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Abstract

In my talk, I will discuss my planned research on the Development of Dutch Orthography and I hope to exchange ideas on Data Enrichment for the first stage of the project. This first stage will take place within a research visit at Gent University.

The main scope of the project proposed here is the description of unguided (not-steered) development of writing systems for West Germanic dialects based on the Latin alphabet. It will render this from diatopic and diachronic grapheme research on Middle Dutch local charters.

Dutch diachronic orthography research has been the focus of research in the last decennium, however mostly focusing on Early Modern Dutch and later stages, and usually in the context of standardisation. That means it is limited to how orthographic development of a language operates within the parameters of a society that is aware of and pays lip service to a supra-regional, consciously and unconsciously superimposed or pursued variety. In my proposed research, I will focus on the period before Early Modern Dutch and the standardisation processes, and ask the question: “How do scribes cope in writing with the Latin alphabet in their dialects when there is no prescribed standard?”To answer this, the writings of scribes who operate in local writing systems, i.e. written dialect, need to be considered, and this should be done with manuscripts, e.g. handwritten administrative texts of local importance only, such as local charters.

Preliminary research suggests that in case of vowel grapheme systems, the aptness of singular graphemes is gradable and can be described in terms of the phonological distinctive features they may convey accurately (De Wulf 2019, in preparation). This stems from the fact that some graphemes are used to convey many more historical phonemes (i.e. West Germanic allophones) than others, and which graphemes these are, also varies from dialect to dialect. There is a clear indication that vowel grapheme systems in the Eastern dialects contain less accurate graphemes, since more of the historical vowel phonemes have in fact evolved into separate phonemes. My working hypothesis is that an implicational scale of phonological features can be established (per dialect or maybe more generally, dialect region), which means that certain features are to be prioritised in writing systems. This should be investigated for vowel as well as consonant graphemes.

The here proposed project will have to clarify whether this holds through for all types of graphemes, and whether this variety is maintained throughout medieval writing in the period 1250-1400.

As the main deliverable I will provide an open access and electronically published diachronic grapheme atlas with commentary.

dr. Francesca Cotugno (University of Nottingham & CSAD, University of Oxford): “Language interplay in the Channel zone: can we map language interactions?”

You can find the abstract here.

Abstract:

We will describe a speaking atlas that takes the form of a website presenting interactive maps, where it is possible to click on over 300 survey points to listen to speech samples and read a transcript of what is said, in dialects and minority languages of France, Italy and Belgium. We show how an attractive website enables us to collect more data in underresourced and endangered languages and how these data may be used for phonetic analyses and dialectometry purposes. A one-minute story (“The North Wind and the Sun”) was used, phonetically transcribed automatically by grapheme-to-phoneme converters and forced aligned with the audio signal: a methodology which can be applied to other languages and dialects.

Internal Research Seminar – INDOLOGY

Leonid Kulikov:  “The Vedic particle ghā̆ and the primordial incest of Yama vs. Yamī: Linguistic and comparative-mythological evidence from Indo-Iranian and beyond.”

Evie Coussé (University of Gothenburg): “The rise of complex verb constructions in Germanic: A project sketch.” Presentation co-organised by GLIMS and ΔiaLing.

You can find the abstract here.

ΔiaLing presentation by Prof. Dr. Antonella Ghignoli (Sapienza – University of Rome): “The NOTAE Project: Reasons for a Research.”

You can find the abstract here.

Project presentations by new DiaLing members:

• Rozenn Guérois: “A typology of the passive voice in Bantu”
• Hilde Gunnink: “Language contact between migrating Bantu speakers and resident Khoisan speakers in southern Africa”
• Minah Nabirye: “Duplication processes in Lusoga morphosyntax”
• Alessandro Papini: “Stylistic and diatopic variation in the ‘Vulgar’ Latin vowel system. Rome and Italy: a statistical analysis based on inscriptional evidence.”