A quantitative-theoretical analysis of syntactic microvariation: Word order in Dutch verb clusters

TY - JOUR

T1 - A quantitative-theoretical analysis of syntactic microvariation

T2 - Word order in Dutch verb clusters

AU - van Craenenbroeck, Jeroen

AU - van Koppen, Marjo

AU - van den Bosch, Antal

PY - 2019/6

Y1 - 2019/6

N2 - This paper is a case study in how quantitative-statistical and formal-theoretical(generative) approaches to language variation can be combined. We provide aquantitative analysis of word order variation in verb clusters in 185 dialects of Dutch and map the results of that analysis against linguistic parameters extracted from the theoretical literature on verb clusters. Based on this novel methodology, we argue that verb cluster ordering in Dutch dialects can be reduced to three grammatical parameters (largely similar to the ones described in Barbiers et al. 2018), and we identify the dialect groups that correspond to the various settings of those parameters.

AB - This paper is a case study in how quantitative-statistical and formal-theoretical(generative) approaches to language variation can be combined. We provide aquantitative analysis of word order variation in verb clusters in 185 dialects of Dutch and map the results of that analysis against linguistic parameters extracted from the theoretical literature on verb clusters. Based on this novel methodology, we argue that verb cluster ordering in Dutch dialects can be reduced to three grammatical parameters (largely similar to the ones described in Barbiers et al. 2018), and we identify the dialect groups that correspond to the various settings of those parameters.

KW - verb clusters

KW - Dutch dialects

KW - linguistic variation

KW - generative grammar

KW - correspondence analysis

KW - k-nearest neighbors classification

M3 - Article

SN - 0097-8507

VL - 95

SP - 333

EP - 370

JO - Language

JF - Language

IS - 2

ER -