Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 6, Issue 2, 2017

Both in Dutch and to a lesser extent in German, pronouns can agree with a noun’s lexical gender or be chosen on semantic grounds. It is well-known that for non-human antecedents, Dutch seems to be shifting towards a more semantic system, via a process labelled ‘hersemantisering’, in which gender marking on the pronoun increasingly depends on the degree of individuation of the antecedent. This article presents a psycholinguistic investigation on how German learners of Dutch as a foreign language (NVT), who distinguish between three nominal genders in their native language, handle the Dutch gender system, which has largely lost its three-way nominal gender, and in which resemanticisation has progressed significantly. More specifically, a speeded grammaticality judgement task (GJ) was used in conjunction with a sentence completion task to examine the German NVT-learners’ perception as well as the production of pronominal gender in the L2 (in this case Dutch). It was found that German learners of Dutch judge more combinations of pronouns and their antecedents to be grammatical than they actually use. However, unlike in Flanders and the Netherlands, grammatical gender still trumps semantic gender, which we explain as a L1 transfer effect. In addition, the role of participants’ proficiency in Dutch is discussed.

This paper addressed the question how the use of Dutch and the regional languages Frisian or Limburgish differ on Twitter and which patterns in language choice can be identified. Previous quantitative studies ( Jongbloed-Faber, Van de Velde, Van der Meer & Klinkenberg, 2016 ; Nguyen, Trieschnigg & Cornips, 2015 ; Trieschnigg, 2015 ) have already shown that people in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Limburg tweet in Frisian or Limburgish respectively, but most often in Dutch interspersed with some English. In this qualitative study, we compared the tweets from twenty twitterers in Friesland and Limburg who use both Dutch and Frisian or Limburgish regularly in order to get insight into their language use patterns. The following patterns in language use were identified: when a twitterer aims to maximise his/her audience, Dutch is regularly employed. However, as soon as an interpersonal, addressed tweet is formulated, Frisian or Limburgish is often used. General tweets in Dutch may therefore very well get a Frisian or Limburgish continuation. Another mechanism frequently found in responding tweets is following the language used in the original tweet, notwithstanding such a tweet was in Dutch or in a regional language. Finally, the data show that, although Twitter is a global medium which can be accessed at any time and any place provided that one has access to the needed technical equipment and Internet connection, twitterers sometimes construct localness i.e. what is perceived as local culture through using Frisian or Limburgish exclusively.

Previous studies on information-structural transfer in texts produced by Dutch advanced learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) have found that one of the defining features in learners’ writing is a marked use of initial adverbials. The present study investigates the effect of this hypothesized L1 interference on native speakers’ perceptions. In line with Rosén (2006) , it was hypothesized that the frequency and contextual use of clause-initial place adverbials in L1 Dutch EFL writing would lead native speakers of English to judge texts to be less coherent, continuous, and native-like than texts written by native speakers. Our qualitative and quantitative empirical study demonstrates that native speakers are not necessarily aware of initial adverbials and are more concerned with other elements of the text that influence cohesion and flow. This new perspective on information-structural transfer forms a starting point for further research into the communicative effect of interlanguage features. 1

Students who are proficient academic language (AL) users, achieve better in school. To develop students’ AL register teachers’ AL input is necessary. The goal of this study was to investigate the extent of AL features in the language input first and second grade teachers give their students in whole class mathematics instruction. Five key features could be distinguished: lexical diversity, lexical complexity, lexical specificity, syntactic complexity and textual complexity. Teachers used all features, but the amount in which they used them varied. While all teachers used lexical specific language when teaching mathematics, they did not use very complex language input. The academicness of teachers’ input was significantly higher in grade 2 than in grade 1 with respect to lexical diversity and lexical specificity. The input during explanation and discussion only differed with regard to textual complexity, which was higher during explanation.

Many studies in recent years identify and discuss Dutch ethnolects. Generally this work takes linguistic phenomena as directly reflective of speakers’ ethnic identity. But if ethnicity is an inherent speaker feature, the absence of white ethnolect descriptions is difficult to explain. In this paper, therefore, I wish to judge the appeal of the notion of ethnolect against its usefulness for explaining language use. I argue that ethnolect can usefully label everyday ethnicisations of language, but that such evaluations generally compress a more complex reality in which so-called ethnolectal features are recruited for other purposes than (un)marking one’s ascribed ethnicity. Crucial to unpacking this reality is the distinction of an intermediary step, the construction of interactional stance, between the use of linguistic features and their association with common-sense identity categories.

Studies have shown positive relationships between teachers’ language proficiency and children’s language development as well as between educators language-related knowledge and skills (language support competence) and children’s language development. This study is the first to investigate the relation between language proficiency and language support competences for the professional group of educators. It is hypothesized that language support competence increases with language proficiency in L1. In a cross-sectional study language-related knowledge, pedagogic skills and language proficiency of 42 educators in Germany were assessed with standardized tests. Correlation and regression analyses revealed a positive relationship between knowledge, language proficiency and educational factors, whereas pedagogic skills were explained to some extent by knowledge and the amount of professional education, but not by language proficiency. Results are discussed with respect to language support practices in early childhood education and current efforts to qualify educators lacking explicit linguistic knowledge and pedagogic skills for this task.