Dutch Nouns Research Articles

Argument doubling with proper nouns in spoken Dutch

Abstract Argument doubling, also known as (contrastive) left-dislocation, is common in spoken Dutch, but it is unclear exactly what triggers it. Earlier proposals in the literature showed that the construction is not used for marking contrast, and suggested it is used for marking shifted topics instead. However, the results from a Spoken Dutch Corpus study on argument doubling with proper nouns demonstrate that topic-shift does not adequately characterize the construction’s function either. Further examination of our corpus data shows that at least for proper nouns, Dutch argument doubling mostly occurs when a new referent is introduced into the discourse, but that this referent does not necessarily become the topic of the discourse. We hypothesize that argument doubling is a way of giving speakers and/or hearers some extra time to establish and/or process the new discourse referent in the discourse, regardless of whether it will become a discourse-topic after its introduction.

Predictions about prosody facilitate lexical access: Evidence from P50/N100 and MMN components

Research into the neural foundation of perception asserts a model where top-down predictions modulate the bottom-up processing of sensory input. Despite becoming increasingly influential in cognitive neuroscience, the precise account of this predictive coding framework remains debated. In this study, we aim to contribute to this debate by investigating how predictions about prosody facilitate speech perception, and to shed light especially on lexical access influenced by simultaneous predictions in different domains, inter alia, prosodic and semantic. Using a passive auditory oddball paradigm, we examined neural responses to prosodic changes, leading to a semantic change as in Dutch nouns canon [ˈkaːnɔn] ‘canon’ vs kanon [kaːˈnɔn] ‘cannon’, and used acoustically identical pseudowords as controls. Results from twenty-eight native speakers of Dutch (age range 18–32 years) indicated an enhanced P50/N100 complex to prosodic change in pseudowords as well as an MMN response to both words and pseudowords. The enhanced P50/N100 response to pseudowords is claimed to indicate that all relevant auditory information is still processed by the brain, whereas the reduced response to words might reflect the suppression of information that has already been encoded. The MMN response to pseudowords and words, on the other hand, is best justified by the unification of previously established prosodic representations with sensory and semantic input respectively. This pattern of results is in line with the predictive coding framework acting on multiple levels and is of crucial importance to indicate that predictions about linguistic prosodic information are utilized by the brain as early as 50 ms.

Paradigmatic relations in Construction Morphology: the case of Dutch Noun+Verb compounds

The formal and semantic properties of Noun+Verb compounds in Dutch can be accounted for by means of paradigmatically related word-constructional schemas. We can form verbal compounds with an infinitival head from nominal compounds with a deverbal head noun, for instance boekbespreken ‘to book-review’, derived from boekbespreking ’book review’ through substitution of ‑ing by ‑en. The paradigmatically related constructions of verbal compounds with an infinitival head and nominal compounds with a deverbal head thus constitute a paradigm for word formation. The paradigmatic origin of verbal compounds makes the rare use of finite forms of these compounds understandable. The form of nominalizations for Noun+Verb compounds provides additional evidence for the paradigmatic origin of these verbal compounds. The analysis proposed lends support to morphological frameworks in which paradigmatic relations between words play a crucial role, such as Construction Morphology.

Adjective position in the code-switched speech of Spanish and Papiamento heritage speakers in the Netherlands: Individual differences and methodological considerations.

This study examines adjective-noun order in code-switched constructions by heritage speakers of Spanish and Papiamento in the Netherlands. Given that Dutch differs from Spanish and Papiamento regarding the default position of the adjective, word order in the nominal domain creates a so-called "conflict site" in code-switching. Most accounts of word order patterns in code-switching focus on structural constraints, such as the matrix language or the strength of the EPP feature in Agr. Thus far, studies comparing the two models have not found compelling evidence for either of them. The present study takes a more comprehensive approach and considers several linguistic (matrix language, adjective language, and type of insertion) as well as extra-linguistic variables (e.g., age, age of onset, and patterns of exposure and use). Moreover, we compare heritage speakers of two different heritage languages that are linguistically similar (both Spanish and Papiamento exhibit postnominal adjectives), and share the same dominant societal language, but are likely to differ from each other in terms of certain sociolinguistic properties. 21 Spanish and 15 Papiamento heritage speakers (aged 7-54) in the Netherlands carried out a Director-Matcher task, aimed at eliciting nominal constructions containing switches. The results show that either the ML or the language of the adjective, or both, are important predictors for word order, although the data cannot disentangle these two factors. Moreover, the type of insertion was found to play a role: word order patterns for noun insertions differed from other types of insertions. In addition, the two groups did not behave similarly: Papiamento speakers were more categorical in their preference for noun-adjective order when inserting Dutch nouns into their heritage language than the Spanish speakers were. Finally, there was a great deal of individual variation, which seemed to be related mostly to the age of the participants: children and teen participants behaved differently from adults. These findings demonstrate that both linguistic and extra-linguistic play a role in determining how heritage speakers deal with conflict sites in the nominal domain. Particularly, the findings suggest that, at least for some communities and in some code-switching modes, children may need more time, or more input, too converge on adult-like code-switching norms.

Grammatical gender and stereotypical gender associations with inanimate nouns in the ‘Germanic sandwich’

This pilot study is a contribution to the theoretical debate on the impact language has on general cognition. More specifically, we applied a Word Sketch collocator (an innovative NLP tool operating on large-scale corpora) to collect human adjective collocations of masculine, feminine, and neuter inanimate nouns in German, Dutch, and English to see whether there is a correlation between the grammatical genders of inanimate nouns and the adjective collocations most frequently used to describe those nouns. Later, in a series of online questionnaires, we examined the impact of grammatical gender and stereotypical gender associations on the perception of inanimate nouns (e.g., street, lamp, bottle) by testing the gender associations of their human adjective collocations obtained from the Word Sketch collocator in German (a grammatical gender language), Dutch (a language with a combination of grammatical gender and natural gender), and English (a natural gender language). In German, the results show that grammatical gender alone is not a decisive factor in causing masculine or feminine gender associations of inanimate nouns. Rather, it is the combination of grammatical gender and stereotypical gender associations of nouns that plays a role. In English, nouns associated with neutral, masculine and even feminine gender had significantly more neutral adjectival associations. In Dutch, nouns with common and neuter gender resulted in a higher proportion of masculine adjectival associations because these nouns are mostly referred to with common and masculine pronouns. We observed a special role played by stereotypical feminine associations of nouns in German, Dutch, and English.

No Self Without Salience: Affective and Self-relevance Ratings of 552 Emotionally Valenced and Neutral Dutch Words

It is unknown how self-relevance is dependent on emotional salience. Emotional salience encompasses an individual's degree of attraction or aversion to emotionally-valenced information. The current study investigated the interconnection between self and salience through the evaluation of emotional valence and self-relevance. 56 native Dutch participants completed a questionnaire assessing valence, intensity, and self-relevance of 552 Dutch nouns and verbs. One-way repeated-measures ANCOVA investigated the relationship between valence and self, age and gender. Repeated-measures ANCOVA also tested the relationship between valence and self with intensity ratings and effects of gender and age. Results showed a significant main effect of valence for self-relevant words. Intensity analyses showed a main effect of valence but not of self-relevance. There were no significant effects of gender and age. The most important finding presents that self-relevance is dependent on valence. These findings concerning the relationship between self and salience opens avenues to study an individual's self-definition.

Zur Morphologie der Substantive in altniederländischen Ortsnamen

Abstract Old Dutch place names from the period 700–1100 are here used for the reconstruction of the morphology of Old Dutch nouns. The genitive singular and plural of the strong masculine and neuter are here scrutinized, as well as the dative plural of all nouns. In the course of the paper the meaning of some place names is revised as well.

Listening Effort Through Depth of Processing in School-Age Children.

A reliable and practical measure of listening effort is crucial in the aural rehabilitation of children with communication disorders. In this article, we propose a novel behavioral paradigm designed to measure listening effort in school-age children based on different depths and levels of verbal processing. The paradigm consists of a classic word recognition task performed in quiet and in noise coupled to one of three additional tasks asking the children to judge the color of simple pictures or a certain semantic category of the presented words. The response time (RT) from the categorization tasks is considered the primary indicator of listening effort. The listening effort paradigm was evaluated in a group of 31 normal-hearing, normal-developing children 7 to 12 years of age. A total of 146 Dutch nouns were selected for the experiment after surveying 14 local Dutch-speaking children. Windows-based custom software was developed to administer the behavioral paradigm from a conventional laptop computer. A separate touch screen was used as a response interface to gather the RT data from the participants. Verbal repetition of each presented word was scored by the tester and a percentage-correct word recognition score (WRS) was calculated for each condition. Randomized lists of target words were presented in one of three signal to noise ratios (SNR) to examine the effect of background noise on the two outcome measures of WRS and RT. Three novel categorization tasks, each corresponding to a different depth or elaboration level of semantic processing, were developed to examine the effect of processing level on either WRS or RT. It was hypothesized that, while listening effort as measured by RT would be affected by both noise and processing level, WRS performance would be affected by changes in noise level only. The RT measure was also hypothesized to increase more from an increase in noise level in categorization conditions demanding a deeper or more elaborate form of semantic processing. There was a significant effect of SNR level on school-age children's WRS: their word recognition performance tended to decrease with increasing background noise level. However, depth of processing did not seem to affect WRS. Moreover, a repeated-measure analysis of variance fitted to transformed RT data revealed that this measure of listening effort in normal-hearing school-age children was significantly affected by both SNR level and the depth of semantic processing. There was no significant interaction between noise level and the type of categorization task with regard to RT. The observed patterns of WRS and RT supported the hypotheses regarding the effects of background noise and depth of processing on word recognition performance and a behavioral measure of listening effort. The magnitude of noise-induced change in RT did not differ between categorization tasks, however. Our findings point to future research directions regarding the potential effects of age, working memory capacity, and cross-modality interaction when measuring listening effort in different levels of semantic processing.

Grammatical Morphology in Monolingual and Bilingual Children With and Without Language Impairment: The Case of Dutch Plurals and Past Participles.

Grammatical morphology is often a locus of difficulty for both children with language impairment (LI) and bilingual children. In contrast to previous research that mainly focused on verbal tense and agreement markings, the present study investigated whether plural and past participle formation can disentangle the effects of LI and bilingualism and, in addition, can point to weaknesses of LI that hold across monolingual and bilingual contexts. Monolingual and bilingual children with and without LI (n = 33 per group) were tested at 2 waves with a word formation task that elicited Dutch noun plurals and past participles. The quantity and quality of errors as well as children's development over time were examined. The plural formation task discriminated between monolingual children with and without LI, but a less differentiated picture emerged in the bilingual group. Moreover, plural accuracy showed fully overlapping language profiles of monolinguals with LI and bilinguals without LI, in contrast to accuracy scores on the past participle formation task. Error analyses suggested that frequent omission of participial affixes may be indicative of LI, irrespective of lingual status. The elicited production of past participles may support a reliable diagnosis of LI in monolingual and bilingual learning contexts. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5165689.

Transcending the lexical vs. grammatical divide regarding the mass/count distinction. Evidence from corpus studies and acceptability surveys in French and Dutch

The lexico-grammatical status of mass and count nouns has been extensively debated over the last decades. We discuss how the two main approaches (lexicalist and grammatical approach) both fail to account for all the properties of the distinction. An alternative lexicalist view is proposed, approaching mass and count features as probabilistic features rather than as categorical ones. Building on Allan (1980), we deployed corpus data and acceptability ratings to examine the mass-count preferences of French and Dutch nouns that allow for both a mass and count interpretation. Our findings indicate that acceptability ratings are related to corpus frequencies. More specifically, we found that attested mass usages (even with very low frequencies) of nouns are more acceptable than nouns with unattested mass usage, that more frequent mass usages are more acceptable than less frequent ones and that the degree of acceptability of a mass usage of a lexical item depends on its relative frequency in discourse. In addition, we found that acceptability ratings of mass usage are sensitive to semantic-pragmatic modulation of the sentence context.

Dutch modality exclusivity norms: Simulating perceptual modality in space

Perceptual information is important for the meaning of nouns. We present modality exclusivity norms for 485 Dutch nouns rated on visual, auditory, haptic, gustatory, and olfactory associations. We found these nouns are highly multimodal. They were rated most dominant in vision, and least in olfaction. A factor analysis identified two main dimensions: one loaded strongly on olfaction and gustation (reflecting joint involvement in flavor), and a second loaded strongly on vision and touch (reflecting joint involvement in manipulable objects). In a second study, we validated the ratings with similarity judgments. As expected, words from the same dominant modality were rated more similar than words from different dominant modalities; but – more importantly – this effect was enhanced when word pairs had high modality strength ratings. We further demonstrated the utility of our ratings by investigating whether perceptual modalities are differentially experienced in space, in a third study. Nouns were categorized into their dominant modality and used in a lexical decision experiment where the spatial position of words was either in proximal or distal space. We found words dominant in olfaction were processed faster in proximal than distal space compared to the other modalities, suggesting olfactory information is mentally simulated as “close” to the body. Finally, we collected ratings of emotion (valence, dominance, and arousal) to assess its role in perceptual space simulation, but the valence did not explain the data. So, words are processed differently depending on their perceptual associations, and strength of association is captured by modality exclusivity ratings.

The processing of singular and plural nouns in English, French, and Dutch: New insights from megastudies.

In this study, we explored the processing of singular and plural word forms, using megastudies in French, English, and Dutch. For singulars, we observed a base frequency effect but no surface frequency effect. For plurals, the effect depended on the frequency of the word form. When the word form had a frequency above a threshold value, we observed both surface and base frequency effects; for the frequencies below the threshold, we found a base frequency effect only, suggesting full decomposition for these words. The threshold differed between the languages, suggesting that more plurals are decomposed in French than in Dutch and more in Dutch than in English. In contrast, for all languages the singular form seems to be coactivated whenever the plural form is processed. These results are interpreted in light of some of the main models of morphological processing. (PsycINFO Database Record

Vrouwelijke persoonsnamen in het Nederlands

Abstract Dutch Female Personal Names In this paper I argue that the formation of female personal nouns in Dutch provides no argument for so-called ‘paradigmatic’ means of word-formation. In the literature (Van Marle 1985, 1986) it has been argued that these nouns in particular provide an argument for paradigmatic word-formation. More in particular, Van Marle observes that female nouns in –ster only exist if there is a neutral personal noun in –er. He therefore concludes that in order to form female personal nouns in –ster, the grammar needs to check whether there is an existing word in –er. However, it can be demonstrated that such means are superfluous once we acknowledge that –er is the realization of a more abstract morpheme, which potentiates the affixation of a morpheme deriving female nouns, realized as –ster. Second, that Dutch hosts a haplology rule that deletes –er immediately before –ster. Since haplology is independently motivated (see e.g. Yip 1998, Nevins 2012), the present contribution provides an argument against paradigmatic means for word-formation.

The production of singular- and plural-dominant nouns in Dutch

The role of number dominance (singular vs. plural) in word production has revealed contrasting results in Dutch and English. Here, we compared the production of Dutch regular plural forms that are more frequent than their stems (plural-dominant plurals) to plurals that are less frequent than their stems (singular-dominant plurals) in a spoken picture-naming paradigm. Moreover, the role of inflectional entropy during spoken word production was assessed. The results revealed that singular-dominant singulars were produced significantly faster and more accurately than their corresponding plurals, independently of inflectional entropy. However, the production of plural-dominant plurals and singulars was modulated by inflectional entropy, and a plural disadvantage only found if the inflectional variants were not uniformly distributed. Critically, uniformly distributed variants showed a plural advantage in this condition. Our findings suggest that singular-dominant and plural-dominant plurals are processed differently, which we discuss in the context of morphological processing theories in spoken language production.

Core vocabulary, borrowability and entrenchment

It is often claimed in contact linguistics that core vocabulary is highly resistant to borrowing. If we want to test that claim in a quantitative way, we need both a quantitative measure of coreness and a method for quantifying borrowability. We suggest here a usage-based operationalization of coreness in terms of entrenchment, and of borrowability in terms of onomasiological success. Applying these measures in a corpus-based study on the use of English person reference nouns in Dutch, we show via a multivariate statistical analysis that there are indeed clear indications of an inversely proportional relationship between the success of the English nouns and the degree of coreness/entrenchment of the concept lexicalized by the loanwords.

Acquiring Nominal Gender by Deaf Learners and Hearing Adult Second Language Learners of Dutch

In this paper the acquisition of Dutch gender by deaf Dutch adults and hearing adult Turkish and Moroccan L2 learners of Dutch is discussed. Although, in the Netherlands, gender acquisition has been studied amply in ethnic minority children and adolescents, research with regard to ethnic minority adults and deaf adults is limited. The analysis of gender data was part of a comprehensive investigation of (writing) skills in these groups. The data were collected via a (semi-) spontaneous language task in which learners were invited to compose The Frog Story on the computer. Discovering and acquiring the gender paradigm turned out to be hard for the learner groups we investigated. Singular common nouns in Dutch take the definite determiner de and neuter nouns the definite determiner het. The results showed that in all learner groups most learners over generalized the use of de to neuter nouns. The reverse, the use of het with common nouns, hardly occurred. With respect to gender acquisition no differences were found between the various learner groups. The outcomes suggest that, in the domain of gender, the acquisition process in deaf learners of Dutch is comparable to the process of acquisition in hearing adult L2 learners of Dutch, despite their different learner situations (late L1 vs. late L2) and, in case of the adult L2 learners, their typologically different first languages. The explanation seems to be passing general learning stages, in combination with the disbalance between the effort required to learn a covert nominal gender distinction and the absence of informative or communicative value in using the gender distinction properly. This disbalance seems to lead to stagnation or fossization in early stages, in all learner groups.

Neuter is not Common in Dutch: Eye Movements Reveal Asymmetrical Gender Processing

Native speakers of languages with transparent gender systems can use gender cues to anticipate upcoming words. To examine whether this also holds true for a non-transparent two-way gender system, i.e. Dutch, eye movements were monitored as participants followed spoken instructions to click on one of four displayed items on a screen (e.g., Klik op [Formula: see text] rode appel [Formula: see text], 'Click on the[Formula: see text] red apple[Formula: see text]'). The items contained the target, a colour- and/or gender-matching competitor, and two unrelated distractors. A mixed-effects regression analysis revealed that the presence of a colour-matching and/or gender-matching competitor significantly slowed the process of finding the target. The gender effect, however, was only observed for common nouns, reflecting the fact that neuter gender-marking cannot disambiguate as all Dutch nouns become neuter when used as diminutives. The gender effect for common nouns occurred before noun onset, suggesting that gender information is, at least partially, activated automatically before encountering the noun.

Knowing versus producing

Dutch nouns are divided into two groups according to grammatical gender which is, among others, marked on the definite determiner: common nouns take the definite determiner de and neuter nouns take the definite determiner het. This study is unique in systematically investigating the acquisition of grammatical gender and the definite determiner in the production and knowledge data of the same Dutch children. Three groups of children were examined: (i) typically developing monolinguals (L1-TD: 6;7—9;11), (ii) monolinguals with Specific Language Impairment (L1-SLI: 8;4-12;0), and (iii) typically developing bilinguals, who are early second language learners (eL2: 6;7-10;0). The three groups of children reveal different stages in discovering that de and het cover the gender paradigm. At comparable ages, the L1-TD children have completed this paradigm discovery; however, the eL2 children have not yet completed it, and the L1- SLI children are only at the first stage of the discovery of the gender paradigm.

Cognitive Sociolinguistics meets loanword research: Measuring variation in the success of anglicisms in Dutch

AbstractThis paper introduces a new, concept-based method for measuring variation in the use and success of loanwords by presenting the results of a case-study on 149 English person reference nouns (i.e. common nouns used to designate people, such as manager) in Dutch. With this paper, we introduce four methodological improvements to current quantitative corpus-based anglicism research, based on the general tenets of Cognitive Sociolinguistics (Geeraerts 2005; Kristiansen and Geeraerts 2007; Geeraerts 2010; Geeraerts et al. 2010): (1) replacing raw frequency as a success measure by a concept-based onomasiological approach; (2) relying on larger datasets and semi-automatic extraction techniques; (3) adding a multivariate perspective to the predominantly structuralist orientation of current accounts; (4) using inferential statistical techniques to help explain variation. We illustrate our method by presenting a case-study on variation in the success of English person reference nouns in Dutch. Generally, this article aims to show how a Cognitive Sociolinguistic perspective on loanword research is beneficial for both paradigms. On the one hand, the concept-based approach provides new insights in the spread of loanwords. On the other hand, attention to contact linguistic phenomena offers a new expansion to the domain of cognitive linguistic studies taking a variationist approach.

Dutch Double Gender Nouns: Arbitrary or Motivated Agreement?

Recent studies on spoken Dutch emphasize an ongoing recategorization of pronominal gender on semantic grounds, with no apparent con-nection to lexical gender (Audring 2006, 2009; De Vogelaer 2006, 2009; De Vogelaer & De Sutter 2010; De Vogelaer & De Vos 2011). In fact, gender instability is not confined to the pronominal domain: Some Dutch nouns display more than one lexical gender (de/het-nouns), a phenomenon that has not been linked to the process of pronominal re-semanticization. The aim of this paper is to identify the common semantic and pragmatic basis for pronominal gender agreement and the choice of a determiner for double gender nouns.