Selection

  • This undertaking aims to study the stylistic and geographic speech variability of the spoken language in the Netherlands, including the status of the traditional dialects and the effects of (potential) dialect loss. A diverse dataset is necessary to establish generalizable results; one needs data from different regions by different kinds of speakers. Nevertheless, for the sake of feasibility, I’ve had to limit the scope of the corpus.

Social criteria

  • The first decision I’ve had to make is to choose the social profile of the locations from which participants will be recruited. An important target for this study is to enable a comparison of the dataset of the present study with the Flemish data of Ghyselen (2016). Ghyselen’s selection consisted of Antwerp, Ghent and Ieper, the former two of which are the two largest cities in Flanders, and all three of which are what Taeldeman (2005) terms “urban centers”. The selection will therefore also be confined to such urban centers of similar size.

  • Similarly important is ensuring that the selected locations are also demographically comparable with each other in order to minimize the extent to which the results are affected by demographic variables. Language change depends on a multitude of location-bound sociological factors. Particularly important for this study I take to be short-distance mobility and long-distance migration as well as socioeconomic power. These embody the mechanisms behind language change and dialect shift: urban centers attract high mobility and migration due to their socioeconomic status, which engenders both langauge change through contact but also a spread to the surrounding areas (Taeldeman 2005).

  • The dialect regions of the Netherlands differ inherently in their demographic properties. It is of no use to try to find a Rotterdam in Drenthe, as Drenthe differs inherently from Zuid-Holland in its degree of urbanization (in fact, Rotterdam alone has a higher popultion than all of Drenthe). Therefore, a relative approach was taken in the selection of cities. More specifically, for all selected regions, a city was chosen that (1) represents a cultural and/or economic center within its respective region and (2) exerts a force that pulls migration from nearby villages, towns and smaller cities. This enables us to compare the data of the current study with Ghyselen’s aforementioned Flemish dataset, and it ensures a comparable degree of mobility and prestige.

Linguistic criteria

  • An investigation into vertical relationship between the different registers available to a speaker requires establishing the range of stylistic variation available to them in the first place. In order to measure the full stylistic repertoire of a given participant, we must be able to not only identify features that distinguish the broader dialect region from the standard language (ex. Brabantian features not present in the Standard Language), but also features that localize it within its dialect region (ex. Eindhoven vs. rest of Brabant). In the socio-variationist literature, this spectrum of localization of features is associated with a distinction between so-called “primary” and “secondary” dialect features, first established by Schirmunski (1930), and later broadened to three levels, such as in the work of Johan Taeldeman (ex. Taeldeman 2006, 2009). Under this terminology, primary features are said to have the narrowest geographical distribution, to stand out the most, and to be the most prone to loss, while secondary and tertiary features are (to an increasing degree) distributed within a wider geographical area, are less salient to language users and less likely to be lost. For now, for the sake of simplicity, I will only make reference to primary and secondary features, the former of which is local to a city and its surroundings, and the latter of which shows a broad distribution within the dialect area.

  • Making this distinction enables a more granular investigation into the linguistic repertoire of a given speaker, i.e. the range of stylistic variation that the speaker has at their disposal. Given that we have thusfar limited our choice to so-called urban centers, finding so-called primary dialectal features is not particularly difficult. This is due to the tendency for urban centers to display distinct features that differentiate it from its broader area: what Taeldeman (2005) refers to as “urban insularity”. The real limitation here is avoiding highly insular dialects, which make it difficult to isolate features based on degree of localization.

  • Additionally, the traditional dialect of the selected location must be described in the literature to a degree that enables us to identify such dialect features. The choice for large cities makes this to some degree easier, as larger cities are more likely to have descriptions detailed enough for the purposes of this study.

Final selection

  • After the filter of the social and linguistic criteria, multiple possible options remain. The final choices made will inevitably be to a certain extent arbitrary. Having said this, the following regions and cities have been selected:

      1. Randstad: Den Haag — Den Haag is selected as the representative of the Randstad, the cultural and economic center of the Netherlands, and arguably the linguistic model for what speakers consider as the standard language (Pinget, Rotteveel, and Van De Velde 2014). The dialect of Den Haag is decidedly Hollandic, with (among others) a merger of PWG *ai and lengthened *e and *i into the diphthong [eɪ] and PWG *au and lengthened *o into the diphthong [oʊ]. Additionally, it can be further localized by the monophthongal pronunciation of PWG *ī and *ū as [ɛː] and [œː] (Elias 2002, 27, 35).
      1. Limburg: Maastricht — Limburg stands for a peripheral region of the Netherlands, with Maastricht as its representative within the confines of the present project. Linguistically, while firmly situated within the Limburgish varieties with, for example, a two-way tonal distinction in stressed bimoraic syllables, it also distinguishes itself by, among others, the diphthong [a:j] representing PWG *al before a coronal (Gussenhoven and Aarts 1999).
      1. Low Saxon: Zwolle — Overijssel’s Zwolle is chosen as a representative of the Low Saxon area. Zwols, the dialect in Zwolle, is a manifestly Low Saxon variety visible in, for example, its retention of PWG *l between back vowels and coronals (ex. /kold/ “cold” and /old/ “old”) and its high vowels for PWG *ī and *ū (ex. /duːvə/ “pigeon” and /krit/ “chalk”, cp. Dutch coganates /dœyf/ and /krɛit/). Alongside this, the dialect of Zwolle features some more localized features, such as the elision of word-initial h (Kraijer 2009, 16).
      1. Brabantian: Eindhoven — Eindhoven is chosen as a socio-economic center of Noord-Brabant. Linguistically, it is part of Brabantian, showing t-deletion in function words, the realization of the masculine agreement suffix -n only when the following sound is /b/, /d/, /h/, /t/ or a vowel, and the so-called secondary umlaut. More locally, however, it is part of East-Brabantian, which shows umlaut in plurals and present tense verbs (boom - beum and (ik) val - (hij) velt). (Swanenberg and Swanenberg 2002, 39; De Schutter 2014)

References

De Schutter, Georges. 2014. “15. The Dialects of the Brabant Region: Phonological Properties.” In Volume 3 Dutch, edited by Frans Hinskens and Johan Taeldeman, 277–97. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/doi:10.1515/9783110261332.277.

Elias, Michael. 2002. Haags. Taal in Stad En Land 4. Den Haag: Sdu Uitg.

Ghyselen, Anne-Sophie. 2016. “Verticale structuur en dynamiek van het gesproken Nederlands in Vlaanderen: een empirische studie in Ieper, Gent en Antwerpen.” PhD Thesis, Ghent University.

Gussenhoven, Carlos, and Flor Aarts. 1999. “The Dialect of Maastricht.” Journal of the International Phonetic Association 29 (2): 155–66. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025100300006526.

Kraijer, Minke. 2009. Op zien Zwols: woordenboek van de Zwolse taal. Kampen: IJsselacademie.

Pinget, Anne-France, Marjolein Rotteveel, and Hans Van De Velde. 2014. “Standaardnederlands Met Een Accent - Herkenning En Evaluatie van Regionaal Gekleurd Standaardnederlands in Nederland.” Nederlandse Taalkunde 19 (1): 3–45. https://doi.org/10.5117/NEDTAA2014.1.PING.

Schirmunski, Victor. 1930. “Sprachgeschichte Und Siedelungsmundarten.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatschrift, no. 18: 113-122/171-188.

Swanenberg, Jos, and Cor Swanenberg. 2002. Oost-Brabants. Taal in Stad En Land 7. Den Haag: Sdu Uitgevers.

Taeldeman, Johan. 2005. “The influence of urban centres on the spatial diffusion of dialect phenomena.” In Dialect Change: Convergence and Divergence in European Languages, edited by Peter Auer, Frans Hinskens, and Paul Kerswill, 263–84. Cambridge University Press.

———. 2006. “Polarisation Revisited.” In Studies in Language Variation, edited by Frans L. Hinskens, 1:233–48. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.1.15tae.

———. 2009. “20. Linguistic Stability in a Language Space.” In Language and Space, edited by Peter Auer and Jürgen Erich Schmidt, 355–74. Walter de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110220278.355.