Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
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The aim of this study is to analyze the variation of the first-person object pronoun, and its variants mij and mijn in historical Dutch, based on the Letters as Loot corpus. The corpus contains...Show moreThe aim of this study is to analyze the variation of the first-person object pronoun, and its variants mij and mijn in historical Dutch, based on the Letters as Loot corpus. The corpus contains letters written in the 17th and the 18th centuries. In contemporary Dutch, mij (‘me’) is the standard variant for the object pronoun of ik (‘I’). In Early New Dutch, this variant was competing with mijn. The aim is to pinpoint and interpret the patterns that determined the variation of the first-person object pronoun and the choice of the variant mij as the standard one, and to extend the small survey of van der Wal (2007) with a larger dataset. This research is conducted following the Historical Sociolinguistics framework, that uses low language varieties and registers and correlates language internal and sociodemographic variables to describe and explain sociolinguistic variation (Hernández-Campoy and Conde-Silvestre 2012, 5). Therefore, diachronic, language-internal and language external variables have been taken in account. The results show that in the seventeenth century the morphological alternation was tendentially determined by the syntactic function of the pronoun (mij as a direct object, mijn as indirect object). This pattern is not found in South Holland where mijn is preferably used regardless of syntactic function. Diachronically, by the 18th-century mij takes over all the syntactic functions, and it is the preferred variant in all the regions. However, 30% of instances of the pronoun are encoded by mijn. The retention of some variation is due to the language usage of lower ranks, that do not exhibit diachronic differences. The shift toward mij as the object pronoun is a change from above, i.e. led by higher ranks of the society.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
closed access
Contrary to most studies of Polder Dutch, which argue that Polder Dutch and Standard Dutch have different social connotations (Stroop 1998, 2010; Van Bezooijen 1999, Van Bezooijen and Van den Berg...Show moreContrary to most studies of Polder Dutch, which argue that Polder Dutch and Standard Dutch have different social connotations (Stroop 1998, 2010; Van Bezooijen 1999, Van Bezooijen and Van den Berg 2001), this thesis aims to demonstrate that present-day language users do not distinguish between the two varieties. Combining two matched guise experiments it shows not only that non-linguists are not able to name ‘Polder Dutch,’ but also that they do not rate the two varieties differently on a range of evaluative scales, providing evidence that Polder Dutch is not perceived to be distinguishable from Standard Dutch.Show less
