A Middle Frankish deletion process and the life cycle of phonological processes
Pronunciation differences often evolve from a grammatical phenomenon into a permanent change in the word itself. This process, known as the life cycle of phonological processes occurs slowly and always in the same direction, but not consistently in terms of speed. The differences between stages lead to the differences between...
Alternative medicine
The Alternative medicine project entails research into the functions and meanings of contemporary forms of belief and healing as well as alternative, non-standard, and integrative forms of medication and treatment. Based on surveys, field work, and media analyses, the broad expansion and growing popularity of non-medical healing methods in the...
Canonization & The canon of church song traditions
An intriguing example of cultural change (and stability) is the existence of cultural canons. For example, canons of literature (what are the most “influential” novels), philosophy (who are the “greatest” thinkers?), folktales (what are the most “popular” fairy tales?), or history (what are the most “important” events?) are assumed as...
Changing song traditions
A fundamental question in the upcoming research period into oral culture is why some cultural artifacts (such as songs and stories) are more successful than others. For example, why has Little Red Riding Hood been one of the most popular fairy tales in the western world for more than three...
Hebben (to have) and zijn (to be)
There is a great deal of variation in the use of hebben and zijn in the various varieties of Dutch as well as their equivalents in various languages. The same applies to the use of the dative case. This is best illustrated by the difference between Dutch and English. While...
Industrial farming in the Netherlands
Dutch pig farming practices posit urgent questions concerning animal subjectivity, animal welfare, environmental problems and precarious human and animal living and working conditions. The widespread of industrial farming as the dominant model of ‘modern’ farming shapes specific ways in which animals are made to live and die, and the forms...
Microvariation in language change
Although languages tend to change according to similar patterns, they do not necessarily change at the same speed. This observation raises one of the most fundamental questions in linguistics: what triggers language change? Language change has been shown to result from grammatical properties of the language (Internal Triggers) as well...
Particles in literary and non-literary corpora
Traditional grammars primarily describe those phenomena that are traditionally described in grammars. For some elements, such as particles and other spoken language phenomena, there is hardly any dedicated space in those types of grammars, and even many theoretical grammars do not always manage to address them. However, they are interesting....
Poetic forms in contacts
When languages come into contact with one another, this also frequently implies that the cultures who speak these languages have come into contact. This has a twofold effect on poetic traditions. In the “receiving culture,” the language can change, which causes certain poetic forms to be less suitable (e.g. word...
Regional identity construction through linguistic practices
In this project the dual role of “language” will be researched: for people, language is a means to (re)produce culture and community, but language itself also forms the heart of a culture/community. If group identifications change, then communities, culture, and languages change as well, and it is within these changes...
Roots of Ethnolects; extended
Ethnolects, language variants that have origins associated with specific ethnic groups, are rooted in the substrate (the influence of the relevant ethnic group’s original language, such as Turkish or a dialect of Arabic), the general processes of acquiring a second language, and the surrounding local dialects. Can the characteristics that...
Sociolinguistic and grammatical influence on language variation
In this project, language variation will be researched as a phenomenon that appears in social and cultural interactions, but is still delineated via the (mental) grammar of the speaker. The interaction between the social meaning of the language formats on the one hand and the limitations of the grammar on...
Standardization of Dutch varieties (dialects, regiolects)
The standard Dutch language is different from the Dutch dialects in large part because it was created through the efforts of elite language users who selected various language formats, which typically were the results of natural developments anyway. What is interesting is that, at the end of the 20th century...
The attrition of inflection
It is often assumed that intensive linguistic contact leads to a loss of inflection, which would result from the fact that inflectional morphology is difficult to learn for those acquiring a second language. A system without inflection would therefore be simpler, which is the reason why, in the history of...
The derivational morphology of Dutch
In the past, the Meertens Institute has conducted a great deal of morphological research, but it has always been focused on inflection. In the upcoming research period, we would specifically like to focus on the investigation of derivational morphology in the standard language (in the Taalportaal), in the dialects (based...
The emergence of complex verb constructions in Germanic languages
All Germanic languages have complex verb constructions with two or more auxiliary verbs, such as: Ik moet kunnen komen / I must be able to come or Ik heb/ben kunnen komen / I have been able to come. The period that these emerged and the conditions under which this occurred...