DynaSAND

Syntactic Atlas of Dutch Dialects – Commentary – Volume II

Table of contents Volume II

 

Introduction

 

The Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects (sand) illustrates the syntactic variation in the Dutch language area at the beginning of the 21st century. The Dutch language area consists of The Netherlands, the northern half of Belgium and a small area in the northwest of France, on the border with Belgium. sand consists of two volumes. Volume I appeared in 2005, at the same time as volume I of the Morphological Atlas of the Dutch Dialects (mand) and the final volume of the Phonological Atlas of the Dutch dialects (fand). sand Volume II and mand Volume II appeared in 2008. Together, these three atlases provide a unique, detailed and extensive description of phonological, morphological and syntactic microvariation in Dutch.

 

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 investigated was 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. Of course, we have found much more variation than shown in the sand-volumes. The complete data collection is available online (see section Dynasand below).

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

 

 

Maps

sandII has two components: a book with maps and a book with commentary. The map book commences 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 maps with symbols. The keys for each map contain a reference to the relevant section in the commentary.

 

Symbol maps

Symbol maps are used to reflect the geographic distribution of distinct variants of a particular syntactic variable, and to visualize potential correlations between 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 has more than one coloured square (with a maximum of 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. The keys of each map present the full set of coloured squares, which is given in the fixed order that is used on the map. A location with more than one variant can thus simply be distinguished from neighbouring measuring points. If none of the syntactic variants on the map were found in a particular location, the sampling point is printed as a grey point. A grey point may also indicate that there are no relevant data for the particular location. The symbol maps were drawn with MapInfo software.

 

Commentary

 

Dynamic Syntactic Atlas

Inspired by this printed atlas many readers will want to consult the underlying data, draw their own maps and combine various maps with each other. This is possible with Dynasand, an on-line database with search engine and cartographic software which is publicly available at www.meertens.knaw.nl. This database includes all the data that were collected in the sand-project: the sound recordings and partially tagged transcriptions of the oral interviews, the results of the written questionnaires and the results of the telephone interviews. The 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. With the cartographic component, the user is able to display the results of the data (s)he has found on a map. Sets of data may be combined into one map, thereby allowing the user to investigate 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 description of the dynamic-sand is given in Barbiers, Cornips & Kunst (2007).

 

Sampling 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 locations necessary for a reliable picture of the occurring syntactic variation, various criteria have been taken into account.

 

Informants

The informants were selected using the following criteria:

 

Methodology

When a speaker of a standard language interviews a dialect speaker, it often happens that the dialect speaker uses a language variety that is somewhere between the local dialect and the standard language. This phenomenon is known as accommodation. The sand interviews were organised in such a way to minimise the risk of accommodation. This has led to a methodology for the Netherlands that was somewhat different from the methodology that was used in Belgium and France. In the Netherlands, we have selected two informants at each location, one of which assumed 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 to record the questions for the questionnaire on tape (DAT-recorder or minidisc). The actual interview was recorded in the afternoon. The assistant interviewer instructed the informant, clarified individual questions if necessary and sometimes discussed the answers to the questions with the informant. During the interview the local dialect was used. The field worker stayed 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 during the interview, but, in these cases, both had the role of informants. The difference in methodology in Belgium and 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).

 

Elicitation techniques

Four different methods were used to elicit the anwers to the questionsin the questionnaires:

 

Data collection

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

 

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 (lit. what think you who I seen have) 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 descriptionof the transcription guidelines is given in Barbiers & Vanden Wyngaerd (2001).

 

Organisation

Participating institutions

Meertens Instituut (KNAW, Amsterdam), University of Gent, University of Antwerp, 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 Antwerp).

Project management

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

 

Methodology

 

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

 

Transcription

 

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/Antwerp), Margreet van der Ham (Meertens Instituut), Marjo van Koppen (University of Leiden/Meertens Instituut).

 

Commentary

SjefBarbiers, Johan van der Auwera, Hans Bennis, Eefje Boef, Gunther De Vogelaer and Margreet van der Ham. Barbiers and Bennis had the main responsibility for chapters 1, 2 and 3; Van der Auwera and De Vogelaer for chapter 4.

 

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to:

 

References

Barbiers, S., L. Cornips & J.P. Kunst (2007). ‘The Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects. A corpus of

the relevant data from a theoretical or historical perspective. Such explanations are dependent on theoretical persuasion and the state of the art of linguistic theory. We opted for a presentation that is as free from theory as possible. We leave it to the linguistic reader to provide explanations for these phenomena.

general terminology.