17th-century Dutch Courant message with "ABC" written across the page in blue
17th-century Dutch Courant message with "ABC" written across the page in blue

Spread the new(s)!

Understanding standardization of Dutch through 17th-century newspapers
Duration
1 January 2020 until 1 January 2026
Project member(s)
M.T. de Vos (Machteld) MPhil , Prof. H. de Hoop (Helen)
Project type
Research
Organisation
Language Variation in 4D, Centre for Language Studies, Faculty of Arts

This project investigates what (socio)linguistic factors are decisive in the functional implementation of a standard language, hypothesizing that newspapers played a crucial role in the expansion of the Dutch standard language, as the first mass medium read by all social classes.

Results

  • de Vos, M., & Van de Velde, F. (in press). Spread the German new(s): Using GAMMs to detect the source of a new reflexive in Early Modern Dutch. Sociolinguistica (In J. K. M. Berns, & F. L. M. P. Hinskens (Eds.), Going far together. Interdisciplinary approaches to language variation research [Special Issue].).
  • de Vos, M. & De Smet, I. (in press). Leading language change: Precept versus practice of strong verbs in Early Modern Dutch. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics.
  • de Vos, M. (in press). Spread the new(s)! Understanding standardisation of Dutch through seventeenth-century newspapers [Doctoral dissertation, Radboud University]. LOT.
  • de Vos, M. & den Hartog, M. (2026). Forms of address in 17th-century Dutch newspapers. Radboud Data Repository [Dataset]. https://doi.org/10.34973/zdnz-5s69.
  • de Vos, M. & den Hartog, M. (2025). ‘Ick en kan U.E. niet na-laten te adverteren…’: Forms of address in 17th-century Dutch newspapers. Nederlandse Taalkunde, 30(3), 298–329. https://doi.org/10.5117/NEDTAA2025.3.003.DEVO.
  • de Vos, M. (2025). Dutch Normative DataBasE (NODE). Radboud Data Repository [Dataset]. https://doi.org/10.34973/pb3x-f167.
  • Vos, M.T. de & Meulen, M.S. van der (2024). Suppressed no more: prescriptivism and the evaluation of optional variability. In N. Yáñez‐Bouza, M. Rodríguez‐Gil & J. Pérez‐Guerra (Eds.), New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research (pp. 296-318). Multilingual Matters Full text
  • Vos, M.T. de & Vogl, U. (2023). Wel iet wat verschelende, maar zó niet óf elck verstaat ander zeer wel. On language making in early modern mono- and multilingual grammars and textbooks. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 37 (1), 37-73. doi: 10.1075/bjl.00080.dev
  • de Vos, M. (2023). Het stijlboek van de weduwe: ontluikende standaardtaal in 17e-eeuwse kranten? In: Neerlandia 4, pp. 32-35.
  • Vos, M.T. de (2022). Deze verscheydenheyt der Voornamen. Codification of third-person pronouns in Early Modern Dutch. Taal en Tongval, 74 (1), 107-146. doi: 10.5117/TET2022.1.005.VOS Full text
  • Vos, M.T. de (2022). In Between Description and Prescription: Analysing Metalanguage in Normative Works on Dutch 1550–1650. Languages, 7 (2):89. doi: 10.3390/languages7020089 Full text

Funding

NWO Open Competition SSH