This master’s thesis presents an edition of part of a handwritten recipe book dating from the first half of the eighteenth century. It was written by the semi aristocratic and VOC-director Aarnout...Show moreThis master’s thesis presents an edition of part of a handwritten recipe book dating from the first half of the eighteenth century. It was written by the semi aristocratic and VOC-director Aarnout van Citters from Zeeland, The Netherlands. Recepten voor de Keuken/Recepten voor Menschen (Recipes for the Kitchen/Recipes for Humans), preserved in the Manuscript Department of Amsterdam University Library (shelf-mark VIII E 14), is a book with different content on each side. It features culinary recipes on one side, and, when the book is turned around, medical recipes on the other side. In this edition, all culinary recipes and a small selection of the medical recipes have been transcribed. The aim of this edition is to present this fascinating historical document about the art of cooking to the modern day reader and to offer a historical context to help the reader interpret the recipes.Show less
To get hands on Dutch fricative devoicing and to find the insides of the devoicing process, it is useful to take a sharper look at child’s language acquisition. How do children acquire their...Show moreTo get hands on Dutch fricative devoicing and to find the insides of the devoicing process, it is useful to take a sharper look at child’s language acquisition. How do children acquire their fricatives in a dialect with voicing fricatives counterparts and with fricatives that nearly stand alone in their place of articulation, like the post-velar fricative? Are these fricatives acquired similarly? To answer these questions, one needs to find out first whether children make a distinction at all between fricatives, and moreover what acoustics they use to distinguish these sounds. In order to learn more about the development of fricative acquisition, an apparent time research including different age groups will be described. In this way, it can be determined whether young and old children use the same acoustic characteristics, and whether there is a development trajectory detectable in the voicing distinction. As has been known from the literature (Hermans & Van Oostendorp 2011), the occurrence of voiced and voiceless fricatives in Dutch is not only determined lexically, but it has very much to do with the phonological context as well. Do children use this context and is there a development in the use of this phonological rule? To gain insights into the above issues, this study attempts to discover how Dutch children cope with the production of the distinction between the fricative counterparts of three different places of articulation. It seems that children first learn to produce different fricatives and, unexpectedly, after a few years they change their use of the voicing counterparts of fricatives. This thesis shows the fricative phonetics of children in kindergarten and children around ten years of age, and suggests a possible explanation for their phonetics at different stages of their childhood.Show less
Traditionally, grammar is important in translation. However, translation quality assessment often does not pay much attention to the correct use of grammar and information structure. This research...Show moreTraditionally, grammar is important in translation. However, translation quality assessment often does not pay much attention to the correct use of grammar and information structure. This research aims to investigate whether Hannay and Mackenzie’s five principles for effective writing in English can be used to provide a guideline for the assessment of grammatical constructions. The study contained a literature review and a questionnaire, which focused on quality assessment of Dutch to English translations in which the five principles are applied. Although the number of respondents is slightly small, there are interesting findings. Especially principle 1 and principle 5 are recognized and those translations are assessed as grammatically correct. The study also found that native speakers of English are more strict in their assessment than non-native speakers of English, who are more tolerant towards minor errors.Show less
Today, various translation applications exist which are used daily by millions of people. However useful these applications are, occasionally they fail to deliver adequate translations. This paper...Show moreToday, various translation applications exist which are used daily by millions of people. However useful these applications are, occasionally they fail to deliver adequate translations. This paper explains how applications following Statistical Machine Translation methods would translate negation in sentences from Dutch to English, why this can lead to inadequate translations, and compares these findings with how different theoretical linguistic frameworks approach negation. The paper ends with a suggestion that, as theoretical linguistic frameworks show, using statistics alone is not sufficient when translating negation in sentences from Dutch to English.Show less
Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands had an English governess, Miss Winter, from when she was six years old. Because of this, Wilhelmina quickly acquired the English language at a young age. Her...Show moreQueen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands had an English governess, Miss Winter, from when she was six years old. Because of this, Wilhelmina quickly acquired the English language at a young age. Her progress in learning English, is clearly visible in the many letters that she wrote to Miss Winter from 1886 to 1936. Most of these letters were transcribed by me, and were studied in order to determine to what degree Wilhelmina learned to master the English language, and how her acquisition of English progressed over time, which is the leading intention of this study. The letters were studied on several points: spelling, lexis and grammar, in which a distinction was made between various phases of the language learning process. The letters that Wilhelmina wrote were divided into three periods: 18881892, 18931896 and 18971898. In this situation, the communicative approach that was used to teach Wilhelmina English was very effective when it comes to learning grammar and vocabulary. It appears that only by regular contact with native speakers a person can improve his proficiency in a second language the way Wilhelmina did in such a short time. Even though spelling is only fully acquired somewhat later, proper instruction can quickly cause this to catch up. Thus, in this thesis I demonstrated the positive effect of teaching methods focused on communication rather than on grammar and writing, such as the Communicative method and the Task-based approach.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
This study attempts to devise a unified account for three linguistic phenomena -- object type, object movement, and again-ambiguities -- that can be observed in Dutch and Swedish. Specifically,...Show moreThis study attempts to devise a unified account for three linguistic phenomena -- object type, object movement, and again-ambiguities -- that can be observed in Dutch and Swedish. Specifically, this study tries to untangle the interaction between theses three phenomena, as illustrated in the following Dutch sentences (in their literal reading): (1) a. Jan heeft weer de deur geopend. (repetitive/*restitutive) John has again the door opened `John opened the door again.' b. Jan heeft de deur weer geopend. (rep/res) John has the door again opened (2) a. *Jan heeft weer hem geopend. John has again it opened b. Jan heeft hem weer geopend. (rep/res) John has it again opened `John opened it again.' (3) a. Jan heeft weer een deur geopend. (rep/*res) John has again a door opened `John opened a door again.' b. *Jan heeft een deur weer geopend. John has a door again opened Comparing these three sets of sentences, it seems that the availability of the repetitive/restitutive ambiguity associated with the adverb weer `again' lies in both the type of the object and its position relative to the adverb. The unified account developed in this study has as its backbones the Mapping Hypothesis proposed by Diesing and Jelinek (1995) and a structural theory on again-ambiguities advocated by von Stechow (1995, 1996). The Mapping Hypothesis partitions a syntactic tree into the Nuclear Scope and the Restriction Clause and handles the interpretation of different object types by the object's syntactic position at LF. When the object is moved to the Restriction Clause by some object movement rule, it receives a specific reading, whereas when the object remains in the Nuclear Scope, it gets a non-specific reading. The structural theory on again-ambiguities claims that the repetitive/restitutive opposition has a syntactic origin. This theory relies heavily on a semantico-syntactic decomposition of verbs into an action and a state component, with the repetitive reading resulting from again modifying a syntactic constituent that represent an action and the restitutive reading from again a constituent that denotes a state. The current study argues that either the Mapping Hypothesis or the structural theory alone can explain only part of the data, and that only by integrating the two can we have a unified account that justifies the whole data. This unified account allows the position of the object (i.e., whether object movement applies or not) and the dual readings of again to be govern by two different mechanisms, but it also permits the two mechanisms to interact with each other so that ungrammatical constructions can be successfully ruled out. To explain the Dutch data above, we first move the objects that have a specific reading, as is often the case for definite descriptions like de deur `the door' and definite pronouns like hem `it', to the Restriction Clause and leave the objects with a non-specific reading, such as the indefinite een deur `a door' in the Nuclear Scope. Then we let weer `again' adjoin to different constituents that map onto either an action (which leads to the repetitive reading) or a state (the restitutive reading). The whole derivation just described can be represented as follows (NS stands for Nuclear Scope): (4) a. Jan heeft weer [NS de deur geopend ]. (rep/*res) John has again the door opened b. Jan heeft de deur_o [NS weer t_o geopend ]. (rep/res) John has the door again opened (5) a. *Jan heeft weer [NS hem geopend ]. John has again it opened b. Jan heeft hem_o [NS weer t_o geopend ]. (rep/res) John has it again opened (6) a. Jan heeft weer [NS een deur geopend ]. (rep/*res) John has again a door opened b. *Jan heeft een deur_o [NS weer t_o geopend ]. John has a door again opened (5a) and (6b) are rejected because the objects in them are in the wrong domain. Although (4a) is grammatical, this sentence does receive a slightly different interpretation than (4b) due to the position of the definite de deur in the Nuclear Scope. The same principles can be applied to Swedish as well, albeit only at LF instead of at S-structure as in Dutch. In future research, it will be useful if more data, especially from Icelandic, can be brought in and if we consider verbs beyond a simple open.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
Dutch grammar prescriptions decree that in subject position, the subject pronoun 'zij' and not the oblique 'hun' should be used. Consequently, the following sentence can only exemplify proper...Show moreDutch grammar prescriptions decree that in subject position, the subject pronoun 'zij' and not the oblique 'hun' should be used. Consequently, the following sentence can only exemplify proper written and spoken Dutch if 'zij' is selected: *Hun/Zij hebben dat gedaan! ("Them/They did that!"). Scholars have revealed that university students disapprove of *hun in a spoken Dutch story (Janssen 2004), and that the more highly educated a group of speakers is, the lower that group’s self-reported use of *hun is likely to be (Bennis & Hinskens 2014). Yet, it remains unclear whether and, if so, how different educational groups perceive 'hun hebben' as well as other 'taalergernissen' (“language annoyances”, or “usage problems”) in spoken Dutch. My sociolinguistic study into 45 young Dutch females’ perception and evaluation of five usage problems in spoken Dutch confirms that speakers’ education is a relevant social variable that future studies about related topics should consider. The speakers with a WO degree (“university degree”) more often commented on the non-standard features in a radio listening task than speakers with HBO (“higher vocational education”) or MBO (“intermediate vocational education”) degrees did. Additionally, the university graduates also were less tolerant of, and more strongly distanced themselves from, spoken sentences that included such non-standard features as compared to the HBO and MBO graduates.Show less
This thesis focuses on theoretical accounts of code-switching with regard to Papiamento-Dutch bilinguals. It examines two contrasting theories, the Matrix Language Framework model (Myers-Scotton,...Show moreThis thesis focuses on theoretical accounts of code-switching with regard to Papiamento-Dutch bilinguals. It examines two contrasting theories, the Matrix Language Framework model (Myers-Scotton, 2002) and the Minimalist Program (Cantone and MacSwan, 2009), and compares them by examining which accounts for what happens at conflict sites in occurrences of Papiamento-Dutch code-switching, looking specifically at switching in noun-adjective word-order conflict sites. An event-related potential study was carried out at Leiden University with Papiamento-Dutch bilinguals. Its aim was to provide an objective measure of the neurocognitive processes underlying code-switching in bilinguals (Parafita Couto, Pablos, Boutonnet, de Jong, Perquin, de Haan and Schiller, under review). The two theories were tested using code-switched sentences which comprised six conditions: two control sentences that were not code-switched, two code-switched conditions where the predictions of the theories differed, and two code-switched conditions where the predictions of the theories matched. It was predicted that the results would support the Myers-Scotton MLF model, as that was the case with a similar project carried out with Welsh-English bilinguals ((Parafita Couto, Boutonnet, Hoshino, Davies, Deuchar and Thierry, 2013). The results of the Papiamento-Dutch experiment showed a slight trend in support of the Minimalist Program. These results differed from those of the project regarding Welsh-English bilinguals which found significant results in support of the Matrix Language Framework model (Parafita Couto, Boutonnet, Hoshino, Davies, Deuchar and Thierry, 2013). The disparity between the conclusions in these two experiments could be due to the difference in the types of bilinguals which participated. Further research will benefit from considering the sociolinguistic features of the bilingual group which participated in the Papiamento-Dutch study discussed in this thesis.Show less
“Can equivalent effect be reached in Korean to Dutch translation?” I want to examine this by analyzing Oh Jung-hee’s novel: ‘새’ (2009) and its Dutch translation: ‘Vogel’. I want to answer this...Show more“Can equivalent effect be reached in Korean to Dutch translation?” I want to examine this by analyzing Oh Jung-hee’s novel: ‘새’ (2009) and its Dutch translation: ‘Vogel’. I want to answer this question by searching for units that might pose a problem for translating 새 regarding communicative equivalence. I will discuss why it is problematic to reach an equivalent effect with the help of various translation strategies.Show less
