Conference – Talk TiN-dag

On February 6, Marjo van Koppen and Feike Dietz will give a talk on De Grote Taaldag (TiN-dag), to introduce a new line of research. The program and other abstracts can be found on the website of the TiN-dag.

Abstract

Language Dynamics in the Dutch Golden Age: Negation in the letters of P.C. Hooft

We introduce a new line of research in which we chart and explain the grammatical properties of intra-author variation in 17^th-century Dutch, as well as the socio-/literary-cultural factors influencing the way authors used their variation. 17^th-century Dutch was a mixture of fading linguistic properties from Middle Dutch, and upcoming new ways to construct words and sentences. Within this linguistically dynamic context, we observe a lot of intra-author variation. The central hypothesis is that author’s (internal) grammars created a particular range of variation, which was then systematically used, based on contextual factors. This talk focuses on negation in the letters of P.C. Hooft. Hooft uses both the Middle-Dutch negative concord system as well as the modern single negation, often within one letter. We analyze the linguistic properties of this variation as well as the literary ones, providing a complete picture of this variation.