Linguist Marjo van Koppen conducts research into language dynamics in the Golden Age, a period in which the language standard was not yet established. “The great thing about the seventeenth century is that you can study language change in action,” says Van Koppen.
They have or have theirs. It was blowing or it was blowing. One says it this way, the other says it like that. A word that previously could only be used as a direct object gains subject status, or a strong verb becomes weak. Language variation is of all times, but it is especially characteristic of a period in which the language changes. The Golden Age is full of such changes:a gold mine for a language researcher.
“In the seventeenth century, the standard language is still under construction,” says Van Koppen. “So when people write there isn't really a standard. But it is also the century of new developments. With the advent of the Republic, there is a need for one common language. At the same time, the language is increasingly used in new contexts. So it really is the century of the expansion of Dutch.”
Creativity and language
In the research project Language dynamics in the Golden Age Van Koppen works together with historical literary scholar Feike Dietz. They initially focus on literary texts from the Golden Age. Their goal is to see how creativity and language go together. “In literature, and even more so in poetry, you can stretch the language system to its limits,” says Van Koppen. She herself mainly looks at variation in sentence structure:syntactic variation.
It is precisely at the sentence level that all sorts of things happen in the seventeenth century, the linguist explains enthusiastically. “You see the cases, which were still present in the Middle Ages, slowly disappear. That's where prepositional phrases come in. So "the letter of the conincs" becomes "the letter of the king." And when the cases disappear, the word order also becomes more fixed, so you can still see what the direct object is without it having an accusative case.”
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In rhyming texts, such as by Bredero, you will find a lot of variation in the sentence order. “In order to achieve rhyme, part of the sentence is then placed backwards, just like we do in Sinterklaas poems. You call this phenomenon extraposition.” The researcher gives another example. “At Vondel we looked at how he expresses 'such a nice man'. He does this in five different ways. He probably varies in the order because it makes the rhyme better, but apparently it's all possible in his language system too."
Letters from Hooft
Until now, Van Koppen and Dietz have mainly concerned themselves with the letters of P.C. Hooft:'the figurehead of the seventeenth century', according to the linguist. What makes this writer's letters so interesting is that not only are they many, but they also show great variation in formality. “There are very literary letters, but also scribbles in which Hooft asks whether someone would like to bring wine on a next visit, or a love letter to a 'beautiful lady'. It is a very diverse collection of texts. The letters are also well documented. We know to whom they were written and when.”
Because the letters had already been published in book form, the researchers could easily digitize the letters. The data was then enriched, provided with linguistic characteristics, so that the data is easily searchable. For example, you can search for the phenomenon of 'negation', whereby you conjure up all negative sentences from the text collection (or the 'corpus') with the push of a button.
It is a typical example of a sentence structure that has changed over time. In the Middle Ages two negations were always used in the sentence:ic and com niet. Linguists call this dual negation. In modern Dutch we only use the word 'not', so single negation. In Hooft's letters, the researchers hoped to discover how the change took place.
West Flemish
Van Koppen and Dietz discovered a pattern:“At Hooft we are on the track that dual negation is a reinforcement of single negation. So when he wants to emphasize, he uses two-pronged negation. That seems to be the same system that we still see in modern West Flemish. That gives citizens courage, because it suggests that such a change is not just random.”
However, the researcher also has a few caveats:“There are all kinds of factors that can play a role. We now think that emphasis plays a role, but there are probably other factors as well, such as rhyme. And it could also be that the archaic dual negation was more appropriate in certain contexts. But it seems that Hooft doesn't just do anything.”
Michiel de Ruyter
After Hooft, Van Koppen wants to continue with Michiel de Ruyter's letters. “Those letters are probably less literary and therefore very interesting. But we still have handwritten letters from De Ruyter, so you can't just have them read in by the computer. That has to be done manually. Fortunately, we have a large volunteer network at the Meertens Institute. They have experience with deciphering manuscripts.”
In constructing this next corpus, the researchers hope to make use of the tools that have already been developed. “We have all added enrichments to the data in Hooft's corpus. For example, you can search for the beginning of a letter, the core or the conclusion. Another researcher in our project is now looking at whether the computer will be able to make that classification automatically.”