Present-day Dutch Research Articles

The position of the genitive in present-day Dutch

This paper analyses a fragment of the adnominal genitive that remains in productive use in present-day Dutch, appearing in novel formations like de generatie der babyboomers ‘the generation the.gen babyboomers’ and het trillende filmbeeld des levens ‘the vibrating film picture the.gen life.gen’. On the basis of written and spoken corpus data, this paper accounts for the structural regularities found in the novel genitives, their relationship to the preposition van ‘of’, which succeeded the adnominal genitive, and the place of the genitive in modern Dutch morphosyntax. It is proposed that a constructional approach can account for the genitive's productivity.

Leve hun! Waarom hun nog steeds hun zeggen

More and more speakers of Dutch use the “object” personal pronoun hun as the subject of a sentence, although there is a strong social stigma attached to this use. In this article, we investigate what makes hun such a good subject in present-day Dutch. Basing the analysis on data from the Corpus of Spoken Dutch, we predict that the use of hun as a subject will remain alongside the use of zij and ze, because hun has the advantage of referring exclusively to animate entities such as humans, unlike the competing forms zij and ze.

Koineization in the present-day Dutch dialect landscape: postvocalic /r/ and more

This contribution addresses a number of conceptual and methodological issues regarding processes of dialect change leading to koineization. After a discussion of some notions and key findings from a few recent relevant studies concerning present-day Dutch dialects, two paradigms of linguistic theorizing will be briefly presented. Next, these paradigms will be compared on the basis of the findings from a recent diachronic study of the deletion of postvocalic /r/ before coronal obstruents. It will be shown that only one of the paradigms survives this test. As to the internal factors, the study offers evidence for the claim that, as far as phonological and morphophonological variation is concerned, the place of a given dialect feature in the typology of phonological rules plays a determining role in its chances for survival in situations of long-lasting, extensive dialect contact. Finally, attention will be paid to some desiderata and possibilities for further research which are either of a methodological (especially data related) or of a more theoretical nature.

The emergence of the determiner in the Dutch NP

This article inquires into the diachrony of the determiner in Dutch. First, it is argued that the determiner is an emergent syntactic category, and that it must be consequently excluded from universal grammar. Second, it is argued that languages that do have a determiner slot in the NP differ considerably with regard to which lexemes they allow in this function. On the basis of these two observations, an in depth usage-based analysis of the emergence of the Dutch determiner is undertaken. It seems that over the centuries, the determiner projection consolidates its position in Dutch. It first cropped up in Old Dutch, and was further elaborated in Middle Dutch, Modern Dutch and Present-day Dutch by the recruitment of ever new slotfillers. Difficulties in the demarcation of the determiner phrase and the notoriously elusive syntax of some adjectives are claimed to be due to diachronic instability: what is e.g., conveniently but somewhat misleadingly called postdeterminers, can be argued to be an instable syntactic category that represents an intermediate stage in the diachronic process. Evidence will be drawn from (quantitative) corpus inquiry.

The emergence of modification patterns in the Dutch noun phrase

This article gives a diachronic account of adnominal modification from Proto-Indo-European to present-day Dutch. The main conclusion is that through the ages, noun phrases appear to “fold out”: they acquire their layered structure for different lexical modifiers over time. The latest stage in this process is the fairly recent development of a specific slot for interpersonal modification of the whole noun phrase. The different stages in the diachronic development are described with the layered and modular representation of functional discourse grammar (FDG).

Polarity-sensitive scalar particles in early modern and present-day Dutch

In this paper, two simultaneous developments in a small area of the Dutch particle lexicon are charted and related to one another: (a) the gradual emerge of particle clusters with the semantics of even in polarity-sensitive contexts, and (b) the growing specialization among Dutch particles which mark scalar endpoints. The particular ways in which Dutch particles and particle clusters become more specialized are discussed and an argument is provided that this growing specialization extends far beyond the small domain studied here, and is the driving force behind the development of particle clusters.

Commitment and exploration as mechanisms of identity formation.

We report a two-wave longitudinal study of 1,571 Dutch adolescents concerning the role of commitment and exploration in identity development. We used the Utrecht-Groningen Identity Development Scale to measure commitment and exploration in the domains of relational and societal identity. Our results can be summarized in three points. (1) Commitment and exploration are related processes in the development of identity. Adolescents with strong commitments also frequently explore them, and adolescents with low exploration in general have weak commitments. (2) The longitudinal stability of commitment and exploration has a medium effect size. For relational identity the stability of commitment is greater than that of exploration, but this is not the case for societal identity. The explanation we give for the lack of this difference in stability between commitment and exploration in societal identity is that the formative period for societal identity comes primarily at the end of adolescence. In that connection, we conclude that for present-day Dutch adolescents the formation of relational identity probably precedes that of societal identity. (3) In neither identity domain is commitment predictive of exploration three years later, nor is the reverse the case. We conclude that no long-term developmental sequentiality of commitment and exploration was found, but the results do not rule out the possibility of short-term developmental sequentiality.

Time Allocation in Times of Structural Transformation

This study focuses on time allocation in 1995 by married or cohabiting, employed or homemaking Dutch women and men aged between 25 and 44. It asks (1) What role does gender play in time-allocation decisions? (2) What effects do situational factors have on time allocation, and do these effects differ between the sexes? Time-allocation models were developed for women and men separately, such that paid work affected unpaid work and free time, and free time, in turn, was affected by paid and unpaid work. It was found that women's unpaid work, rather than their free time, acts as a time buffer when more time is allocated to paid work, whereas men's free time rather than unpaid work time assumes this function. Although time allocation is still gendered, time-use patterns of both women and men at the end of the 20th century are differentiated by situational factors. In the present-day institutional Dutch context, the combination of having children and performing market work implies a relative loss of free time for women and men alike which is believed to be connected with a loss of control over time.

Cultural classifications under discussion latent class analysis of highbrow and lowbrow reading

Cultural classifications, in the sense of categorisations of cultural goods and practices, are often abused in cultural stratification studies to classify people involved with these goods and practices. In this paper the issue is discussed of how to use cultural classifications without begging the question of their definition and without claiming to have at our disposal an archimedean point permitting the classification of cultural goods. Using time budget data from the 1990 Dutch Time Budget Survey (over 3000 respondents) and focussing on one cultural activity (reading in leisure time) latent class analysis - a method for finding the latent classes or categories of variables - provides an empirical basis which permits exploring an extrapolation of Peterson and Simkus's (1992) suggestion (on omnivorous and univorous musical preferences) with respect to actual reading behavior. It is shown that present-day Dutch society is composed of clearly distinguishable categories: non-readers, high readers, and low readers. Besides, there is a small group which combines apparently heterogeneous categories. (Focus on a single cultural practice must make one hesitant to label this group ‘reading omnivores’.) Subsequently, a multinomial logit model is described and used to test hypothesized causal relationships between kinds of reading behavior and a number of background (SES) and intervening variables. These variables help to account for class membership and thus make possible the explanation of differences in reading behavior.

Cultural Perceptions: Exploiting the Unexpected of the Other

Studies of perception seem to have been dominated by scientific theory for disciplinary purposes. The present work proceeds from the standpoint that people's discourse of perception deserves attention in its own right and examines constructions of perception with special reference to their situated sociocultural meaning. The investigation focuses on descriptions of unexpected perceptual experience about the Chinese in present-day Dutch travel literature and, from a rhetorical perspective which views discourse as both constructive of reality and active upon it, attempts to make transparent the sociocultural purposes to which such perceptual representations are put. Methodologically, since the meaning of (perceptual) discourse is cued through verbal and situational context, the present analysis premises its interpretation upon the ways that the perceived reality is formulated, accounted for and culturally understood. It is shown that perceptual representations of unexpected cultural experiences can be contextually managed to show distance from, unworthiness of, contempt for, disbelief in or transcendence over the cultural Other. In conclusion it is suggested that discursive perception of culture be conceptualized as culture-making practice and that people's perceptual discourse be conceptualized as individuals' resources for social ends.

F. Springer: diplomaat-skrywer

F. Springer, pseudonym of Dutch ex-diplomat Corel Jan Schneider, fills a unique position in the present-day Dutch literary scene in that the action of his prose works is usually not situated in the Netherlands but mostly in exotic places where Schneider was posted to as an employee of the Dutch foreign service. Having Java as his place of birth and Dutch New Guinea as his first place of assignment, quite a few of his earlier stories and short novels focus on the fateful encounter between Western administrative efficiency or approach to colonial life and Eastern (mainly primitive) ways of living. As a sceptic, Springer views the while man's colonial administration as futile scribbling in the margins of history'. Springer's main works are the novels Bougainville, noted for its unique structure, and Quissama, a gripping evocation of postcolonial Angola. In these and other of his texts Springer regards writing as a way of making his existence more bearable and keeping misery, encountered in all third world countries, at a distance in order not to be engulfed by it. He also views it as his expression of opposition against the world of make believe and the deception of modern diplomacy and international trade relations.

Godsdienstwijsgerig onderzoek in Nederland 1980-1990; een overzicht

In a brief introductory section difficulties concerning the name of the discipline are stated and the delimitation of the period of review is accounted for. The second section develops the contrast between the analytical and the speculative methods as the two main approaches in the field of the philosophy of religion. This section ends by considering the possibility that a rapprochement is taking place between these two opposing orientations. The section on thematical issues contains the bulk of the article, at least in quantitative respect. Eight fields of interest which are treated in present-day Dutch philosophy of religion are briefly discussed in the light of selected publications and/or discussions, the doctrine of God, cosmology, psychology, theory of religion, philosophy of theology, theory of culture, religious language and historical subjects like the research on Spinoza and Levinas.

Oculus ecclesiae or the eyes of the people. Church and society in medieval Frisia

Medieval Frisia, also known as the ‘Seven Frisian Sea Lands’, consisted of clearly distinguishable parts: West Friesland (now part of the Dutch province of Holland), West-Lauwers Friesland (the present-day Dutch Province of Friesland), the Lands between the Lauwers and the Eems (the present-day province of Groningen) also called East Friesland, together with German East Friesland (Fig. 1). This study is concerned with the Lands between the Lauwers and the Eems; its main emphasis is on the lands (terrae) of Fivelgo and Hunsingo (Fig. 2). The history of medieval Friesland is not considered here in terms of modern political theory; instead, emphasis is on the forms of society and administration as they really existed, and on actual family and communal relationships. Viewed in this light the peace and truces inspired by the Church are seen to have played an important role.