Parameters and Language Contact: Morphosyntactic Variation in Dutch Dialects

• Published in: Catalan journal of linguistics Vol. 22; pp. 71 - 95
• Main Authors: Van Craenenbroeck, Jeroen, Van Koppen, Marjo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Barcelona Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Servei de Publicacions 01-01-2023; Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
• Subjects: Dialects; Dutch dialects; Dutch language; Language contact; Language variation; microvariation; Morphosyntax; parameters
• ISSN: 1695-6885; 2014-9719
• DOI: 10.5565/rev/catjl.363

The central issue addressed in this paper is the formal linguistic notion of parameter as a predictor for the (non-)occurrence of multiple linguistic phenomena. We start from a parametric analysis of a microvariational data set and we introduce a way of gauging the success of that analysis. At the same time, we explore to what extent language contact—operationalized here as geographical proximity—can be seen as an explanatory factor that is complementary to the parametric analysis. Methodologically, the paper advocates for the use of k-nearest neighbors classification as an interesting new technique in the linguist’s toolkit.