Linguistic changes through time and space in southern Dutch dialect varieties: the intransitive middle-construction

Leonie Cornips

Fri. 11-12:40 B

Introduction:

In this talk, I will present a detailed study of a syntactic change through time, namely between 1884 and 1994, and of syntactic variation in space in the dialects of Limburg, a province in the south of Netherlands, near the Belgian and German borders. I will focus on the intransitive middle construction.

Brief description:

In 1884, the geographical distribution of the several variants of the middle-construction in the local dialects can be described as follows:

(i) the Flemish/Belgium dialects that lie to the west of the province Limburg only use the Standard Dutch variant of the middle-construction, as is illustrated in (1):

-Flemish/Standard Dutch:

(1) Dit bed slaapt goed

This bed sleeps well

(ii) in the south of the province of Limburg, the dialects only have the middle construction in (2). The middle in the example in (2) is ungrammatical in Standard Dutch but fully grammatical in Standard German:

- south of Limburg/Standard German/*Standard Dutch:

(2) Het slaapt zich goed in dit bed

it sleeps refl. well in this bed

(iii) in the north of the province of Limburg, the dialects have both the middle construction in (2) and the middle in (3). The latter is ungrammatical in Standard German and Dutch:

- north of Limburg/*Standard German/*Standard Dutch

(3) Dit bed slaapt zich goed

this bed sleeps refl. well

However, this geographical distribution changed drastically around 1994. The changes are (i) the Standard German variant in (2) has almost disappeared and (ii) the northern Limburg variant in (3) has expanded to the south and further to the north. Moreover, during these 110 years a construction, as in (4a), that can be argued to have different syntactic features has undergone middle formation similar to the example in (3):

- north and south of Limburg:

(4) 1884 a. Deze inkt schrijft goed

This ink writes well

- north and south of Limburg:

1994 b. Deze inkt schrijft zich goed

This ink write refl. well

Objectives:

1) To discuss the phenomenon of geographical extension with respect to syntax;

2) To discuss the internal and external mechanisms of language change (Kroch 1989);

3) To discuss dialect/language contact situations