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This paper introduces a novel method to predict when a Google translation is better than other machine translations (MT) in Dutch. Instead of considering fidelity, this approach considers fluency and readability indicators for when Google ranked best. This research explores an alternative approach in the field of quality estimation. The paper contributes by publishing a dataset with sentences from English to Dutch, with human-made classifications on a best-worst scale. Logistic regression shows a correlation between T-Scan output, such as readability measurements like lemma frequencies, and when Google translation was better than Azure and IBM. The last part of the results section shows the prediction possibilities. First by logistic regression and second by a generated automated machine learning model. Respectively, they have an accuracy of 0.59 and 0.61.

This thematic issue on Early Modern West Germanic homes in on the processes underlying the extensive amount of morphosyntactic variation and change within and between language users in this era. It demonstrates that language structure and language use often interacted with each other, and illustrates that, to fully understand the triggers and extent of this variation and change, we need to combine perspectives and methodological tools from different (sub)disciplines. That is why this issue brings together scholars working on Early Modern West Germanic in different fields and disciplines – in particular scholars from early modern literary studies, formal (historical) linguistics, computational linguistics and historical sociolinguistics – to present a wide array of possible methodologies to investigate historical language variation, and to explore how the different approaches can complement each other to help further our understanding of the complex setting of variation., Journal of Historical Syntax, Vol. 6 No. 13-18 (2022): Special issue: Cross-disciplinary approaches to linguistic variation in Early Modern West Germanic

Public sentiment (the opinion, attitude or feeling that the public expresses) is a factor of interest for government, as it directly influences the implementation of policies. Given the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 crisis, having an up-to-date representation of public sentiment on governmental measures and announcements is crucial. In this paper, we analyse Dutch public sentiment on governmental COVID-19 measures from text data collected across three online media sources (Twitter, Reddit and Nu.nl) from February to September 2020. We apply sentiment analysis methods to analyse polarity over time, as well as to identify stance towards two specific pandemic policies regarding social distancing and wearing face masks. The presented preliminary results provide valuable insights into the narratives shown in vast social media text data, which help understand the influence of COVID-19 measures on the general public.

The CLIN30 Shared Task is defined as a computational approach to classify have-doubling, which is a syntactic phenomenon combining a past participle construction with an additional participle, usually from the verb have, e.g., he has had lived there. This paper describes perfect doubling, a particular subform of the have-doubling construction, in detail, and introduces a dataset to study the phenomenon in a computational way. Different classification approaches from the Shared Task participants are discussed, and an error analysis of classification results is provided. The models reach up to nearly 80% accuracy, which is a viable starting point for further research.

Name variants which differ more than a few characters can seriously hamper record linkage. A method is described by which variants of first names and surnames can be learned automatically from records that contain more information than needed for a true link decision. Post-processing and limited manual intervention (active learning) is unavoidable, however, to differentiate errors in the original and the digitised data from variants. The method is demonstrated on the basis of an analysis of 14.8 million records from the Dutch vital registration.

An increasing body of studies point to supralocalisation processes being an important factor in the emergence and development of written Standard English, which largely took place from the Late Middle English to the Late Modern English period (c. 1400–1700). Given that the south-east area, with its metropolis London, played an important role in this development, it is not surprising that this region has received much attention by English historical linguists and philologists. The current paper shifts the focus to written English in the important regional centres of York (North), Bristol (Southwest), and Coventry (West Midlands) in the same period to explore potential supralocalisation processes, which in turn help to further our understanding of the underlying standardisation processes of written English. Couched within the field of historical (socio)linguistics and based on new manuscript material from these urban centres, this paper combines qualitative and quantitative approaches with the philological method to present new findings on the development of periphrastic DO, paying particular attention to the language-external factors place and text type. The results, in line with previous studies, reveal that periphrastic DO primarily occurs in affrimative declaratives and to a lesser extent in negative sentences in all investigated text types in the different urban centres over the period 1400–1700. However, in contrast to earlier findings, no clear rise-fall pattern emerges, and it is diffcult to determine a path of supralocalisation.

The afinite construction, that is, the ellipsis of a finite auxiliary from a verbal complex in a syndetic subordinate clause, curiously appears in Early New High German (ENHG) in the second half of the 15th century, and disappears again ca. 250 years later, though the ellipsis of perfect auxiliaries remains possible, at a much lower frequency, for longer. The same type of ellipsis has also been reported for Middle Low German (MLG) by Magnusson (1939), and the first attestation predates the ENHG one by about 200 years. Härd (2000: 1459) repeats Magnusson’s observation and adds that the ellipsis becomes “very frequent” from the 13th century onwards. Based on the MLG reference corpus ReN, the current paper shows that while Magnusson’s finding can be confirmed, Härd’s claim cannot be substantiated. All in all, the afinite construction is only scatteredly attested in MLG, but there is great variation between texts. The current paper will attempt to identify the determining, mainly language-external, factors behind this variation. The new data furthermore afford a new assessment of the origin of the afinite construction, and lend support to the hypothesis that ENHG and MLG underwent independent developments with respect to the emergence of the construction.