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- Volume 74, Issue 1, 2022
Taal en Tongval - Volume 74, Issue 1, 2022
Volume 74, Issue 1, 2022
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komen ‘come’ + Verb of Movement
Authors: Jeffrey Pheiff & Lea SchäferAbstractPeriphrastic constructions with come have primarily been grammaticalized to express tense in Indo-European languages (Devos & van der Wal 2014). In the Germanic language group, come has not undergone grammaticalization to the same degree that related go has. Nevertheless, this verb has acquired some special functions when used in combination with other elements. One of them concerns the combination of come with a motion verb. In Standard Dutch, the choice of the morphological form (inf/ ptcp) of the movement verb in this construction is variable (Haeseryn et al. 1997): De agent kwam de straat ingefietst.ptcp /infietsen.inf ‘The police officer came cycling into the street’. This contribution investigates this special construction in terms of diatopic and register variation as well as from a semantic-functional perspective. We performed an experiment in which we tested for geographic and semantic factors. The results show that the distribution of the variants is not regionally conditioned contrary to our expectations. Instead, the infinitive variant is the preferred variant across all regions in regional Dutch. We then discuss the results for the semantic factors that we systematically integrated into the test conditions, i.e. lexical semantics and path and manner as has been previously proposed in the literature (Ebeling 2006, Honselaar 2010, Beliën 2016). The results of a regression analysis do not conform to expectations. We reflect on the results and propose an alternative hypothesis, based on Schäfer (2020), proposing that the infinitive variant is the result of a stalled grammaticalization process, in which komen is – or better was – on its way toward becoming a future auxiliary. Future work will have to test this hypothesis.
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Looking for the middle of nowhere: nicknames denoting imaginary remote locations and alluding to really existing ones1
More LessAbstractNicknames for imaginary remote hamlets are widespread. One may think, for example, of Podunk Hollow (US). In the Netherlands, Boerenkoolstronkeradeel is best known (boerenkool = kale, stronk= stembase, deel = municipality). The leading Dutch dictionary defines Boerenkoolstronkeradeel as ‘a remote hamlet, alledgedly unreachable for “modern civilisation”’, the reference – most probably – being the Randstad, the urban conglomeration in the western part of the country. At least two factors may be supposed to have played a part in making some really existing locations inspirational: 1) remoteness, 2) rural or agrarian character. This paper identifies regional linguistic characteristics in these nicknames, and relates them to specific existing locations, leading to the paradox that an almost unknown and remote location becomes a known icon for ‘the middle of nowhere’. It will analyze to what extent each of the two factors may have made such really existing names inspirational. One of the conclusions will be that a third factor, too, must be considered: the estimated (subjective) linguistic distance between regional languages concerned on the one hand, and the standard language on the other.
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Taaldiversiteit in Nederland
Authors: Hans Schmeets & Leonie CornipsAbstractThis paper outlines a regional and socio-demographic overview of languages and dialects used most often in and outside the home and on social media in the Netherlands based on a large-scale national representative survey by Statistics Netherlands conducted in 2019 among 7,652 people aged 15 years or older. 149 different languages/dialects were reported to be spoken at home, in other places or used for writing messages on social media.
For 25 percent of the people surveyed, Dutch is not dominating at home: 8.2 percent speak another language than Dutch; 10.2 percent a regional language (Low Saxon 4.8 percent; Limburgish 3.4 percent, and Frisian 2.0 percent), and 5.3 percent dialect. The five most widely spoken other languages are English (1.6 percent), Turkish (0.9 percent), Moroccan Arabic/Berber (0.8 percent), Chinese/Mandarin (0.4 percent) and Polish (0.4 percent). 83 percent mostly use Dutch to write messages on social media with English following (35 percent).
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‘Deze verscheydenheyt der Voornamen’
More LessAbstractThis study explores the micro-selection and codification of third-person pronouns in the normative discourse on Standard Dutch from ca. 1550 to 1650. The analysis shows that there is little consensus both on what the norm for these pronouns should be, as well as on how to approach variation in their use, both in form (optionality) and in meaning (multifunctionality). Three different methods of micro-selection were attested, differing in their level of acceptance towards variation. The first method allows a high degree of variation, both in form and in meaning; the second only a certain degree of variation, with some implicit limitations to multifunctionality; and the third method clearly and explicitly limits multifunctionality by means of reallocation (Trudgill 1986; Lodge 2013), thereby also limiting optionality. Variation is never entirely eradicated in these paradigms, indicating that the view that language standardization is characterized by a suppression of optional variation (e.g. Haugen 1966; Milroy and Milroy 1999) does not completely fit this early period of standardization.
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