Netherlandic language research

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Chapter Seven
The Period 1675-1880.

The limits of this period are somewhat vague and arbitrary. There is some justification for taking 1650 as a starting point because, as was stated in the preceding chapter, the study of 17th century Netherlandic has been focused on the first half of the century. The striking difference in usage between the beginning and the end of the century, also mentioned in chapter VI, is another possible reason for a division into two equal halves.

The terminal point chosen is also a rather arbitrary one, but it can be defended. About 1880 a new literary movement started, which led, on the one hand, to a prose impressionism that tended to alienate literary usage from the spoken language, and on the other, to a realism that, much more so than before, made use of the spoken language in writing. This realism gradually narrowed the gap, in the Northern Netherlands, between written Netherlandic with its Southern peculiarities, and spoken Netherlandic. A vindication of the rights of the spoken language may be seen in the attempts made to obtain a spelling reform, attempts which eventually led to the abolition of some orthographical and morphological distinctions that were based on historical differences and were no longer necessary (cf. p. 14).

Moreover, this limit of 1880 has, especially in a book dealing with linguistic activity, the practical advantage that it conforms to the present practice of basing grammatical handbooks on the post-1880 language. And, apart from a few forerunners, the systematic study of dialects, too, does not get under way until after 1880.

There has been little study of the period of Netherlandic we have delimited. It falls between the first half of the 17th century - which has attracted both philological and literary interest - and Modern Netherlandic, which requires a different approach from the historical one. Besides, the period from about 1675 till about 1775 is not of great importance in Netherlandic literature, so that scholars felt little inclined to re-edit works by authors of that time. Moreover, for a modern reader they are relatively easy to understand: works considered to be

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attractive to a modern public required no annotation. In anthologies, all that was needed was a few notes to the texts selected.

And so, true linguistic studies are not numerous. G.G. Kloeke's article on Haagse volkstaal uit de achttiende eeuw, Ts. LVII, 15 ff, 233, is based on a small dictionary of the Hague dialect, K. Heeroma's Goois uit het midden der 18e eeuw, N.Tg. XXXI, 164 ff, on a letter written in the dialect of Het Gooi - a region south-east of Amsterdam -, occurring in the review De Denker. C.G.N. de Vooys wrote Opmerkingen over de taal van Justus van Effen's Hollandsche Spectator, for N.Tg. XLIV, 75 ff. The language of individual authors has also been little studied. The works by J.J.B. Elzinga and H.J. Vieu-Kuik, dealing with French words in the writings of Van Effen and Wolff-Deken, will be mentioned in chapter IX. Of earlier date is the book by A. de Jager, Proeve over den invloed van Bilderdijk's dichtwerken op onze taal (Leyden, 1847), and even the Bilderdijk-glossary by A. Bogaers, Woordenboek op de dichtwerken van Willem Bilderdijk (Haarlem, 1878), which, in an appendix, gives some peculiarities of Bilderdijk's usage, appeared long before the period covered by this book. Since then, Bilderdijk's language, in some ways original and in any case remarkable, has had little attention paid to it. In the recent edition of his epic De Ondergang der eerste Wareld by J. Bosch (Zwolle, 1959), the linguistic aspect is only presented in explanatory notes in the text. The curious linguistic and grammatical ideas of Bilderdijk himself were discussed in 1906 - the 75th anniversary of his death - by J. te Winkel, Bilderdijk als taalgeleerde, in the Gedenkboek, edited with the authorization of the Bilderdijk-committee (Pretoria-Amsterdam-Potchefstroom, 1906), p. 109 ff, and by A. Kluyver, who, in the periodical Onze Eeuw for the year 1906, published an article entitledBilderdijk en de taalwetenschap. Bilderdijk was not very highly regarded as a philologist, until C.C. de Bruin, in Bilderdijk en de studie van het Middelnederlands, N.Tg. XLVIII, 1 ff, had something more pleasant to say of his activities in the field of Middle Netherlandic.

The life of the learned poet Bilderdijk covers the second half of the 18th, and the first three decades of the 19th century.

An important figure in the Northern Netherlandic literature of the 19th century was E.J. Potgieter, born in 1808, an essayist, poet and novelist with a very individual and quite archaistic style, inspired by the great 17th century classic authors. Jac. Smit wrote a Bijdrage

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tot de kennis van Potgieter's stijl (Groningen-Batavia, 1937), to which Miss G.M.J. Duyfhuizen made some additions in her edition of Potgieter's poem Florence (Santpoort, 1942). In a number of articles written by G.S. Overdiep, O.Tt. IV, Over Potgieter's litteraire vormen (reprinted as a whole in Overdiep's Verzamelde Opstellen III, 19 ff), several points of syntax are discussed.

The 18th century exhibited a lively interest in grammatical studies. One important linguist was Lambert ten Kate (1674-1731), whom A. van der Hoeven discussed in his doctoral thesis (The Hague, 1896), Lambert ten Kate. De ‘Gemeenschap tussen de Gottische spraeke en de Nederduytsche’ en zijne onuitgegeven geschriften over klankkunde en versbouw, describing Ten Kate chiefly as a scholar of comparative Germanic. A recent but shorter publication on the same subject is that by T.A. Rompelman, Lambert ten Kate als germanist (Amsterdam, 1952). Ten Kate's merits in the field of Netherlandic proper were duly appreciated by C.G.N. de Vooys, De taalbeschouwing van Lambert ten Kate, N.Tg. XVII, 65 ff, reprinted Verzamelde Taalkundige Opstellen I, 374 ff.

A philologist of great authority in his day was Balthazar Huydecoper (1695-1778), who aimed at devising strict rules for the written language. This side of his activities was vigorously attacked by R.A. Kollewijn in his article Een taaldespoot uit de pruiketijd, for T. en L. XVI, 1 ff, reprinted in Kollewijn'sOpstellen over spelling en verbuiging (³ Groningen, 1916), 159 ff. Huydecoper deserves a more favourable judgment for his studies on Middle Netherlandic, and he is accorded such a judgment in the first two chapters of H. de Buck's De studie van het Middelnederlandsch tot in het midden van de negentiende eeuw (Groningen-The Hague, 1931). In this book, other 18th century philologists are also discussed, for example Isaac le Long and Frans van Lelyveld. The most important grammarians of the century are dealt with by C.G.N. de Vooys in his articles Achttiende-eeuwse spraakkunstbeschouwing, in N.Tg. XVI, 273 ff, and Van Ten Kate tot Siegenbeek, in N.Tg. XXII, 12 ff, the former of which has been reprinted in de Vooys' Verzamelde Taalk. Opstellen I, 354 ff, the latter ibid. III, 11 ff. De Vooys pays attention to, among others, David van Hoogstraten, whose Aanmerkingen over de geslachten der Zelfstandige Naamwoorden first appeared in 1700, and was reprinted several times, after

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1723 under the title of Lijst der gebruikelijkste Zelfstandige Naamwoorden, betekent door hunne geslachten. This Geslachtslijst, which from 1759 onward appeared under the supervision of Adriaan Kluit, was held in great respect throughout the 18th century. A critical discussion of Van Hoogstraten's list is to be found in R.A. Kollewijn's Opstellen over spelling en verbuiging, 54 ff. De Vooys also deals with the Nederduitsche Spraakkunst by Arnold Moonen, first edited in 1706, the Spraakkunst by Arnold Séwel, and the works of Adriaan Verwer.

An outline of Moonen's life and work, paying regard also to his philological activities, has been drawn by J. Lindeboom,Arnold Moonen (Amsterdam, 1958). A study on Verwer as a philologist is that by J.F. Vanderheyden, in V.M.V.A. 1957, 617 ff.