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One centennial discussion in linguistics concerns whether languages, or linguistic systems, are, essentially, homogeneous or rather show "structured heterogeneity." In this contribution, the question is addressed whether and how sociolinguistically defined systems (or 'varieties') are to be distinguished in a heterogeneous linguistic landscape: to...
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... the opposite side of the spectrum, dialects are local varieties maximally distant from the standard. Traditionally, four major dialect areas are distinguished (cf. Figure 1), viz. West Flemish, East Flemish, Brabantic, and Limburgian (cf. Belemans and Keulen, 2004;Devos and Vandekerckhove, 2005;Ooms and Van Keymeulen, 2005;Taeldeman, 2005), which still appear to constitute relatively homogeneous areas from a sociolinguistic point of view, e.g., in terms of the amount of dialect leveling or the use of regional features in supraregional ...
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... of the crucial aspects of a scenario as sketched by is that it assumes the emergence of a new variety which is taking over some of the functions of the traditional standard, VRT-Dutch. This article tries to answer the fundamental question whether a three-way distinction dialect- tussentaal-standard is grounded in an empirical reality. Even though this answer may depend on the context in which the investigation is carried out and may as such also show variation in Flanders, we use data from only one location, Ieper (but see Ghyselen, 2016b for a more comprehensive study). Ieper is located in the West-Flemish dialect area (cf. Figure 1) 5 , where the transition from a diglossic (dialects vs. standard) to a diaglossic repertoire (with intermediate usage) is believed to be in an early stage (Willemyns, 2007;De Caluwe, 2009;Ghyselen and De Vogelaer, 2013). This is a result of the fact that the linguistic repertoire in West Flanders is, in comparison to other regions, relatively rich, since the area is known to be fairly resistant to processes of dialect shift and dialect leveling (Willemyns, 2008;Ghyselen and Van Keymeulen, 2014), making it a particularly interesting methodological test ...
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... The fact that coherence is a matter of degree also accounts for the absence in preceding research of unequivocal conclusions on the existence of structured heterogeneity in language variation. Whereas some studies clearly reveal clusters of covarying linguistic variants - Ghyselen and De Vogelaer (2018) for instance identify "local dialect", "cleaned-up dialect", "substandard Dutch" and "VRT-Dutch" in a West Flemish context -others, such as Gregersen and Pharao (2016), focusing on linguistic variation in four Danish locations, conclude that lects are not coherent. While one might legitimately argue that the results depend on the sociolinguistic context under scrutiny, it is our opinion that the way the abstract notion of coherence is turned into an empirical one plays an equally crucial role. ...
In this chapter, we revisit the concept of coherence by focusing on a colloquial variety of Belgian Dutch, which is often seen as incoherent by virtue of its being situated in-between the standard and the regional dialects – hence its name tussentaal. In spite of tussentaal’s mixed nature, we argue that there are implicational restrictions on its production, which are crucially reflected in cognition. A perception experiment featuring implicationally (in)coherent spoken Belgian Dutch (ranging from dialect to near standard) revealed that native speakers noticed and penalized incoherence, though not on the samples’ prestige attributes but on the open response evaluations. In view of these findings, we propose that (in)coherence is not only a production feature but just as much, if not more, a perceptual reality.
... The coexistence of two standard varieties of Italian offers the opportunity to address the more general issue regarding the nature of a language variety. Although this is not a new theoretical problem in European sociolinguistics (Coseriu 1969;Ammon 1989), there is growing interest in the empirical characterization of aggregates of linguistic variables 3 (Guy and Hinskens 2016;Ghyselen and De Vogelaer 2018;Vietti 2019). The co-occurrence of linguistic features in relation to social factors has been framed within the concept of coherence. ...
... The positioning of the elements takes place in relation to their social distribution, but other socio-cognitive factors may constitute structuring dimensions of this space. This perspective, developed from the study of the Italian situation by Berruto (1987Berruto ( , 2012 through the notion of "continuum con addensamenti", is supported by the recent analysis of the Flemish sociolinguistic situation by Ghyselen and De Vogelaer (2018) (see also Ghyselen and Grondelaers, this volume). In this study, a continuum with focal points is advocated as a possible model to explain the distribution of variants. ...
... Lánnang-uè has high degrees of languageness. If this is indeed the case, then there should be evidence of systematicity or structured variation in its prosodic features/patterns, as languages tend to have systematicity across its features/patterns (Weinreich et al. 1968;Ghyselen and De Vogelaer 2018). ...
... Lánnang-uè patterns, as language-like varieties tend to exhibit systematic or structured variation across its features/patterns (Weinreich et al. 1968;Ghyselen and De Vogelaer 2018). ...
... Like Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, Hypothesis 3 was motivated by sociolinguistic research in Lánnang-uè where I found evidence of structured variation in many of its features (Gonzales 2018;Gonzales and Starr 2020), or specifically, evidence that variation is (systematically) constrained by social contexts -evidence that Lánnang-uè is highly language-like (Weinreich et al. 1968;Ghyselen and De Vogelaer 2018). If this is true, then the variation in adherence to the syntactic pattern should be structured like the variation found in other Lánnang-uè features/patterns, as languages tend to have structured variation across their features/patterns (Weinreich et al. 1968). ...
Lánnang-uè, as used in Manila, is a predominantly oral Sino-Philippine variety that has elements derived from Hokkien, Mandarin, English, and Tagalog. Its users, the Lannangs, are divided in their perceptions towards the variety – some view it as what is commonly known as a ‘language’, while the majority view it as broken Hokkien, ad-hoc code-switching, or an unstructured admixture. My previous research on Manila Lánnang-uè (henceforth, Lánnang-uè), which focused on three features, has shown some evidence for the former – that Lánnang-uè has high degrees of ‘languageness’. It also revealed an intriguing pattern: a mismatch between popular folk belief and linguistic practice. This dissertation seeks to further explore the patterns found through a comprehensive investigation of the variety. It aims to answer the question: Where does Lánnang-uè fall in the cline of languageness? I do this by analyzing linguistic data across multiple levels of language with respect to established key properties relevant to languageness, such as systematicity, spread, stability, linguistic independence, clustering, and user attitudes. I employ a wide range of methods and tools (e.g., descriptive, experimental, computational, corpus-based, ethnographic, sociolinguistic) in the hopes of answering this question. Furthermore, using the evidence collected, I hope to situate Lánnang-uè in the constellation of contact varieties/phenomena. The results suggest that Lánnang-uè is highly language-like. A series of investigations across multiple features in the variety indicates high levels of systematicity in the variety. For example, I found that Lánnang-uè has variation that is systematically conditioned by social and linguistic factors. For at least some features, there is a strong indication that variation is systematically used to express particular social meaning(s). Another major finding in my investigation is that the features in Lánnang-uè have a high degree of spread and stability within the community. My findings also suggest that the patterns/features are relatively independent from the source languages of Lánnang-uè. Furthermore, although many speakers do not perceive it as a full-fledged language, there are those who do, referring to it as ‘secret code’ and ‘mixed language’. The findings corroborate my previous work on Lánnang-uè, which also suggest that the variety has high degrees of languageness. The close resemblance of many Lánnang-uè lexical and grammatical elements to Hokkien and the fact that many community members refer to Lánnang-uè as Hokkien (e.g., broken Hokkien, adulterated Hokkien, nativized Hokkien) might, at first glance, lead one to definitively conclude that it is a variety of Hokkien. However, a closer examination of the sociohistorical and linguistic patterns involving Lánnang-uè and its users indicate that that may not be the case. It shows that Lánnang-uè has features of “mixed languages”. Pending more research, the findings of this dissertation suggest that the most likely scenario is that Lánnang-uè is a mixed language or – if one shifts away from the idea of rigid typological categories and aligns with a view of a linguistic continuum – a variety situated somewhere in a continuum from ‘Hokkien’ to ‘mixed language’, leaning closely towards ‘mixed language.’ Overall, Lánnang-uè has features that set it apart from other linguistic varieties and language types in its linguistic ecology. It is rightfully labeled Lánnang-uè – a language that its users can truly call their own.
... The debate ties in with a broader theoretical discussion on the possibility of delineating linguistic varieties (cf. Geeraerts 2010; Ghyselen and De Vogelaer 2018;Lenz 2010), in which diverse theoretical and methodological stances can be distinguished. Especially when it comes to defining and delineating standard languages, multiple approaches have been introduced. ...
... After all, as soon as we look at actual language use, homogeneity does not exist (see my arguments further above). Geeraerts (2010) as well as Ghyselen and De Vogelaer (2018) offer an in-depth discussion of this 'variety problem', pleading for a different conceptualisation of the notion of a variety. These discussions adopt a cognitive, usage-based perspective, assuming that linguistic systematicity or structure should not be hypostasised as an independent entity, but that it only arises in the process of social interaction and is hence always dependent on individual usage events. ...
... These regularities can be interpreted as varieties, now defined as sets of language variants strongly correlating in their socio-situative usage (cf. Berruto 2010; Ghyselen and De Vogelaer 2018;Schmidt and Herrgen 2011;Weinreich, Labov and Herzog 1968). These varieties should not only be seen as entities interesting for linguistic analysis; I will argue below that they are also cognitive realities. ...
... If it were, there would be much less variation within and across S-learners and languages than there actually are. The dynamicity of human linguistic capacity suggests otherwise, and so do sociolinguistic studies, since Labov's seminal work in the 60s, which show how systematic S-learners are in combining and using variants they are exposed to, while creating new ones (see for instance, Dogruöz andBackus, 2009, Backus, 2010;Ghyselen, 2016;Ghyselen and De Vogelaer, 2018, for some recent references). Likewise, work on diachronic changes (e.g., Kroch, 1989, Lightfoot, 2006, and much related work), indicates that S-learners may entertain different competing grammars, even in the same language. ...
In the literature, the term code-mixing/switching refers to instances of language mixing in which speakers/signers combine properties of two or more languages in their utterances. Such a linguistic behavior is typically discussed in the context of multilinguals, and experts commonly focus on the form of language mixing/switching and its cross-linguistic commonalities. Not much is known, however, about how the knowledge of code-mixing comes about. How come any speaker/signer having access to more than one externalization channel (spoken or signed) code-mixes spontaneously? Likewise, why do both neurotypical speakers/signers and certain neuro-atypical speakers/signers produce structurally similar mixing types? This paper offers some answers to these questions arguing that the cognitive process underlying code-mixing is a basic property of the human learning device: recombination, a fully automated cognitive process. Recombination is innate: it allows learners to select relevant linguistic features from heterogeneous inputs, and recombine them into new syntactic objects as part of their mental grammars whose extensions, arguably individual idiolects, represents what Aboh (2015b,a, 2019b) characterizes as hybrid grammars.
The third, fully revised version of the Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst (ANS), the main reference grammar of Dutch, aims to describe grammatical variation in the national standard varieties of Dutch. This paper investigates whether this pluricentric perspective is compatible with the geographical distribution patterns of Dutch grammatical variants. We provide an overview of the distribution patterns described in the second edition of the ANS and we check this description against frequency data from newspaper corpora for four selected variants which represent different distribution patterns. Although the observed distribution patterns do not always coincide with national borders, we argue that the pluricentric model does not (necessarily) conflict with linguistic reality and that it is the appropriate choice to meet the needs of Dutch language users.
... For more nuance on the identification of CBD as a variety, see e.g. Ghyselen and De Vogelaer (2018). ...
The following study in the field of audiovisual translation (AVT) focuses on language variation in a specific multimodal text type: feature length animation films. In the first two decades of the twenty-first century different localisations of American computer-animated feature films (CAFFs) were issued on DVD for The Netherlands and Flanders/Belgium: for the Dutch language market separate audiovisual translations—typically both subtitles and dubbing—were provided for The Netherlands (NL-NL, or Netherlandic Dutch) and Dutch for Flanders (NL-FL, also Belgian Dutch). However, dubbing for the latter is not as straightforward due to the complexities of additional regional variation, especially in Flanders. For NL-FL, a continuum of linguistic variation exists, ranging from standard Dutch on one end to local dialects on the other end, with a colloquial Belgian Dutch in between, also known as tussentaal.
This chapter employs an experimental but basic design as a means for testing the grounds for further research and to this end uses a set list of features of colloquial Belgian Dutch as a median to examine the linguistic deviation towards either standard Belgian Dutch or further variation, including dialects and this for the dubbing included in a corpus of DVDs. The study focuses on both main and minor characters from multiple popular CAFFs produced by Disney, Disney/Pixar, DreamWorks, Blue Sky, Illumination, and Sony between 2001 and 2019. The objective of this chapter is therefore to position tussentaal in relation to standard Dutch on the one end and language variation for NL-FL on the other. By doing so, the chapter aims to map the localisation trends for dubbing CAFFs in Flanders. The outcomes are then related to the specificity of localisation offers of the same CAFFs on streaming platforms.
Znanstvena monografija Stanje in perspektive uporabe govornih virov v raziskavah govora predstavlja rezultate prvega leta dela v raziskovalnem projektu Temeljne raziskave za razvoj govornih virov in tehnologij za slovenski jezik (J7-4642) kot tudi rezultate raziskovalcev, ki se ukvarjajo z govorom v drugih raziskovalnih projektih, s skupnim glavnim ciljem strateškega in učinkovitega razvoja prostodostopnih govornih virov. Prispevki izpostavljajo načrte, cilje in izzive ob gradnji govornih virov, in sicer na leksikalni in skladenjski ravni, iščejo rešitve za posebnosti govora na fonetično-fonološki ravni tudi v povezavi s standardi zapisovanja (narečnega) govora. Govor in jezikovna variantnost sta raziskovana kot manifestacija socialne slojevitosti, govorjeni diskurz pa tudi z vidika součinkovanja različnih semiotskih kodov v smislu vzajemnega učinkovanja za tvorjenje smisla sporočila. Z vidika prepletanja prvin govorjenega in pisnega jezika so analizirana izbrana spletna besedila, zanemarjena ni niti vloga govora v gledališki umetnosti.
Come raccogliere, interpretare, trattare e condividere i dati linguistici: queste le principali linee di indagine del volume, che ospita i contributi di dottorandi e studiosi di Linguistica e Umanistica digitale. Dal mutamento alla variazione, dalla fraseologia al lessico specialistico, dalla lessicografia alla semantica, fino all’utilizzo di linguaggi di mark-up e di corpora, l’attenzione si sofferma su approcci e metodologie di lavoro differenti, con lo scopo di condividere pratiche di studio e di ricerca – sia in campo teorico sia in campo applicativo – sul dato linguistico, oggetto esplorabile secondo molteplici sfaccettature e sistemi d’indagine.
