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

Abstract1 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. 1. Introduction Koineization can be defined as the development, through dialect mixing, simplification and reduction, of a regional lingua franca which incorporates features of various different dialects (cf. Siegel 1985, 2001; Trudgill 1986; Hinskens, Auer & Kerswill 2005: 11). Thus, new compromise dialects develop, which in a sense function as a greatest common denominator of the constituent dialects. In the processes which give rise to koines, reduction consists of the elimination of the constituent dialects’ most peculiar features; typically these are local features, but of course it can also concern features which are specific to different types of community, such as neighbourhoods. See e.g. 1 Thanks are due to the editors for their help and patience, to Cor van Bree, Ben Hermans and Johan Taeldeman for highly valuable input as well as to the anonymous reviewers for the many important questions and suggestions from which this contribution has benefited. All flaws are the author’s responsibility. Taal & Tongval 63 (2011), nummer 1; www.taalentongval.eu

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Roukens’ (1941: 59) description of features separating the dialect varieties of two neighbourhoods of the town of Kerkrade in the Ripuarian speaking southeastern slice of the Dutch language area. Ultimately the emergence of a koine thus results from structural convergence between closely related linguistic systems, in casu dialects, in other words from horizontal dialect levelling, i.e. cross-dialectal levelling. Horizontal dialect levelling can of course be triggered by vertical levelling, i.e. levelling in the structural space between dialect and the standard language (Sobrero’s 1996 ‘passive koineization’). There are no processes of koineization as such; koineization rather results from general processes of dialect change, with the loss of variants or entire rules being key mechanisms. Dialect change can affect individual dialects; it can but does not necessarily need to result in koineization. Koineization is a manifestation of the victory of “la force d’intercourse” over “l’esprit de clocher” (De Saussure, part III, ch. 4), i.e. of unification over particularism. Nevertheless, it is immaterial whether the changes leading to koineization result from dialect contact (either direct contact or indirect contact, as e.g. through the shared standard norm) or rather from internally motivated mechanisms such as Sapir’s (1921) ‘drift’. Cf. Villena Ponsoda (2008) for a case in point. Since koineization is a relational concept, its study is complicated by nontrivial methodological aspects. In order to establish if cross-dialectal convergence (and advergence, i.e. the unilateral homogenization of originally different dialects, for that matter – Mattheier 1996) has taken place, comparable and reliable data are needed for two or more related dialects from two or more historical periods (diachronic data). In sections 5 and 6 below a study will be presented which is based on comparable and reliable data for 50 different dialects of Dutch from two periods in recent history. In section 2 the concept of koineization will be positioned in the context of present-day Dutch and some of its history. In section 3 koineization will be compared to the notion of ‘regiolect’ and to horizontal and vertical convergence.

2. Standard Dutch and the Hollandic dialects of Dutch Usually koineization appears to be related to convergence towards the standard language; this is also the case in the Dutch language area. Historically, standard Dutch is closely related to the dialects spoken in Holland stricto sensu, i.e. the present-day provinces of Noord- and Zuid-Holland plus the western part of the province of Utrecht. As far as Dutch is concerned, the question presents itself whether Holland stricto sensu is a ground zero of historical processes of dialect levelling. Hinskens – Koineization in the present-day Dutch dialect landscape

The Hollandic dialects have not completely disappeared. To a considerable extend they have been promoted to the standard norm; therefore it looks as if the Hollandic dialects have disappeared to make room for the standard language – but our modern perception is partly blurred as a result of the type of process that John Joseph (1982) has labeled ‘synecdoche’. Historically, the modern Dutch standard language itself is largely a koine (cf. section 7.1 below); as Van Bree (2009) has recently shown, it is mainly Hollandic in most areas of the syntactic component. The picture is quite different for morphology and phonology - although we do find originally Hollandic traits in the lexical incidence of a few vowels, including /a/, the so-called ‘eenheids-aa’, unitary /a/, the merger of Westgermanic long and lengthened .

3. The ‘regiolect’ concept and the role of the standard language In a paper from 1983, the Dutch dialectologist Hoppenbrouwers coined the notion of ‘regiolect’; in his conception, a regiolect is a continuum of subtly different intermediate varieties in the strucural space between the traditional dialects and the standard language (cf. Bellmann’s 1996 ‘diaglossie’). In this paper, Hoppenbrouwers presents his findings of a study of changes in the old three gender system of a small group of East-Brabantine dialects of Dutch, showing how the gradual erosion of the gender system (both adnominally and pronominally), is giving way to the common gender system of standard Dutch; the various intermediate varieties form a continuum between the traditional dialects and standard Dutch. Meanwhile, many use the notion of regiolect to refer to cross-dialectal convergence or koineisation (hence not to dialect standard convergence). Koineization is an age-old mechanism (cf. hē koiné diálektos of Attic and Ionic dialects of Hellenistic Greek; cf. Brian Joseph 1992; Bubenik 1993), but the role of standard languages in this mechanism is relatively young, probably as young as wide-spread dialect-standard bilingualism or diglossia. All over Europe, the role of the standard language has become so important that more often than not koineization is a side-effect of the convergence of dialects towards the standard (cf. sections 1 and 2 above; for references see Hinskens et alii. 2005: 24-28). Even today, koineization is not always a function of joint convergence towards the standard variety, however. Hinskens (1992) discusses among other things the allomorphy in the diminutive suffix in the (Ripuarian) Rimburg dialect of Dutch, concentrating on the allomorph for stems ending in a velar consonant, [skə]; apparent time data show that the local Rimburg dialect is converging with the surrounding (Ripuarian and Limburg) dialects, resulting in an allomorph [ʃkə] which is structurally more distant from the standard variety, in which /ʃ/ has a marginal status as a phoneme since it Taal & Tongval 63 (2011), nummer 1; www.taalentongval.eu

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merely occurs in certain loan words. This is an instance of strictly horizontal convergence which even leads to vertical divergence. More recently, more cases have been documented of cross-dialectal convergence which even results in divergence from the standard language. Vandekerckhove (2000), e.g., shows how the dialect of Deerlijk in the transition zone between East- and West-Flemish dialects adopts a few traits (pertaining to the /sk/ cluster and to the intervocalic glottal stop) from West-Flemish rather than from the standard language. Devos & Vandeweghe (2003) discuss the substitution of the oblique form by the subject form of the personal pronoun in prepositional phrases, as in me(t) mij, tegen u/joe, ‘with me’, ‘against you’ ~ met ik(ke), tegen gij, lit. ‘with I’, ‘against you’. This syncretism probably originated in the second person system in the south-east of the West-Flemish dialect area; from there, it has gradually spread throughout the entire paradigm and over the entire West-Flemish area. For the situation of the dialects of Spanish spoken in Andalucia and specifically the sibilant (fricatives and affricates) subsystem, Villena Ponsoda (2008) reports on similar developments. One of the main questions regarding koineization is hence to which extent koineization or cross-dialectal convergence can be argued to be a side-effect of convergence between dialect and standard language. This is one of the issues which will be addressed in the research to be discussed in sections 5 and 6 below. But first the question will be addressed whether there are any internal forces which ought to be taken into account (section 4).

4. Linguistic and psycholinguistic dimensions Predictions regarding processes of dialect change -and language change more generally- can be derived from both formal linguistic and psychological theories. As far as formal theories regarding linguistic structure are concerned, a good candidate seems to be phonological rule typology - also known as the life cycle of a sound change (Kiparsky 1988; 1995). Rules of phonetic implementation (Neogrammarian ‘Lautwandel’) are productive; so-called lexical rules are not, as they are frozen in specific morphemes or morphological procedures. Lexicalised rules are not productive either, while lexically diffuse sound change (‘Lautersatz’) is semi-productive. An example of a rule of phonetic implementation is the one for the dialect-specific realization of the velar fricatives /γ, χ/ as either more palatal (the majority of the southern dialects of Dutch) or more uvular (the central, western and north-eastern dialects of Dutch). A well-known example of a lexical rule is English trisyllabic shortening, resulting in the alternation between tense and lax vowels in pairs such as op[ei]que vs op[æ]city. Modern Dutch reduction and deletion of unstressed vowels is a lexically diffuse rule, witness the fact that reduction into schwa is Hinskens – Koineization in the present-day Dutch dialect landscape

common in the first, unstressed syllable of an item such as minuut (‘minute’), while being blocked in the first, unstressed syllable of piloot (‘pilote’), although segmentally prosodicaly there is no difference between these items. A famous lexicalised phonological rule of Dutch concerns the historical shift /u:/ > /y/ > /oey/ which has taken place in items such as huis (‘house’), muis (‘mouse’) and uit (‘out’); the shift has become entirely unproductive, witness the fact that a loan word such as ‘blues’ will not change into *bl[oey]s. The degree to which speakers are aware of and can thus manipulate (for, say, stylistic reasons) phenomena grows steadily, going from phonetic implementation and postlexical processes via lexical rules to lexicalised rules. Are sound changes thus more resistent to dialect levelling the more productive they are? In her recent study of dialect levelling on the northern island of Ameland, Jansen (2010) analysed among other things four dialect features which all concern the lexical incidence of specific vowel variants. The three of them which are clearly lexicalised all appear to be subject to loss, whereas the one which is productive is not endangered. However, in the Rimburg study reported on in Hinskens (1992) the case was discussed of the weakening of the voiced (palato‑) velar fricative to a palatal glide. This process, which is productive as a pair of rabbits, nevertheless appears to be undergoing dramatic loss. In short, the distinction between lexicalised or lexical rules (which are nonproductive or semi-productive) on the one hand and post-lexical processes or rules of phonetic implementation (both of which are productive) on the other does not seem to offer a wholly unambiguous basis for the prediction of the vulnerability or resistance of sound characteristics of a dialect. In sections 5 and 6, the deletion of postvocalic /r/ before coronal obstruents in dialects of Dutch will be discussed on the basis of a recent syntopic apparent time study and of a recent diatopic diachronic study, respectively. The deletion of postvocalic /r/ before coronal obstruents does not seem to have the same rule typological status in all dialect groups studied; the findings with respect to the relative resistance of this phenomenon in the dialect groups studied will be related to the status of the feature in each dialect group. As far as language use is concerned, usage‑based approaches have been repeatedly claimed to be relevant to the study of language variation and change. Usage‑based approaches constitute a young paradigm of linguistic thinking, contrasting with formal theory in that they do not assume language users to have at their disposal abstract grammatical knowledge, but rather to store detailed information about the words of their language each time they hear them. With respect to the sound components, storage includes detailed phonetic information about words. One of the best‑known usage-based models of phonology is Bybee (2001). Bybee’s views are closely connected to proposals that have been made within Taal & Tongval 63 (2011), nummer 1; www.taalentongval.eu

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the framework of Exemplar Theory in phonetics (Johnson 1997). For syntax, Construction Grammar and Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 2008; Goldberg 2006) are not far away. Cognitive grammar, exemplar theory and usage-based approaches are all inspired by connectionism and one of the central assumptions in this family of theories is that language structure emerges from language use. So in sofar as language users have at their disposal grammatical knowledge, it is not abstract and it developed ‘bottom-up’, through the generalization over concrete memories (the stored ‘exemplars’) of tokens of words or sounds that a speaker has been exposed to, rather than on the basis of innate linguistic capacities. These theories have become relatively popular among psychologists and psycholinguists. From the point of view of usage-based approaches, the answer to Jackendoff’s (2002: 152) question “What aspects of an utterance must be stored in long-term memory, and what aspects can be constructed online in working memory?” will probably be: in principle everything is stored, be it regular or not, be it predictable and hence redundant or not, all variant forms included. Computation (the system of which is the object of generative theory) plays a relatively small role. Storage takes place in the mental lexicon. In this approach the lexicon is not the list of exceptions (as in Bloomfield’s 1933 conception), but rather a network of prototype‑wise organised words, phrases and constructions. All types of regularities (and hence predictability and productivity), including grammatical structure, emerge bottom‑up from the information in the lexicon, through conventionalization, which in turn results from repetition, hence from distributional frequency and frequency of usage (usually referred to as type and token frequencies, respectively). In usage‑based approaches to language, processes of language variation and change are equally accounted for along quantitative lines on the basis of type and token frequencies (see, e.g., Hay & Sudbury 2005). The higher an item’s token frequency, the more it will be subject to phonetic wear and tear. The role of type frequency in language change can be illustrated on the basis of Bybee’s account of the gradual erosion of French liaison on plural nouns. This process is explained from the fact that the construction [ det N adj ]plur “with an unmarked noun and an adjective” has a higher type frequency “which makes it more productive” than that with a vowel‑initial adjective, so that e.g. des enfants [z] intelligents [dEz̰̰ ɑ̃fɑ̃ zɛ̃ tɛliʒɑ̃ ] ‘intelligent children’, will gradually make way for [dEz̰̰ ɑ̃fɑ̃ ɛ̃ tɛliʒɑ̃ ]. “Thus, it is not surprising that there is variation in the data” and competition between the occurrence and the non‑occurrence of the liaison [z] in this context (Bybee 2001: 174-175). In the diatopic diachronic study of the deletion of postvocalic /r/ before coronal obstruents, to be presented in section 6 below, an attempt was made to relate the variation and change in the phenomenon to type and token freHinskens – Koineization in the present-day Dutch dialect landscape

quencies and thus to assess explanatory power of usage‑based approaches à la Bybee and Exemplar Theory.

5. The deletion of postvocalic /r/ before coronal obstruents in dialects of Dutch The deletion of postvocalic /r/ before coronal obstruents has occurred in several different (contiguous as well as non-contiguous) groups of Dutch and Frisian dialects; it has typically affected the dialect variants of standard Dutch items such as those in (1): (1)

eerst beurs kort woord koorts worst baard

‘first’ ‘wallet; stock market’ ‘short’ ‘word’ ‘fever’ ‘sausage’ ‘beard’

To tell from these facts, as far as the lefthand environment is concerned, the deletion occurred after both tense and lax vowels, after back and front vowels, after rounded and unrounded vowels. In many Limburg dialects of Dutch (including the subset of r-deleting ones), items such as eerst, beurs and worst have a high vowel; hence deletion occurred after high, mid and low vowels. As far as the righthand environment is concerned, the deletion took place preceding both voiced and voiceless stops, preceding fricatives and preceding both single and complex codas. Dialect specifically r-deletion seems to have operated sporadically preceding sonorants, in particular preceding the fellow liquid /l/ (in dialect variants of standard Dutch items such as kerel, ‘fellow’ and wereld, ‘world’) and nasals as in, e.g., doorn, ‘thorn’, kern, ‘core’ (cf. De Schutter & Taeldeman 1994). In modern standard Dutch, /r/ in items in which it precedes a coronal obstruent is fairly stable. The presence of absence of postvocalic /r/ is distinctive in minimal pairs such as (2)

kaars paars erwt kort

-

kaas Paas Ed kot

‘candle’;’cheese’ ‘purple’; ‘Easter’ ‘pea’; ‘Ed’ ‘short’, ‘den, digs’

Assuming that Dutch /r/ is originally apical in articulation and hence coronal, dialectal r-deletion in this context may be an Obligatory Contour Principle efTaal & Tongval 63 (2011), nummer 1; www.taalentongval.eu

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fect, i.e. an instantiation of the general constraint prohibiting adjacent identical elements, in casu the feature [coronal]. Since the phonetic realization of /r/ often takes on a slightly fricative nature, witness cross-dialectal misunderstandings and acquisition data,2 also manner features may have played a role. One piece of evidence supporting this view concerns findings regarding patterns of rule loss, i.e. substituting r-less with r-full variants, in the Rimburg local dialect (Hinskens 1992: section 6.3.6), where most loss of r-lessness occurs in items with /t/ following etymological /r/, and no rule loss in items with etymological /s/. Other evidence is the fact that in southern Dutch dialects r-lessness is geographically much more wide-spread preceding a sibilant than before a stop (De Schutter & Taeldeman 1994).

In connection with r-deletion, three types of Dutch dialects can be distinguished: first there are the dialects which are like the standard variety and have no r-deletion. The second type does show r-deletion, and there is a third type of dialects in which r-deletion seems to be developing. Exactly what is happening in the dialects with ‘old’ r-deletion and in the dialects in which rdeletion seems to be a relatively new phenomenon? Has the r-deletion before coronal obstruents been lexicalized in the Dutch dialects with old r-deletion? Is r-deletion still productive in the dialects in which the process is a relatively new phenomenon? In the first case r-deletion would be a misnomer, as it is really a matter of r-lessness. The deletion appears to be lexicalised in dialects in which only tautomorphemic forms can be r-less3 and /r/ is realised if the following coronal is (part of) another morpheme, as in inflected verb forms such as vaar-t, duur-t, vier-t, ‘sails’, ‘lasts’, ‘celebrates’. The fact that relatively recent loans such as mars, ‘march’ and sport never occur r-lessly adds further support to the claim that r-deletion has been lexicalized in these dialects (Hinskens 1992: section 5.3.6 for the dialect of Rimburg, in the transition zone between Ripuarian and East-Limburg dialects). In her recent PhD-thesis on the dialect varieties spoken on the northern island of Ameland, Jansen (2010:141-144) also discusses r‑deletion (preceding coronal consonants generally, i.e. obstruents as well as sonorants). Her apparent time data show that the phenomenon undergoes modest loss. Yet it is productive, witness the fact that it affects recent loans such as popcorn, and -interestingly- it even generalises to morphologically complex words, more in particular to environments in which /r/ is part of a particle in a particle verb, a prefix, 2 See Hinskens 2011b section 4 for examples from first language acquisition. 3 Historically eerst, ‘first’, is an exception, but obviously it was no longer analysed as a morphologically complex word (a superlative lit. early-most or earliest) in the period when r-deletion was productive. Hinskens – Koineization in the present-day Dutch dialect landscape

the first element of a compound word and the like, as in voorlezen, verhuizen, haarspeld, ‘read aloud’, ‘move house’, ‘hair slide’. In order to answer the question of the vitality or vulnerability of r-deletion for different groups of relevant dialects of Dutch, a quantitative diachronic study was carried out, which will be presented in the next section.

6. R-deletion, r-lessness and the quality of postvocalic /r/; a quantitative diachronic study This section zooms in on a recent quantitative diachronic study of the fate of r-deletion or r-lessness before coronal obstruents in three groups of dialects of Dutch. In subsection 6.1 the data and the various steps in the analyses of the data will be discussed, in subsection 6.2 the main findings will be presented. Subsection 6.3 summarizes the insights gained from this study. 6.1 Data and method The data for this study were taken from two large diatopic, questionnairebased studies carried out in the 20th century. The oldest one is the Reeks Nederlandse Dialectatlassen (RND), i.e. Series of Dutch Dialect Atlasses. The data for this project were collected in fieldwork between 1925 (southwest) and the mid sixties (north); they concern 1956 different local dialects and consist of dialect translations of 135 sentences plus isolated words and paradigms; the data are available in the form of narrow phonetic transcriptions. The youngest of the two studies is the Goeman-Taeldeman-van Reenenproject (GTR). The data for this project were collected in fieldwork between roughly 1980 and 1995; they concern 613 different dialects of Dutch and Frisian and consist of dialect translations of 1854 words and 22 sentences. For this project, too, the data are available in the form of narrow phonetic transcriptions; they have been digitalized and the database is accessible through the website of the Meertens Instituut. Much of the data collected for GTR is the source of both the Fonologische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten (part 1, 1998 - part 4, 2005), i.e. Phonological Atlas of the Dialects of Dutch, and the Morfologische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten (part 1, 2005 - part 2, 2008), i.e. Morphological Atlas of the Dialects of Dutch. There is a modest overlap and thus a modest direct comparability between RND and GTR as regards both local dialects and lexical items for which dialect variants were elicited. For the present study overlapping RND- and GTRdata have been used for 9 lexical items in 50 different dialects which together represent three parts of the Dutch language area (cf. Map 1 in the appendix); 16 dialects are spoken in the north-east (Lower Saxonian), 17 in the centre Taal & Tongval 63 (2011), nummer 1; www.taalentongval.eu

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(Hollandic – cf. section 2 above; western Brabantic), and 17 in the south-east (south-eastern Brabantic; Limburgian).4

The choice of these dialect areas was based on maps 187-190 of FAND vol. 4 (hart, ‘heart’, kort, ‘short’, baard, ‘beard’, dorst, ‘thurst’); roughly speaking, most of the dialects in each of these three areas appear to be r-less in these items. In the commentary sections accompanying map 187, i.e. the map for the dialect variants of the word hart, the editors of the atlas point out that -what they refer to as- r-syncope is connected with (quantitative and qualitative) changes in the vocalism, but that there appears to be no relationship with the loss or maintenance of the etymological second syllable. From the lexical items for which RND- and GTR-data overlap 9 were chosen for the present study; all 9 items are monomorphemic and monosyllabic. The choice of items was balanced for five phonological parameters or factor groups, viz.: – – – – –

the place of articulation of the preceding vowel (back - front), the place of articulation of the preceding vowel (low - non low), the roundedness versus unroundedness of the preceding vowel, the quantity of the preceding vowel (V - VV or lax - tense) the number of following coda obstruents (C - CC).

The RND- and GTR-data for the realization of each of the 9 items in each of the 50 dialects were coded as

‘0’ in case the /r/ is phonetically realized, even if only weakly (as appears to be the case in many of the north-eastern dialects in both data sets - cf. Weijnen 1966: 251), ‘1’ in case both variants with and without phonetically realized /r/ were transcribed, ‘2’ for r-less variant(s). Moreover, the data were coded for the type of phonetic realization of /r/ in postvocalic position generally; in both sources two main types were distinguished, namely apical [r] and relatively velar or uvular [R]. 4 The long periods of time that elapsed between the fieldwork for the different dialect regions constitute the Achilles heel of these data (and of RND generally). For the regions at issue, the fieldwork was carried out between 1930-’35 (Brabant), 1938-’48 (Limburg), 1947-’62 (the central dialects) and 1956-’61 (the north-eastern dialects). Hinskens – Koineization in the present-day Dutch dialect landscape

Per dialect per source per item (50 x 2 x (9+1) = 1000 relevant observations), the coded data were stored in an SPSS database. The subsequent statistical analyses concerned – r-lessness: for this variable, analyses of variance (ANOVA), t-tests for paired samples and correlation measurements (Pearson’s r) were carried out; – types of phonetic realization of /r/: for this variable, the analyses consisted of frequency counts, crosstabs, χ2 and the calculation of contingency coefficients. 6.2 Main findings First, the findings for r-lessness will be discussed. In doing so, the two paradigms sketched in section 4 will be tested.

6.2.1 r-lessness On the overall level, r-lessness appears to be significantly affected by the variable time; in the two or three generations which lie between the RND-data and the GTR-data, r-lessness appears to have increased (F=4.866 df=1 p=.030). It also appears to be significantly affected by the variable geographical space; the highest rates of r-lessness occur in the South-East, the lowest in the NorthEast (F=45.594 df=2 p=.000). The phonetic realization of /r/ ([r] versus [R]) does not appear to exert a significant effect on r-lessness. As far as the interactions between the three variables are concerned, on the overall level, r-lessness appears to be significantly affected by time x space; while r-lessness decreases in the South-East, it increases both in the central and in the north-eastern dialect groups studied (F=6.236 df=2 p=.003). The interaction between time and the phonetic realization type of /r/ does not appear to significantly affect r-lessness, but the interaction between space and the phonetic realization type of /r/ does (F=5.274 df=1 p=.024); the dialects in the north-eastern group only have [r], among the dialects in the central group those with [r] have slightly more r-lessness than those with [R] (indexes being .2269 and .2153, respectively), while in the south-eastern group those with [r] have almost twice as much r-lessness than those with [R] (indexes being 1.7652 and .9765, respectively). The latter finding concerning the south-eastern dialects adds support to the view of r-deletion as an OCP-effect.

The data were also analysed for each single linguistic factor group or phonological parameter, i.e. for the backness versus frontness of the preceding vowel, the height of the preceding vowel, the roundedness versus unroundedness of the preceding vowel, the quantity of the preceding vowel and the number of following coda obstruents. The outcomes have been summarized in Table 1. Taal & Tongval 63 (2011), nummer 1; www.taalentongval.eu

109

Preceding vowel back-front

110

1

correlation different level of r-lessness?

2

Following obstr

.77

low nonlow .85

rounded unrounded .82

front > back

─

unrounded > rounded

─ ─ T

─ ─ ─

r-lessness per factor group significantly 3 affected by: time x phon.fact. ─ time x phon.fact. x real. /r/ T time x phon.fact. x space ─

V - VV

C - CC

.78

.71

─

─

─

─ ─ ─

+ ─

1. AllTable (paired samples) correlations p=.000. of r-lessness per factor group. 1. The main findings for the analyses 2. t=3.911 df=98 p=.000; t=-2.740 df=99 2-tailed p=.007.(.05 [R] dialects are spoken in K27 Ameide (C), K39 Culemborg (C), Q3 Genk (S‑E), and Q91 Veldwezelt (S-E), the [R] > [r] dialects are the ones spoken in Q20 Sittard (S-E) and Q162 Tongeren (S-E). The older (RND) data for Genk are slightly complicated by the fact that one of the three informants used [R]. Hinskens – Koineization in the present-day Dutch dialect landscape

The sound change which occurred in these 7 dialects is very probably not a consequence of the pressure exerted by the standard norm, since there simply is no standard norm as regards these main phonetic realization types of /r/, that is, the modern standard Dutch norm permits several variants. 6.3 Sizing up The usage based / Exemplar Theory conceptions can only partly be investigated on the basis of the available data and the material from RND and GTR does not allow to thoroughly test the theory of the life cycle of a sound change either. On the basis of the available data it cannot be established whether in a given dialect (group) r-deletion is productive in the Neogrammarian or rather in the lexically diffuse sense nor can it be established to which extent the speakers are aware of r-deletion. In order to answer these question more and different data are required. For these reasons the findings from the above study only permit drawing conclusions in the form of clearly articulated hypotheses. In the north-eastern and central dialect groups r-deletion appears to be productive and is therefore probably either a postlexical or a lexically diffuse rule; in south-eastern dialects it is probably a historical, lexicalized process. The changes in the phonetic quality of the (postvocalic) /r/ which are taking place in several dialects are possibly cases of Neogrammarian sound change (which in one local dialect appears to have taken the categorical shape of allophony). Despite the limits of the data and thus of the analyses, certain tendencies are clear and outspoken. On the overall level there appears to be koineization going on with respect to r-lessness; in sofar as the koineization is brought about by the loss of the dialect feature, - this is because dialects in which r-deletion has probably been lexicalised trade in the dialect variants for the standard variants, thus lowering their overall r-lessness index, while r-lessness is growing strongly in the dialects in which r-deletion is either fully productive (phonetic or postlexical) or semi-productive (lexically diffuse). This way, in quantitative respects both types of dialects may eventually meet half-way; - in this overall pattern, three out of the five factor groups studied play a role, though only in interaction with the type of phonetic realization of /r/ (in the case of the factor groups back versus front and lax versus tense preceding vowels) or geographical space (low versus non-low preceding vowels). The factor group concerning the number of coda obstruents following /r/ does not appear to play a role at any level. Also on this level of analysis there are findings which lend support to the hypothesis that r-deletion originated as an OCP-effect; Taal & Tongval 63 (2011), nummer 1; www.taalentongval.eu

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- part of the koineization may well be an effect of the normative pressure exerted by the standard norm, which is not r-less. This is then an instance of Sobrero’s (1996) ‘passive koineization’ (cf. section 1 above); - the token frequency of the concerned items seems to play no or at best a marginal role. In sofar as token and type frequency play a role, the effects are contrary to what usage-based approaches à la Bybee would predict. Breaking down the analyses of the frequency effects for the three dialects groups hardly changes the picture and the support for usage-based approaches does not grow. However, the two instances of type frequency effects detected do add dialect geographical specificity to the earlier findings for the relevant phonological factor groups. In postvocalic position, in none of the three dialect groups there appears to be sound change going on in the realization of /r/. However, seven out of the individual 50 dialects studied appear to have traded in one type of phonetic realization of /r/ for the other one; here the standard norm cannot plausibly have played a role. The overall effect on the dialect landscape of the change in the phonetics of /r/ in this position, if any, is not koineization.

7. Questions for further research One of the shortcomings of the above search for real time changes in the deletion of postvocalic /r/ before coronal obstruents and the phonetic quality of /r/ in three groups of Dutch dialects is the fact that it is based on elicitation data. For the study of dialect levelling in Rimburg (presented in Hinskens 1992), elicited data were compared with relatively spontaneous, conversational data for three postlexical dialect features; the analyses did not reveal any essentially different patterns. However, work in progress by Auer, Schwarz & Streck (this volume) does: whereas the real time comparison of atlas data (for Wenker’s Deutscher Sprachatlas from the 19th century and the Südwestdeutscher Sprachatlas from the 20th century) does not give evidence to dialect change, that for spontaneous data does so. Consequently, for the phonetic realization of /r/ in postvocalic position and the deletion of /r/ in postvocalic position before coronal obstruents in the 50 dialects of Dutch studied, calibrations on the basis of relatively spontaneous, conversational data seem called for. Apart from this, there are many other issues for further research regarding koineization in other domains. These issues come in two types. The first concern the present and past Dutch situation; some of them concern historical or ongoing developments, others are desiderata for the quantitative and qualitative extension of available data. These issues will be briefly discussed in section 7.1. The second type of issues for further research are more general in Hinskens – Koineization in the present-day Dutch dialect landscape

nature, concerning conceptual and methodological issues; some of them will be briefly discussed in section 7.2. 7.1 The Dutch situation ‘Statenbijbel’ 1637. A relevant case for historical sociolinguistics The first complete Dutch bible translation that was based on the ‘original’ texts was written in the early 17th century by a group of theologists of Flemish, Hollandic, Lower Saxonian and Frisian backgrounds, a pragmatic answer to the Dutch variant of the ‘Questione della lingua’. For this sake, they deliberately constructed a koine type variety of Dutch. The translation was commissioned by the then government – a relatively early case of language planning and cultivation. It would be revealing to learn more about the considerations this group of learned men made in the choices they eventually made, the more so since the language of the resulting ‘Statenbijbel’ seems to have influenced the more elevated style levels of Dutch speaking protestants for centuries. The historical koineization of major urban dialects In the German Department at the University of Wisconsin‑Madison, Mike Olsen studies processes leading to koineization (specifically in the verb system) in the 17th Amsterdam situation. These developments have been studied by older generations of scholars (a.o. Daan 1985) on the basis of material which, compared to the present-day possibilities, was relatively scarce and often of a rather specific genre (works of literature). For other centuries and cities research of this type is still largely lacking.

Lexical tone in Limburg (and other Franconian) dialects and its role in koineization and regional standard Dutch Most Limburg dialects of Dutch have lexical tone systems; across these dialects there is variation in the phonetic implementation of the tone contrast. For both phonologists and sociolinguists it might be rewarding to study lexical tone in koineization, but also in the emerging regional varieties of the standard language. Is the distribution of tone in regional standard Dutch comparable to that in the dialects? Does the result of interference of lexical tone in regional standard Dutch (which, in interaction with sentential pitch, is often perceived as ‘singsong’) function as an indicator, a marker or a stereotype (Labov 1972)?

Beyond GTR: desiderata The GTR database is a goldmine. To add to and deepen its research possibilities, it would be desirable and feasible 1) to make the fieldwork recordings available, 2) to enrich and widen both the data and the search tools for study at Taal & Tongval 63 (2011), nummer 1; www.taalentongval.eu

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the level of the syllable and the phonological phrase, 3) to add background information about the informants’ age, gender, educational and socio-economic background and the like, 4) to add data from informants of several different age groups per dialect, 5) to add more sentences as well as 6) conversational data to the elicited dialect use. Beyond traditional dialects: desiderata In order to be able to study the relevant linguistic and sociolinguistic dynamics in vivo, it would be desirable to make systematic recordings of emerging koines and regional varieties of the standard language, equally distributed over the language area, representing the main dialect areas - as e.g. in the REDE project, presented by Jürgen Erich Schmidt (this volume). Digitalizing the data from old questionnaires, monographs and the like It would be a step forward if at least the major older questionnaires and dialect maps (for both entire language areas and specific dialect groups) were made available electronically. This would greatly facilitate genuinely diachronic dialect geographical research - hopefully also across national borders which, as in the Dutch-German case, cut across old dialect continua.

Diatopic approaches and aggregating data Most studies of dialect convergence and divergence are syntopic in orientation. The question is how to know whether the outcomes of such studies can be generalised to other parts of the language area and to other local or regional communities. The empiricist’s answer would be to carry out diatopic studies, such as Wilbert Heeringa’s present research project (briefly presented in this volume), in which methods are explored to find one’s way as a linguist through large amounts of aggregated data from a large number (N=80) of dialects of Dutch. 7.2 General Koineization and regiolect formation Among the main questions regarding koineization are

i which types of features of the input dialects survive the selection process? and ii how do the surviving features covary with each other and with non-dialect features? Each of these two questions is immediately followed by the question “why?”. Hinskens – Koineization in the present-day Dutch dialect landscape

Additionally, the following general questions concerning koineization thrust themselves forward:

iii do koineization and regiolect formation merely consist of the stripping away of local features? iv what are they traded in for? Are they replaced by regional (common denominator) features or by standard variants? v what exactly is the role of ‘dialect borrowing’ (Bloomfield 1933) in these processes? vi what is the role played by transfer or diffusion (two scenario’s for the dissemination of innovations, proposed by Labov 2007; cf. Kerswill 2003)? vii how important is stabilization in these processes? How does it work? Covariation and co-occurrence To find out how new non-standard varieties may stabilise, it seems necessary (though probably not sufficient) to reach a deeper understanding of the covariation and co-occurrence of (local and regional) dialect features, substandard features and standard features in a given community. The zoo-taxonomy of scientific methods In his thinking about scientific methods, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) ponders: The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes the middle course, it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own (Novum Organum, 1620).

The empiricist “men of experiment” collect data without altering them; they thus resemble ants. The “reasoners” are blind for the real world and weave theoretical webs out of their own material; they are like spiders. The bees, finally, do both; they gather their material from flowers and convert it into something which is superior to the original material. For many decades, dialectology (at least in the Dutch language area) has been dominated by ants, with only few spiders. Recently the number of spiders has started to grow; ecologically this can only be a healthy development. A symbiosis between ants and spiders is thus desirable - but how likely is it to develop on a larger scale? There is definitely still a largely unfilled niche for bees.

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An example of a question that might keep a bee busy: Optimality Theory conceives grammar as “a kind of filterbank” (Gussenhoven 2004: 161 – my translation, FH), an extensive series of requirements imposed on the form of utterances. These requirements are not specific to individual language systems (say, languages or dialects). What is specific to language systems is the relative weight, the ordering of requirements; different language systems differ more or less subtly in the ordering of the requirements. In connection with koines the question presents itself whether they are in any way the ideal compromise in that the relevant requirements are ordered such that they differ minimally from the orderings in the relevant parts of the grammars of the dialects involved. Frans Hinskens. Meertens Instituut (KNAW) and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Postbus 94264, 1090 GG Amsterdam, Nederland. Mail: Frans.Hinskens@ meertens.knaw.nl.

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