Linguistic Microvariation

 

Meertens Instituut, Amsterdam

October 2014

 

Authors

Cora Pots

Nina Wiedenhoff

 

 

 

Supervision and Editing

Sjef Barbiers

sjef.barbiers@meertens.knaw.nl

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

Section 1 – Introduction – Why study dialects?

Section 2 – Data collection

Section 3 – How-to manual MIMORE tool

Section 4 – Case study I: Third person plural pronoun

Section 5 – Case Study II: Interruption in the verbal cluster

Section 6 – Research questions

Section 7 – Learning module (including assignments and reading materials)

Section 1 – WHY STUDY DUTCH DIALECTS?

 

The Dutch language is spoken in the Netherlands, the northern half of Belgium, and a small part of Northwest France on the border with Flanders. Within this language area, one “standard” language (Dutch) is spoken, but there are also numerous varieties of the standard language, i.e. dialects. From a sociolinguistic perspective, the standard language is seen as the “official” language, which is mainly used in education and public places, etc., while the dialectal varieties are used as the informal, everyday language. From a linguistic perspective, by contrast, there is no principal difference between a language and a dialect as both are (different) languages that can be studied. This immediately underlines one of the reasons why the study of dialects is of such great importance for linguistic research: it forms an endless source of linguistic data.
                  The existence of dialects makes it possible to compare linguistic phenomena (such as word order, or word formation) in two or more languages even within one and the same language area. As such the study of linguistic microvariation is complementary to macrovariation: studying the dialects of a particular dialect family enables us to keep most properties of the dialects involved constant and observe which properties of a dialect change if one feature of that dialect changes (Kayne 2000). Microcomparative research provides us with an almost ideal language laboratory. It can give us some clear insights into which grammatical differences are linked to each other. Dialectal variation can thus be a helpful tool to find new correlations between linguistic phenomena, it can also be a good source to test or verify the strength of correlations that we are already familiar with. 

 

1.1 Linguistic phenomena

The Dutch dialects show variation in linguistic properties that also form part of standard Dutch. Even more interesting, dialects show phenomena that do not form part of the standard language. One example is the phenomenon of complementizer agreement, in which the complementizer – dat (‘that’) in Standard Dutch - agrees with the subject of the clause, as is shown in the example in (1) from Midsland, on the island of Terschelling (SAND). 

 

(1)           Gienien  mag  ’t  zien  dus ik  fien  da-st    dou  ’t  ook  net  zien meist.
no one    may   it  see   so    I    find  that-2sing          you  it  too  not  see  may
‘No one is allowed to see it so I consider that you are not allowed to see it either.’

This phenomenon does not form part of the Dutch standard language while many dialects of Dutch (widely distributed through the country) show complementizer agreement.

 

1.2 Microcomparative research

The study of dialects, which considers languages on a micro-comparative level, is also closely connected to the study of language change. It focuses on the differences between languages that are closely related and typically have many grammatical properties in common. Studying dialects thus contributes to our knowledge of diachronic developments, in that the differences between two dialects often reflect changes within one and the same language system.
                  Another reason why studying dialects is important, is the fact that local dialects are rapidly disappearing because of the increasing mobility and communication (e.g., social media). It is hardly possible for a language community to remain in isolation in this age of globalization and mass media. Because of this, the Dutch dialects appear to be changing in the direction of regiolects and even in the direction of the standard language, which may eventually lead to the disappearance of dialectal variation in the Dutch language area in its current form. This stresses the importance of studying dialects for its cultural and historical value: dialects represent an essential part of the cultural heritage of the Dutch speaking area and must be captured before extinction.

 

1.3 Variation on the level of sounds and words

Within the dialects there is variation on the level of sounds, words, phrases, and sentences. Of all different types of variation in the sound system is probably the most obvious form of dialectical variation as different accents are the first thing to be recognized most of the time. This type of variation is not only easy to distinguish, it also forms the category of differences at which dialectology has mainly looked until recently.
                  Until the end of the previous century, dialectal variation was primarily studied from a lexical and phonetic/phonological perspective and morphological variation was largely left aside. The main focus was on the words as separate units and not on the internal structure of those words. However, morphological variation can function as a helpful tool to signal language change. The dialects can show differences in pluralization (-en or –e suffix), diminutives (-ken or –sje suffix), and the genus of articles and adjectives. Dialects can change morphologically (affixes and suffixes may change or disappear) and adapt to forms of other regions of cities nearby. When this process of dialectal change takes place, dialects have their own, specific dynamics, and are not changing in the direction of the standard language per se. The form of the language of other speakers with whom dialect speakers are in (close) contact plays an important role.
                  The variation on the level of sounds, words, phrases, and sentences is strongly interconnected. According to the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995 and subsequent work), much of syntactic variation can be reduced to morphosyntactic properties of individual morphemes, i.e. to the lexicon: small morphosyntactic differences such as the absence of an inflectional morpheme are expected to have effects on syntactic structure. This makes it very interesting to investigate the possible correlations between syntactic, morphological, phonological, and lexical phenomena.

 

1.4 Variation on the level of sentences and phrases

The study of syntactic variation within the Dutch language area is important for a number of reasons. The amount of syntactic variation that can be found in the Dutch dialects is surprising, since most people have the impression that variation is mainly concentrated in the domains of pronunciation and lexicon. In the recent past, however, dialect syntax has become an important topic of study in linguistics. Syntactic properties of (the Dutch) dialects are now being studied in a more systematic way. Studying the syntactic properties of dialects is necessary to fill an important empirical gap in what we know about dialects. Studying Dutch dialects from a syntactic perspective can give us a more complete picture of the Dutch grammar.

                  Thus far, the micro-comparative study of Dutch has primarily focused on variation on the sentential level. Verbal clusters, sentential negation, and complementizer agreement are some of the phenomena that are studied within the Dutch language area. As many linguistic phenomena show similarities on the level of the distribution of words, phrases and sentences, the same type of variation is also expected to be present at the level of phrases, within the nominal constituent. There is no obvious reason why the dialectal variation would be more richly expressed in the sentential system than in the nominal one. Dialectal variation on the phrasal level can be found in nominal constructions that express interrogation, exclamation and focalization. Furthermore, articles and demonstratives can co-occur in some but not in all varieties of Dutch. Studying micro-variation at the phrasal level can give an overview of the richness of variation in this phrasal system. 

1.5 Reading materials

Barbiers, S., Cornips, L., and Kunst, J.P. (2007). The Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects (SAND): A Corpus of Elicited Speech and Text as an Online Dynamic Atlas. In: J. Beal, K. Corrigan, and H. Moisl (Eds.), Creating and digitizing language corpora. Vol. 1: Synchronic databases. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 54-90. (available online)

 

Barbiers, S. and Bennis, H. (2007). The Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects. A discussion of choices in the SAND-project. In: Nordlyd 34 (1). (available online)

 

Barbiers, S. (2009). Locus and limits of syntactic microvariation. In: Lingua 119(11). 1607-23. (available online)

 

Barbiers, S., M. Devos, G. de Schutter (eds.), (2002-2003). Dialectsyntaxis in bloei. In: Taal & Tongval, 15-16.

 

Corver, N., Koppen, M. van, & Kranendonk, H. (2013). De nominale woordgroep vanuit dialect-vergelijkend perspectief. Variaties en generalisaties. In: Nederlandse Taalkunde, 18(2). 107-137. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

 

Kayne, R. (2000). Parameters and Universals. New York: Oxford University Press.

 

Koppen, M. van, Corver, N., Kranendonk, H. & Rigterink, M. (2007). The Noun Phrase: Diversity in Dutch DP Design (DiDDD). In: Nordlyd  34(1). (available online)

 

Suggested readings

Van der Wal, M. & Bree, C. van (2008). Geschiedenis van het Nederlands. Houten-Antwerpen: Uitgeverij Spectrum.

 

Bree, C. van, Toorn, M. van den, & Wal, M. van der (1997). Paradigmawisselingen en constanten: 200 jaar taalkundige diversiteit. In: De Vries, J.W. (Ed.), Eene bedenkelijke nieuwigheid. Twee eeuwen neerlandistiek. Hilversum: Verloren. (available online)

 

 

 

Section 2 - DATA COLLECTION

 

2.1          Dynamic Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects (DynaSAND)

 

2.1.1 General description

Between 2000 and 2003 a large-scale dialect syntax project was conducted in The Netherlands and parts of Belgium (Flanders) and France to investigate syntactic dialectal differences in this Dutch-speaking area and to provide a detailed description of the current syntactic variation in Dutch dialects. The project was a co-operation between Meertens Institute (KNAW, Amsterdam), University of Ghent, University of Antwerp, University of Leiden, University of Amsterdam and Frisian Academy (KNAW, Leeuwarden). The research was held in 158 locations in the Netherlands, 102 locations in Belgium and seven in France; a total of 267 locations. This research project had as its goal both the production of a traditional printed atlas and an electronic atlas. The printed atlas visualizes syntactic variation in the Dutch dialects (SAND: Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects/Syntactische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten, Deel I, Barbiers, Bennis, De Vogelaer, Devos & Van der Ham, 2005; Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects/Syntactische Altas van de Nederlandse Dialecten, Deel II, Barbiers, Van der Auwera, Bennis, Boef, De Vogelaer & Van der Ham, 2008). Each map is provided with a linguistic description of specific syntactic variables, a discussion of the geographical distribution of the variable in question and a bibliography. The electronic atlas is a web-based dynamic atlas created as a tool for linguistic research. The data corpus can be searched with a search engine. The data corpus consists of data from 267 dialects. In addition, cartographic software allows for the online creation of maps (Barbiers, Cornips & Kunst, 2006).

 

2.1.2 Research domains

The research domains were chosen on the basis of a survey of existing literature, the knowledge of variation of Dutch and Belgium dialectologists and the theoretical importance of specific phenomena. For this project, it was decided to investigate a selection of topics in depth, rather than attempting to provide a descriptive overview of all topics in syntactic variation, which would have been much less profound. The project was restricted to four domains, namely:

 

• The left periphery. This domain includes topics such as complementizer selection, complementizer agreement, subject pronouns, subject doubling, relative clauses and questions.
• The right periphery. This domain concerns the organization of the verbal cluster, including the order of the verbs in the cluster, the Infinitivus Pro Participio (IPP) effect, and the interruption of the verbal cluster by non-verbal material such as particles, stranded prepositions and bare nouns.
• Negation and quantification. This domain includes the variation in negative particles, negative concord, scope, negative polarity and negative quantifiers.
• Pronominal reference. This domain includes the variation in the use, the form, and the referential properties of personal pronouns (weak versus strong), reflexive pronouns and reciprocals (Barbiers & Bennis, 2007).

 

2.1.3 Methodology

2.1.3.1 Informants

Informants could participate in this project when the following criteria were met:

 

• The informant speaks the dialect of the community;
• Both the informant and his/her parents were born and raised in the same community;
• The informant has lived in the community until the age of eighteen and has not been living outside the community for a period longer than seven years;
• The informant speaks the dialect at home and in at least one public domain;
• The informant is between 55 and 70 years old.

 

In addition, it was also checked whether the informant had a normative perspective towards his/her dialect. If this was the case, the informant could not participate in the project. For each location, two informants were recruited.

 

2.1.3.2 Data collection

The data collection stage comprised of four sub stages, namely the inventory stage, the postal pilot study, the fieldwork and the telephone interviews. During the inventory stage, all literature that was consulted was also entered into a database, so that it could be used as a source of information throughout the project. In the postal pilot study and during the fieldwork a questionnaire, comprising of 424 test sentences, were administered. To elicit the answers to the questions in the questionnaires, different methods were used, including translation tasks, indirect relative grammaticality judgment tasks, empty spot tasks, completion tasks, meaning questions and picture response tasks. In the last stage, telephone interviews were held to fill certain gaps in the data that had arisen during the administering of the questionnaires in the field.

 

2.1.3.3 Procedure

It was decided to use a different procedure for the fieldwork in The Netherlands than in Belgium. This was decided because dialect speakers in Belgium are more stable in their use of their dialect. Therefore, for the Belgium speakers the risk of accommodation towards the standard language was very low. For the Dutch speakers however, this risk was much higher. It was thus decided that in Belgium the field worker did the interview him/herself using a variety of the regional language with two speakers of the local dialect as informants. In the Netherlands, the interview was also held with two speakers of the local dialect, but one of these speakers functioned as the assistant interviewer, while the other was the informant. The field worker was present in the room, but tried to interfere as little as possible. In both procedures, questionnaires were used to gather the data. For a more detailed description of the procedure and the elicitation techniques that were used, see Cornips & Jongenburger (2001) and Cornips & Poletto (2005).

 

2.1.4 From data to database

Recordings were made of the fieldwork interviews and telephone interviews. These recordings were digitalized and transcribed. Transcriptions were carried out in the software program PRAAT. Then, the data were tagged with part of speech (POS) information, that is, words were labeled with a tag to indicate in which word class this word belongs. In addition, it was decided to add more attributes that strictly speaking do not belong to POS tagging. These attributes involved information about syntactic function, word order and hierarchy. In addition, the recordings of the interviews are also accessible in the database and it is possible to see the context of the particular sentence that is of interest for the end-user.

 

2.1.5 References

SAND I. Barbiers, S., Bennis, H., De Vogelaer, G., Devos, M. & Van der Ham, M. (2005). Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects/Syntactische Altas van de Nederlandse Dialecten; Deel I. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

 

SAND II. Barbiers, S., Van der Auwera, J., Bennis, H. Boef, E., De Vogelaer, G. & Van der Ham, M. (2008). Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects/Syntactische Altas van de Nederlandse Dialecten; Deel II. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

 

Barbiers, S. et al. (2006). Dynamische Syntactische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten (DynaSAND). Amsterdam, Meertens Instituut. URL: https://sand.meertens.knaw.nl/.

 

Barbiers, S., Cornips, L. & Kunst, J.P. (2007). The Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects: A corpus of elicited speech and text as an on-line dynamic atlas. In: Beal, J.C., Corrigan, K.P. & Moisl, H.L. (eds.). Creating and digitizing language corpora. volume 1: Synchronic databases. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 54-90. (available online)

 

Barbiers, S. & Bennis, H.J. (2007). The Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects. A discussion of choices in the SAND-project. In: Bentzen, K. & Vangsnes, Ø.A. (eds.). Nordlyd, 34(1), 53-72. Scandinavian Dialect Syntax 2005. (available online)

 

Cornips, L. & Jongenburger, W. (2001). Het design en de methodologie van het SAND-project.  Nederlandse Taalkunde, 16(3), 15-232.

 

Cornips, L. & Poletto, C. (2005). On standardizing syntactic elicitation techniques I. Lingua, 115, 939-957. (available online)

 

 

2.2          Diversity in Dutch DP Design (DiDDD)

 

2.2.1 General description

This project was executed between 2005 and 2009 and investigated syntactic diversity in the determiner phrase (DP, for example ‘the man’) in varieties of Dutch. The varieties of Dutch that were studied are Standard Dutch, Dutch dialects and older stages of Dutch. It was a project of the University of Utrecht, UiL-OTS. The research was conducted in about 200 locations in both the Netherlands and the Dutch-speaking parts of Belgium (Flanders), as well as on various written sources of older stages of Dutch. The overall aim of this research project was to contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of grammatical (syntactic) diversity and the way this diversity is encoded in human language; to be studied from one single language, namely Dutch. The goal was to give insight into the fine-grained aspects of syntactic diversity in the nominal system. An additional goal was that the project would result in a better understanding of the theoretical notion of parameter. Furthermore, the data of the project are used in two different databases. The first database, the dialect-grammar database, contains the data of reference grammars of both older and contemporary Dutch. In this database, 83 different reference grammars of Dutch are included. The second database contains the responses to the written questionnaire, and is online available via the MIMORE tool. In addition, the recordings of the interviews and transcriptions of these interviews are also available in the MIMORE tool. The search engine to search only the DiDDD database is still to be developed (Corver, Van Koppen, Kranendonk & Rigterink, 2007).

 

2.2.2 Research domains

This project investigated the noun phrase in contemporary variants of Dutch and in older variant of Dutch using three different domains, namely:

 

1)    DP-internal pronouns, for example ‘de mijne’, the my-inf. mine. This domain includes the distribution attributive pronominals within DP, the distribution and morphosyntactic expression of substantively used pronominals, the interplay between articles, demonstratives and possessives and the expression of nominal constructs featuring non-pronominal possessors in combination with definite articles/demonstrative pronouns.

2)    Number, quantification and negation, for example ‘twee auto’s’ two cars, ‘veel mensen’ many people and ‘geen water’ no water. This domain includes the dimensions of variation in the expression of quantification and negation and the DP-internal variation with respect to quantification.

3)    The left periphery of the DP, for example ‘welke auto’ which car. This domain includes left edge phenomena involving left peripheral elements associated with discourse properties like interrogation, exclamation and focalization/emphasis and the aspects of cross-categorical parallelism between the nominal system and the sentential system.

These three domains were chosen because they belong to the core phenomena associated with the functional system of the noun phrase, have been topics of discussion in modern grammatical theorizing and because global inspection of available reference grammars indicated that these domains are potentially rich regarding to grammatical variation  (Corver, Van Koppen, Kranendonk & Rigterink, 2007).

 

2.2.3 Methodology

2.2.3.1 Informants

Most of the informants had already participated in the SAND-project. For the informants that had not already participated in the SAND-project, the selection criteria were the same as for the SAND-project, for convenience repeated here:

 

• The informant speaks the dialect of the community;
• Both the informant and his/her parents are born and raised in the same community;
• The informant has lived in the community until the age of eighteen and has not been living outside the community for a period longer than seven years;
• The informant speaks the dialect at home and in at least one public domain;
• The informant is between 55 and 70 years old.

 

2.2.3.2 Data collection

The data collection stage consisted of four sub stages, namely the study of the reference grammars, a written survey with a short questionnaire, a written survey with a long questionnaire and oral interviews. During the study of the reference grammars, grammars of modern dialects but also of older stages of Dutch dialects were investigated. All data was stored in the reference grammar database, and was used to develop the questionnaires. Then, a short questionnaire was sent to all the informants of the SAND-project. The reason for this was twofold; first, it functioned as a control mechanism for the data that would be gathered with the long questionnaire, and second, to find possible forms of variation that were not found on basis of the reference grammars. Following, the long questionnaires were sent to informants from 23 different places of residence, spread over the Netherlands and Flanders. In the other 30 places of residence, oral interviews were conducted on the basis of the long questionnaire. The methods of elicitation for the questionnaires were a translation task and a yes/no-translation task (in which a sentence was presented to the informant and he/she was asked to indicate whether that sentence occurred in their dialect and if so, to translate it into their dialect) (Corver, Van Koppen and Kranendonk, 2013).

 

2.2.3.3 Procedure

The written questionnaires were divided into four sub-questionnaires. First, two questionnaires were sent to the informant. When he/she had sent back the questionnaires, the remaining two questionnaires were sent. This was done because the questionnaires were rather long, and sending all four sub-questionnaires at once could have resulted in less consistent and robust data. The oral interviews based on the questionnaire were administered in the same way as for the SAND-project. That is, the interview was also held with two speakers of the local dialect, but one of these speakers functioned as the assistant interviewer, while the other was the informant. The field worker was present in the room, but tried to interfere as little as possible. In both procedures, questionnaires were used gather the data.

 

2.2.4 From data to database

For the first database, the reference grammar-database, not only the data are included but also relevant comments from the authors. Unfortunately, this database is currently not yet available online.

                  For the second database, the data of both the short and the long questionnaire are included. The orthography of the informants (who filled in the written questionnaire) is used. The oral interviews were recorded and the recordings were digitalized. The recordings were transcribed using the SAND-protocol for transcription.

 

2.2.5 References

 

Corver, N., Koppen, M. van, & Kranendonk, H. (2013). De nominale woordgroep vanuit dialect-vergelijkend perspectief. Variaties en generalisaties. In: Nederlandse Taalkunde, 18(2). 107-137. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

 

Corver, N. et al (2011). Database Diversity in Dutch DP Design (DiDDD). Utrecht, UiL-OTS. URL: httpd://diddd.meertens.knaw.nl/.

 

Corver, N., Van Koppen, M., Kranendonk, H. & Rigterink, M. (2007). The noun phrase: Diversity in Dutch DP design (DiDDD). In: Bentzen, K. & Vangsnes, Ø.A. (eds.). Nordlyd, 34(1), 53-72. Scandinavian Dialect Syntax 2005. (available online)

 

 

2.3          Goeman-Taeldeman-Van Reenen project (GTRP)

 

2.3.1 General description

Between 1979 and 2000 morphological and phonological variation in the Dutch dialects was investigated in the Goeman-Taeldeman-Van Reenen project. The project was a co-operation between the Meertens Institute (KNAW, Amsterdam), the University of Ghent, the University of Leuven, the University of Amsterdam, the Fryske Akademy (Frisian Academy; KNAW, Leeuwarden) and the Nedersaksisch Instituut (Institute of Low-Saxon) of the University of Groningen. The research was conducted in about 600 locations in the Netherlands and Flanders. The goal of the research was to collect a broad range of data concerning morphological and phonological variation in the Dutch language area, and later also to produce two printed atlases; the Morphological Atlas of Dutch Dialects (‘Morfologische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten’, MAND; Volume I: De Schutter et al. 2005; Volume II: Goeman et al. 2008) and the Phonological Atlas of Dutch Dialects (‘Fonologische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten’, FAND; Volume I, II and III: Goossens et al. 1998, 2000, 2005; Volume IV: De Wulf et al.). The production of the FAND was organized at the University of Ghent, while the production of the MAND was organized at the Meertens Institute (KNAW, Amsterdam). The data of the GTRP was used to create the online GTRP database, which can be searched using the search engine (https://mand.meertens.knaw.nl/database/; Goeman, 2006; Goeman and Taeldeman, 1996).

 

2.3.2 Research domains

The research domains of this project were as follows:

 

• The phonological and morphological variation of inherited vocabulary, that is, not of borrowings et cetera.
• The phonological phenomena on the level of the word or constituent, that is, not on the sentential level.
• Paradigms of the basic words of all word classes.
• All pre- and postvocalic C-clusters and all historical vocals in the context of different consonants.

 

2.3.3 Methodology

2.3.3.1 Informants

Informants were selected to participate in this study using the following criteria:

 

• The informant speaks the dialect of the community;
• The informant is born in the place of residence and has lived there preferably his/her whole life; the same goes for his/her parents;
• The informant is between 50 and 75 years old;
• The informant is preferably low-educated but with considerably high literacy skills.

2.3.3.2 Data collection

The data collection comprised of two stages, namely the inventory stage and the fieldwork. In 1975 a conference was held for dialectologists of the Netherlands and Flanders to inventory what kind of research would be needed in their field. It was found that there was acute need of a broad description and investigation of the morphological and phonological variation in the Netherlands and Flanders. After this conference, a commission was made that had the task to prepare the actual fieldwork. They created an extensive questionnaire, consisting of words, word groups and sentences, in total 1876 items. The items were to be translated by the informants in their own dialect. In addition, in many cases it was asked to also give another word of the word paradigm, for example the diminutive of the given word.

 

2.3.3.3 Procedure

Two fieldworkers per country, that is, the Netherlands and Belgium administered the questionnaires with the informants.

 

2.3.4 From data to database

The administering of the questionnaires was recorded. Most tape-recordings, however, were made in the era of analog recording. When the quality of digitalization became good enough, all recordings were digitalized. All items were transcribed in narrow IPA (SIL). The transcriptions were used to create a database, now in hands of the Meertens Institute (KNAW, Amsterdam), which maintains the website, documentation and sound-archives. Part of the sound recordings are already available in MIMORE.

 

 

2.3.5 References

 

FAND I. Goossens, J., J. Taeldeman and G. Verleijen, 1998. Fonologische Atlas van de

Nederlandse Dialecten. Deel I.  Gent: Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal en letterkunde.

 

FAND II & III. Goossens, J., J. Taeldeman and G. Verleijen, 2000. Fonologische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten. Deel II. DeWestgermaanse korte vocalen in open lettergreep. Deel III. De Westgermaanse lange vocalen en diftongen. Gent: Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde.

 

FAND IV. De Wulf, C., J. Goossens, & J.Taeldeman, 2005. Fonologische Atlas van de

Nederlandse Dialecten. Deel IV. De consonanten. Gent: Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde.

 

Goeman, A. & Taeldeman, J. (1996). Fonologie en morfologie van de Nederlandse dialecten. Een nieuwe materiaalverzameling en twee nieuwe atlasprojecten. Taal & Tongval 48, 38-59. (available online)

 

Goeman, A. (2006). De morfologische atlas van de Nederlandse dialecten (MAND); Zero en bewaard gebleven morfologische informatie. Taal & Tongval, Themanummer 18, 66-92. (available online)

 

MAND I. De Schutter, G., T. Goeman, B.L. van den Berg, T. de Jong  2005. Morfologische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten Deel I / Morphological Atlas of the Dutch Dialects Volume I. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

 

MAND II. Goeman, A., M. van Oostendorp, P. van Reenen, O. Koornwinder, B.L. van den Berg, A. Van Reenen, 2008. Morfologische atlas van de Nederlandse dialecten. Deel II/Morphological Atlas of the Dutch Dialects. Volume II. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

 

 

 

 

 

Section 3 - HOW-TO MANUAL MIMORE TOOL

On the basis of an illustrated example, the linguistic phenomenon of subject doubling, all different options of the MIMORE search database are explored.

 

3.1 Introduction

Subject doubling is the phenomenon in which the subject pronoun is repeated and there are two subject pronouns in one sentence. This phenomenon occurs neither in standard Dutch nor in the northern dialects of the Netherlands. In the southwestern and western-central dialects of Dutch, however, it is possible to double the subject (the noun phrase, or NP) of the sentence by means of a subject pronoun that agrees with the subject in person, number and gender.

 

Two examples of subject doubling are shown in (1) and (2) below.

 

(1)           ‘k    ga-ik               ook  mee.                                                                                       regular order
I_weak go-I_strong        too   with

                  ‘I’m coming too.’

 

(2)           Ga-ze                       zij             ook mee?                                                                    inverted order
Goes-she_weak        she_strong  too with

                  ‘Is she coming too?’

 

In the examples in (1) and (2) you can see that the subject pronoun is repeated and appears twice in the same sentence. Note that the two instances are not exactly identical. Subject doubling may occur in all combinations of person and number (1p, 2p, 3p; singular or plural). Subject doublings often consist of a combination of a weak and a strong pronoun as is the case with the examples in (1) and (2): ‘k (‘I’) is a clitic and a weak form of the personal pronoun ik (‘I’); the pronoun ze (‘she’) is the weak form of strong zij (‘she’).1

 

With the MIMORE search engine we can search for varieties on the level of sound, words, phrases and sentences, and for combinations of one or more of those varieties. As subject doubling in principle is a syntactic phenomenon, we start with micro variation on the sentential level. Later on we can possibly pursue our search if we want to look for some correlating grammatical phenomena that correspond with the syntactic phenomenon of subject doubling. 

 

3.2 How to search for data?

Let’s start and search for some interesting subject doubling data in the MIMORE tool.  

 

• Go to MIMORE Search  
• Click on perform new search

 

There you see, vertically presented, several tabs on which you can select the information you want to search for:

 

• Geographic conditions
• Resources and limits
• Search for text
• Search for tags
• Search for syntactic phenomena
• Presentation: table with results

 

In the last tab you can choose the format in which the search results will be presented: in a table with results or in a visual map.

 

Let us search for some subject doubling data now. We know that the phenomenon does not occur in the northern dialects of Dutch but we do not know in which specific region(s) or places in the south of Dutch the subject may be doubled. So we leave the search for ‘Geographic Conditions’ open: no geographical restrictions.2 In the next tab, we can choose to search within one of the main components of the MIMORE tool: GTRP, DynaSAND, and/or DiDDD. Subject doubling is a syntactic phenomenon but there is no need to specify this in the search; we can leave this option open for now.

 

At the tab ‘Syntactic Phenomena’ we select for the syntactic database of the DynaSAND in which all syntactic phenomena (the ones that are investigated) appear in alphabetical order.

 

• Click on Search for Syntactic Phenomena
• Click on the tab in the middle: sand
• Go to the letter S to search for subject doubling
• Select the text box subject doubling 28x

 

It is not (yet) possible in MIMORE to search within all 28 subject doubling phenomena at the same time. We thus have to narrow our search and split it into several smaller search queries, for example like the categorization below.

 

• Subject doubling 1pSG
• Subject doubling 1pPL
• Subject doubling 2pSG
• Subject doubling 2pPL
• Subject doubling 3pSG (masc./fem./neut./lexical subject)
• Subject doubling 3pPL

 

Optional assignment 1

Can you think of another way of splitting up the 28 subject doubling search results? 

 

Then we choose to collect the data in a table with results to get an overview of all attested sentences and their locations. 

 

• Go to the tab Table with results
• Click on Table with results
• Hit the search button on the lower right side of the page

 

Now we can have a closer look at the data that we have collected. The table can show the data categories below. It is possible to deselect one or more of these data categories such that you don’t get to see them in the search results.

 

• Nr.
• Resource
• ID
• Sentence
• Test sentence
• Translation
• Location
• Place name
• Latitude
• Longitude
• Tags
• Gloss
• Context
• Audio

 

We can easily go through all the test sentences and if needed we can select the test sentences we do not want to save in our search (wrong result, error, etc.) and narrow the results a little bit.

 

• Go through the search results and demark the field on the left below the # sign of the test sentences you want to delete (those results are then left out).
• Add the adapted search to your virtual collection by clicking on add to virtual collection

 

Like this we can optimize our search results. It will never be the case that a search is completely perfect in one time; there will always be some test sentences that obey the criteria but do not belong to the same linguistic phenomenon that we are looking for. It is thus always useful to complete the search results by going through the data and check them manually.  

                  In the example above we have used the search function Search for Syntactic Phenomena. It is also possible to use the options Search for Text or Search for Tags. The option Search for Text currently only allows searching for one word at a time, and only Dutch or dialectal Dutch words (no words from the glosses or the translations). There are three ways to use Search for Tags. With the tag constructor the user creates his own complex tag by combining a category with one or more features. The complex tag does not have to be complete. Features can be left unspecified, in which case they don’t filter the results. For example, a complex tag specified as Pronoun (2) will give both second person singular and second person plural pronouns as results. The second way to search with complex tags is to use one of the tags from the menu of predefined tags. Finally, the user can also enter complex tags manually. In Search for Tags it is possible to search with a string of more than one tag. This search is order sensitive, i.e. a search with ‘Pron(2) V’ will only yield results of the type jij werkt ‘you work’ while a search with ‘V Pron(2)’ will only yield results of the type werk jij ‘work you’. The default interpretation of a tag search string is that the tags must be adjacent, so no results of the type als je gezond leeft  ‘if you healthy live’ will appear if searched with ‘Pron(2) V’. If adjacency is not required or desirable, an empty category can be used between the tags. This empty category is available in the Category menu of the tag constructor.  The tag search string required to find als je gezond leeft  ‘if you healthy live’ would be: Pron(2) ( ) V.

 

3.2 How to create a map?

Now that we have got an overview of our collected subject doubling data (one specific phenomenon), we can have a closer look at the data and see from which locations the data are collected. It might be interesting to see how the data are geographically distributed. By creating a map, we can have a clear overview of the distribution over the (southern) Dutch regions where subject doubling is used.

 

• Click on add to virtual collection

Now your search is stored in your own virtual data collection. Note that the virtual collection cannot be saved permanently! When you quit MIMORE, your virtual collection will be lost. It is possible, however, to export your search results.

• To create a map, click on the globe icon on the right side
• To save the map, right click on the image of the map and click save image

 

Note that the image of the map cannot be stored in your virtual collection.

 

3.3 How to work with your virtual collection?

Next to creating a map, storing your searches in the virtual collection is useful for several other reasons. It makes it possible to compare different searches and to make a comparison between the data of two or more searches. Let’s stay with the subject-doubling phenomenon and dive deeper in the collected data. When we have stored (temporarily!) all the different searches as mentioned above - 1pSG, 1pPL, 2pSG, 2pPL, 3pSG, and 3pPL – we can have a closer inspection on the differences and similarities between those closely related phenomena.

 

By copying and merging the data of two or more searches, we can look at the union, the intersection or the complement of the search queries. This can give us some clear insights and it helps to explain certain linguistic phenomena and facilitates investigating the link between two different phenomena. Is there a complete overlap and are two phenomena evenly distributed, or are there some clear differences in the distribution?   

 

• Select two (or more) searches within the virtual collection by marking the field on the left, below the # sign
• Click on Copy & Merge – Union to store the union of the collected items
• Click on Copy & Merge – Intersection to store the intersection of the collected items
• Click on Copy & Merge – Complement to store the relative complement of the collected items

The union of two searches shows the areas in which one of the two phenomena, or both phenomena are used. The intersection of two searches shows the area in which both phenomena are used. The relative complement of two searches shows the area in which a phenomenon is used that is not used in the other dialectal areas.

 

3.4 How to compare two maps?  

In cases of subject doubling, the first pronoun is never heavier than the second, e.g. ze (‘she’) is followed by zij (‘she’), instead of the other way around: a weak pronoun in principle is followed by a strong pronoun. The geographic distribution of the combination of two strong pronouns (zij – zij) is more restricted than that of the combinations with both strong and weak forms. Let’s have a closer look on the geographic distribution of strong and weak pronouns in subject doubling cases.

 

• Click on Perform new search
• Select subject doubling in the DynaSAND (see above) and click on the third person singular feminine variant. This will give all subject doubling phenomena with ze and/or zij in all possible combinations, so we have to further specify our search.
• Go the tab Search for text
• Type ‘zij’
• Go to the tab Search for tags
• Click on Pron(pers,3,sg)
• Save this search to your virtual collection (see above)

 

This will result in all instances of subject doubling with at least one strong pronoun zij. Note that it is not (yet) possible to search for two instances of zij in the text filter, or to search for two tags at the same time. We can filter out the instances of ze to get only combinations of two strong pronouns (zij – zij) and compare the search results of subject doubling in which ze and zij appear.

 

3.5 How to organize your search results

When you’ve selected multiple tabs in your search query, it might be helpful to close down the tabs you have used. This makes it easier to get a ‘one page view’ of your search results.

• Click on the tabs you have used - ‘Geographic conditions’, ‘Resources & limits’, ‘Search for text’, ‘Search for tags’ and/or ‘Search for syntactic phenomena’; this will hide the search request.

Sometimes it is not quite clear how many search results there will be. When a query takes too long (e.g., several minutes) or there are no results at all, it can be useful to search for a limited number of results.

 

• Click on Resources & limits
• Select the option to the right The total number of results is
• Choose a maximum number of results

After the search is performed, it is possible to select the columns that are presented in the table. On top of the table, you can select all options you would like to investigate. Data you’re not interested in, can be filtered out easily.

 

Optional assignment

Try to search for several combinations of subject doubling containing weak and/or strong pronouns. In which regions subject doubling is most apparent? Do you come across any differences between weak-strong and strong-strong pronouns?   

 

3.5 How to export the data?

When we are happy with the search results and have stored them in our virtual collection, it is time to save the search results. Do not wait to long with saving your search results as the storage in the virtual collection is temporarily. You can save the results and export them either to an Excel sheet, a csv file or a pdf file.

 

• Open the search you want to save by clicking on its title
• Click on export
• Choose excel 5.0, csv or pdf
• Click download en save your exported file

 

3.6 How to search for correlations between phenomena?

The microvariation as we have seen it with subject doubling, shows variation on the sentential level. Variation on the level of sound, words, phrases and sentences is possible, and combinations of one or more of those varieties are also possible. Let’s continue our search by looking at some correlating grammatical phenomena that correspond with the syntactic phenomenon of subject doubling.
                 

A correlation between the phenomena of subject doubling and left dislocation is sometimes hypothesized. Subject doubling is one of the syntactic phenomena in the DynaSAND and left dislocation is one of the phenomena in the nominal projection in DiDDD and thus we can use the MIMORE search engine to make a comparison of the two phenomena. The strong pronoun appears to occurring somewhere in the middle of the sentence mostly, so it is expected not to be a left dislocated element. We can have a look at whether the map of subject doubling and left dislocation show some overlap.

 

• Go to the tab Syntactic Phenomena and click on DiDDD
• Click on the text box Left dislocation
• Compare the two maps in your virtual collection3

 

Optional assignment 2

Doubling is rapidly disappearing in one specific area in one of the southern Dutch dialects. Is it possible to find out in which area this is the case?

 

Optional assignment 3

Which type of doubling is the most frequent one? First person singular or first person plural?

 

3.7 Reading materials

 

Barbiers, S. (2009). Locus and limits of syntactic micro variation. In: Lingua: 119 (11), 1607-1623. (available online)

 

Craenenbroeck, J. van & Koppen, M. van (2008). Pronominal doubling and the structure of the left periphery in southern Dutch. In: S. Barbiers, O. Koeneman, M. Lekakou, M. van der Ham (Eds.), Microvariation in Syntactic Doubling. Elsevier/Emerald, Amsterdam. 207-250. (available online)

 

Craenenbroeck, J. van & Koppen, M. van (2002). Subject doubling in Dutch dialects. In: Koppen, M. van, Thrift, E., Torre, E. van der & Zimmerman, M.(eds.). Proceedings of Console IX. pp. 54-67. Leiden: SOLE.

 

Haegeman, L. (1990). Subject pronouns and subject clitics in West Flemish. In: The Linguistic Review 7, 333-363.   

 

De Vogelaer, G. & Devos, M. (2008). On Geographical Adequacy, or: How Many Types of Subject Doubling in Dutch. In: S. Barbiers, O. Koeneman, M. Lekakou, M. van der Ham (Eds.), Microvariation in Syntactic Doubling. Elsevier/Emerald, Amsterdam. 251-276.

 

Zwart, J.W. (1993). Dutch syntax: A minimalist approach, Diss., University of Groningen. 

Suggested readings 

Barbiers, S., Koeneman, O. & Lekakou, M. (2009). Syntactic doubling and the structure of wh-chains. In: Journal of Linguistics: 45, 1-46. (available online)

 

Cardinaletti, A. & Starke, M. (1999). The typology of structural deficiency. A case study of the three classes of pronouns. In: Clitics in the languages of Europe, ed. Henk van Riemsdijk, 145–233. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. (available online)

 

Dechaine, R.M. & Wiltschko, M. (2002). Decomposing pronouns. In: Linguistic Inquiry 33:409–442.

 

Section 4 - CASE STUDY I: THIRD PERSON PLURAL PRONOUN

 

4.1 Introduction

In Dutch dialects, phonological and morphological variation within personal pronouns is well attested. Since there is so much variation, it is useful to zoom in on one particular personal pronoun form, to gain insight in the range of variety within this particular form and the way the different forms are spread over the Dutch language area. In this case study, we will investigate the variation and the distribution of this variation of the third person plural personal pronoun form. We will look at the possessive pronoun form and the subject pronoun form.

                  It is very probable that students are already familiar with some of the variation within this particular pronoun form. For example, most people that have visited a village in the province of Noord-Brabant will have heard the use of ‘hullie’, for which an example sentence is given in (1):

 

(1)           Hullie kind           ‘Their child’                           [Abbekerk Dutch, GTRP]

 

In a different dialect, however, we find another form of the possessive pronoun, given in (2):

 

(2)           Hale kojnt            ‘Their child’                           [Opperdoes Dutch, GTRP]

 

Looking at those two different forms of the same possessive pronoun, we could wonder if there is more variation, and also how this variation is distributed. This is what we will do in section 2. In section 3., we are going to investigate the variation within the subject pronoun. It is a well-known phenomenon – which is also hotly debated in the literature and media – in the Dutch language area that the object form of the third person plural pronoun, that is, ‘hun’, is used as a subject pronoun. An example of this is given in (3):

 

(3)           Ie       geloobn jammer              genoeg  neit dad  hun  armer binn as     jullie.

They believe   unfortunately ‘enough’ not  that they poorer are  than you.

‘They do not believe, unfortunately, that they are poorer than you are.’

                                                                                                                                                [Onstwedde, SAND]

 

Interestingly, we see also the form ‘hullie’ as a subject pronoun, the same form as we saw above as a possessive pronoun. An example is shown in (4):

 

(4)           Je     denke toch    niet dat  hullie armer  binnen as     wij?

You think  surely not  that they   poorer are        than we?

‘Surely you do not think that they are poorer than we are?’

                                                                                                                                                [Schoorl, SAND]

 

In section 4., we are going to look at one additional phenomenon, namely inflection marking on the third person plural possessive pronoun, when this pronoun is used in a context where there is no noun. An example of this is given in (5).

 

(5)           ‘Over tantes gesproken’, hullie-s bennen op vakantie.

                  ‘About aunts speaking’,   they –INFL are on  holiday.

                  ‘Speaking of aunts’, They are on holiday.’                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        [Oosterend, DiDDD]

 

4.2 Variation in the third person plural possessive pronoun

In this section, we are going to investigate the variation in forms of the third person plural possessive pronoun ‘hun’ in the Dutch language area, using the MIMORE tool. In the GTR project, possessive pronouns are part of the questionnaire. So, using the option ‘search for syntactic phenomena’, we can select an item of the GTRP with the possessive pronoun that we want to investigate. We can select, for example, the item ‘hun geit’ their goat to do this, since the particular possessive pronoun under question is in that item. We find this item by clicking on the ‘H’ option. After clicking on ‘search’, we get for all 617 dialects in the GTRP their translation of the Standard Dutch item ‘hun geit’. When we go through all the results, we can roughly divide the results in five categories, namely ‘hun’ forms, ‘hullie’ forms, ‘heur’ forms, ‘hulder/hunder’ forms and ‘heule’ forms. For all these categories, the vowel (in the first syllable) can vary. Also, the consonant /h/ is often deleted. For the category ‘hun’ forms, it is the case that also the consonant /n/ can be deleted. In the ‘hullie’ category, also the ‘hunnie’ forms are included, since both forms descend from the same complex form ‘hunlieden’ (Van der Wal & Van Bree, 2008).

                  Now that the categories are defined, we can manually select all items for each category (tip: click on the option ‘all items deselected’, so you just have to select the items for one category instead of having to deselect all other items). Each time we have selected all items of one category, we click on the option ‘add to virtual collection’ and label the selection with the name of the category (for example ‘hun’, but of course you can make this label as specific as you want). When all categories are added to the virtual collection, we can make a map in which all categories are presented. In Figure 1. the map that can be made is shown.

 

Discussion assignment 1

With Figure 1, the variation in ‘hun’ and distribution of this variation can be discussed, using the following questions (or different questions that come up during the discussion):

• Which forms of ‘hun’ did you encounter before and which did you not know yet? Are there students that use one of the forms other than ‘hun’ in their dialect?
• What can we say about the distribution of the variation? Is it logical? Does something stand out? How could we investigate whether the distribution is for example correlated to language contact or sociolinguistic factors?

 

Figure 1. Variation in third person plural possessive pronoun ‘hun’ and the distribution of this variation. MIMORE.

Optional assignment 1

In this assignment, the variation in ‘hun’ can be studied from a phonological perspective. Since there is much phonological variation within each category of the third person plural possessive pronoun (e.g. /hulli/, /sulli/, /halli/, /hooli/), it is of interest to investigate this phonological variation within each category in more depth. For each category, maps can be made of this phonological variation and the distribution of this variation. This assignment can be made as extensive as fits the timeframe. For example, it can be chosen to just make a distinction between different vowels in each possessive pronoun form, but the study can also be extended by also taking into account long and short vowels, or by investigating the consonant substitution of /h/ by /s/ or /z/, etc. An example map of the distribution of ‘hullie’ with the attested different vowels is shown in Figure 2. Naturally, the results can again lead to a similar discussion as proposed for the main case study in discussion assignment 1.

 

Figure 2. Distribution of different vowels in the possessive pronoun form ‘hullie’

 

Optional assignment 2

In this assignment, lexical variation will be studied. In the main case study, the item ‘hun geit’ their goat was used to investigate variation of the possessive pronoun. However, there is also variation in the word that is used for ‘geit’ goat. If you take a closer look at the data, you will find that there are three different lexical items used to refer to goat, namely the standard form ‘geit’, and two non-standard forms, namely varieties on ‘sik/sige’ and ‘dur’ (note that in all three forms, there is also much phonological variation). In this assignment, a map can be made to see how these three forms are distributed. The map that can be made is shown in Figure 3. With regard to this map, a discussion can be held on the distribution of the lexical forms, but also whether language contact can be of influence on which form is used.  For example, in German, the word for goat is ‘Ziege’, which could arguably be the source for the form ‘sik/sige’. Of course, a good argument for this idea is that the form ‘sik/sige’ is used in provinces that are bordered to Germany. As for the form ‘dur’, an idea for where it comes from is not that easily made. Here lies an opportunity for an extra case study.

Figure 3. Distribution of three different lexical forms that are used to refer to ‘geit’ goat           

4.3 Variation in the third person plural subject pronoun

In this section, we are going to use the MIMORE tool to investigate the variation within the third person plural subject pronoun. To do this, it is best to use the option ‘search for syntactic phenomena’, go to the options of SAND and look under the ‘S’ for the option ‘forms of subject pronouns’. Here, we see a wide range of different forms of subject pronouns. Since we are only investigating the third person plural pronoun in this case study, we are also here going to look at this pronoun. There are more third person plural subject pronoun forms indicated than we have investigated with the GTRP data. However, to make it not too complex, let us only look at the forms that we looked at in section 2. We start with ‘hullie’, by selecting ‘third person plural, strong forms, complex: hullie’. We add the results to the virtual collection. Remember that in the category ‘hullie’ also the form ‘hunnie’ was included. Unfortunately, it is not possible to search for two different forms at the same time. We now select ‘third person plural, strong forms, complex: hunnie’ and add the results to the virtual collection. In the virtual collection, we select the results for ‘hullie’ and ‘hunnie’ and click on ‘create union’ to create the category ‘hullie’. Now we do the same for the category ‘hulder/hunder’. For this, we have to go through the same steps as for the previous category, but then with more forms, namely ‘third person plural, strong forms, complex: ulder’, ‘third person plural, strong forms, complex: zVlder’, ‘third person plural, strong forms, complex: zVder’ and ‘third person plural, strong forms, complex: zunder, ziender’. Then, we select ‘third person plural, strong forms: hun’ and add the results to the virtual collection to create the category ‘hun’. As a final step, we select ‘third person plural, strong forms: zij, zie’, because we also want to know where the standard form for the third person plural subject pronoun is used. We add the results to the virtual collection. We select the categories we have made and create a union. The map that is made is shown in Figure 4.

 

Figure 4. The variation of the third person plural subject pronoun ‘zij’ and the distribution of this variation (dynaSAND)

 

Looking at this map, it seems strange that there is so much discussion about the use of the form ‘hun’ as third person plural subject pronoun; there seem to be very little locations were this form is used. However, if we look at the number of results, we see that this form is actually used a lot. What is going on here? The problem is that in many locations, the form ‘hun’ is used as well as the form ‘zij’. In Figure 4., the yellow dots are hiding the green dots. Therefore, we have to make a map in which we do not select the form ‘zij,zie’ in order to create a more accurate picture of the distribution of the use of ‘hun’. This map is shown in Figure 5. Now we see that there are indeed much more locations where ‘hun’ is used as third person plural subject pronoun. Note however, that it is still interesting that there are a few locations in the Dutch language area where the only form that is used is ‘hun’, as can be seen in Figure 4.

                 

Figure 5. The variation of the third person plural subject pronoun ‘zij’ and the distribution of this variation without the standard form ‘zij,zie’.

 

Discussion assignment 2.

By reading the reading materials for this week, the students have adequate information to form a founded opinion about the discussion regarding the use of ‘hun’ as a third person plural subject pronoun. The students can be divided over two groups, one that is ‘against’ the use of ‘hun’ and one that is ‘pro’ the use, that is, that thinks the change is logical/inevitable. This discussion can be as extensive as fits the time schedule.

 

4.4 Inflection marking on the third person plural possessive pronoun

In this last section, we are going to look at inflection marking on the third person plural possessive pronoun ‘hunne’, using the MIMORE tool. In the DiDDD project, test sentences were used that contained the construction ‘de hunne’, meaning theirs. This pronoun is used in a context where there is no noun. We can investigate this best by selecting the predefined tag ‘pron(poss,3,pl)’ and combine this with selecting the syntactic phenomena ‘possessive N’, which is one of the options under ‘DiDDD’. When we look at the results, we find that we can make three rough categories of inflection marking, namely the category ‘-e/-en’, the category ‘-s/-ze’ and the category ‘-nde/-nt’. We can now manually select each category and add them to the virtual collection. Then, a map can be made of the distribution of the three categories of inflection marking. This map is shown in Figure 7.

 

Figure 7. Inflection on third person possessive pronoun ‘hunne’

 

Writing assignment 1.

At this point in the course, students have enough knowledge about the research topic to write a (short) paper about dialectal variation and specifically this case study. Students can thus be asked to write a paper, for example using the data collected during this case study and the reading materials.

 

Optional assignment 3.

In this assignment, inflection marking on possessive pronouns can be investigated in more depth. It would be interesting to make an overview of the sorts of inflection marking on all possessive pronouns. This can be done by zooming in on the dialects that turned out to have inflection marking on the third person plural pronoun, as can be seen in Figure 7., and to look at all possessive pronoun forms of these dialects. With the results, for each dialect a paradigm can be made of possessive pronouns.

 

Optional assignment

Find out what the distribution of the third person plural possessive pronoun and its personal pronoun counterpart are. What are the differences and similarities between the distribution of ‘hun’ and ‘hullie’? E.g. hun/hullie lopen vs.  hun/hullie boek.

4.5 Reading materials

Cornips, L. (2000). Inherente normen binnen de eigen groep. Hun doen allemaal van die rare woorden, weet je. In: Taal en Tongval, 52, 47-61. (available online)

 

De Rooij, J. (1990). Over hun en hen, en hun. Vorm en functie van de niet-gereduceerde voorwerpsvormen van het persoonlijk voornaamwoord in de derde person meervoud, in standaardtaal, ouder Nederlands en dialect. In: Taal en Tongval, 42, 107-147.

 

Van Bergen, G., Stoop, W., Vogels, J. & Hoop, H. de (2011). Leve hun! Waarom hun nog steeds hun zeggen. In: Nederlandse taalkunde 16 (1), 2-29.

 

Van Hout, R. (2009). Onstuitbaar en onuitstaanbaar: de toekomst van een omstreden taalverandering. In: Wat iedereen van het Nederlands moet weten en waarom. Van der Sijs, N., Stroop, J. & Weerman, F. (Eds.). Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker. 42-54.

 

Van der Wal, M. & Bree, C. van (2008). Morphologische veranderingen. In: Geschiedenis van het Nederlands. Houten-Antwerpen: Uitgeverij Spectrum. 414-415.

 

Suggested readings

Audring, J. (2013). A pronominal view of gender agreement. In: Language Sciences, 35, 32-46.

 

Hoop, H. de (2013). The rise of animacy-based differential subject marking in Dutch. I. A. Serzant and L. Kulikov (Eds.), The Diachronic Typology of Non-Canonical Subjects. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 35-53.

 

De Vogelaer, G. & De Sutter, G. (2011). The geography of gender change: pronominal and adnominal gender in Flemish dialects of Dutch. In: Language Sciences, 33, 192-205. (available online)

 

Siebold, N.H. (2010). Possessive function. In: Personal pronouns in the dialects of England. A corpus study of grammatical variation in spontaneous speech. Diss., University of Freiburg. (available online)

 

Section 5 - CASE STUDY II: INTERRUPTION AND VERBAL CLUSTERS

 

5.1 Introduction

It is well known that Dutch varieties show verbal clusters, and that there is much variation in the order in which verbs occur in these clusters. Also, there is variation in the way these clusters can be interrupted by non-verbal material. In addition, interruption is also found in the nominal domain. In this case study, we are going to investigate the abovementioned phenomena, which are each also very interesting from a theoretical point of view. In this case study thus more attention can be paid to theoretical consequences and foundations of the phenomena that are investigated. In section 2 we are going to look at variation in the order in which verbs occur in verbal clusters. In general, it is stated that in Standard Dutch verbal clusters can be both head-initial (as illustrated in (1)) and head-final, while in Frisian, verbal clusters can only be head-final, as is shown in (2).

                 

(1)           Omdat   hij me op wou bellen.

                  Because he me up wanted call

                  ‘Because he wanted to call me up.’                               [Standard Dutch, head-initial]

 

(2)           Omdat ik dy    op beljen wollen.

                  Because I you up  call     wanted

                  ‘Because I wanted to call you up.’                                 [Frisian, head-final]

 

We would want to know how this variation in order of verbs in the verbal cluster is distributed.

                  In section 3 we are going to investigate the interruption of verbal clusters. As Bennis (1992) notes, the particle in particle constructions in Dutch may appear at several positions within the verbal cluster. This is shown in (3) to (5):

 

(3)           dat ik Jan  op    had        willen        bellen

(4)           dat ik Jan          had   op willen        bellen

                 

(5)           dat ik Jan          had        willen   op bellen

                  that I Jan (up) had (up) want (up) call

                         ‘that I had want to call John up’

 

Again, it would be of interest to know the distribution of these different positions of the particle within the verbal cluster.

                  In section 4 we are going to look at the interruption of the nominal domain. An example of this is given in (6) to (7).

 

(6)           Wat voor taarten verkoopt u?

                  What for  pies        sell          you?

                  ‘What kind of pies do you sell?’  [no interruption]

 

(7)           Wat verkoopt u voor taarten?

              What sell       you for  pies?

                  ‘What kind of pies do you sell?                     [interruption]

 

5.2 Variation in the order of verbs in verb clusters

In this section, we are going to investigate the variation in the order of verbs in verb clusters, and the distribution of this variation. First, we are going to look at verb clusters with two verbs, namely the auxiliary ‘have’ plus a past participle. We do this by selecting a syntactic phenomenon from the options under SAND, letter ‘V’, ‘verbal clusters’. There are two possible orders of verbs here: first the auxiliary and then the past participle (V1-V2) and first the past participle and then the auxiliary (V2-V1). We first investigate the former, by selecting ‘auxiliary ‘have’ finite plus participle 1: 1-2’. We add the results to the virtual collection. Then, we do the same for the latter construction, by selecting ‘auxiliary ‘have’ finite plus participle 1: 2-1’. Also these results are added to the virtual collection. Now we can combine these results in one map, to see how these different constructions are distributed in the Dutch language area. The map that can be made is shown in Figure 1.

 

 

Figure 1. Distribution of the variation in the order of verbs in verbal clusters with two verbs (dynaSAND)

 

What immediately stands out from this figure, is that the V1-V2 order indeed does not seem to occur in Frisia, as is claimed in the literature (although at the borders this order does occur).

Now, we are going to look at a more complex verbal cluster, with three verbs. We do this by selecting ‘auxiliary ‘have’ finite plus modal infinitive/participle plus infinitive V1-V2-V3’ and adding the results to the virtual collection, and doing the same for ‘auxiliary ‘have finite plus modal infinitive/participle plus infinitive V3-V2(PART)-V1’. When we combine the results in one map, we get the map as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Distribution of the variation in the order of verbs in verbal clusters with three verbs (dynaSAND)

 

Here we see that in Frisia still only the head-final construction is used, but that in the rest of the Dutch speaking area this construction is not used.

 

Research assignment 1.

Koeneman & Postma (2006) show with their study that the order of verbs in verbal clusters in Frisian is changing, and that so-called ‘hybrid’ clusters seem to occur, that is, verbal clusters that are neither Standard Dutch nor Frisian. Using the MIMORE tool, try to investigate whether in Frisian ‘hybrid’ clusters occur and which type of clusters these are. Make maps and write a short research report.

 

Optional assignment 1.

It is stated (Zwart, 1996) that in Frisian verbal clusters do not show the infinitivus pro participio or IPP-phenomenon, that is, that in the verbal cluster the modal is not a past participle but an infinitive. Use the MIMORE tool to investigate if the data in this database support this claim.

 

5.3 Interruption of verbal clusters

In this section, we are going to investigate the interruption of verbal clusters. We do this by selecting a syntactic phenomenon, under SAND, ‘V’, ‘interruption of verbal clusters’. Then, we select ‘adverbial particle: WEG zou moeten gooien’ and add the results to the virtual collection. We do the same for ‘adverbial particle: zou moeten WEG gooien’ and ‘adverbial particle: zou WEG moeten gooien’. With the results of all three constructions, the following map can be created, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Distribution of variation in the interruption of adverbial particle in verbal clusters (dynaSAND)

 

Interestingly, although the construction ‘zou WEG moeten gooien’, which sounds more exotic, is used in fewer locations than the other two constructions, it is still used very frequently and the distribution of the three constructions is almost equally spread over the Dutch language area.

Now, we do the same for a different interrupting item, namely an adpositional particle and NP. We do this by selecting ‘adpositional particle: wild DP OP eetn’ and adding the results to the virtual collection, and doing the same for ‘adpositional particle: willen OP eten’ and ‘adpositional particle: willen DP OP eten’. When we combine the results in one map, we get the map in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Distribution of variation in the interruption of adpositional particle in verbal clusters (dynaSAND)

 

Now we see that the construction ‘willen OP eten’ is used in most locations, while the other two constructions are restricted to the western provinces of Flanders. Thus, apparently the interruption of the verbal cluster by an adverbial particle is used in the entire Dutch language area, but the additional interruption by a DP is only used in a very small part of the Dutch language area.

 

Discussion assignment 1

With Figure 3 and Figure 4 a discussion can be held using the following questions (or different questions that come up during the discussion):

• Which constructions do you use yourself? Does this match with the locations on the maps?
• Why would the two constructions with the interruption of the DP be more restricted than the other constructions? Can we come up with a theoretical explanation for this? Could language contact play a role?
• Why do you think there are almost no Frisian locations marked on the maps?

 

Optional assignment 2

Another interesting syntactic phenomenon is the position of ‘te’ to in the verbal cluster, also since sometimes ‘te’ is doubled (e.g. ‘te zitten te werken’ to sit to work). Using the MIMORE tool, we can investigate what the variation is of the position of ‘te’. We do this by looking under ‘syntactic phenomena’, ‘SAND’, ‘V’, ‘morphosyntax of verbal clusters’.  We select ‘position of te ‘to’ in the verbal complex: zitten te werken’ and add the results to the virtual collection. We do the same for ‘position of te ‘to’ in the verbal complex: te zitten werken’ and ‘position of te ‘to’ in the verbal complex: te zitten te werken’. In Figure 5 the map is shown that can be made when the results are put together.

Figure 5. Distribution of the position of ‘te’ to in the verbal cluster ‘te zitten werken’ (dynaSAND)

 

What can we say about the distribution of the three different positions? Can we explain the distribution of the construction ‘te zitten te werken’ in which the ‘te’ is doubled? What can we say about these different constructions from a theoretical viewpoint? That is, how must the Verbal Phrase look to account for these data and what do we say about the doubling of ‘te’?

 

 

 

5.5 Reading materials

Barbiers, S. (2008) Werkwoordclusters en de grammatica van de rechterperiferie. In: Nederlandse Taalkunde: 13 (2), 160-187. (available online)

 

Booij, M. (1990). The boundary between morphology and syntax: separable complex verbs in Dutch. In: Booij, G. & Van Marle, J. (Eds.). Yearbook of Morphology 3. Dordrecht: Foris. 45-63.

 

Corver, N. (2014). Floating around in the Dutch nominal domain. In: Auer, A. & Köhnlein, B. (Eds.). Linguistics in the Netherlands 2014. 26-38.

 

Hoekstra, E. (2010). On the interruption of Verb-Raising clusters by nonverbal material. In: Zwart, J.W. & De Vries, M. (Eds.). Structure Preserved. Studies in syntax for Jan Koster. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 175-184.

 

Koeneman, O. & Postma, E. (2006). Veranderingen in Friese werkwoordclusters. In: Nederlandse Taalkunde, 2, 124-145. (available online)

 

Wurmbrand, S. (2004). West Germanic verb clusters: The empirical domain. In: K.E. Kiss and H. van Riemsdijk (Eds.), Verb clusters: A study of Hungarian, German, and Dutch, 43-85. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. (available online)

 

Zwart, J.W. (1996). Verb clusters in Continental West-Germanic dialects. In: Black, J.R. & Motapanyane, V. (Eds.). Microparametric syntax and dialect variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 229-258.

 

Suggested readings

Barbiers, S. (2005). Word order variation in three-verb clusters and the division of labour between generative linguistics and sociolinguistics. In: Cornips, L. & K. Corrigan (ed.). Syntax and Variation. Reconciling the Biological and the Social. Amsterdam/Philadelphia : John Benjamins Publishing Company. 233-264. (available online)

 

Bennis, H. (1992). Long head movement: the position in the verbal cluster in Dutch. In: Bok-Bennema, R. & Van Hout, R. (Eds.). Linguistics in the Netherlands 1992. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 37-47. (available online)

 

Hoekstra, E. (2007). On Koopman’s generalization: remarks on verbal clusters in Old Frisian and Old English. In: Post van der Linde, C., Wezel, L. & Roeleveld, A. (Eds.). Twai tigjus jeer: Jubileumnummer van het mededelingenblad van de Vereniging van Oudgermanisten uitgegeven ter gelegenheid van het twintigjarig bestaan van de vereniging. Amsteram: Vereniging van Oudgermanisten. 139-151. (available online)

 

Zwart, J.W. (2007). Some notes on the origin and distribution of the IPP-effect. In: Groninger Arbeiten zur germanistischen Linguistik, 45. 77-99.

 

Section 6 - RESEARCH QUESTIONS

 

• In which locations is preposition stranding used?

 

• Which different lexical items are used for nouns referring to members of the family, (i.e. ‘moeder’, ‘vader’, ‘zus’, ‘broer’, ‘oma’, ‘opa’ etcetera) and how are these items distributed over the Dutch language area?

 

• How are the different lexical items for the second person singular subject pronoun (e.g. ‘du’, ‘gij’ and ‘jij’) distributed over the Dutch language area?

 

• According to Postma (in Postma, G.J. (2013), Clause-typing by [2] – The loss of the 2nd person pronoun du 'you' in Dutch, Frisian and Limburgian dialects. In: V. & V. Camacho-Taboada, et. al (Eds.). Information Structure and Agreement. Amsterdam : Benjamins, 2013, pp. 217-254), dialects in which ‘du’ is used as second person singular subject pronoun, do not have a double paradigm (that is, a difference in inflection on the verb for second person singular in a declarative sentence and question, for example ‘loop jij’ and ‘jij loop-t).  Do the data in MIMORE support this claim?

 

• What is the distribution of the use of periphrastic ‘doe’ (i.e. ‘ik doe wel even daarheen lopen’)?

 

• What is the variation in morphology of the past particles ‘gekund’ and ‘gewild’?

 

• What is the correlation between IPP, the presence of ‘ge-‘ and word order in the verbal cluster?

 

• What kind of variation is there in the paradigm of reflexive pronouns?

 

• What kind of variation can be found in the complementizer and relative pronoun in free relative clauses?

 

• According to Nadasdi (1995), subject doubling correlates with speakers’ relative use of French and English. Those who speak relatively less French (and more English) display less subject doubling, cf. Nadasdi, T. (1995). Subject NP doubling, matching, and minority French. In: Language Variation and Change 7:1–14. What are the similarities between subject doubling in French and Flemish (e.g., as opposed to Dutch, two weak subject forms are not possible in French) or how is the distribution of subject doubling at the border with France?

 

• Is there a correlation between subject doubling and left dislocation?

 

• Is there a correlation between subject doubling and doubling in wh-movement constructions?

 

• Are clitic left dislocation and clitic doubling correlated?

 

• How are subject doubling and clitic doubling distributed over the Dutch language area?

 

• What is the distribution of the different types of wh-movement?

 

• What is the distribution of long Wh-movement with a relative pronoun (wie - die)?

 

• How is the use of the negation particle en distributed over the Dutch language area?

 

• How is partial wh-movement (wat – wie) distributed over the Dutch language area (German border)?

 

 

 

 

Section 7 (syllabus) – LINGUISTIC MICROVARIATION: WORKING WITH MIMORE

When: Date, Time Where: Location

ECTS ?

Description

The focus of this course is on microvariation within several components of the grammatical system: syntax, morphosyntax, morphology, phonology and the lexicon, and how to collect the relevant data. The study of dialectal variation is a growing research area and dialectal data collection is becoming more and more important. The aim of this course is to provide an introduction to dialectal studies and provide guidelines for working with the MIMORE search engine. Furthermore, advised and background reading materials and research questions are added to provide students with the tools to explore their own research within the domain of microvariation, and for working with online search database MIMORE.

Requirements

a. Active class participation

b. Presentations

c. Final research paper

Weekly planning

The following contains the course schedule from week to week, containing introduction, how-to manual, case studies and reading materials. The advised background reading is additional reading that will help you understand the theoretical background, gain a broader overview, and next to that will be helpful for your research projects.

WEEK 1

In the first lecture we will address some general issues concerning the course (organization, expectations, practicalities) and some of the following general questions:
- Why study dialects at all? - What is the relevance of studying microvariation?
- What is MIMORE? - What are relevant dialectal data?

Reading materials

Barbiers, S., Cornips, L., and Kunst, J.P. (2007). The Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects (SAND): A Corpus of Elicited Speech and Text as an Online Dynamic Atlas. In: J. Beal, K. Corrigan, and H. Moisl (Eds.), Creating and digitizing language corpora. Vol. 1: Synchronic databases. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 54-90.  (available online)

Barbiers, S. and Bennis, H. (2007). The Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects. A discussion of choices in the SAND-project. In: Nordlyd 34(1). (available online)

Barbiers, S. (2009). Locus and limits of syntactic microvariation. In: Lingua 119(11): 1607-23. (available online)

Corver, N., Koppen, M. van, & Kranendonk, H. (2013). De nominale woordgroep vanuit dialect-vergelijkend perspectief. Variaties en generalisaties. In: Nederlandse Taalkunde, 18(2). 107-137. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Koppen, M. van, Corver, N., Kranendonk, H. & Rigterink, M. (2007). The Noun Phrase: Diversity in Dutch DP Design (DiDDD). In: Nordlyd  34(1). (available online)

 

Suggested readings

Van der Wal, M. & Bree, C. van (2008). Geschiedenis van het Nederlands. Houten-Antwerpen: Uitgeverij Spectrum.

 

Bree, C. van, Toorn, M. van den, & Wal, M. van der (1997). Paradigmawisselingen en constanten: 200 jaar taalkundige diversiteit. In: J.W. de Vries (Ed.), Eene bedenkelijke nieuwigheid. Twee eeuwen neerlandistiek. Hilversum: Verloren. (available online)

 

WEEK 2

The second week we will spend on an introduction on the MIMORE search engine. We will spend some time on how the data were collected and how the system works. The following questions will be addressed: What are the main components of the MIMORE tool? – What type of data do we need when studying dialectal variation? - How can online tools facilitate data collection? – How are the data collected data within the MIMORE tool? 

Reading materials

Barbiers, S., Bennis, H., De Vogelaer, G., Devos, M. & Van der Ham, M. (2005). Syntactische Altas van de Nederlandse Dialecten; Deel I. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Barbiers, S., Van der Auwera, J., Bennis, H. Boef, E., De Vogelaer, G. & Van der Ham, M. (2008). Syntactische Altas van de Nederlandse Dialecten; Deel II. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

 

Barbiers, S. et al (2006). Dynamische Syntactische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten (DynaSAND). Amsterdam, Meertens Instituut. URL: https://sand.meertens.knaw.nl/.

 

Barbiers, S., Cornips, L. & Kunst, J.P. (2007). The Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects: A corpus of elicited speech and text as an on-line dynamic atlas. In: Beal, J.C., Corrigan, K.P. & Moisl, H.L. (eds.). Creating and digitizing language corpora. volume 1: Synchronic databases. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 54-90. (available online)

 

Barbiers, S. & Bennis, H.J. (2007). The Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects. A discussion of choices in the SAND-project. In: Bentzen, K. & Vangsnes, Ø.A. (eds.). Nordlyd, 34(1), 53-72. Scandinavian Dialect Syntax 2005. (available online)

 

Cornips, L. & Jongenburger, W. (2001). Het design en de methodologie van het SAND-project. In: Nederlandse Taalkunde, 16(3), 15-232.

 

Cornips, L & Poletto, C. (2005). On standardizing syntactic elicitation techniques I. Lingua, 115, 939-957. (available online)

 

WEEK 3

In the third week we will go through all possible search options in the MIMORE tool on the basis of an example in the empirical domain of subject doubling. The following questions will be answered: What is subject doubling? – Why is subject doubling prone to syntactic microvariation? – How can we use MIMORE to find empirical data? – What can we do with the search results? – Why do we want to know which phenomena are correlated with each other? 

Reading materials

Craenenbroeck, J. van & Koppen, M. van (2008). Pronominal doubling and the structure of the left periphery in southern Dutch. In: S. Barbiers, O. Koeneman, M. Lekakou, M. van der Ham (Eds.), Microvariation in Syntactic Doubling. Elsevier/Emerald, Amsterdam. 207-250. (available online)

 

Craenenbroeck, J. van & Koppen, M. van (2002). Subject doubling in Dutch dialects. In: Koppen, M. van, Thrift, E., Torre, E. van der & Zimmerman, M.(eds.). Proceedings of Console IX. pp. 54-67. Leiden: SOLE.

 

De Vogelaer, G. & Devos, M. (2008). On Geographical Adequacy, or: How Many Types of Subject Doubling in Dutch. In: S. Barbiers, O. Koeneman, M. Lekakou, M. van der Ham (Eds.), Microvariation in Syntactic Doubling. Elsevier/Emerald, Amsterdam. 251-276.

 

Haegeman, L. (1990). Subject pronouns and subject clitics in West Flemish. In: The Linguistic Review 7, 333-363.   

 

Zwart, J.W. (1993). Dutch syntax: A minimalist approach, Diss., University of Groningen. 

Suggested readings 

Barbiers, S., Koeneman, O. & Lekakou, M. (2009). Syntactic doubling and the structure of wh-chains. In: Journal of Linguistics: 45, 1-46. (available online)

 

Cardinaletti, A. & Starke, M. (1999). The typology of structural deficiency. A case study of the three classes of pronouns. In: Clitics in the languages of Europe, ed. Henk van Riemsdijk, 145–233. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. (available online)

 

Dechaine, R.M. & Wiltschko, M. (2002). Decomposing pronouns. In: Linguistic Inquiry 33:409–442.


WEEK 4

In the fourth lecture we will start with a case study on the personal (possessive) pronoun hun and the MIMORE tool will be further explained in detail on the basis of the case study. The following questions will be answered: What is the grammatical status of hun? – What are the possible forms of the third person plural personal pronoun?  - What are the possible forms of the third person plural possessive pronoun? - What is the geographical distribution of hun as a personal pronoun?

Reading materials

Van Hout, R. (2009). Onstuitbaar en onuitstaanbaar: de toekomst van een omstreden taalverandering. In: Wat iedereen van het Nederlands moet weten en waarom. Van der Sijs, N., Stroop, J. & Weerman, F. (Eds.). Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker. 42-54.

Van der Wal, M. & Bree, C. van (2008). Morphologische veranderingen. In: Geschiedenis van het Nederlands. Houten-Antwerpen: Uitgeverij Spectrum. 414-415.

 

Suggested readings

Siebold, N.H. (2010). Possessive function. In: Personal pronouns in the dialects of England. A corpus study of grammatical variation in spontaneous speech. Diss., University of Freiburg. (available online)

 

WEEK 5

In the fifth week we will continue the case study on hun and discuss some assignments on the topic. There will be room for discussion and questions on the topic and on the search assignments. Questions that will be answered include the following: How can I collect data on the topic of the third person plural pronoun? – How can I form an opinion on a specific case of language change, i.e. hun?

Reading materials

Cornips, L. (2000). Inherente normen binnen de eigen groep. Hun doen allemaal van die rare woorden, weet je. In: Taal en Tongval, 52, 47-61. (available online)

 

De Rooij, J. (1990). Over hun en hen, en hun. Vorm en functie van de niet-gereduceerde voorwerpsvormen van het persoonlijk voornaamwoord in de derde person meervoud, in standaardtaal, ouder Nederlands en dialect. In: Taal en Tongval, 42, 107-147.

 

Van Bergen, G., Stoop, W., Vogels, J. & Hoop, H. de (2011). Leve hun! Waarom hun nog steeds hun zeggen. In: Nederlandse taalkunde 16 (1), 2-29.

 

Suggested readings

Audring, J. (2013). A pronominal view of gender agreement. In: Language Sciences, 35, 32-46.

 

De Vogelaer, G. & De Sutter, G. (2011). The geography of gender change: pronominal and adnominal gender in Flemish dialects of Dutch. In: Language Sciences, 33, 192-205. (available online)

 

WEEK 6

In the sixth lecture we will start with the second case study: interruption in the verbal cluster. The MIMORE tool will be further explained in detail on the basis of the case study. Questions that will be answered: What is the structure of the Dutch verbal cluster? – What are possible varieties in the Dutch verbal cluster? – In which way verbal clusters can be interrupted? – In which way interruption in the nominal domain takes place? 

Reading materials

Hoekstra, E. (2010). On the interruption of Verb-Raising clusters by nonverbal material. In: Zwart, J.W. & De Vries, M. (Eds.). Structure Preserved. Studies in syntax for Jan Koster. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 175-184.

Koeneman, O. & Postma, E. (2006). Veranderingen in Friese werkwoordclusters. In: Nederlandse Taalkunde, 2, 124-145. (available online)

 

Zwart, J.W. (1996). Verb clusters in Continental West-Germanic dialects. In: Black, J.R. & Motapanyane, V. (Eds.). Microparametric syntax and dialect variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 229-258.

 

Suggested readings

Zwart, J.W. (2007). Some notes on the origin and distribution of the IPP-effect. In: Groninger Arbeiten zur germanistischen Linguistik, 45. 77-99.

 

WEEK 7

In week 7 we continue with the case study on interruption in the verbal clusters and discuss some assignments on the topic. There will be room for discussion and questions on the topic and on the search assignments. Questions that will be answered are: How can I compare interruption phenomena? – How are interruption phenomena distributed over the Dutch language area?

Required readings:

Booij, M. (1990). The boundary between morphology and syntax: separable complex verbs in Dutch. In: Booij, G. & Van Marle, J. (Eds.). Yearbook of Morphology 3. Dordrecht: Foris. 45-63.

 

Corver, N. (2014). Floating around in the Dutch nominal domain. In: Auer, A. & Köhnlein, B. (Eds.). Linguistics in the Netherlands 2014. 26-38.

 

Suggested readings

Bennis, H. (1992). Long head movement: the position in the verbal cluster in Dutch. In: Bok-Bennema, R. & Van Hout, R. (Eds.). Linguistics in the Netherlands 1992. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 37-47. (available online)

 

Hoekstra, E. (2007). On Koopman’s generalization: remarks on verbal clusters in Old Frisian and Old English. In: Post van der Linde, C., Wezel, L. & Roeleveld, A. (Eds.). Twai tigjus jeer: Jubileumnummer van het mededelingenblad van de Vereniging van Oudgermanisten uitgegeven ter gelegenheid van het twintigjarig bestaan van de vereniging. Amsteram: Vereniging van Oudgermanisten. 139-151. (available online)

 

WEEK 8
In the last week the possible research questions will be discussed and students are able to formulate their own research problem and start with their projects.

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