| Title: | Synchronic variation and loss of case. Formal and informal language in a Dutch corpus of 17th-century Amsterdam texts |
| Authors: | Fred Weerman, Mike Olson, Robert A. Cloutier |
| Publication: | Diachronica, 30 (3), p. 353-381 |
| p-ISSN: | 0176-4225 |
| e-ISSN: | 1569-9714 |
| Publisher: | John Benjamins Publishing Company |
| Place: | Amsterdam |
| Year: | 2013 |
| Abstract: | A bias towards formal texts obscures our view of language change and gives a misleading impression of actual developments if ‘changes from below’ are in conflict with ‘changes from above,’ resulting from norms that are visible in particular in formal language. A corpus of 17th-century Amsterdam texts with varying levels of formality is assembled to study the loss of genitive and dative case-marking in Dutch. These results are compared with the use of present participle constructions, which serve as an extra variable to gauge how formal a text is. We argue that nominal case-marking no longer existed in informal language in 17th-century Amsterdam and that the genitive became a feature of formal norms and was hence subject to pressures from above. |
| Key words: | genitive; change from above; formality scale; loss of case; 17th-century Dutch; present participle constructions; corpus; dative |
| Language: | English |
| DOI: | 10.1075/dia.30.3.03wee |
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