DynaSAND

Syntactic Atlas of Dutch Dialects – Commentary – Volume I

Table of contents Volume I

 

0          Introduction

0.1       Introduction

0.2       Syntactic phenomena

0.3       Maps

            0.3.1     Symbol maps

            0.3.2     Colour maps

0.4       Commentary

0.5       Dynamic Syntactic Atlas

0.6       Measuring Points

0.7       Informants

0.8       Methodology

0.9       Elicitation techniques

0.10      Data collection

0.11      Digitalisation and transcription

0.12      Organisation

0.13      References

0.14      SAND syntax: a guide to the use of this atlas

            0.14.1   Commentary

            0.14.2   Atlas

 

0.1  Introduction

The Syntactic Atlas of Dutch Dialects (SAND) illustrates the variation in syntactic properties of dialects of Dutch dialects at the beginning of the 21st century. The Dutch-language area consists of the Netherlands, the northern half of Belgium and a small part of France on the border with Vlaanderen. The SAND consists of two volumes (2005/2006). At the same time as the appearance of SAND 1, the first volume of the Morphological Atlas of Dutch Dialects (MAND 1) and the final volume of the Fonologische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten (FAND) have been published. In 2006 the set of grammatical atlases of the Dutch-speaking area will be completed. The result will be a compilation that is unique in the world: a detailed and extensive description of grammatical microvariation.

            The description and mapping of syntactic variation is important for a number of reasons. Local dialects are disappearing faster than ever before through the increase of mobility and communication and through the general decrease in the ability of a community to remain in isolation. These dialects appear to be increasingly approximating regiolects and also the standard language. Most experts expect that a substantial part of this variation will be lost rather soon. The wealth of variation that is described in these atlases is of important cultural and historical value; it represents an essential part of the cultural heritage of the Dutch-speaking area. The amount of syntactic variation that is described in this atlas is surprising, since most people – laymen and professionals – have the impression that variation is mainly concentrated in the domains of pronunciation and lexicon. However, these atlases show that the amount of grammatical variation in a relatively small language area is astonishing.

            This atlas provides unique material for linguistic research. Linguists may use these maps in their research into the nature of the linguistic system. What exactly are the properties of microvariation? How is microvariation related to variation between languages? What are the boundaries of microvariation? How is microvariation related to the general linguistic system? What typological generalisations can be deduced from the atlas? Do typological generalisations between languages also hold for language-internal generalisations? Are there similarities between geographic variation and diachronic variation? Which aspects of geographical variation can be explained as the result of language change? Do the properties of geographic language variation provide us with insights in the direction of language internal change?

            The atlases also provide information concerning language external properties, such as the history of Dutch, the ethnolinguistic situation, the genesis of the standard language, the influence of related Germanic languages such as German and English, the linguistic position of Frisian as a minority language, the properties of dialect attrition, etc.

            The collections of FAND, MAND and SAND provide us with a monument for the Dutch language; for the first time in history, linguists may assess hypotheses on language variation with the aid of a complete and precise description of the dialects of a language.

 

0.2  Syntactic phenomena

The aim of the SAND is to provide a detailed description of the present-day situation with respect to syntactic variation in Dutch dialects. The selection of topics that are investigated has been inspired by a survey of existing literature. We have chosen for an approach in which a selection of topics is investigated in depth, rather than attempting to provide a descriptive overview of all phenomena that show variation in the syntactic domain. This approach allows us to evaluate generalisations and hypotheses that relate to a particular phenomenon in the literature. The fact that the selected topics are investigated in detail makes it possible to formulate new descriptive generalisations and theoretical hypotheses.

            In volume 1, we have concentrated on the following issues:

The common link that these phenomena share is the fact that the form of the constituent in question is determined by syntactic dependency. The form of the complementiser is dependent on properties of the subject; the form of a subject pronoun depends on the position of the pronoun and the presence of another subject in the same clause; the form of reflexive and reciprocal pronouns is determined by properties of their antecedents; preposed constituents such as question pronouns and relative pronouns are dependent on their syntactic function within the clause and on the depth of the embedding of the clause in which the pronoun has its functional interpretation.

            In Volume II (2006), the focus will be on the verbal system with respect to issues such as Verb Second, verbal inflection and verbal clustering, and on negation and quantification.

 

0.3  Maps

SAND I has two components: a book with maps and a book with commentary. The map book starts with two general maps. The first map provides the location of provinces and regions, in addition to the locations in which the SAND interviews were held. This map can be folded out in order to position it alongside the specific maps in the atlas. Next to the fold-out map, there is an alphabetical list of place names, their coordinates and their usual dialectological code, the so-called Kloeke-number. The second, general map provides a subjective classification of the dialects, based on a questionnaire that was sent to 1500 informants of the Meertens Instituut in 1939. These informants were asked to judge the degree of similarity between their dialect and the dialects in the neighbourhood (cf. Daan & Blok (1977)). This subjective map is included for comparison with the maps in the SAND. The SAND makes use of two types of maps: maps with symbols and maps with coloured areas. The keys for each map contain a reference to the relevant paragraph in the commentary.

 

0.3.1  Symbol maps

Symbol maps are used to reflect the geographic distribution of distinct variants of a particular syntactic variable in the dialects, and to visualise existing correlations of different variables. The various syntactic variants of a specific variable are depicted by means of coloured squares. Within a set of thematically coherent maps, the colour of a specific variant is kept constant as much as possible. Within a single symbol map, the use of related colours (e.g., light green vs dark green) indicates related phenomena. If a location allows more than one variant of a particular variable, this location receives more than one coloured square (maximally six squares, three horizontally and two vertically). The order of colours in a combination of squares is kept constant and the squares are located in a predictable manner with respect to each other. In the keys of each map the full set of coloured squares is given in the fixed order that is used on the map. A measuring point with more than one variant can thus simply be distinguished from neighbouring measuring points. If none of the syntactic variants on the map has been found in a particular location, the measuring point is printed as a gray point. A gray point may also indicate that there are no relevant data for the particular location. The symbol maps are drawn with MapInfo software.

 

0.3.2  Colour maps

Colour maps are provided to show the general distribution of a particular phenomenon, abstracting away from individual locations and from individual peculiarities of the phenomenon in question. The coloured areas on these maps are determined by an extrapolation technique that calculates the chance of occurrence of a particular phenomenon in locations for which there is no information available on the basis of the points for which a value is available. Areas which receive a similar chance are depicted in the same colour. The underlying idea for using this kind of extrapolation is that the chance that a particular phenomenon occurs in location A is not independent of the chance that the phenomenon is observed in location B. The closer A and B are, the bigger the chance that the same phenomenon is found at the two locations. This technique of extrapolation provides a window for each location that has received a value; for all measuring points that fall within this window the average value is determined. Ultimately, a map is produced in which a relative value can be assigned to each location. For example, if there are four, valued locations within a specific window and two locations have a positive value (100) while the other two have a negative value (0), all locations within this window receive the value 50.

            The colour maps that are included in the atlas also depict the individual value of the distinct measuring points. There are two types of colour maps. The first type displays the distribution of one phenomenon only. A measuring point that is displayed as a white diamond is in agreement with the general pattern in its area, a measuring point with a black diamond is not. A measuring point illustrated with a white diamond with a Y indicates that one of the informants conforms to the general pattern whereas another informant does not; it may also indicate that the dialect conforms to the general pattern of the coloured area, in addition to allowing a different variant. The second type of colour map displays the distribution of two phenomena. A measuring point with a white diamond allows one of these phenomena, a measuring point with a black diamond allows the other one, while a dialect in which both phenomena are attested, has a white diamond with a Y.

For the extrapolation technique, the visualisation method and the required cartographic software for these maps, see Wattel & Van Reenen (1994).

 

0.4  Commentary

The detachable commentary comes in two varieties: a Dutch and an English version. The five chapters in the commentary book correlate with the five chapters of the map book. Each chapter in the commentary book is introduced by a general introduction in which the nature and the linguistic relevance of the specific phenomenon is discussed. We have tried to avoid theory-specific terminology and theory-internal analyses in order to enhance the accessibility of the atlas and to make the atlas less dependent on the theoretical state of affairs in the early 21st century. The introduction also contains a paragraph in which the syntactic phenomena are discussed in their historical perspective. The second paragraph of each chapter contains a short discussion of the most relevant literature for the topic under discussion. This overview of the literature is not intended to be exhaustive. In the third paragraph, the different maps are discussed individually. For each map, we have provided the following information: the type of syntactic phenomenon, the actual sentences used in the interviews, the way the data were elicited and the geographical distribution of conspicuous properties. In general, the discussion of individual maps is kept rather short since the maps speak for themselves in most instances. Often, there is a discussion about whether a particular map confirms or runs against an existing generalisation. Each chapter is concluded with a list of the relevant literature. This list comprises more literature than the discussion in paragraph two, but it is not exhaustive either. For more literature, we refer to the SAND bibliography that can be consulted by way of the website of the Meertens Instituut: www.meertens.knaw.nl.

 

0.5  Dynamic Syntactic Atlas

A printed atlas like this one will inevitably pique the interest of readers who may wish to consult the underlying data, combining different maps and drawing their own maps on the basis of the available data. This wish can be granted with through the Dynamic SAND. The dynamic atlas is an on-line database that is accessible for public use at www.meertens.knaw.nl. All data that have been collected with questionnaires and interviews have been stored in the dynamic atlas (cf. par. 0.10). The database also contains the sound recordings of the oral interviews and the normalised orthographic transcriptions of these interviews, partly enriched with categorial information. A user-friendly search engine allows the user to look for information with respect to sentences, locations, location codes (Kloeke numbers), strings of words, parts of words, word categories, and lemmas. A cartographic component is added. With this module, the user is able to display the results of the data he/she has found on a map. Sets of data may be combined into one map, thereby allowing the user to research possible correlations between phenomena that have been entered into the database. The user is able to determine the properties of the map with respect to the area that is depicted, the symbols and the colours. An extensive desciption of the dynamic SAND is given in Barbiers, Cornips & Kunst (to appear).

 

0.6  Measuring points

The dialects in the Netherlands (and Friesland), the Dutch-speaking half of Belgium and a small part of northern France constitute a continuum. It is impossible to determine exact boundaries between different dialects. Consequently, it is impossible to determine the number of dialects in the Dutch language area. In order to determine the number of measuring points necessary for a reliable picture of the occurring syntactic variation, various criteria have been taken into account.

language area. The area is divided into equally-sized squares. In each square, one measuring point was selected, reckoning with the relative position of measuring points in neighbouring squares.

can be expected, following relevant literature and dialectological knowledge. This causes an increased density of measuring points in the Belgian language area and in well-known transition zones. This is the reason that, for instance, the province of Oost–Vlaanderen has a somewhat higher density of measuring points than West–Vlaanderen and a much higher density than Noord–Holland. This criterion is also responsible for the fact that there are more measuring points in the eastern part of the Netherlands than in the western part. Because of their relative isolation, a measuring point has been added to each of the (former) Dutch islands.

Amsterdam, Antwerpen, Brussel, Gent, Groningen, Heerlen, Nijmegen, Rotterdam and Utrecht. More so than in smaller locations, the informants in these cities are representative of the neighbourhood, and not of the whole city. Dialects may accordingly differ among different parts of these cities.

demographic changes is taken into account. This led us to discard measuring points in recently developed areas such as the polders in the former IJsselmeer.

human resources, time and financial means that were available to this project.

The application of these criteria led to a total of 267 measuring points, 158 of which are located in the Netherlands, 102 in Belgium and seven in France (cf. the fold-out map).

           

0.7  Informants

The informants were selected by means of the following criteria:

(i)        the informant speaks the dialect of his/her community;

(ii)       the informant and his/her parents are born and raised in the place of residence;

(iii)      the informant has lived in the place of residence until the age of 18, and has not been living elsewhere for a period longer than seven years;

(iv)      the informant uses the dialect at home and in at least one public domain;

(v)       the informant preferably belongs to a lower class or the lower middle-class;

(vi)      the informant is between 55 and 70 years old.

At first, the informants were selected from existing files of informants, such as the files of the Meertens Instituut, the phonological atlas (FAND) and the three dialect dictionaries of southern Dutch: the dictionaries of Brabant dialects, Limburg dialects and Flemish dialects. Potential informants were screened to see whether they met the criteria mentioned above, to ensure that they did not have a normative perspective towards their dialect and whether they would qualify as an assistant interviewer (see 0.8). For each location, two informants were needed. In many cases, a selected informant in a particular location was able to provide the name of another suitable informant. If existing information was insufficient for finding proper informants, societies for regional/local geography and history or regional/local dialect societies were contacted.

 

0.8  Methodology

If a speaker of a standard language interviews a dialect speaker, it generally happens that the dialect speaker opts for a language variety that is somewhere between the local dialect and the standard language. This phenomenon is known as accommodation. The SAND interviews are organised in such a way that the risk of accommodation is as low as possible. This has led to a methodology for the Netherlands that was somewhat different from the methodology in Belgium and France. In the Netherlands, we have selected two informants at each location, one of which took on the role of assistant interviewer, while the other was the target informant. Each interview required an entire day. In the morning session, the field worker instructed the assistant interviewer and asked him to put the questions for the questionnaire on tape (DAT-recorder or minidisc). The actual interview was recorded in the afternoon. During the interview the local dialect was used. The assistant interviewer instructed the informant, clarified individual questions if necessary and sometimes discussed the answers to the questions with the informant. The field worker kept out of this interview as much as possible. In Belgium, the field worker did the target interview him/herself using a variety of the regional language. Again, two (or more) speakers of the local dialect were present at the interview, but in these cases both had the role of informants. The difference in methodology in Belgium en the Netherlands was motivated by the fact that dialect speakers in Belgium are more stable in their use of local dialects. A more detailed description of the methodology of the SAND project and the elicitation techniques that were used, can be found in Cornips & Jongenburger (2001) and Cornips & Poletto (2005).

 

0.9  Elicitation techniques

Four different methods were used to elicit the anwers to the questions in the questionnaires:

a) Indirect grammaticality judgements. In this method, sentences in local dialect were presented to the informant who was asked to judge whether the sentences were attested in the local dialect. The advantage of using sentences in local dialect is that these sentences are not discarded due to lexical or phonological properties. An advantage of the indirect procedure is that normative considerations are prevented as much as possible. Sometimes this method was used to get relative judgements. Variants of a particular sentence were offered to the informant. In addition to the question as to whether a particular sentence can be attested in the local dialect, the speaker was also asked to provide relative judgements, comparing different sentences.

b) Elicitation through pictures. This method was used only with reflexive and reciprocal pronouns (chapter 4). The (assistant) interviewer provided the informant with a picture and asked him/her to complete a sentence that was presented in the local dialect.

c) Translation. In many cases, the informant was asked to translate a sentence that was presented in the standard language into the local dialect.

d) Indirect grammaticality judgement + translation. A combination of methods (a) and (c) was sometimes used. The informant was asked to judge whether a particular Standard Dutch sentence was common in the local dialect, and to translate the sentence into the local dialect. The advantage of this method is that the translation can function to consolidate and evaluate the judgement.

 

0.10  Data collection

The empirical research for the SAND project (2000-2003) was phased in the following way.

(i)        Development of an inventory of existing knowledge on syntactic variation. Among other things, this included a study of the literature (2000). The resulting bibliography can be consulted through the website of the Meertens Instituut (http://www.meertens.knaw.nl).

(ii)       Written questionnaire (2000). A pilot study with 424 test sentences was carried out among the 368 informants obtained from the database of the Meertens Instituut. The aim of this pilot was to make a first inventory of the dispersal of specific phenomena. This was necessary to make the final questionnaire as efficient as possible. The results of this study were used to control the data that were collected in the oral interviews (phase iii).

(iii)      Oral interviews (2001–2002). The interviews at the 267 measuring points (cf. section 0.6) consisted of a set of approximately 160 test sentences and a variable set of sentences that were selected on the basis of the results of the phases (i) and (ii). The interviews were recorded with DAT or minidisc recorders.

(iv)      Telephonic interviews (2003). After an overview of the results of the oral interviews, we added a telephonic interview phase to complete the data set with data that were missing or unreliable. The telephonic interview consisted of approximately 100 questions for each measuring point. Telephonic interviews were held with informants from 252 locations. These interviews were recorded as well.

 

0.11  Digitalisation and transcription

The interviews were recorded with DAT-recorders (in the Netherlands) and minidisk

recorders (in Friesland and Belgium). These recordings were transferred directly to computers without conversion, using the Sadie DAW system. The sample frequency was 44.1 kHz, 16 bits. The result is that the quality of the recordings is high enough to allow phonetic research.

Transcription of the recordings was achieved by means of the PRAAT programme (Boersma & Weenink; http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/). Phonetic transcription was impossible due to limited human resources and finances available and it is not really necessary for syntactic research. We made use of a normalised orthographic transcription with different rules for lexical and functional morphemes. Lexical morphemes were transcribed according to the rules of Standard Dutch, abstracting from phonetic and phonological differences. For instance, the verb /kinne/ on tape was transcribed as kennen 'to know'. Functional morphemes such as inflection, pronouns and determiners were not normalised, since these morphemes are crucially involved in morpho-syntactic variation. These morphemes were literally transcribed, in such a way that a one-to-one correspondence between sound and orthography was approached. For instance, the sentence Wa denk je wien ik gezien heb ('What do you think who I have seen') was transcribed without a /t/ on wa, whereas the normalised spelling is 'wat', and with an additional /n/ on wien, although the normalised orthography is 'wie'. Clusters of morphemes were transcribed as a whole, since the boundaries between functional morphemes are often difficult to determine and require additional analysis. Consequently, the embedded clause dat ik het hem geef  ('that I it him give') might be transcribed as ‘daketem geef’. A preliminary morphemic analysis was assigned in those cases (da–'k–'t–'m ...). A more detailed description of the transcription guidelines is given in Barbiers & Vanden Wyngaerd (2001).

 

0.12  Organisation

Participating institutions

Meertens Instituut (KNAW, Amsterdam), University of Gent, University of Antwerpen, University of Leiden, University of Amsterdam, and Frisian Academy (KNAW, Leeuwarden).

Financing

Flemish-Dutch Committee for Dutch Language and Culture (VNC), Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), Foundation for Scientic Research Belgium (FWO), Meertens Instituut, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), Research Foundation of the University of Antwerpen, and the Royal Academy of Dutch language and Literature (KANTL, Gent).

Initiative and supervision

Hans Bennis (Meertens Instituut), Hans den Besten (University of Amsterdam), Magda Devos (University of Gent), Johan Rooryck (University of Leiden) and Johan van der Auwera (University of Antwerpen).

Project management

Sjef Barbiers (Meertens Instituut), Hans Bennis (Meertens Instituut), Magda Devos (University of Gent), Guido Vanden Wyngaerd (University of Antwerpen/Catholic University of Brussels; until December 2001), Johan van der Auwera (University of Antwerpen).

Methodology

Leonie Cornips (Meertens Instituut) and Willy Jongenburger (Meertens Instituut; until September 2001).

Coordination

Tamar Israël (April 2000 until September 2002), Jeroen Van Craenenbroeck (December 2001 until April 2003), Margreet van der Ham (April 2001 until January 2004) and Susanne van der Kleij (January 2000 until February 2002).

Field work

Sjef Barbiers (Meertens Instituut) and Guido Vanden Wyngaerd (University of Antwerpen/Catholic University of Brussels).

–Belgium: Gunther De Vogelaer (University of Gent), Annemie Neuckermans (University of Gent/Antwerpen), Hugo Ryckeboer (University of Gent), and Vicky Van den Heede (University of Antwerpen/Gent).

–Friesland: Arjan Hut (Frisian Academy) and Henk Wolf (Frisian Academy).

–the Netherlands: Irene Haslinger (Meertens Instituut), Mathilde Jansen (Meertens Instituut), Jeroen Van Craenenbroeck (University of Leiden), Margreet van der Ham (Meertens Instituut), Susanne van der Kleij (Meertens Instituut), Marjo van Koppen (University of Leiden/Meertens Instituut), and Hedde Zeijlstra (University of Amsterdam).

Transcription

Sjef Barbiers (Meertens Instituut) and Guido Vanden Wyngaerd (University of Antwerpen/Catholic University of Brussels).

–Belgium: Gunther De Vogelaer (University of Gent), Annemie Neuckermans (University of Antwerpen/Gent), and Vicky Van den Heede (University of Gent/Antwerpen).

–Friesland: Arjan Hut (Frisian Academy), Bouke Slofstra (Frisian Academy), and Henk Wolf (Frisian Academy).

–the Netherlands: Irene Haslinger (Meertens Instituut), Mathilde Jansen (Meertens Instituut), Alies MacLean (Meertens Instituut), Jeroen Van Craenenbroeck (University of Leiden), Margreet van der Ham (Meertens Instituut), Susanne van der Kleij (Meertens Instituut), Marjo van Koppen (University of Leiden / Meertens Instituut), Vivien Waszink (Meertens Instituut), and Hedde Zeijlstra (University of Amsterdam).

Annotation

Sjef Barbiers (Meertens Instituut) and Guido Vanden Wyngaerd (University of Antwerpen/Catholic University of Brussels).

Irene Haslinger, Alies MacLean, Margreet van der Ham, Marjo van Koppen, Vivien Waszink (Meertens Instituut), and Bouke Slofstra (Frisian Academy).

Software-development

Jan Pieter Kunst (Meertens Instituut): database, search engine, tagging application, cartografic software; Ilse van Gemert (Meertens Instituut): cartographic software; Kees Grijpink (Meertens Instituut): digitisation.

Cartography

Sjef Barbiers (Meertens Instituut), Gunther De Vogelaer (University of Gent), Irene Haslinger (Meertens Instituut), Jeroen Van Craenenbroeck (University of Leiden), Vicky Van den Heede (University of Gent/Antwerpen), Margreet van der Ham (Meertens Instituut), and Marjo van Koppen (University of Leiden/Meertens Instituut).

Margreet van der Ham, with the help of Ton Goeman, Jan Pieter Kunst and Marco René Spruit, and Boudewijn van den Berg (Meertens Instituut).

Ton Goeman (Meertens Instituut).

Commentary

Sjef Barbiers (Meertens Instituut), Hans Bennis (Meertens Instituut), Gunther De Vogelaer (University of Gent), Magda Devos (University of Gent) and Margreet van der Ham (Meertens Instituut).

Barbiers and Bennis had the main responsibility for the chapters 1, 4 & 5; De Vogelaer and Devos for the chapters 2 & 3.

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to:

 

0.13  References

Barbiers, S., L. Cornips & J.P. Kunst (to appear). 'The Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch

Dialects. A corpus of elicited speech as an on-line Dynamic Atlas.’ In J. Beal, K.P. Corrigan & H. Moisl (eds.) Models and Methods in the Handling of Unconventional Digital Corpora. Volume 1: Synchronic Corpora. Palgrave-Macmillan.

Barbiers, S. & G. Vanden Wyngaerd (2001). Transcriptieprotocol voor de Syntactische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten. Manuscript, Meertens Instituut.

Cornips, L & W. Jongenburger (2001). 'Het design en de methodologie van het SAND

project.’ Nederlandse Taalkunde 16:3. 215–232.

Cornips, L. & C. Poletto (2005). ‘On standardising syntactic elicitation techniques I.’

To appear in Lingua.

Daan, J. & D.P. Blok (1977). Van Randstad tot Landrand. Toelichting bij de kaart

Dialecten en Naamkunde. Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij.

Wattel, E. & P. van Reenen (1994). 'Visualisation of extrapolated social-geographic data.’

[Rapportnr. WS–429, Faculteit Wiskunde en Informatica, Free University Amsterdam].

 

0.14  SAND syntax: a guide to the use of this atlas

0.14.1  Commentary

 

0.14.2  Atlas