General information

The DiDDD project is an NWO supported project that started in January 2005. The project aims to answer the following research questions:

• What light does the microvariation in the Dutch nominal domain shed on the architecture of the DP?

• What light does our analysis shed on the dimensions of microvariation - more in general, on the nature of parameterization?

The linguistic data that will constitute the empirical basis for this study will come from contemporary-dialectal and older variants of Dutch. The theoretical framework is that of generative grammar: the principles and parameters approach. Since the grammatical systems under discussion resemble each other for the greater part, the differences that we do find arguably lead to a more direct identification of co-varying properties and as such, to a more direct identification of the parameters at work within the DP.

The project consists of three subprojects, each of which focuses on a particular empirical domain:

• prononominals (in particular demonstratives and possessives)

• number, quantification and negation

• left edge phenomena (interrogation, exclamation, focus)

Recently, there has been an upsurge in the field of generative research into Dutch dialects. The SAND project at the Meertens Institute for instance, has inspired interesting research in the field of Dutch dialect syntax within the clausal domain. Not much attention has been paid to the nominal domain yet. However, the data show that there is a lot of interesting variation going on in this domain as well.

back to top

Project members

Currently, three linguists are working on this project: Norbert Corver, Marjo van Koppen and Huib Kranendonk.

Norbert Corver is professor in the Department of Dutch in the faculty of Arts. Within the research department UiL-OTS he is chair of the syntax and semantics group. DP syntax is a prominent topic in his work. You can click here to get to his personal page for more information.

Before starting in this project as a postdoctoral fellow, Marjo van Koppen was a PhD-student in the SAND project. at the University of Leiden/ULCL. Her thesis (which can be downloaded from her personal webpage) deals with microvariation concerning agreement of coordinated subjects and pronominal subjects with finite verbs and complementizers. Within this project she will focus on the left periphery of the noun phrase. In particular, she will look at focus, wh- and exclamation constructions.

Huib Kranendonk did his MA in Linguistics at the University of Utrecht. He graduated under supervision of Norbert Corver in August 2005 and started as a PhD student in September of the very same year. Within the project, he focusses on quantification and negation in the nominal domain.

From January 2005 to November 2006, Mirjam Rigterink has participated in the project as well. She did research on demonstratives and possessive constructions. Besides, she has greatly contributed to the fieldwork enterprise.

back to top

Progress

First of all, we have built a database in which we stored all the information found in reference grammars of dialects and older phases of Dutch. This gave us a good overview of the phenomena to be investigated. On the basis of these data, we designed questionnaires which could be used for both oral interviews and written examination. After having tested these questionnaires in several pilot studies, we started the fieldwork.

By now, we have more or less collected and stored all data. The picture below gives a rough idea of where we did fieldwork:

We are currently analyzing the data. More information will follow soon. For some preliminary results (i.e. papers and talks given on the basis of the new data), see downloads.

back to top