Relativisation in Dutch diaries, private letters and newspapers (1770–1840)

Abstract

The paper focuses on three important themes in historical sociolinguistics: (1) the emergence of national language planning in the Netherlands around 1800, (2) the influence of historical prescriptivism on usage, and (3) genre as a crucial factor in explaining variation and change. The case study deals with relativisation, particularly the neuter relative pronoun in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Dutch. Analysing both internal and external factors, we show that the definiteness of the antecedent does not explain the variation, contrary to what is assumed in the research literature. Likewise, a strong effect of language norms on usage patterns cannot be established. The crucial factor turns out to be genre.

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