De Aristarch van 't Y

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Summary

Scholars active in Dutch linguistics in the eighteenth century attached great importance to a work called Proeve van taal- en dichtkunde; in vrijmoedige aanmerkingen op Vondels vertaalde Herschepppingen van Ovidius (1730) by Balthazar Huydecopoer (1695-1778). This particular book, which was diligently studied and often quoted, gave Huydecoper great prestige as a linguist in the eighteenth century.

Available literature about the liguistic problems dealt with in this book so far fail to provide a clear picture of the notions about language that Huydecoper established in his Proeve. Huydecoper is mostly regarded as the characteristic example of a linguist who wanted to force the language into a particular shape by setting up rules, like those about the use of hun and hen, of als and dan and of waarmee and met wie. As a result of this, many scholars still see Huydecoper as ‘the language dictator from the age of reason’ (‘de taaldespoot uit de pruiketijd’), as R.A. Kollewijn characterized him in 1906. This paper will try to show that a slightly more balanced approach than that of Kollewijn might be desirable.

While Huydecoper was preparing a new edition of Vondel's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, he kept making notes about the use of the Dutch language and poetry, relevant to Vondel's text. These notes were published under the title of Proeve van taal- en dichtkunde. In this book, Huydecoper pointed out the mistakes that Vondel had made, both with regard to the language and to the art of poetry. He did this very consciously, because he was convinced that pointing out certain errors in the work of well-known authors would be more effective than setting up a large number of rules. Also he believed it was more appropriate to point out the errors of a famous writer than to target a less prestigious artist. By commenting on Vondel's translation of the Metamorphoses, Huydecoper wanted to show that even Vondel's work was not entirely flawless. As a result, it was not recommended to follow his example in everything he had written. It was better to look at his work critically. Whatever withstood the touchstone of criticism, could confidently be followed, what did not, ought to be improved upon.

Most notes in the Proeve show the same pattern of construction. After having indicated which passage from Vondel the note refers to, Huydecoper offered his comments on the relevant text. In addition, Huydecoper occasionally pointed out similar or dissimilar conceptions of other linguists. This ‘theoretical’ part is always followed by ‘practical’ examples. Huydecoper is always very careful in giving his quotations. Not only the name of the author and the title of the book which is the source of the quotation are given, but also page, book, act, scene, column and line. He felt that quotations had to be complete and accurate. For this reason, Huydecoper quoted as much as possible from original texts.

As these observations show, Huydecoper did not present his ideas about linguistic matters in the Proeve in a systematic way. The book is a varied collection of notes that he had taken while preparing the third edition of Vondel's Herscheppinge, a Dutch rendering of Ovid's Metamorphoses.

The main purpose of this paper has been the construction of a ‘Spraakkunst van Huydecoper’, a ‘Huydecoper's Grammar’ and placing it within the framework of eighteenth century Dutch linguistics. Using elements from the Proeve, I have outlined Huydecoper's

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ideas about orthographia (spelling), etymologia (classification of words) and syntaxis (syntax). Prosodia, or prosody, though it was considered as a part of grammar in the past, has been disregarded, because it was gradually marginalized in grammatical texts during the eighteenth century and because prosody is not a part of grammar according to modern concepts.

Huydecoper's notions about orthographia, etymologia and syntaxis, have been juxtaposed with items from Nederduitsche spraekkunst (1706) by Arnold Moonen, Nederduytsche spraakkonst (1708) by Willem Sewel and the Aenleiding tot de kennisse van het verhevene deel der Nederduitsche sprake (1723) by Lambert ten Kate. The linguistic works of these authors have been selected because Huydecoper characterized them in the Proeve as ‘onze Nederduitsche Spraakkunstschryvers’. Moreover, they certainly were the most influential eighteenth century Dutch grammarians.

The main purpose of linguists in the eighteenth century was to provide additional rules for the Dutch language. They believed that the vernacular was not inferior to any other language, not even to Latin or classical Greek. The carelessness with which many people used the Dutch language greatly irritated them. Consequently, they all agreed that it was necessary to civilize the vernacular. However, the answer to the question which criteria should be set to improve and regulate the vernacular was - certainly in the first few decades of the eighteenth century - not agreed on. In general, we find four criteria in linguistic texts from this period: ratio (the system of language), vetustas (the past), auctoritas (use of language by prestigious authors) and consuetudo (use of language by educated people). These four criteria also appear, to a higher or lower degree, at work in the Proeve.

Huydecoper believed that the ‘gronden’ or the natura of the Dutch language and its actual usage had grown apart in the course of time. This process had started at the end of the sixteenth century and been consolidated by the early seventeenth. Consequently, Huydecoper believed the purest form of Dutch was found among the medieval authors; these so-called Ouden (Ancients) were, after all, closest to the origins of the language and farthest removed from its corrupted use.

Daily speech could not play any role in constructing the vernacular in Huydecoper's view, because of its disregard for the rules of grammar. Moreover, there is much variation in spoken language, both between various districts and towns and between individual inhabitants of a particular town. Huydecoper thought that only examples from the written language could support linguistic rules.

In the Proeve, Huydecoper mostly proposed Vondel as an example for those who wished to use the vernacular in a grammatically correct and pure way. Even though he greatly admired Vondel's writing, especially his early work, he did not try to deny that Vondel occasionally committed errors against the Dutch language. Therefore his usage was not to be copied just like that.

While setting up his linguistic rules, Huydecoper frequently refers to vetustas, the past. This is connected with his views regarding the changes in the language. In Huydecoper's view changes in the language equalled degeneration of the language. He believed that the Spanish invasion at the end of the sixteenth century had started a process of decay for the language, the start of its degeneration. The purest form of Dutch is therefore to be found among the Ancients, he believed, i.e. authors who wrote before or shortly after the arrival of the Spaniards. By means of rules and directions that were not to be deviated from, Huydecoper tried to stop the decay of the vernacular and to restore what he regarded as

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the correct and pure language. Huydecoper extensively studied the use of language by the aforementioned Ancients to be able to determine what was - in his eyes - correct Dutch. He combined a - purely linguistic - appreciation of this variant of the Dutch language with a - particularly for his age - thorough knowledge of it.

Although the Ancients had the purest form of Dutch, the Moderns provided examples of the most elegant forms of the language. They show which words and expressions are carefully chosen by important writers and which ones are used by the common people.

The - written - language of Ancients and Moderns - Huydecoper counted i.a. Hooft and Vondel among the latter - together with reason provided him with the criteria that mostly guided, him to prove the validity of one of his linguistic rules. Whenever examples from the language used by Ancients and Moderns complied with the demands of reason, there need not be any doubt as to the validity of the rule. Whenever there was a discrepancy between the two, Huydecoper curiously enough preferred reason.

Because linguistic rules and directions were only valid if based on actual use of the language, Huydecoper believed it was absolutely out of the question to think up rules independent of it. However, he sometimes failed to put this notion into practice. Sometimes he disregarded actual use of the language, because it did not correspond with his own usage, or because it was contradictory to the regularity he looked for in the language.

Huydecoper certainly did not regard spelling as an important part of grammar. This is shown not only by the small number of notes referring to spelling in the Proeve, but also by the tone of these few notes. Anyway, the status Huydecoper had earned for himself as a linguist meant that several of his notions about spelling were adopted by well-known and influential linguists in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

In the Proeve, Huydecoper wrote that the spelling of words was determined by their origin. He had derived this principle from the work of the German linguist Wachterus, who, in his Glossarium Germanicum (1727), claimed that ‘Orthographia pendet ab Etymologia’. In determining the right spelling of several words Huydecoper was guided by this principle, which played an important role in that part of grammar that was devoted to spelling from the mid-eighteenth century - the beginning of historical linguistics - until the middle of the nineteenth century.

Because Huydecoper based the spelling of a word on its origin, he necessarily focused on the written language. The sounds of a word were to him of less importance than the signs with which it was written. This does not, however, imply that Huydecoper completely rejects the spoken language as a principle for spelling: he was willing to use it as a guideline, provided it was subjected to rules. In rendering foreign proper names, Huydecoper thought it best to be guided by pronunciation. In this context, he also remarks that it is usually a sound idea to follow general practice.

Two other principles of spelling that Huydecoper uses in the Proeve and that often clash with the rules of etymology are those of differentiation and sonority.

Etymologia, or the classification of words, is usually the most extensive part of a grammar in the Dutch linguistic tradition. Most of the notes concentrating on linguistic matters in the Proeve relate to the classification of words. To gain an insight into Huydecoper's linguistic notions with regard to etymologia, information from the grammatical works of Moonen, Sewel and Ten Kate has been collected in relationship with what Huydecoper wrote about the several classes of words. There is a total of nine classes: articles, nouns, pronouns, verbs, participles, conjunctions, adverbs, prepositions and interjections, which

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are dealt with in as many sections. Each section generally consists of a part in which a definition and a description of the relevant category are given. In subsequent subsections several characteristics, or - to use the Latin term - accidentia of the class in question are proposed. Correspondences and differences between the information given by, on the one hand, Moonen, Sewel and Ten Kate and, on the other hand, Huydecoper, have made it possible to draw conclusions about traditional and innovative elements in Huydecoper's notes on etymologia in relationship with his three aforementioned predecessors. The discussion of each word class is ended by a short section in which the main findings are summarized.

Finally, after this discussion of the classification of words, attention is directed towards a number of observations in the field of syntaxis, such as contraction, concord and word order. Remarks of a syntactic nature had, incidentally, sometimes also been made in the discussion of the classification of words.

One of the main findings of this enquiry into the linguistic ideas expressed by Huydecoper in the Proeve is that the ‘Spraakkunst van Huydecoper’ that was constructed shows lacunae in several areas when compared with Moonen's Nederduitsche spraekkunst and Sewel's Nederduytsche spraakkonst. Huydecoper's work is often fragmented: he restricts himself to a discussion of those aspects of the Dutch language about which the linguistic sources he consulted, or practical use of the language showed contradictions and/or obscurity and where his treatment of Vondel's Herscheppinge offered him the possibility. Huydecopers generally does not go in for profound theoretical reflections, but aims at practical linguistic advice, which he offers with great confidence, based on his own linguistic research.

Even though the Proeve is not nearly a complete grammar and Huydecoper has not arranged his matter systematically, the book appealed to many people in the eighteenth century. There are a number of reasons for the popularity of this work, I believe.

In contrast to the grammars proposed by Moonen and Sewel, the Proeve does not contain many pages of necessarily bone dry outlines of the declensions of articles, nouns, pronouns and participles and conjugations of verbs. After all, Huydecoper did not write a grammar, but rather a poetica in the shape of a linguistic and literary comment. The force of the Proeve lies not only in its theoretical contents, but also in the practical application of that knowledge. Huydecoper offers a large body of practical suggestions and warnings which he thought relevant and which uncertain poets and other writers could use to their advantage. Huydecoper stresses on several occasions that poets do not always have to observe the grammatical rules to the letter: they could claim some poetical licence for the sake of rime and metre. The Proeve was particularly useful for those who were not very familiar with grammatical terminology, based as it was on Latin grammar. They could easily understand linguistic observations from the Proeve, because Huydecoper tends to avoid jargon.

Huydecoper himself claimed that he was not trying to impose his opinions about a linguistic question on others. Everyone was free to decide for himself what was good and what was incorrect Dutch. In controversial matters Huydecoper often reaches a clear decision after extensive investigations. Poets and linguists could easily use the register to get access to Huydecoper's ideas. His readily applicable linguistic instructions were widely appreciated.

Huydecoper was not a grammarian pur sang, but rather a philologist. The approach of the Proeve fits in a long tradition of providing critical notes to texts that were originally from classical antiquity, but later also in the vernacular. Many readers will have been familiar with the form in which Huydecoper presented his commentary. This, too, will have

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contributed to its success.

One might wonder what gave Huydecoper his authority as a linguist. Just like the question about the popularity of the Proeve, this problem allows several solutions. Huydecoper's position as a member of a respected, art-loving, patrician family from Amsterdam will have had some influence. Moreover, when the Proeve appeared, he had already earned a reputation as a literary writer with successful French-classicist tragedies and a translation of the Hekeldichten en brieven van Q. Horatius Flaccus (1726). The opinion of a man who could write popular plays obviously outweighed that of a writer who only criticized others.

Also, Huydecoper's style in the Proeve will have had some influence on the authority he was allowed. He wrote without wasting words and made his point confidently and clearly. He did not avoid the use of some humour to promote his ideas.

Still, to my opinion Huydecoper's authority as a linguist was mostly the result of his use of his (inductive) method. This process, which he used in writing the Proeve, was greatly admired in the eighteenth century. Huydecoper was not contented just pointing out errors that did not conform to the rules of the Dutch language as he saw them. He wanted not only to show what was wrong, but also to indicate why he disapproved of certain usages. According to Huydecoper, one should not blindly trust what others had written about linguistic problems to determine if something was right or wrong. One should make one's own investigations into a problem and not rely on what grammarians had written about it. Huydecoper thought comments on linguistics (and poetry) were only relevant when based on sound investigations. Comments that were given off the cuff were not approved of; they had to be supported by examples from the practical use of the language. The many quotations Huydecoper incorporated in the Proeve bear witness to this principle.

This paper has shown that Huydecoper does have certain characteristics that justify calling him ‘a language dictator from the age of reason’ (‘een taaldespoot uit de pruiketijd’). However, he could just as well be described as ‘a linguistic initiator’. The most fitting epithet seems to me what a contemporary called him in a panegyric: ‘de Aristarch van 't Y’, or - very roughly translated - ‘the Aristarch from old Amsterdam’.

Translation by A.C. Breedveld