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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]

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]

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 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]

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]

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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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

In this contribution, we present the Historical Corpus of Dutch (HCD), a new multi-genre, diachronic corpus of Early and Late Modern Dutch (ca. 1550-1850). It consists of a digitised collection of handwritten administrative texts (e.g. town council meeting reports), handwritten ego-documents (e.g. diaries and travelogues), and printed pamphlets (e.g. of a political or religious nature). The corpus is also balanced between northern and southern material, with data from the provinces of Holland and Zeeland for the North, and from Flanders and Brabant for the South. After having discussed its structure and composition, we will illustrate the value of the new corpus with a number of smaller case studies. Based on our experiences with the corpus, we will conclude by launching a plea for historical corpus building not to focus too much on the quantity of data ('big data'), but rather shift attention to data quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illustrates some of the opportunities and challenges of pursuing a big data approach in linguistic research. To do so, we investigate the diffusion of the loan verb pimpen 'to fancify' in Dutch based on Twitter data. First, we focus on the derivations of the verb (e.g.: terugpimpen 'to pimp back', herpimpen 'to repimp', etc.) and plot the diversity of these forms through time, using the Chao-Wang-Jost estimation of Shannon entropy. We follow this up with an alternation study that compares pimpen not only to its 'native' alternative opleuken, but also its most frequent derivation oppimpen, using multinomial regression. It is found that, while pimpen's early expansion in Dutch has proceeded at breakneck speed, resulting e.g. in a plethora of derivations that has so far gone undetected, its current momentum seems to be waning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports investigations into sound change at the community-level of Frisian and Low Saxon dialect groups in the north of the Netherlands, which differ in key factors influencing dialect decline. We combine phonetically transcribed corpora with dialectometric approaches that can quantify change among older male dialect speakers in a real-time framework. A multidimensional variant of the Levenshtein distance, combined with methods that induce realistic distances between sounds, is used to estimate how much dialect groups converged to and diverged from Standard Dutch between 1990 and 2010. Our analyses indicate that sound change is a slow process in this geographical area. The Frisian and North Low Saxon dialect groups seem to be most stable, while Westphalian Low Saxon varieties seem to be most prone to change. We offer possible explanations for our findings and discuss shortcomings of the data and approach in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Periphrastic constructions with come have primarily been grammaticalized to express tense in Indo-European languages (Devos & van der Wal 2014). In the Germanic language group, come has not undergone grammaticalization to the same degree that related go has. Nevertheless, this verb has acquired some special functions when used in combination with other elements. One of them concerns the combination of come with a motion verb. In Standard Dutch, the choice of the morphological form (inf/ ptcp) of the movement verb in this construction is variable (Haeseryn et al. 1997): De agent kwam de straat ingefietst.ptcp /infietsen.inf 'The police officer came cycling into the street'. This contribution investigates this special construction in terms of diatopic and register variation as well as from a semantic-functional perspective. We performed an experiment in which we tested for geographic and semantic factors. The results show that the distribution of the variants is not regionally conditioned contrary to our expectations. Instead, the infinitive variant is the preferred variant across all regions in regional Dutch. We then discuss the results for the semantic factors that we systematically integrated into the test conditions, i.e. lexical semantics and path and manner as has been previously proposed in the literature (Ebeling 2006, Honselaar 2010, Beliën 2016). The results of a regression analysis do not conform to expectations. We reflect on the results and propose an alternative hypothesis, based on Schäfer (2020), proposing that the infinitive variant is the result of a stalled grammaticalization process, in which komen is – or better was – on its way toward becoming a future auxiliary. Future work will have to test this hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the micro-selection and codification of third-person pronouns in the normative discourse on Standard Dutch from ca. 1550 to 1650. The analysis shows that there is little consensus both on what the norm for these pronouns should be, as well as on how to approach variation in their use, both in form (optionality) and in meaning (multifunctionality). Three different methods of micro-selection were attested, differing in their level of acceptance towards variation. The first method allows a high degree of variation, both in form and in meaning; the second only a certain degree of variation, with some implicit limitations to multifunctionality; and the third method clearly and explicitly limits multifunctionality by means of reallocation (Trudgill 1986; Lodge 2013), thereby also limiting optionality. Variation is never entirely eradicated in these paradigms, indicating that the view that language standardization is characterized by a suppression of optional variation (e.g. Haugen 1966; Milroy and Milroy 1999) does not completely fit this early period of standardization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research considers the pronunciation of the Standard Dutch vowel /œy/ in the Achterhoek region, where it is typically realised as a monophthong. Previous studies (eg. Kloeke, 1927; Van Reenen, 2005; 2006; Gerritsen and Jansen, 1979) have shown a variable use of [y] and [u] in this area of the Netherlands. However, this research follows on from previous studies by considering the links between rural and non-rural pronunciation, as well as a geographical split between the north and south of the region. During the summer of 2015, 34 Achterhoeks speakers (aged from 26-73) from different towns in the region were recorded completing a picture task and reading sentences designed to elicit marked dialectal pronunciations. F1 and F2 formant frequencies were analysed in Praat (Boersma and Weenink, 2014) and a formant editor developed by Sóskuthy (2014), and then compared in order to arrive at the results. These were then compared with the findings from a 1979 corpus designed by Leendert van Prooije. A system of classifying Dutch vowels into lexical sets (cf. Wells, 1982) was developed in order to more concisely discuss pronunciation differences; under this system, the vowels in question would fall under what has been termed the HUIS vowel. The first result is that variations in the position of the vowel following some rhotics were observed in the speakers. Grouped into age, gender, and location, and measured through normalised formant frequencies, it was found that the more retracted vowel [u] was observed in rural speakers, whereas the fronted vowel [y] was seen in speakers from non-rural areas. Where the vowel appeared in any position other than following the rhotic consonant, it was realised as [y], without any observable differences between speakers. However, further analysis of the FAND II corpus revealed that this effect was not always consistent. In the case of the HUIS vowel, it would appear there is variation based on the status of participants' locations. The vowel [y] in this area of the Netherlands resulted in a shift from the older [u] of West Germanic dialects (Kloeke, 1927; Van Reenen, 2006), so here the [u] pronunciation after /r/ could be considered a relic of the older dialect of the area. This result was then considered alongside the possibility of a /ru/ isogloss involving more locations within the area of the Achterhoek. Using data from the FAND II database, it was found that there was some evidence for the existence of such an isogloss as a possible alternative explanation. This study therefore presents the conclusion that, based on the HUIS vowel, the style of speakers residing in the north-eastern part of the Achterhoek is likely to be more representative of the traditional dialect. Further exploration of this conclusion could be set up in other aspects of speech, and thus we can consider the implications for the future of the dialect in the southern and western areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standard works on linguistics give Amstetten Bavarian (Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996) and Weert Limburgish (Ladefoged 2007) as examples of languages with four or five distinctive vowel heights. Other Limburgish and East Central Bavarian dialects are also described with four or five heights. If the reports are correct, these vowel systems have significant typological importance. They would invalidate the neutral vowel theory which proposes that no language will have more than three distinctive heights or depths on any vocalic plane (Hitch 2017). It is proposed that semi-diphthongality and laxness are distinctive features in Limburgish which permit analyses of three distinctive heights. Similarly, it is proposed that laxness is distinctive in the relevant Bavarian dialects and that they have three distinctive heights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not only can monolingual histories mask multilingual practices, but writing languages out of history happens very differently even in the same time and place. We examine two cases in one historical setting, an Indigenous language and an immigrant language in Wisconsin (U.S.), Menominee and German. The widespread view of the United States today as an English monolingual state reflects an ongoing process of writing other languages out of history, or invisibilization. Menominee and German present sharply contrasting cases of this process and reactions to it from the late 19th century to the present. German, once widely taught, written and read in a standard variety, has lost that status as one piece of a broader political struggle and exists today basically as a 'post-vernacular' language. In contrast, Menominee faced ongoing, violent efforts to extirpate it, but is being revitalized by a new generation of speakers today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Adieu, Vaarwel, groet mijne zo Waarde Ouders': The usage of French loan suffixes and loan words in a nineteenth-century family correspondence The French cultural hegemony in Europe over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries affected Dutch society. During the French period (1795-1813), the French influence on Dutch politics was significant as well. As a result, the Dutch language 'frenchified': many loan words and loan suffixes were borrowed from French. A corpus analysis of the family letters of the Bijleveld family from Leiden (1813-1814) reveals the extensive impact of French language contact. Especially in the letters of son Theodoor, who was sent to France in 1813 to serve for Napoleon's Garde d'honneur ('guard of honor'), the amount of loan suffixes is considerable. This result outnumbers the outcomes of the study by Rutten, Vosters and Van der Wal (2015) and shows that the language use of elite citizens was significantly influenced by French. A comparison between loan suffixes and loan words in the letter corpus reveals an even more compelling result: the relative frequency of loan words in the corpus is twice as high as the relative frequency of loan suffixes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Late medieval Sweden was a multilingual society. At least three languages – namely Old Swedish, Low German, and Latin – were in use, beside other regional languages. While the influence of Low German is easily detectable in all parts of the Swedish language system and has been investigated rather thoroughly from a historical sociolinguistic point of view (cf. Braunmüller 2004), the role of Latin has been rather marginalized in traditional Swedish language historiography, focusing on the earlier stages of Old Swedish, which are described as its classical form (cf. Pettersson 2005). Starting out as the language of religion, administration, diplomacy and, to some extent, trade, Latin was the dominant language of text production in Sweden until the 14th century, which saw Written Old Swedish gain some domains as well, resulting in a more balanced diglossic relation between the two languages. The emerging written variety of Swedish, however, was heavily influenced by the multilingual practices of scribes, in large part clerics who were used to using at least Swedish and Latin on a daily basis for a variety of communicative purposes (Höder 2010). These multilingual practices, ranging from ad hoc translations via code-switching to the application of Latin stylistic, textual, and syntactic norms in Swedish text production (Höder 2018), had a lasting impact on the later development of a Swedish proto-standard, and are still reflected in conservative text types today. This contribution approaches this development from a historical sociolinguistic and contact linguistic perspective, concentrating on the establishment of multilingual practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do young bilingual speakers of current Turkish and Moroccan ethnolects of Dutch deal with phoneme contrasts that do not exist in their heritage languages and that are at the same time subject to regional and social variation in the Dutch speech community at large, such as that between Dutch phonemes /a:/ and /α/? Data from speakers from the Amsterdam and Nijmegen urban areas were analyzed and compared. Two variable properties of /a:/ and /α/ defining the phoneme pair were examined: (1) duration, and (2) place of articulation. We found clear differences between the two urban areas (regional effect) and between the Amsterdam ethnic groups (social effect). In addition, we found variation dependent on the interlocutor (socio-stylistic effect) and the linguistic context. The main dimension of social and linguistic variation was place of articulation, length remaining the primary distinctive feature of the vowel pair. No heritage language effect was found. Young ethnolect speakers take part in existing patterns of regional and social variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Samenvatting: In dit artikel tonen we aan de hand van kwalitatieve data aan hoe talige praktijken met sprekers en artiesten uit drie steden in de periferie van Nederland en België, namelijk Tilburg, Heerlen en Genk een lokale identiteit construeren en reproduceren en hoe op die manier het besef van lokale eigenheid tot stand komt. We laten zien dat in deze drie steden artiesten en sprekers aan de hand van geënsceneerde en gemediatiseerde taalprakijken bewust nieuwe lokale identiteiten construeren. In de drie gevallen gaat het om hybride of heterogene taalprakijken, waarbij het Nederlands of lokale dialectale elementen gecombineerd worden met elementen uit andere aanwezige (contact)talen (zoals het Surinaams of het Italiaans). Bovendien worden deze taalpraktijken in Tilburg en Heerlen, maar ook – hoewel in mindere mate – voor Genk, via parodie verspreid, versterkt en vernieuwd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dialect and standard language in contact. The many forms of the Langstraat dialect Over the past century, the dialects of the Langstraat region in the province of Noord-Brabant have structurally changed under the influence of the Dutch standard language. The younger dialect varieties that have emerged, have lost characteristic features through time and have adopted features of Standard Dutch. Despite convergence and dialect levelling, however, more variation arises with new forms that sometimes exhibit even more divergent features than their traditional counterparts. Moreover, all participants in the present study seem to use a diversity of linguistic forms and intermediate forms are all but fixated, and even one and the same speaker shows diversity in the use of his dialect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we report a hardly noticed, poorly studied, and non-understood property of kinship terms in many Dutch dialects: a distinct, more impoverished possessor inflection in kinship terms, which was coined "possessor truncation" in Goeman et al. (2008). After reporting dialect-geographical, diachronic, and morphological properties of possessor truncation, we give a morphosyntactic account inspired on determiner drop in kinship terms in Italian. Possessor truncation in Dutch and determiner drop in Italian can be unified under the assumption that kinship terms generate their referential role within in the sub-lexical domain, while ordinary nouns merge these argumental properties in the supra-lexical domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an in-depth study of the Frisian loan pindakaas from Dutch pindakaas. This word can be literally glossed as 'peanut cheese', but it translates into English as 'peanut butter'. The translation illustrates that the compound pindakaas is not compositional in Dutch and Frisian, that is, pindakaas is not a kind of kaas ('cheese'). Because of its non-compositional nature, Dutch pindakaas, we argue, has not been borrowed into Frisian as pindatsiis, even though Dutch kaas in Frisian is tsiis. In contrast, compositional compounds featuring Dutch -kaas surface in Frisian with -tsiis, such as Dutch schapenkaas, Frisian skieppetsiis. The non-compositional nature of pindakaas is shown to have a historical explanation. Independent evidence is cited from psycholinguistics supporting the claim that compositional compounds behave in a way that differs from non-compositional ones. Thus evidence is provided that borrowing is sensitive to compositionality in that elements of compounds are more easily left untranslated when their meaning is not predictable by compositionality from their usage elsewhere in the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of English on other languages such as Dutch is still growing. But how does this influence show up in actual day to day verbal behavior? A promising domain to study this issue is texting by young adults. How often and in what ways do they use English in their digital messages? Are there context factors at work that make them rely less or more on English? In an experimental study the influence of two pragmatic factors has been assessed: social distance and subjective costs. How familiar is the sender with the receiver, and how intrusive is the message? In response to four sketches of a communicative situation, 38 young adults composed in all 148 text messages. Both pragmatic factors proved to be effective. English words and phrases were used most often in communicating with peers for a 'light' reason. When addressing more senior receivers with a rather intrusive message, English was used far less. In the undemanding situation English features outnumbered the Dutch ones; in the more demanding situation this pattern was reversed, now the Dutch features were the more frequent ones. The use of English showed a positional effect as well: it occurred for the most part at the beginning and ending of the message, leaving the core content almost untouched. Each of these effects shows that texters take into account several pragmatic considerations. If English is becoming an integral part of Dutch text messages, it seems to do so in a deliberate way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the influence of English on Dutch is mainly visible in a large number of lexical borrowings (De Decker & Vandekerckhove, 2012; Berteloot & Van der Sijs, 2002), a newly compiled corpus of chat conversations between Dutch young adults shows that some native speakers of Dutch codeswitch to English in their Dutch conversations and use English creatively. In this study this is explained as an identity practice for young gay men in a community of practice where non-heteronormative gay-celebratory identities are constructed, due to the connotations of English with the (always English-speaking) entertainment in which these speakers can find multidimensional, young, and 'cool' gay role models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, the use of allegedly typical and mostly universal, genrebound chatspeak features is examined, such as leetspeak, acronyms, abbreviations and other shortening mechanisms. We investigate how common they actually are in a large written chat corpus (more than two million words), produced by Flemish teenagers between 2007 and 2013. Moreover, we investigate whether their frequency correlates with the social variables gender and age and whether it depends on the medium in which the conversation takes place (synchrous Instant Messaging vs. asynchronous CMC). The quantitative analysis reveals no major impact of gender, despite it receiving ample attention in recent CMC research. Age en especially medium, however, are pointed to as two significant determinants. Furthermore, the results call for a distinction between merely creative and playful chatspeak forms on the one hand and highly functional features on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]