In this thesis, first, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was reviewed and established as a prime example of the Anglo-Saxon language. Second, the principles of the transitional nature of Old English to ...Show moreIn this thesis, first, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was reviewed and established as a prime example of the Anglo-Saxon language. Second, the principles of the transitional nature of Old English to (Early) Middle English were discussed and examples thereof in The Peterborough Chronicle were highlighted. Third, the origins of the dative declension were examined and various dative semantic contexts were illustrated. Finally, an analysis exploring dative inflection rates was formed based on the study of 247 expected dative phrases. Hereon, this thesis exemplified the hypothesis set out in the beginning of this paper: rather than declining ubiquitously, the practice of inflection remained largely intact in various dative semantic contexts whereas it had disappeared in others. Altogether, the semantic contexts display dissimilar rates of inflection regarding the distribution of the dative inflection in The Interpolations, The First Continuation and The Final Continuation.Show less
The twenty-first century has seen an increase in prescriptive attitudes towards language correctness, with usage guides, language blogs and even automated Twitter bots offering advice on what is or...Show moreThe twenty-first century has seen an increase in prescriptive attitudes towards language correctness, with usage guides, language blogs and even automated Twitter bots offering advice on what is or is not permissible within Standard English. Using comments posted below-the-line (BTL) by members of the public, in response to a regular column on language use in The Times titled “The Pedant”, written by Oliver Kamm, this thesis examines grassroots prescriptive attitudes – defined as attitudes held by non-linguists towards language correctness – towards prescriptive ideologies and a specific usage problem: less with countable nouns. This thesis concludes that a small majority of BTL posters hold well-documented grassroots prescriptive attitudes towards language correctness.Show less
Currently, in The Netherlands, the strategies with which Dutch students are taught English as a second language are questioned and gradually changed. The educational strategies are becoming more...Show moreCurrently, in The Netherlands, the strategies with which Dutch students are taught English as a second language are questioned and gradually changed. The educational strategies are becoming more descriptive and less rule-defined and prescriptive. This thesis is a qualitative study to investigate the status quo of this development. It questions the degree with which L2 English teachers use prescriptive teaching strategies while teaching Dutch high school students, and what their attitude is towards teaching using prescriptive strategies. By means of two methodologies, a hypothetical survey aimed at L2 English teachers in The Netherlands and qualitative interviews conducted at a Dutch high school, this thesis draws conclusions about the usage of prescriptive strategies in general and about certain usage problems from the HUGE database and Kamm (2015).Show less
In this thesis, I continue the research conducted by Crabtree et al. (2016) and look at the relationship between emotive language and election performances through the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count...Show moreIn this thesis, I continue the research conducted by Crabtree et al. (2016) and look at the relationship between emotive language and election performances through the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count program. I ascertain whether the incumbent, prime ministerial, and extreme ideology party hypotheses are able to predict the use of emotive language of Dutch political parties during the 2017 election debates(Crabtree et al., 2016, p. 7). The findings of this research provide insight into Dutch parties’ linguistic choices in relation to their incumbency status. I attempt to answer the following question: Can the emotive language used in the Dutch 2017 election debates be predicted according to the incumbent, prime ministerial, and extreme ideology party hypotheses?Show less
This thesis was concerned with investigating affecting variables on language attitudes. Variables examined were age, gender and proficiency of the English language, in which catachresis was also...Show moreThis thesis was concerned with investigating affecting variables on language attitudes. Variables examined were age, gender and proficiency of the English language, in which catachresis was also looked into, as well as motives for borrowing loanwords.Show less
This MA thesis presents the results of a study which focused on ascertaining whether language influenced the way of thinking of English and Dutch respondents with respect to locating objects in...Show moreThis MA thesis presents the results of a study which focused on ascertaining whether language influenced the way of thinking of English and Dutch respondents with respect to locating objects in space. Speakers of Dutch make use of three different cardinal posture verbs, staan, liggen and zitten (to stand, to lie and to sit, respectively) when locating inanimate objects in space, whereas speakers of English prefer to use the neutral verb to be. By means of a classification experiment and a memorization experiment it became clear that speakers of Dutch do not have a different way of thinking (e.g. classifying and remembering) about the objects due to their more diverse lexical field. This can be due to the fact that English and Dutch do not differ sufficiently in their use of posture verbs, as English does have the verbs to stand, to lie and to sit and does use these verbs for locating objects. It can also be because the use of the three different posture verbs has conventionalized in Dutch, causing the respondents to refrain from conceptualizing the position of the object. Thus, the language does not inspire any thoughts, which means that it cannot influence the speakers’ way of thinking.Show less
