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Abstract

In this article, we investigate Van der Horst’s (2013) hypothesis that Dutch (like other European languages) underwent a diachronic process of ‘crystallization’, i.e. tighter lexical organization, at the expense of freely combinatorial syntax, in the last centuries. Analysing the collocational association strength in lemma and part-of-speech trigrams using the Δ measure and entropy (), we find quantitative support for the idea that Dutch has crystallized in the period under investigation (1850–1999). Further enquiry into the diachrony of the lexicon by means of Kullback-Leibler Divergence () suggests that the reason might be what Baayen et al. (2017) have called the ‘Ecclesiastes Principle’, namely a lexical expansion that puts a cap on the combinatorial syntax. This lexical expansion is probably a response to the increasing specialization and cultural turnover in late modern times. The slow change in the syntax of Dutch shows how languages adapt to their cultural niche.

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2026-08-18
2026-09-09

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The crystallization of language over time
John Benjamins ; https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.24105.det
/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.24105.det
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keywords: ΔP ; entropy ; linguistic niche hypothesis ; crystallization ; Dutch

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