Taal en Tongval. Jaargang 61
(2009)– [tijdschrift] Taal en Tongval–
Auteursrechtelijk beschermd
[pagina 72]
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BoekbesprekingTon Goeman, Marc van Oostendorp, Pieter van Reenen, Oele Koornwinder, Boudewijn van den Berg, Anke van Reenen, MAND. Morphological Atlas of the Dutch dialects. Volume II. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008.De reeks atlassen van de Nederlandse dialecten zal voor de meeste lezers van Taal en Tongval geen nadere introductie behoeven. In 2005 zijn de eerste drie atlassen over fonologie, morfologie, en syntaxis al aan het publiek gepresenteerd, en er is een interessant themanummer van Taal en Tongval aan gewijd (Themanummer 18, 2006), waarin opstellers van de dialectatlasssen aan het woord komen, en ze ook worden gerecenseerd. De eerste morfologische atlas (MAND 1) is gewijd aan meervoudsvorming en diminutiefvorming bij nomina, en aan het genus van nomina, en besproken door Damaris Nübling in genoemd themanummer.
Het tweede deel dat hier kort wordt besproken, behandelt de comparatief- en superlatiefvormen van adjectieven, bezittelijke voornaamwoorden, subjects en objectpronomina, en de verschillende werkwoordsvormen (tegenwoordige en verleden tijd, infinitief, voltooid deelwoord, en werkwoordstammen).
Met de voltooing van dit tweede deel over morfologie en het zusterdeel over syntaxis (SAND II) in 2008 is een indrukwekkende prestatie geleverd door een team van onderzoekers, van wie de seniorleden getoond hebben de noodzakelijke vasthoudendheid te bezitten om zo'n complex project te voltooien. Goeman, Taeldeman en Van Reenen zijn al in de jaren zeventig van de vorige eeuw met dit project begonnen, en het is goed te kunnen vaststellen dat ze de voltooiïng hebben mogen aanschouwen, en het beloofde land van de morfologische beschrijving van de Nederlandse dialecten hebben kunnen binnenwandelen.
Deze publicatie bestaat uit twee delen, die elkaars noodzakelijke complementen vormen, een reeks atlassen die de verspreiding van de verschillende vormen in | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
[pagina 73]
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kaart brengen, en een commentaar dat in een vijftal hoofdstukken de verschijnselen en de kaarten bespreekt. Zonder commentaar kan men de kaarten inderdaad niet gemakkelijk interpreteren, en de tekst van de commentaren verwijst uiteraard constant naar de kaarten. De commentaren verbinden de analyse van de feiten uitgebreid met de relevante taalkundige literatuur, en zijn in dit opzicht zeker meer dan alleen commentaren.
De hoofdstukken zijn stuk voor stuk goede taalkundige studies van de structuur van en de variatie in de besproken taalvormen. Om een voorbeeld te geven: in het eerste hoofdstuk, over de comparatief- en superlatiefvormen, vinden we een mooi overzicht van de typen variatie in de stam die optreedt als er een comparatiefsuffix aan wordt toegevoegd: klinkerverandering, verandering in klinkerlengte, palatalisatie, etc. De commentaren zijn in het Engels geschreven zodat ook niet-Nederlandstalige onderzoekers de gegevens kunnen gebruiken. Wat daarbij wel opvalt is dat de standaard-Nederandse vormen doorgaans als uitgangspunt voor de uiteenzetting genomen worden zonder dat van die vormen de fonetische transcriptie wordt gegeven. Dat zou voor niet-Nederlandstaligen wel gemakkelijker zijn geweest.
Ieder hoofdstuk verbindt de gegevens uitstekend aan de bestaande taalkundige literatuur over de desbetreffende verschijnselen. De literatuurlijst maakt duidelijk dat de gegevens van dit project al vóór de volledige publicatie ervan al voor diverse taalkundigen een bron van inspiratie is geweest voor taalkundige analyse en theorievorming. Daaraan kunnen inmiddels weer nieuwe publikaties worden toegevoegd, zoals de in 2009 verdedigde dissertaties van Suzanne Aalberse (Aalberse 2009) en Nieke Roos (Roos 2009). Ook in het te verschijnen themanummer over genus van Taal en Tongval zal blijken dat het GTvR-project zijn vruchten al heeft afgeworpen.
De hier besproken publicatie kan worden opgevat als een soort etalage, want achter deze atlas staat de website van MAND: www.meertens.knaw.nl/mand/database die de data doorzoekbaar maakt langs allerlei dimensies, en die ook veel meer data bevat dan de atlas toont (op de site staat trouwens alleen een foto van de omslag van MAND deel 1). Een voorbeeld is de variatie in verledentijdsvormen zoals klopte dat in sommige streken zoals Groningen als [klobdÉ™] wordt uitgesproken (zie ook Roos 2009), waarbij dus de richting van assimilatie anders is dan in het standaard-Nederlands: de slotobstruent van de stam wordt stemhebbend (regressieve assimilatie). Zulke feiten komt men alleen op het | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
[pagina 74]
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spoor door ook naar de database achter deze atlassen te gaan. Om die reden zou ik de verwijzing naar de database in het hier besproken boek dan ook veel prominenter hebben gemaakt, en nadrukkelijk aandacht gevraagd hebben voor de rijkdom van de achterliggende database.
De kaarten bieden een mooi overzicht van de variatiepatronen, door twee typen kaarten: contourkaarten die de verspreiding en dichtheid van verschijnselen weergeven, en kaarten waarin door middel van symbolen alle vormen worden gerepresenteerd.
Vanuit het perspectief van taalvariatie is opmerkelijk dat men soms kleine eilandjes aantreft: in een gebied overheerst een vorm, maar één plaats is dan een uitzondering. Je vraagt je dan af hoe dat kan: waarom geeft één informant in zo'n gebied een afwijkende vorm? Dat is een intrigerende vorm van variatie, over de verklaring waarvan ik hier alleen zou kunnen speculeren.
Samengevat: MAND II is een verrijking van onze kennis van de Nederlandse dialecten, en in combinatie met de achterliggende database een rijke bron voor allerlei vormen van linguïstisch onderzoek. Het is van belang dat deze informatie ook op lange termijn beschikbaar blijft. Het is goed te weten dat het Meertens-instituut er aan werkt om de toegankelijkheid ook op lange termijn te waarborgen. Een wens van mij is dat in de toekomst deze gegevens ook gekoppeld kunnen worden aan parallelle gegevens over het standaard-Nederlands, zodat onze kennis van zowel de standaard-taal als die van de dialecten nog verder verdiept kan worden. Bovendien zouden we het Nederlands van veel meer sprekers in hun variatiebreedte willen kennen. De taalwerkelijkheid is immers nog veel complexer dan wat deze dialectatlas beschrijft door het verschijnsel van regiolecten, en de meertaligheid van veel sprekers die kunnen switchen tussen het standaard-Nederlands en een dialectische of regiolectische variant van het Nederlands, om nog maar te zwijgen van de variatie die verbonden is met verschillende spreekstijlen binnen één variant. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bibliografie
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[pagina 75]
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Geert Booij | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sjef Barbiers, Johan van der Auwera, Hans Bennis, Eefje Boef, Gunther De Vogelaer and Margreet van der Ham (2008): SAND. Syntactische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten Deel II. Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects. Volume II. Amsterdam: University Press.The focus of this review is on the second volume of the Syntactic Atlas of the Dutch Dialects (Dutch Syntactische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten. Deel II), ‘SAND-II’, which has been produced by Sjef Barbiers, Johan van der Auwera, Hans Bennis, Eefje Boef, Gunther De Vogelaer and Margreet van der Ham (Amsterdam University Press). In the publication year of SAND-II, 2008, also the second volume of the ‘MAND’ (Morphological Atlas of the Dutch Dialects/Morfologische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten) appeared (Goeman et al 2008). Besides the authors mentioned, the following linguists worked on the second SAND volume: Magda Devos, Kees Grijpink, Irene Haslinger, Mathilde Jansen, Jan Pieter Kunst, Annemie Neuckermans, Jeroen van Craenenbroeck, Vicky van den Heede, Guido Vanden Wyngaerd, Marjo van Koppen and Hedde Zeijlstra.
From the beginning, the SAND project and its publications have been moving into the centre of syntactic, dialectological and dialect syntactic research. The fruitfulness of the methods used and the importance of the data for linguistic questions from very different perspectives is without doubt and is mirrored in numerous studies based on the SAND data (see e.g., Barbiers/de Schutter/Devos 2002-2003 (eds.), De Vogelaer 2008, Van Craenenbroeck 2004, Spruit 2008, Cornips 2002). The aim of this review is firstly to provide a comprehensive overview of the contents and the structure of SAND-II. Secondly, an aspect should be highlighted here which played an only marginal role in earlier SAND reviews (see e.g., van der Wouden 2008, Hoekstra 2007). Whereas the discussion of the project and its publications has been mainly on the syntactic phenomena analysed, I would like to shift my emphasis to the cartographic representation of the data in form of language maps. The main questions leading the discussion are: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
[pagina 76]
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How are the syntactic data mapped? Which cartographic means and tools are used in SAND-II? Which kind of information is provided by the language maps and their keys? To what extent is the cartographic representation reader-friendly, understandable and informative? What about the interplay between language maps and map commentaries? It should be pointed out that the aim of the atlas goes well beyond ‘mere’ dialectgeographic description. Its goal is to provide answers to the following questions formulated at the beginning of the commentary volume: ‘What exactly are the properties of microvariation? How is microvariation related to variation between languages? What are the boundaries of microvariation? How is microvariation related to the general linguistic system? What typological generalisations can be deduced from the atlas? Do typological generalisations between languages also hold for language-internal generalisations? Are there similarities between geographic variation and diachronic variation? Which aspects of geographical variation can be explained as the result of language change?’ (6) As in SAND-I (Barbiers et al 2005), the authors retain the familiar concept by presenting the atlas by means of two separate publications: a volume of maps and a commentary volume that is inserted into the cover of the map book. Since both volumes can be placed alongside each other, a map and its attendant commentary may be read in parallel. At the beginning of the commentary volume, which consists of 78 pages of text, background information about the concept and methodology of the project is provided (see ‘Introduction’, p. 6-10). Although this information is reproduced from SAND-I, the repetition assures the independence of the second volume. While the emphasis of the first volume was on complementizers, subjects (pronouns, doubling, clitics), reflexive and reciprocal pronouns and finally fronting, the second volume focuses on phenomena of the verbal domain, of negation and of quantification. These classes of phenomena are discussed in four thematic main chapters: ‘verbal clusters’, ‘verbal cluster: interruption and morphosyntax’, ‘auxiliaries and verb positions’, ‘negation and quantification’. While the focus of chapter 1 ‘verb clusters’ (p. 11-24) is on the serialization of verbs in two- and three-verb-clusters, chapter 2, ‘verbal cluster: interruption and morphosyntax’ (p. 25-42), concentrates on phenomena in which the verbal cluster is interrupted by non-verbal material (for example by the infinitival marker te ‘to’) and on phenomena regarding the interface of syntax and morphology. Among the latter, the IPP (‘Infinitivus Pro Participio’) and its | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
[pagina 77]
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counterpart, the PPI (‘Participium Pro Infinitivo’), are found. The emphasis in chapter 3, ‘auxiliaries and verb positions’ (p. 43-57), is on the selection of perfective auxiliaries, on the doen-periphrasis (‘do’ + infinitive) and some apparently anomalous constructions ‘in which, from a Standard Dutch point of view, the finite verb occurs in an unexpected position’ (46) or in which a subject pronoun intervenes between the stem and the tense suffix of the finite verb. Chapter 4, ‘negation and quantification’ (p. 58-72), represents the largest thematic group. Among the various phenomena taken into consideration, instances of sentence negation, focus negation as well as negative polarity are discussed.
The commentary book consists of well structured chapters, each beginning with an introduction to the syntactic phenomena in question as well as background information on historical development. The introduction is followed by a discussion of the central research literature.Ga naar voetnoot(1) The largest part of each thematic main chapter is dedicated to the discussion of the maps presenting the subphenomena. Each map has its own discussion part in the commentary book including a general description of the phenomenon and its variants mapped, a motivation for its inclusion, the survey methods and test sentences used, the locations/regions surveyed by the different methods and the areal distribution of the different variants. Each thematic main chapter closes with a comprehensive bibliography. At the end of the commentary volume, a list of the survey sentences used and a comprehensive and very useful index are provided.
The maps and their commentaries are (also) formally linked, since the four chapters of the map volume correspond to the four chapters of the text volume. In addition, each map number refers to the corresponding section number in the commentary volume and vice versa. The map volume contains 89 coloured language maps which are distributed over 64 pages altogether: 18 maps regarding ‘verb clusters’, 23 maps for ‘verbal cluster: interruption and morphosyntax’, 16 maps concerning ‘auxiliaries and verb positions’ and 32 maps representing ‘negation and quantification’. Although the authors ‘opted for a presentation that is as free of theory as possible’ (10), the quantitative dominance of the chapter ‘negation’ - besides some terminological preferences - might hint at a generative perspective while selecting the phenomena to be published. The commentary volume is available in English and Dutch while the map volume is (in principle) bilingual. (In the following, the remarks on the commentary | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
[pagina 78]
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volume refer to the English version.) Aside from the linguistic maps presenting the syntactic phenomena, two reference maps are published at the beginning of the map book: a map of the survey locations (10) and the famous map of Dutch dialects by Daan & Blok (1969).
The fact that the map of survey locations (10) can be folded out enables the user to place it alongside all other atlas maps. This map presents the entire survey area coloured in a grey shade on which all 267 sampling points (158 in the Netherlands, 102 in Belgium and 7 in France) are mapped by small black points - all in the same size - and identified by the localities' names. A first glance already reveals the uneven distribution of the survey points with an obviously increased density in the Belgian area and in some transition zones. The uneven areal distribution is especially due to the fact that ‘locations were added in regions in which much variation was to be expected, following relevant literature and dialectological knowledge.’ (7) By means of a blue square grid - superimposed over the language area - coordinates (‘Kloeke-numbers’) are attributed to the localities. These coordinates are also presented in the complete list of place names following the map. Aside from the survey points, the names of provinces and islands can be identified on the map by means of larger font size. A slightly modified version of this map serves as the underlying base map for the following language maps. In some details, the base map differs from the map of survey locations on page 10. Unfortunately, these details lower the reader-friendliness of the language maps. As the survey points are bleached out on the syntax maps, they set themselves only slightly apart from the background. This also holds for the borders of the provinces which are mapped in thin grey lines. Since the base map includes neither the names of survey locations nor provinces nor the square grid, the identification of a specific locality is sometimes difficult. Whereas these details are missing, the base map shows some important rivers (marked by blue lines and without names) which are not on the map of localities (on page 10).
The map book of SAND-II uses three different map types varying according to size and sometimes also according to the part of language area presented. Mostly, we find maps covering half a page of the map book and mapping the whole language area. In addition, there are maps covering only one-third of a page and mapping only a subpart of the language area because the other regions miss either symbols or data. Hence the split pages allow for a direct comparison of up to three maps. The motivation for mapping only a subpart of the whole survey area is not always obvious. If we compare, for example, the maps 46b | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
[pagina 79]
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and 49a, one might ask why the first is split and the second is not. The third map type represents full-page maps on which synthesizing information of various phenomena is summarized.
The syntactic phenomena, or better: their variants, are mapped by means of symbols situated on the survey points. SAND uses little squares as symbols which are distinguishable from each other only by means of their colours or colour shades while the size remains identical. ‘Within a set of thematically coherent maps, the colour of a specific variant is kept constant as much as possible. Within a single symbol map, the use of related colours (e.g., light green vs. dark green) indicates related phenomena.’ (6) Especially on maps with symbols of related colours, the distinctiveness of the symbols is sometimes difficult (see, for example, map 56a). A variation of the symbol type (different shapes or at least different size) could have increased the readibility and would have provided more possibilities of grouping phenomena which belong together into a common phenomenon class. The only deviation from the squarish symbols are midsize grey points indicating localities in which a special phenomenon does not occur. (This symbol is also mentioned in the key for map 19b, whereas it is missing on the map.) Sometimes, the ‘colour problem’ accompanies the fact that in the case of more than one symbol per location an overlapping of the symbols occurs, which might complicate the identification of the symbols and their assignment to a location (see for example the province of Limburg on map 16a or 17b). In order to improve the readability of maps with various symbols at one location (with a maximum of six squares, three horizontal and two vertical), ‘[t]he order of colours in a combination of squares is kept constant and the squares are located in a predictable manner with respect to each other. The keys of each map present the full set of coloured squares, which is given in the fixed order that is used on the map’ (6).
In general, the map keys are written in Dutch and English. Mostly, they start with the test sentence used in the survey setting. In the case of synthesizing maps, only one exemplary test sentence is translated into English while the other sentences or sentence parts only appear in Dutch (see, e.g., 40a and 40b). Their English translation can be found in the commentary volume. In addition to the semantics of the symbols and the possible symbol combinations occuring on the map, the map key presents the absolute numbers of symbols mapped. Unfortunately, these absolute numbers are not complemented by the total number of localities surveyed concerning the special phenomenon. But only rarely are | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
[pagina 80]
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the data mapped based on the entire sample of 267 localities; more often only a subpart of localities provides the empirical basis (see, e.g., map 49 a and 49b). The information on how many localities were investigated with respect to a particular phenomenon can only be read in the commentary volume. Of course, the problem of differing sample sizes increases in the case of synthesizing maps like map 30b. This map presents the interruption of the verbal cluster by bare nouns (dat hij wil brood eten ‘that he wants to eat bread’), adverbials (hij moet kunnen vroeg opstaan ‘he has to be able to stand up early’), plural nouns (dat hij wil varkens kopen ‘that he wants to buy pigs’), indefinite objects (dat hij moet een nieuwe schuur bouwen ‘that he has to buy a new barn’), definite objects (dat hij moest de auto verkopen ‘that he had to sell the car’) and prepositional phrases (dat zij moet naar Jef bellen ‘that she has to call Jeff’). Whereas the test sentences with a bare noun and an adverbial were tested in the majority of the 267 localities, the other phenomena were only asked at those localities where the interruption by a bare noun or by an adverb occurred, which was the case mainly in Belgium.
A valid interpretation of the language maps must also take into consideration the concrete method used to gain the data mapped. The impact the methodology could have on the results can be exemplified by comparing map 14b and 15a, whose focus is on the serialization within a two-verb cluster with HAVE instead of BE as the perfective auxiliary. The informants' task was to translate the given sentences. In one test sentence (map 14b) the verbs were presented in a 1-2 order (heeft verteld ‘has told’ ) while in the other test sentence (map 15a) the verbs were given in a 2-1 order (geroepen hebben ‘have called’). In both cases, nothing was asked about the order of the verbs. A first glance at the two maps shows a clear dominance of the 2-1 order in the entire language area. Besides this verb order, the 1-2 order also occurs and quite often so (93 occurrences) on map 14b. According to the authors, ‘[t]his means that informants who came up with a green 2-1 order in their translation spontaneously altered the order that was offered to them. This is a clear sign that the 1-2 order is strongly dispreferred.’ (16) In contrast to map 14b, the 1-2 order is very rare (9 occurrences) on map 15a. This fact provides evidence for the hypothesized correlations of methodology used and data gained. Therefore, the explicit verbalization of the concrete survey methods in the map key would have been a helpful complement to the interpretation of the language maps. The problem of ‘methodological impact’ applies especially to the synthesizing maps, on which different phenomena gathered by means of different survey methods are mapped together. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
[pagina 81]
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The critical points mentioned in this review should not detract from the enormous value of the entire work. The atlas, and especially the commentary volume, has definitely to be judged as the result of a substantial project based on internationally oriented research that carries the topic of dialect syntax into a greater context of (theoretical and empirical) linguistics. Like SAND-I, SAND-II provides unique data and empirically founded answers to the questions formulated at the beginning of this review. I will not close my review without referring to another very fruitful and highly useful SAND publication which can be seen as the ideal complement of the two printed SAND volumes: I am speaking of DynaSAND, the database of the SAND project, which is available online and contains all underlying linguistic and extralinguistic data for the entire project (www.meertens. nl./sand/). Aside from a user-friendly search engine that allows for the search for information with respect to linguistic phenomena, test sentences, locations and other aspects, a cartographic software program provides great possibilities to create individual maps (cf. Barbiers/Cornips/Kunst 2007).
Alexandra N. Lenz (Groningen) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bibliografie
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[pagina 82]
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