Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.pdf

A-Z 343ReferencesaspectDutchGermanic language which developed from West Low Franconian and has two historicaldialect variants: Flemish (south) and Dutch (north). Dutch is the official language(approx. 20 million speakers) of the Netherlands and its overseas territories and is thesecond official language of Belgium next to French. Afrikaans, which developed fromseventeenth-century dialects, is now an independent language. The oldest literaryattestations (Middle Dutch) date from 1150 in the area of Limburg-Brabant (Henric vanFeldeke). Since the seventeenth century the dialect of Amsterdam has been consideredthe written norm (e.g. the official Bible translation of the Statenbijebel, 1626–37), whileDutch is spoken in the south only as the dialect variant ‘Flemish.’ With the signing of theNederlandse Taalunie (Netherlandic Language Union, 1980) century-long attempts atunifying the Netherlands and Belgium were officially recognized.In its older forms, Dutch was not much farther removed from High German than LowGerman, and still today shows marked similarities to German, though it has preserved anumber of archaic forms in its lexicon (cf. oorlog ‘war’ vs Ger. Krieg, geheugen‘memory’ vs Ger. Gedächtnis, eeuw ‘century’ vs Ger. Jahrhundert). The nominalinflectional system of Dutch is much more reduced than that of German.ReferencesBooij, G. 1995. The phonology of Dutch. Oxford.Brachin, P. 1987. Die niederländische Sprache. Hamburg.Devleeschouwer, J. 1981. Het ontstaan der Nederlandse Franse taalgrens. Naamkunde 13. 188–225.Geerts, G. 1987. Dutch reference grammar, 3rd edn. Leiden.Overdiep, G.S. 1949. Stilistische Grammatica van het moderne Nederlands, 2nd edn. Zwolle.Shetter, W.Z. 1994. Dutch: an essential grammar. London.Van Haeringen, C.B. 1960. Netherlandic language research: men and works in the study of Dutch,2nd edn. Leiden.Van Loey, A. 1970. Schoenfeld’s Historische Grammatica van het Nederlands, 8th edn. Zutphen.HistoryDonaldson, B.C. 1983. Dutch: a linguistic history of Holland and Belgium. Leiden.Franck, J. 1910. Mittelniederlandische Grammatik. Arnhem. (Repr. 1976.)Van Kerckvoorde, C.M. 1993. An introduction to Middle Dutch. Berlin and New York.