Abstract
From a diachronic perspective, Germanic languages are in the process of deflection. In this context, there appears to be a rather chaotic amount of variation within the verbal inflectional paradigms of Dutch dialects. Based on the paradigms of the verb leven (“to live”) in 253 Dutch dialects, we provide a description and a paradigmatic analysis of the variation that we found in verbal inflection in geographically determined, synchronic varieties of Dutch. It turns out that the observed variation is remarkably consistent: there are nine different paradigms, eight of which show a geographically delimited distribution. We discuss the observed geographical variation in the context of Germanic deflection. We argue that variation and deflection are determined by paradigmatic simplification of the feature system involved. We demonstrate that the following economy strategies are relevant: (A) the reduction of the number of distinctive features for a particular affix in an inflectional paradigm: each affix within the Dutch verbal inflectional system is characterized by one phi-feature only; (B) the introduction of a default category [+finite]; (C) the reduction of the number of feature categories in an inflectional paradigm: Dutch inflectional paradigms allow the presence of only one inflectional category ([number], [person], [gender]). These strategies largely determine the realm of variation, within which regional varieties occupy different positions. By doing so, we provide a perspective on paradigmatic change, triggered by properties of the language system.
Highlights
It is a well-known fact that Germanic languages show substantial variation with respect to inflection
The data that we have used, were drawn from the SAND, a database containing a large corpus of syntactic information, 1 Given the fact that we look at inflection from a paradigmatic point of view, we assume that a zeromorpheme is present when one of the forms in a verbal paradigm lacks an overt inflectional morpheme
We have argued above that the majority of the Dutch dialects can be characterized by a condition that allows one phi-feature only to determine a particular instantiation of verbal inflection
Summary
It is a well-known fact that Germanic languages show substantial variation with respect to inflection. In Standard Dutch the inflectional morpheme in the subject– verb order is –t, but moving through the dialects one finds the inflectional suffixes –st, –s, –en, –n, and –0.1 In this paper, we concentrate on the feature system that is minimally required to describe and analyse the observed variation from a paradigmatic point of view. This focus implies the preliminary assumption that there is a one-to-one relationship between inflectional affixes and (a set of) morphosyntactic features (cf Aalberse in press). The most important outcome of this research is that variation in inflection and deflection can be analysed as being determined by paradigmatic principles of economy
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