10.000 surveys collected in 2018 in 249 West-Flemish locations. Given that a sample of this size is difficult to analyse using traditional dialectological methods, we introduce generalized additive mixed-effects regression as a means of simultaneously analyzing the diatopic, diastratic and diachronic variation in these surveys (cf. Wieling et al. 2014:689). These generalized additive mixed-effects models reveal striking dynamics in the pronominal system in West-Flanders: the variant etwuk is clearly taking over the role of etwat as dialectal indefinite pronoun, with the region of the cities Ieper and Poperinge as 'expansion tank'. The rise of the non-standard pronoun etwuk is remarkable, given that Flanders is generally marked by dialect shift and dialect levelling (usually in favour of the standard language). We will argue that the pronominal changes in West-Flanders can be interpreted as a sign of linguistic glocalisation, with etwuk as means of indexing regional identity in times of homogenizing informal language use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a regional and socio-demographic overview of languages and dialects used most often in and outside the home and on social media in the Netherlands based on a large-scale national representative survey by Statistics Netherlands conducted in 2019 among 7,652 people aged 15 years or older. 149 different languages/dialects were reported to be spoken at home, in other places or used for writing messages on social media. For 25 percent of the people surveyed, Dutch is not dominating at home: 8.2 percent speak another language than Dutch; 10.2 percent a regional language (Low Saxon 4.8 percent; Limburgish 3.4 percent, and Frisian 2.0 percent), and 5.3 percent dialect. The five most widely spoken other languages are English (1.6 percent), Turkish (0.9 percent), Moroccan Arabic/Berber (0.8 percent), Chinese/Mandarin (0.4 percent) and Polish (0.4 percent). 83 percent mostly use Dutch to write messages on social media with English following (35 percent). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nicknames for imaginary remote hamlets are widespread. One may think, for example, of Podunk Hollow (US). In the Netherlands, Boerenkoolstronkeradeel is best known (boerenkool = kale, stronk= stembase, deel = municipality). The leading Dutch dictionary defines Boerenkoolstronkeradeel as 'a remote hamlet, alledgedly unreachable for "modern civilisation"', the reference – most probably – being the Randstad, the urban conglomeration in the western part of the country. At least two factors may be supposed to have played a part in making some really existing locations inspirational: 1) remoteness, 2) rural or agrarian character. This paper identifies regional linguistic characteristics in these nicknames, and relates them to specific existing locations, leading to the paradox that an almost unknown and remote location becomes a known icon for 'the middle of nowhere'. It will analyze to what extent each of the two factors may have made such really existing names inspirational. One of the conclusions will be that a third factor, too, must be considered: the estimated (subjective) linguistic distance between regional languages concerned on the one hand, and the standard language on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. Nowak, 2019 & 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. Nowak, 2019 & 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 Maas (1995 & 2007). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The days when dialectology was a quiet island in the (sometimes rough) ocean of modern linguistics seem to be over. Since the so-called social turn and the integration of quantitative methods into the study of urban as well as rural dialects, the barriers between early 'Labovian' sociolinguistics and dialectology have gradually been broken down. Of late, the study of dialect variation has become more and more an integral part of mainstream formal theory as 'micro-variation'. Even more recently, constructivist approaches (such as Usage-based Phonology and Exemplar Theory for phonetics as well as ethnographic perspectives) are entering and enriching the field. Apart from these various developments, at least in the Old World, the object appears to be changing more and more rapidly, giving rise to the erosion of traditional dialect landscapes and the emergence of supra-local koinai as well as dialect/standard continua. This paper addresses some of the main aspects of these tendencies. We will discuss questions such as: how can the new types of language variety be studied; can dialectology be enriched with other than the traditional data and methods; how far-reaching is the innovative impact of the various disciplinary, inter-subdisciplinary and inter-disciplinary cross-fertilisations? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Near-identical twin toponyms along the state border. How do they reflect the linguistic and political past? The Netherlands (hereafter: NL) shares its national border with Belgium (B) and Germany (D). Alongside the border are toponyms which are either identical (like Lemiers : NL, also D), or near-identical, like Clinge (NL)/ De Klinge (B) or Aamsveen (NL)/ Amtsvenn (D). The names concerned denote adjoining settlements and regions. Name pairs like Aamsveen/ Amtsvenn, differring in pronunciation, are comparable to name pairs like Görlitz/ Zgorzelec, on the German-Polish border. The Belgian border is not a linguistic one; Dutch is the standard language on both sides of it. The German border, however, currently divides two standard languages, while there used to be a continuum on the dialectal level until until about 1940. Since the 19th C, both the Dutch and the German standard language have won ground at the expense of the dialect, due to the increased influence of the national administrations. This paper focuses on present twin names along the Dutch state border which show small differences. For example, some differences are (partly) orthographic (Clinge (NL)/ De Klinge (B)), others imply (partial) translations and folk etymological adaptations (Aamsveen (NL)/ Amtsvenn (D)), or relate to lexical differences: Baarle Hertog (B) versus Baarle Nassau (NL). The paper proposes a typology and tries to explain the differences by relating them (with respect to the German border) to increased influence of the German standard language and orthography (and, by consequence, spelling pronunciation), and, with regard to the Belgian border, to different spelling regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the 250-year status of their language as an oral language (but see below the reference to Georg Brandes [1888]) the only hard evidence we have just what the Doukhobors' language was like, are the interviews conducted with Doukhobor elders in the 1960's, i.e., those speakers who had brought the language with them in their mass migration to Canada in 1899. Some glimpses can also be gained by the study of their ritual texts (psalms, prayers, and hymns) that fortunately had been collected and written down in the early 20th century by the Bolshevik Russian land surveyor in a book called Životnaja Kniga duxoborcev (Bonč-Bruevič, Vladimir. 1909 [1954].) There is a debate as to how the title of this book is best translated into English, The Book of Life or The Living Book. I believe that The Living Book currently has the edge. Before being collected and written down, this book was also oral, and much of the language reflected the spoken practice (Schaarschmidt 1995). At all times, the illiterate Doukhobors had access to members of their community that performed the written tasks for them, such as dealing with the bureaucracy of the Russian Empire. And because of their forced move from the Crimea to Transcaucasia, the Doukhobors' previous exclusive contacts with South Russian now faced Russian-Turco-Tataric bilingualism. The latter can still be traced rather easily: of the ever decreasing number of elders in their seventies and up, many remember bits and pieces of Turco-Tartaric words and expressions that are published in a series of articles in the Doukhobor monthly Iskra by a former and now retired Russian-language teacher in the Doukhobor area of British Columbia (see, for example, Popoff 2013). In addition, many Doukhobor surnames show Turco-Tataric influence. What is often not so clear is whether the Turco-Tartaric words came into Standard Russian before the contact of Doukhobor Russian with Turco-Tartaric, and it is our role as etymologists to determine that on the basis of multi-volume dialect dictionaries or field work in the still extant Doukhobor oral language area within Georgia. For any moribund language that in the past had multiple functions there arises the question of the relationship between language death and the preservation of culture, a largely unresolved issue in sociolinguistics. On the one hand, there are cases of large-scale language loss with the retention of at least some elements of culture (to wit, Ukrainian in Canada, Sorbian in Germany, many First Nations in North America, and, as will be demonstrated in the present research article, Doukhobor Russian in Canada and Georgia). The present paper will deal with a small subtopic in this large field, i.e., the loss of "special" languages, such as the "ritual language" as used by the Doukhobors as well as their oral language that they brought with them to Canada in 1899 and that was partially recorded by linguists, such as Harshenin (1961; 1964; 1967). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multilingualism and modern language teaching in the 16th century: the interjection hola as a possible case of language contact in the Colloquia, et dictionariolum In this paper, we explore the semantic-pragmatic functions of the interjection hola in the Dutch, French and Spanish versions of the Colloquia, et dictionariolum, printed in Antwerp, as a possible case of language contact. The Colloquia, et dictionariolum, first printed in the 16th century, are parallel language textbooks designed for acquiring basic skills in up to eight languages. The first edition of the Colloquia was bilingual Dutch-French; Spanish was among the first languages added to the textbook. At the core of the textbook are dialogues related to everyday situations, such as shopping at the market or participating in a family dinner. Although these dialogues are commonly regarded as early sources of spoken forms of European languages, they are in fact instances of conversational mimesis i.e. they are representations of spoken language, intended for didactic purposes and, most importantly, adapted and translated over time by various authors. In our case study, we analyse first (h)ola's semantic-pragmatic function(s) from a contrastive perspective. Subsequently, we explore a possible case of semantic-pragmatic extension in Spanish due to language contact. Generally speaking, (h)ola can fulfil a requestive function in Dutch, French and Spanish (cf. typology by Poggi 2009), viz. it was used to attract someone's attention, a function that can be attested for the three languages in the Colloquia. Moreover, the dialogues of the Colloquia provide an example for (h)ola in a requestive-cessative function, used to tell someone to stop or slow down. This function has been described for both Dutch and French hola (also in English and German) but has, up until now, not been attested for the Spanish counterpart. A first explorative analysis of hola in the 16th-century Spanish CORDE-corpus does not yield any cessative occurrences either. Consequently, the cessative function of Spanish hola in the Colloquia might be due to the possible interference from Dutch or French (or both). However, in order to provide a more conclusive answer, a detailed study of the semantic-pragmatic functions of hola in the Germanic and Romance languages involved will be necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introductory paper we discuss the expanding focus of lexical borrowing research over the past decade. Where this 'inevitable' outcome of language contact was originally predominantly addressed from a historical linguistic and lexicographic perspective, a broader range of linguistic traditions have recently been applied to the topic, each introducing their own questions, perspectives and methods. Below, we first present the main insights ensuing from a century of loanword research. Then, we introduce the viewpoints that characterize more recent work and the questions they foreground. In presenting the contributions to this special issue, we finally pay specific attention to the way the six papers add to the broader tendencies and innovations of current lexical borrowing research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory paper provides an outline of the recent research on processes of destandardization and demotization in national standard languages across Europe, with a focus on the standard language dynamics in the Dutch language area. On the basis of a state-of-the-art-description, a number of remaining theoretical and methodological issues are identified, which the papers included in this thematic issue address from multiple perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory paper outlines the different trends and movements that have in recent years led to a marked increase in the number of linguistic studies that combine a construction-based theoretical outlook on grammar with a dedicated interest in issues of synchronic and/or diachronic language variation. In addition, it gives an overview of the papers included in this thematic issue and links them with broader tendencies in the fields of cognitive linguistics and construction grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question to what extent Flemish subtitlers reproduce Belgian-Dutch colloquialisms of the spoken source text in the subtitles. Next to the official Belgian Standard Dutch language, Colloquial Belgian Dutch or tussentaal is frequently spoken on Flemish television. In this context, it is particularly interesting to investigate whether the subtitlers copy those spoken colloquialisms to the subtitles or whether they translate them into standard language. This study compares the language used in twenty television programs to the corresponding subtitles in order to verify the linguistic choices of the subtitlers. In addition, it will be examined whether the subtitles contain more lexical colloquialisms than morphological or syntactic colloquialisms, and whether the program genre influences these choices. The results reveal that Colloquial Belgian Dutch lexemes are more often reproduced in subtitles on Flemish television than morphological and syntactic colloquialisms. Furthermore, it is shown that especially the subtitles of entertainment and comedy programs contain tussentaal. Based on these results, we conclude that the demotization process in Flanders is not confining itself to the spoken registers, since it also manifests itself in certain written contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diachrony of Dutch hoeven 'need' This paper presents a diachronic investigation into the semantic and grammatical evolution of the Dutch negative polarity modal auxiliary hoeven ('need'). The study is corpus-based, working with representative samples of occurrences of the verb and of its predecessor, the (originally) full verb behoeven ('need'), from different stages of Dutch, from Old Dutch until today. It shows how, after the initiation of a tendency to auxiliarize in behoeven in Early New Dutch (which largely ends again after that period), the short form hoeven splits off from the latter in that same time period and takes the lead as the auxiliary variant from then onwards. It also reveals, however, that in the course of New Dutch hoeven starts to develop new autonomous uses, in a way comparable to what has happened in the other central modal auxiliaries in Dutch (a case of collective degrammaticalization). Moreover, it shows how, from its emergence onwards, this modal auxiliary develops a wide range of modal and related meanings in a very short time, no doubt due to a strive for (semantic) analogy with the other (and much older) central modals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper focuses on conservative and innovative (transitional) dialect areas and the questions of 1) how such areas can be methodologically visualized and 2) how the outcomes can be interpreted. In the first part of this paper a geostatistical method of representing phonological features in space will be introduced: interpolation. This method is not entirely new to dialectology; it has been quite neglected, though, in comparison to other methods of mapping, such as the isogloss or dot symbol method that was mainly used in traditional dialect atlases. The interpolation method will be applied to a large corpus of spontaneous speech data from rural dialects spoken in southwest Germany. Methodological steps in data processing will be described, resulting in a data set that can be used as input for statistical analysis and the visual depiction of variation in space as interpolated grid plots. In the second part results will be discussed. The major outcome consists of an aggregate interpolation plot that includes variables from fifteen different etymological sound classes. These sound classes can be used for demonstrating the distribution of receding phonological variables in space. The interpolation shows two conservative areas where receding forms are still widespread. They lie within the centers of the two major dialect groups of southwest Germany: Alemannic and Swabian. The conservative areas are separated by a broad transitional zone characterized by intense variation between receding and innovative variants. It will be argued that this transitional zone is not due to the horizontal spread of the dialects into each other's areas alone. Rather, variation is triggered by vertical standard influence that supports any dialect form to spread out horizontally as long as it is phonologically identical or similar to the standard form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper adds empirical evidence to the observation that dialect contact can lead to language change and in particular, structural simplification. Empirically, the paper maps out the differences in the speed of the transition from stage II to stage III in different Middle Low German scribal dialects (Schreibsprachen) and proposes an account for these differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to encourage the interdisciplinary study of 'languageculture,' an approach to language and culture in which ideology, linguistic and cultural forms, as well as praxis are studied in relation to another (cf. Cornips et al 2012). It focuses on the construction of local and regional identities in Limburg and the linguistic political context of this Southern-Netherlands region where people are strongly aware of their linguistic distinctiveness. This contribution addresses the impact of globalization processes and mobility of speakers resulting in new and complex patterns of cultural and linguistic encounters. Since globalization does not only affect dominant areas, we need a new understanding of language and identities in peripheral areas in Europe (cf. Cornips et al. 2012). Although dialects are traditionally seen and analyzed as something that anchor people in a local context, speakers have become translocal i.e. people and the ways in which they speak are on the move (cf. Quist 2010). In this paper, in contrast to dialectology and dialect atlases based on modern linguistic theoretical insights like the Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects (SAND), place is not conceived in objective, physical terms but instead as an emic, culturally defined category (Johnstone 2004). The process of place-making provides insight in how people categorize themselves and others through languagecultural practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the seventeenth century, the use of diminutive suffixes in Dutch was changing: the [kə] suffix was making way for the present-day Standard suffix [jə] - a transition which involved many hybrid suffixes - and the present-day substandard [i] also made its entrance. In this paper, the use of the different types of diminutives in private letters of the seventeenth-century Letters as Loot corpus will be examined for regional and social variation. This corpus consists of 595 letters - 545 of which are private - written by men and women of different social backgrounds. Its contents enable historical (socio)linguists to extensively examine seventeenth-century Dutch from the perspective of the language history 'from below' for the first time. However, examining the seventeenth-century diminutive suffixes is a difficult enterprise, for the various spelling forms in the letters frequently obscure the difference between the phonological types of suffixes [i] and [jə]. In order to shed new light on the history of Dutch diminutive suffixes, this paper also presents a method of analysis to categorise particular spelling forms as particular phonological types of suffixes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses variation and change in seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury Dutch, reviewing the importance of two types of explanation, the first focusing on dialect contact resulting from immigration as the locus of change, the second stressing the importance of writing conventions. Using a unique corpus of private letters from all social ranks, we discuss various phonological and morphosyntactic variables. We argue that ego-documents offer unique opportunities for historical (socio)linguistics, providing an unprecedented view of the vernacular. At the same time, writers did not consistently put their local dialect to paper. Writing practices such as morphological and syllabic orthographic principles caused the written code to move away from the vernacular. Supralocalization and graphemization, which are topics at the core of historical sociolinguistics, have to be taken into account by anyone interested in the communicative strategies which ordinary people used when they needed to write. At the same time, since supralocalization and graphemization may impede research on spoken language phenomena, they should also be addressed by researchers primarily interested in spoken language phenomena such as dialect contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes issue with the traditional (standard-oriented) account of codification in French commonly presented in histoires de la langue. In them the seventeenth-century grammarians are portrayed (a) as being engaged, in a detached and rational way, in a programme of intellectual and aesthetic perfection of the language, and (b) as being the country's linguistic legislators, working (teleologically) to design and set up a standard variety of French for the benefit of future generations. Our paper tries to show, first of all, that when we set the process of codification in French within its broad sociolinguistic context, we see the extent to which it was contingent on wider social concerns: codification did not happen in an atmosphere of serene detachment and rationality but was conditioned throughout by the social tensions endemic in a city the size of Paris. The paper then looks at the particular role of grammarians, notably Vaugelas, and notes that he himself makes no claim to be initiating or directing the process of linguistic change, but merely to be reflecting usage. While the grammarians give preference to salient variants possessing the highest social value (bon usage), it cannot be said that they actually set those values. These emerge from a consensus involving directly or indirectly the whole community. The development in the speech of a big city the size of Paris is traditionally seen in terms of top-down standardisation, but it is preferable to see it in terms of dialect-mixing and koineisation. What we see reflected in many of Vaugelas' Remarques is one of the processes involved in koineisation isolated by Peter Trudgill and labelled as 'reallocation of variants': the community tacitly accommodates linguistic variants left over from earlier instances of dialect-contact within its overall scheme of socio-stylistic variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the field of historical sociolinguistics and gives a brief impression of the advances made during the last three decades. Furthermore, the relationship between local and international perspectives is stressed, while discussing the papers in the present Taal & Tongval issue. Finally, new research perspectives and the importance of using original archive sources come to the fore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In traditional research, necessary and luxury loanwords have often been opposed to each other as representing two fundamentally different types of borrowing. However, the terms of necessity and luxury have been shown to be problematic, as necessary loanwords can be avoided by choosing alternative types of contact-induced innovations in the recipient language, and from a usage-based perspective, speakers also perceive a certain 'need' for luxury borrowings. In my paper, I will thus rephrase the distinction in terms of catachrestic (~necessary) vs. non-catachrestic (~luxury) borrowings (Winter- Froemel, 2011; Onysko and Winter-Froemel, 2011) and focus on the latter group in order to investigate basic principles motivating the introduction of the loanwords in the recipient language. More specifically, I will discuss euphemism, dysphemism, and playfulness, which have been proposed in previous research as basic functions of borrowings (see, e.g. Carstensen, 1965; Galinsky, 1967), and I will explore how these concepts can be refined from a usage-based perspective. Finally, I will turn to the function of naming, which is traditionally considered to be fundamentally different from the pragmatically based factors listed above. Contrary to this belief, I will argue that naming also has a pragmatic dimension by virtue of speakers' intentions to (re)conceptualize the objects in question. The broad variety of pragmatic motives identified underpins the necessity to adopt a usage-based approach to linguistic borrowing, and the potential of analyzing borrowings according to their cognitive and communicative value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the reported attitudes of Flemish Sign Language (or VGT) signers with respect to Standard(ised) VGT and (varieties of) VGT in the media. Information extracted from interviews with and stimulus fragments shown to ten deaf VGT signers shows that they no longer consider standardization of VGT negatively. However, they do not value standard versus nonstandard varieties in terms of status versus solidarity traits (Giles & Coupland, 1991), but rather in terms of intelligibility versus identity. With respect to VGT on national television the quality of signing is considered more important than the variety used. Nevertheless, they do realize that the use of VGT in the media can have a significant impact on normativity and standardization of the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing variability in Europe's standard languages has spawned widely shared accounts of destandardization, as well as premonitions of the death of the very idea of a standard language. In this paper, we propose an alternative to these views by demonstrating that the 'classical' standardness criteria (uniformity, prestige, codification) have become too narrow to define standard varieties in our Late Modern era of democratization and digitalization. Rather than rejecting these criteria as invalid, however, we revise them in function of contemporary standard language dynamics. Building on corpus data and (especially) experimental perception data, we will show (1) that the overt prestige which is typical of standard languages has extended to include other types of superiority (such as media cool or dynamism), (2) that the uniformity believed to manifest itself in the absence of variation can also surface as 'perceptual harmony' (an intuitive agreement on how much socially meaningful variation is admissible in specific contexts), and (3) that codification as the referee of right and wrong in standard languages is being complemented with public media licensing. The three extensions are grounded in a conception of standard languages as vital (not virtual), and multi-indexical (not just neutral or traditionally prestigious) varieties. Applied to the standard language situation in the Low Countries, they reveal that more varieties than VRT-Dutch and Neutral Netherlandic Standard Dutch can claim standard status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a couple of decades now, in Flanders, the functional elaboration of what is generally called tussentaal, i.e. mesolectal language use situated in between ('tussen') acrolectal Standard Dutch and basilectal Flemish dialects, has caused increasing concern about the position of Standard Dutch relative to other recognized ways of speaking. This has provoked intense debate about the proper characterization of this evolution. In this paper I focus on the daily language practices and overt attitudes of six girls at a Flemish secondary school to illustrate that it is relatively easy to find evidence that suggests the mentioned evolution is properly characterized as a type of destandardization. Yet by zooming in on the covert attitudes of the girls, which are influenced by the Standard Language Ideology (SLI), I will argue that a close ethnographic study of daily language use is able to go beyond the surface appearances of larger-scale ideologies and can demonstrate the continuing influence of standardization. Sociolinguistic ethnography may therefore have a vital role to play in the ongoing debate about language variation in Flanders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current third-wave or Speaker Design approaches to sociolinguistic variation hold that speakers may use variation strategically to create certain communicative effects (such as the projection of interactional personas and alignments). This paper explores the implications that such approaches have for empirical research methodology. For this, the discussion draws on a case study of language shifting from standard Austrian German into Austrian nonstandard/dialect on a TV discussion show, in order to expound the following issues: (1) how to identify strategic uses of language variation and shifting; (2) how to generate empirical evidence for the fact that such strategic language use is interpreted accordingly by listeners. It is suggested that media data are particularly useful in this enterprise, and that close attention must be paid to listeners' perceptions of (non-)standard language and the associated social meanings in order to explain what speakers 'do' when they perform strategic shifts e.g. from standard to non-standard language in local interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses in which ways language (de)standardization is an integral aspect of the socio-historical changes which move the Danish speech community (as an exemplary case of European communities with a long history of political independence) from Modernity to Late Modernity. The discussion is based on results from empirical studies of the strength of the Standard Language in terms of facts concerning both usage (SL) and ideology (SLI). The leitmotif of the discussion consists in assessing whether the linguistic facts and the ideological facts indicate that the 'SL/SLI complex' is being weakened or strengthened. This is assessed in the societal domains of education and broadcast news presentation, and in terms of general adherence in the population. A basic assumption of the approach is that the idea of 'best language' is a main factor in language standardization. In that respect the findings indicate that only subconsciously offered evaluations are relevant to elucidating the current status of the 'best language' idea. The implication is that there is one strictly shared norm which operates with two 'best languages' depending on evaluative perspective: the 'superior' CONSERVATIVE accent is best for the school context, the 'dynamic' MODERN accent is best for the media context. Considering the consistency of this subconsciously exhibited norm, together with the observed changes in use, we can only conclude that the 'best language' idea and the Danish SL/SLI complex appear stronger than ever before. The general lesson to consider concerns the role of the media, and of data elicitation under different conditions of (sub)conscious awareness, as well as the need for investigations of both aspects of the SLI/SL complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The southern Dutch variety has a traditional, so-called 'grammatical' gender system, in which pronouns agree in gender with their antecedent noun, which can be masculine, feminine or neuter. For most nouns, there is no apparent semantic motivation underlying gender assignment. However, this kind of grammatical system may be replaced with a system that makes use of semantically-motivated gender-marked pronouns, by a process termed 'resemantisation'. Certain elements of semantic gender systems are to be found in the language acquisition of southern children. This paper addresses the question to what extent these semantic tendencies in pronoun usage by children are indicative of an ongoing change in the southern pronominal gender system. Hence it focuses on pronominal gender usage of adults and adolescents as well as language acquiring children. The results reveal first, that even adolescents do not yet reach an adult-like proficiency in the grammatical gender system, and, second, that the influence of grammatical gender on pronominal reference gradually decreases from generation to generation. Though grammatical gender still stands strong, clear semantic patterns are observed, which indicate an ongoing process of resemantisation. The data for adolescents also suggest that the resemantisation process is pushed forward by language acquirers. In this paper the dynamics of this process will be discussed as well as how this fits in the typology of resemantisation pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a research conducted in West-Flanders on the attitudes towards tussentaal, a Flemish substandard language variety. This research aims to answer three questions pertaining to these attitudes. The fi rst question is what the impact of the variable 'age' is on the attitudes towards tussentaal. Although previous research has been conducted on attitudes towards this language variety, so far no attention has been paid to age-specifi c patterns in these attitudes. The second question is which tussentaal elements can account for certain positive or negative attitudes towards the variety as a whole. In order to answer this question, this research will focus on defi nite and indefi nite article forms that are typical for tussentaal with the aim of discovering how people perceive the tussentaal forms with respect to the standard forms. This fifi eld of research is relatively unexplored, which entails some methodological issues. As such, this part of the research can be considered a methodological experiment. The third and fi nal question is what impact the frequency of the tussentaal article forms has on the attitude of the informants. These three questions are discussed more elaborately in the fi rst part of this paper. The design of the research (the variables and the methodology) is explained in the second part. The fi nal part of this paper presents the results of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The southern Dutch variety has a traditional, so-called 'grammatical' gender system, in which pronouns agree in gender with their antecedent noun, which can be masculine, feminine or neuter. For most nouns, there is no apparent semantic motivation underlying gender assignment. However, this kind of grammatical system may be replaced with a system that makes use of semantically-motivated gender-marked pronouns, by a process termed 'resemantisation'. Certain elements of semantic gender systems are to be found in the language acquisition of southern children. This paper addresses the question to what extent these semantic tendencies in pronoun usage by children are indicative of an ongoing change in the southern pronominal gender system. Hence it focuses on pronominal gender usage of adults and adolescents as well as language acquiring children. The results reveal first, that even adolescents do not yet reach an adult-like proficiency in the grammatical gender system, and, second, that the influence of grammatical gender on pronominal reference gradually decreases from generation to generation. Though grammatical gender still stands strong, clear semantic patterns are observed, which indicate an ongoing process of resemantisation. The data for adolescents also suggest that the resemantisation process is pushed forward by language acquirers. In this paper the dynamics of this process will be discussed as well as how this fits in the typology of resemantisation pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the results of a perception study in Flanders are reported. 80 informants were subjected to a qualitative interview, to gain insight in the way Flemish language users judge on the situational appropriacy of several Dutch language varieties. The reported beliefs of the informants were compared to language ideological frameworks and they show an evolution in the standard language ideology (Milroy & Milroy, 1985), an ideology in which the standard language is considered to be the ideal and to be the only appropriate variety for formal and public situations. The informants still consider the standard language to be important and to be superior, but the variety according to them is not necessary for formal and public situations. Instead Tussentaal, lit. 'in-between language', has gained a position in the situational spectre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a corpus-based investigation into naming preferences in Belgian Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch for fourteen clothing terms. The study is a follow-up of Geeraerts, Grondelaers and Speelman (1999), in which soccer and clothing terminology from 1950, 1970 and 1990 was analysed as an indicator of standardisation in Dutch. This study extends the clothing corpus with new, comparable data from 2012 collected from magazines and shop windows. A profile-based measure of linguistic uniformity quantifies the differences in naming preferences across the 14 concepts between different varieties of Dutch. The results shed new light on the current linguistic situation in the Low Countries. The diachronic convergence between Belgian Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch found in Geeraerts, Grondelaers and Speelman (1999) seems to have come to a halt in present-day Dutch. On the other hand, the recent data confirm that the distance between the language in the lower register shop windows and the standard language in magazines remains largest in Belgian Dutch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses English multi-word insertions found in a Dutch corpus of naturally occurring spoken conversation. Specifically, the corpus is based on manual morphophonological transcriptions of three seasons of the reality TV show Expeditie Robinson (known as 'Survivor' in the English-speaking world) and contains 10,000 utterances produced by 52 Belgian Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch speakers. Our analysis zooms in on all English insertions found in the data that contain more than one word, such as alive and kicking and you're almost there (300 instances for 187 types). Three different diagnostic tests are presented that measure the degree of fixedness and conventionality of these multi-word insertions, namely lexicographical treatment, raw frequency and paradigmatic modifiability. Results reveal that the English multi-word inclusions are typically highly conventional fixed expressions, copied as a whole from English and inserted in Dutch much like traditional loanwords. Constructions containing open slots (e.g. NOUN of the day) and prototypical codeswitches (e.g. someone's got to do all the work) are rare. These findings will be linked to the nature of the English-Dutch contact setting. Overall, our study contributes to research on contact-induced variation and change by paying attention to the use of foreign (semi-)fixed phrases and constructions, which form an interesting but often neglected grey-zone on the continuum from borrowing to codeswitching. Additionally, it opens up the restricted focus on monolingual contexts of early research on phraseology and Construction Grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dutch aan-construction (e.g. Hij gaf een bos bloemen aan zijn vrouw 'He gave a bouquet to his wife'), the prepositional alternative for the double object construction (Hij gaf zijn vrouw een bos bloemen 'He gave his wife a bouquet'), is a post Middle Dutch innovation (i.e. after 1500 AD). The precise details of the rise of the aan-construction remain, however, understudied. It is for example unclear whether the construction really breaks through in the 17th century, as Weijnen and Gordijn (1970) argue on the basis of a small corpus of farces, and what its semantic range was in those early days. In this paper we try to shed more light on these issues. On the basis of a selfcompiled corpus of literary Dutch, we firstly show that the construction was not only already frequently attested in the language use in the 17th century, but also covered a remarkably wide semantic range at that time. Next, via a detailed comparison with data for the 20th century, we show that there have been interesting changes concerning the semantic evolution of the aanconstruction. The structural weight of a cluster of 'do'- and 'send'-verbs for example declines over time and at more general level there seems to be a trend towards more abstract uses of the aan-construction. A diachronic collostructional analysis (Hilpert, 2006) and Configural Frequency Analysis (von Eye, 2002) lends a statistical underpinning to our observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the results of a perception study in Flanders are reported. 80 informants were subjected to a qualitative interview, to gain insight in the way Flemish language users judge on the situational appropriacy of several Dutch language varieties. The reported beliefs of the informants were compared to language ideological frameworks and they show an evolution in the standard language ideology (Milroy & Milroy, 1985), an ideology in which the standard language is considered to be the ideal and to be the only appropriate variety for formal and public situations. The informants still consider the standard language to be important and to be superior, but the variety according to them is not necessary for formal and public situations. Instead Tussentaal, lit. 'in-between language', has gained a position in the situational spectre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper explores the relationship between language use and group identity by analyzing how a multiethnic group of former coal miners in the region of Limburg makes use of linguistic features belonging to Cité Duits. Initial findings point towards the fact that we are dealing with a hybrid German-Dutch variety with a few lexical loans from Italian and French. As pointed out in earlier studies, languages are neither automatically bounded entities nor pre-established systems linked to one specific culture, but rather processes that emerge in time and space as a continuously changing product of social interaction. Speakers draw on their linguistic resources in specific situations and develop new ways of speaking (cf. Heller 2007; Otsuji, Pennycook 2010). By scrutinizing syntactical patterns that are characteristic for the in-group speech of the informants, I will show that the flexible use of certain structures and prepositions does not occur randomly, but forms part of a linguistic practice that highlights the positive attitude of the speakers towards the group members (cf. Le Page, Tabouret-Keller 1985: 182ff.). Particular attention will be paid to extraposition and non-inversion of subject-verb order in main clauses (cf. Freywald et al. forthc.). Furthermore, the results found within the data suggest that there is evidence for a general easing of grammatical restrictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports an experimental answer to a question which has remained controversial since it was put on the agenda in the Romantic era: is beauty individually or communally determined? Applied to our research topic, accent variation in spoken Netherlandic Standard Dutch, this question should be rephrased as: is the perceived beauty of regional accents of Dutch in the eye of the beholder, or is it entrenched in the communal attitudes towards these varieties? Listener-judges rated the audio-taped speech of eight speakers representing four regional accents on traits pertaining to four evaluative dimensions, viz. integrity, dynamism, competence and status, but also on a separate scale pertaining to how beautiful or ugly the speech was found. The experiment reported here confirms prior experimental work which demonstrated that the beauty scale correlated with all the evaluative dimensions inherent in the ratings. This overarching and synthesizing function of the perceived beauty of speech suggests a communal rather than an individual origin of aesthetic perception in the field of language attitudes. We therefore concur with Van Bezooijen (2002) that beauty perceptions afford privileged and convenient access into language attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates a series of Germanic verb constructions, which appear to involve the 'wrong' morphology on one or more of the verbs involved: Norwegian parasitic participles, Frisian upward and downward parasitic participles, and the German Skandal construction. I provide an explicit syntactic account unifying the phenomena and deriving the differences from independent differences among the languages. These apparently odd constructions are shown to be subject to specific distributional restrictions which are fully in line with standard grammatical principles of the languages under consideration. The account is based on a top-down definition of Agree, namely the claim that an unvalued feature is valued by the closest c-commanding element with the appropriate valued feature. I demonstrate that this view allows for a uniform treatment of the morphological and syntactic properties of these constructions, which, so far, have been assumed to be unrelated. Lastly, I argue that different word orders in verb clusters can be derived either by syntactic movement (in which case locality conditions have to be obeyed and new Agree(ment) relations are formed) or by pf-linearization of sister nodes (in which case no locality effects are observed and no new Agree(ment) relations are established). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at mapping out and analyzing language variation and the underlying social structures of adolescents in a part of the province North Brabant, The Netherlands. It presents the findings of a study that was conducted in 2010 at two Dutch high schools, in a large college in the town of Uden and in a much smaller school in the peripheral village of Mill. Twelve video recordings were made of Brabantish boys and girls aged 15 and 16, who were having spontaneous conversations in their spare time at school. Additionally a written survey was made of social and cultural characteristics. We sketched profiles of our 38 informants, consisting of features such as locality, ethnicity, language use, language attitude, cultural behavior, and political opinion. We could form only one cluster of three informants that shared relating characteristics. Diversity and variability seems to reach such a degree that stereotypes are not or hardly applicable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we report on a dialectometrical study of dialect change at the lexical, morphological and sound component levels. In particular, recently collected fieldwork data on a reasonable number of different Dutch dialects have been analysed to trace the processes leading to their convergence and/or divergence. We study: 1) dialect change, i.e. the change of a dialect compared to itself; 2) convergence and divergence among dialects; and 3) convergence to and divergence from standard Dutch. In addition, we present some of our future research proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Typically, modern dialects show contact-induced rather than endogenous phonological change, i.e. a given dialect absorbs features of other varieties of the same language with which it is in contact, often replacing the dialect's own sounds. In most cases, this process is lexicalised, i.e. it proceeds word by word, although the entire sound structure of the variety may be affected in the end. One of the unresolved questions of research on phonological dialect change is the nature of the spread of these changes. In principle, they can be due to horizontal (neighbouring dialects) or vertical contact (the standard variety or other forms with a wider range influence the dialects in the area "below" it). This paper discusses some quantitative measures used to estimate the magnitude of the two alternative forms of the propagation of a change, and reports some findings for the traditional dialects of southwest Germany in the last century. On the basis of a large corpus of spontaneous speech, we present an aggregated analysis using statistical correlations and a mixed logistic regression model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we will investigate the relation between regiolect formation and the emergence of tussentaal ('interlanguage') in Flanders. More in particular, we will try to find out to what extent tussentaal is the product of regiolect formation as defined by Hoppenbrouwers (1990) and Hinskens (1993, 1996). In all Flemish regions a supra-regional interlanguage is gaining ground, with an indisputable Brabantic character. As for the intra-regional communication, the situation is different in the three regions under consideration. In the Brabantic region the traditional dialects are on the decline, except for the Antwerp city dialect, which - more than any other dialect - contributes to the formation of the Brabantic regiolect. In the West-Flemish region the traditional dialects are still fairly vital, but nevertheless a West-Flemish regiolect seems to be emerging too. In the East-Flemish region people tend to switch directly from the traditional dialects to the interlanguage. There seems to be no such thing as an East-Flemish regiolect. This regiospecific dynamics between dialect, regiolect (if any) and interlanguage makes for a very complex situation of language variation in Flanders today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On February, 16, 2006 , the website PLAntennamen in de Nederlandse Dialecten was launched ('plant names in the Dutch dialects', or PLAND), which contains over 300.000 tokens, and which is potentially the biggest database of its kind worldwide. This paper provides a description of the history of PLAND, its contents and the interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the division of dialect areas in the Dutch province North-Brabant, as proposed by Weijnen, predominantly in his dissertation (1937). The spread of dialect phenomena as described in more recent research results, such as Woordenboek van de Brabantse Dialecten ('Dictionary of the Brabantic Dialects') or Morphology Atlas of Dutch Dialects, is compared to the isoglosses Weijnen has drawn. Special attention is given to three dialect areas Weijnen has mentioned as 'non-Brabantic'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses Weijnen's most important and most representative contributions to Dutch dialectology. Weijnen's scientific work is marked by combining an overall synthetic motivation and a stringently analytical approach. This combination resulted in both stratigraphic studies of the dialect lexicon and innovative insights in the classifi cation of the Dutch dialects. Weijnen succeeded in uniting bundles of isoglosses resulting from geographical studies on words and sounds and subjective, perception based ratings of dialect speakers on linguistics distances between dialects. His work is strikingly consistent, from his dissertation onwards (1937), along his opus magnum, Nederlandse Dialectkunde (1958 en 1966), and up to and including his 1999 study on the old lexical layers in the south-central dialects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dutch dialectologist Weijnen was a central figure in the instigation and development of the Atlas Linguarum Europae (ALE). This paper discusses the role of comparative dialect syntax in Weijnen's work and the ALE and compares this with modern comparative dialect syntax research. One main conclusion is that collecting comparative dialect syntax data on a large scale requires a theoretical perspective to guide and restrict the descriptive questions to be asked. A second main conclusion is that modern technological developments can make large comparative dialect syntactic data sets accessible to the research community. Consequently, it becomes possible to test hypothesized correlations quantitatively. A precondition for such an enhancement of the empirical basis of comparative syntactic research is of course extensive and intensive systematic data collection in as many language areas as possible. Most of this work still has to begin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this contribution, the paper legacy of Toon Weijnen, as stored and made digitally searchable in the library and archives of the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam, is described. Weijnen's library is a refl ection of the entire state of Dutch dialectology until the fi nal decade of last century. His scientifi c correspondence includes almost 2000 letters from the period 1935-2006 and around 500 other manuscripts. But above all this, his students are the scientifi c legacy of Toon Weijnen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates a non-prototypical use of the Dutch suffixes which are usually attached to a noun to denote a female referent. These suffixes may also be attached to nouns whose referent cannot be described in terms of being female; rather, the nouns in question refer back to an antecedent whose referent is either a group of people or is inanimate. Based on corpus data and attestations from the web, it is concluded that this phenomenon is a non-canonical type of agreement resulting from an association between collective nouns and feminine grammatical gender. It is posited that the few cases in which reference is made to a noun with an inanimate referent may involve personification of that referent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]