Taal en Tongval - Volume 76, Issue 1, 2024

Abstract This study investigates the left peripheral uses of so in Early New High German narratives and compares them to left peripheral so in Dutch and English. In the German and Dutch Ponthus, so tends to occur with adverbial elements and normally occupies a position immediately preceding the finite verb. English so diverges from the Dutch and German both in its function and in the position it occupies within t Read More

Abstract Many Sater Frisian adpositions may be lengthened with a schwa (-e). Our analysis reveals that lengthening is sensitive to syntactic, semantic and lexical-idiomatic factors. A necessary precondition for lengthening is that the adposition, together with the verb, expresses permanence, not change. Thus lengthening is characteristically found with immutative verbs, more specifically, copulas of predicati Read More

Abstract Nowadays Frisian is referred to as a language, as it was thus regarded during the late Middle Ages. However, during the Early Modern Period (c. 1500 – c. 1800) the language spoken by the Frisians was referred to as ‘Nederduits’ (Low-Dutch), also by the Frisians themselves because of a feeling of loss of being a language community during the sixteenth century; the use of Frisian receded in the higher s Read More

Abstract It is disputed whether Old Frisian should be grouped with the ‘Old’ Germanic languages or the ‘Middle’ Germanic ones. However, a divide in linguistic conservativity exists between earlier and later manuscripts, which also correlates with a conspicuous dialectal variation between East and West. One aspect related to this problem of periodisation that has not yet been studied is the system of adverbs Read More