Language
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Dutch Grammar (But Were Afraid to Ask)
Over the past few years, a number of reference works have appeared which make a substantial contribution to the descriptive codification of modern standard Dutch. Dutch spelling, revised as recently as 1996, is regulated in a single official standard which applies in both Flanders and the Netherlands. The phonology of Dutch was the subject of a scholarly monograph in 1995, and a new pronunciation dictionary was published in 1998. Dutch vocabulary is described in great detail in the 40 volumes of the monumental Dictionary of the Dutch Language (Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, wnt), a project which started in 1860 and was completed in 1998. And in the field of grammar, we now have the new edition of the Standard Grammar of Dutch, better known as the ans (Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst), the most comprehensive description of the syntax and morphology of contemporary Dutch. Behind these works there is a long-standing tradition of painstaking linguistic research in Flanders and the Netherlands, actively supported by the Dutch Language Union, the joint Dutch-Flemish government body for the promotion of Dutch.
In the European context, the ans provides the Dutch-speaking community with a standard grammar which is on a par with those of the three surrounding language areas: the German Duden Grammatik (1995), Grevisse's Le bon usage (1986) for French, and the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985) by Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik. These four grammars are broadly similar in their comprehensive and authoritative coverage of the respective languages and their grammars, which they describe in great empirical detail. This makes for interesting linguistic comparisons. Within the group of Germanic languages, for example, Dutch has no difficult cases and fewer articles than German. It can form plural nouns in -s as in English, but shares with German a more complex verb system and broadly similar word order patterns. In Dutch and German syntax, but not in English, the finite verb occupies a fixed second position in main clauses; and as a corollary the variety of possible non-subject sentence openings in Dutch is far greater than in English. On the other hand, in its vocabulary and word formation processes, Dutch, unlike more purist German, has undergone a significant influence from French, and has usually retained the original stress on French and Romance loan words. But in English, due to 1066 and all that, this French influence has been far more pervasive. In these and many other respects, Dutch occupies an interesting intermediate position in terms of vocabulary, grammatical structure and linguistic development.
First published in 1984 in one volume of 1,300 pages, the second edition of the ans now runs to more than 1,800 pages. It has been thoroughly revised and expanded. A new introduction sets out the descriptive principles, while other new chapters describe the sound shape and the word formation processes of Dutch, and phenomena such as negation, modality and aspect. Throughout, there is a wealth of data, descriptions and advice on spoken and written Dutch, on formal and informal registers, on what one can and cannot say in Dutch, and on the wide range of social, regional and stylistic variation in the Dutch language as spoken in Flanders and in the Netherlands.
In volume i of the new ans a short outline of the sounds of contemporary standard Dutch is followed by a series of chapters on the ten major lexical categories of Dutch, ranging from Verbs, Articles and Adjectives to Conjunctions, Prepositions and Interjections. The chapter on Pronouns offers detailed information on the social and regional complexities of Dutch forms of address and clearly illustrates the changing politeness conventions and the differences in pronominal usage across the Dutch language area. The chapter on Interjections is full of lively detail on modern spoken Dutch, with formulas for social intercourse, and for the use of exclamations, tags, invectives, swear words and other expressions of Dutch emotions. The chapter on Nouns highlights the particular intricacies of Dutch diminutives such as ‘radiootje’, ‘computertje’ and ‘dingetje’, and links up well with the new closing chapter on Word Formation which describes in 150 pages how to create new nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in Dutch.
Volume 2 contains descriptions of Dutch syntax and the properties of major constituents and of sentence types such as active and passive, with due attention to Dutch word order patterns. Here we find enlightening descriptions of the use of the little modal particles that can greatly affect the tone of the message that is being conveyed, and also of the characteristic differences in word order between Dutch and Flemish. An attractive new feature is the description of general processes such as ellipsis and gapping, negation, aspect and modality in the latter part of this volume, which stands out by its perceptive treatment of the finer points of Dutch grammar.
Access to the information in the ans is greatly facilitated by a clear and systematic presentation and layout, by detailed lists of contents, by systematic cross-
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