Taal en Tongval - Volume 61, Issue 2, 2009

Southern Brabant dialects of Dutch provide constructions such as: (a) ik heb iemand niet gezien <I have anybody not seen> (I did not see anybody) (b) Ik heb niemand niet gezien <I have nobody not seen> (I did not see nobody) The traditional view is that (a), with a positive quantifier expression developed from (b) with a negative one (cf. Van der Auwera & Neuckermans 2003). In this article the opposite development is proposed. Arguments are derived from earlier language stages in which the negation particle en/ne played an important role, and from the present distribution of both construction types, which are currently found in the central (Brabant) language varieties . In western (Flemish) and eastern (Limburg) dialects (b) is found, but is apparently borrowed from central dialects; (a) is not found at all. The article ends with the suggestion that the same development path might account for Brabant constructions with universal quantifiers, as well. In fact (c) is common in Brabant, and much less so (if at all) in the other southern Dutch dialects: (c) Ik heb al die mensen niet gezien <I have all those people not seen> (I did not see all those people)

Frisian nouns ending in schwa (henceforth: schwa nouns) like brêge (‘bridge’) show unpredictable behaviour when used as a first member of a nominal compound. In some cases the schwa is retained (e.g. brêgeman ‘bridge man’), in other cases the schwa can or must be dropped (e.g. bûsjild ‘pocket money’, from bûse ‘pocket’). Although there are no fixed rules two factors turn out to be crucial: the (non)optionality of the schwa in the simplex word (e.g. brêge ‘bridge’ vs mis(se) ‘church mass’) and the similarity to the Dutch synonymous counterpart (e.g. F. skoalle, D. school ‘school’). In a particular subset of the data the interaction of these two factors has a non-trivial and surprising effect on Frisian word formation.

This study discusses Versloot 2008, an important contribution to the study of language variation in older Frisian, based on charters and codices. Special attention is paid to (a) how theses charters and codices are used by Versloot in order to obtain linguistic results, and (b) to the statistical treatment of the data. It is argued that with respect to 2 x 2 tables the Fisher Exact test one-tail should be preferred to X2.

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

‘Bargoens’ is a Dutch sociolect of ambulatory marginal groups, which in the presence of outsiders is also spoken as a secret language. The mysterious group language has for five centuries enjoyed non–insiders. The external interest is proven by the use of the ‘Bargoens’ in literary texts (since the beginning of the sixteenth century), as well as by dozens of publications on ‘Bargoens’ from the end of the nineteenth century onwards. During the last decades, besides collections of words, also descriptions have appeared, such as monographic publications on local variants and on divergent aspects of the ‘Bargoens’. This article largely deals with the pre–scientific interest for the ‘Bargoens’ as it reveals itself by publications on this secret group language. So this is a summary history of the science of Bargoens in the making, as well as a survey of the literature in and on the ‘Bargoens’. This article aims at a literary survey as complete as possible. References are made to some two hundred titles.

|| Van de Velde, F. (2009). De nominale constituent. Structuur en geschiedenis. Leuven, Universitaire Pers Leuven. Dit boek is een handelseditie van het proefschrift van de auteur. Dat blijkt ook uit de opzet van het boek: het is geen handboek waarin volledigheid wordt nagestreefd, maar de auteur bespreekt een aantal interessante aspecten van de syntaxis van de nominale constituent en daarmee gepaard gaande taalveranderingen. Het centrale punt is dat achter diverse veranderingen een grote tendens schuilgaat: de NC in het huidige Nederlands is het resultaat van een proces van stapsgewijze uitbreiding met een aantal duidelijk afgebakende ‘kavels’ ter linkerzijde van het nomen. Dat punt wordt door Van de Velde op overtuigende wijze geïllustreerd aan de hand van een indrukwekkende hoeveelheid data.

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