Frans Hinskens – författare

Dialects are constantly changing, and due to increased mobility in more recent years, European dialects have 'levelled', making it difficult to distinguish a native of Reading from a native of London, or a native of Bonn from a native of Cologne. This comprehensive study brings together a team of leading scholars to explore all aspects of recent dialect change, in particular dialect convergence and divergence. Drawing on examples from a wide range of European countries - as well as areas where European languages have been transplanted - they examine a range of issues relating to dialect contact and isolation, and show how sociolinguistic conditions differ hugely between and within European countries. Each specially commissioned chapter is based on original research, giving an overview of work on that particular area and presenting case studies to illustrate the issues discussed. Dialect Change will be welcomed by all those interested in sociolinguistics, dialectology, the relevance of language variation to formal linguistic theories, and European languages.

Dialects are constantly changing, and due to increased mobility in more recent years, European dialects have 'levelled', making it difficult to distinguish a native of Reading from a native of London, or a native of Bonn from a native of Cologne. This comprehensive study brings together a team of leading scholars to explore all aspects of recent dialect change, in particular dialect convergence and divergence. Drawing on examples from a wide range of European countries - as well as areas where European languages have been transplanted - they examine a range of issues relating to dialect contact and isolation, and show how sociolinguistic conditions differ hugely between and within European countries. Each specially commissioned chapter is based on original research, giving an overview of work on that particular area and presenting case studies to illustrate the issues discussed. Dialect Change will be welcomed by all those interested in sociolinguistics, dialectology, the relevance of language variation to formal linguistic theories, and European languages.

This handbook aims at a state-of-the-art overview of both earlier and recent research into older, newer and emerging non-standard varieties (dialects, regiolects, sociolects, ethnolects, substandard varieties), transplanted varieties and daughter languages (mixed languages, creoles) of Dutch. The discussion concerns the theoretical embedding, potential interdisciplinary connections and the methodology of the studies at issue, keeping in mind comparability and generalizability of the findings. It presents general concepts and approaches in the broad domain of Dutch variation linguistics and the main developments in different varieties of Dutch and their offspring abroad. The book counts 47 chapters, written by over 40 scholars from the Netherlands, Flanders, Germany, England, South Africa, Australia, the USA, and Jamaica.

This volume presents a study of the phenomenon of dialect levelling, the process of the reduction of structural variation. This process affects variation both in the cross-dialectal and in the dialectal-standard language dimension (in German dialectology referred to as Ausgleich and Abbau, respectively). The study is based on a research project on an originally rural Limburg dialect of Dutch. On the basis of a survey of the relatively rare relevant literature, a sociolinguistic model of dialect levelling is developed. A model is also proposed for embedding the study of this special type of linguistic change in formal phonological theory; this model centres on the role of the syllable in phonological processes. After a sketch of the social history and the dialect situation of the research area as well as an exposition of the methodology, descriptions and (mainly formal) explanations of the 21 dialect features at issue are presented. The approach is basically sociolinguistic and the analysis of the fieldwork data primarily quantitative. The patterns that emerge in the processes of the levelling out of the dialect features are related to both internal and external factors. In accounting for the findings, methods and insights from historical linguistics, dialectology as well as (linear and non-linear) phonological theory play an important role. After a discussion of the findings, the outlines are sketched of a theory of dialect levelling. The possibilities as well as some of the problems are discussed of an integration of the study of language variation and change on the hand and formal linguistic theory on the other.