Language maintenance and
standardization in Frisian
Go with the flow (but row your own boat)
Eric Hoekstra & Arjen Versloot
Resilience and shift:
language change in the past
• Social factors
• Linguistic factors
Language maintenance:
language change in the future
• Social factors
• Linguistic factors
• Linguistic factors relevant for language
standardisation and education
Past and future
Learn from the past of the language …
… in order to shape its future.
Linguistic factors:
how to investigate
Frisian Language Corpus 1300-2000
Accessible but under construction
http://www.fryske-akademy.nl/tdb/
Linguistic change in the history of
Frisian under the influence of Dutch
• Which changes occurred?
• Why did the changes which occurred
occur?
• Why did many conceivable changes fail to
occur?
Why did the changes which
occurred occur?
• Which items in Frisian lost the competition
with Dutch?
• Which items in Frisian did not get
replaced?
Theory of language change
• Two items compete.
• One of them ‘wins’.
Change in a minority language
• Two items within Frisian compete.
• The item that is more similar to the
corresponding item in Dutch wins through
secondary activation.
What is secondary activation?
• Saying or hearing the Frisian word
FOARDIEL (=advantage) causes a
primary activation of the neural
representation of that word in the brain.
• It causes a secondary activation of items
similar to it, such as the Dutch word
VOORDEEL.
Experiencing or producing the
Dutch word VOORDEEL
Neural representation of Dutch VOORDEEL
is activated.
Neural representation of Frisian FOARDIEL
is secondarily activated.
Secondary activation of similar
items: which?
• Same meaning (synonyms, antonyms)
• Same form: rhymes, same suffix, same
prefix, same inflectional paradigm
• Similar words in other languages
Scheme of secondary activation for
Dutch singular VOORDEEL
• “Voordelen” (Dutch, plural, same
paradigm)
• “Foardiel” (Frisian, similar form, same
meaning)
• “Nadeel (Dutch, antonym, similar form)
Example Dutch VOORDEEL
• Frisian has two words roughly meaning
‘advantage’:
foardiel
fertuten
• Due to secondary activation by Dutch
voordeel, Frisian foardiel will win out
against Frisian fertuten.
Influence of Dutch on Frisian
Given two competing elements within
Frisian, the element that is more similar to
a corresponding Dutch item increases its
chance of survival through secondary
activation.
Several such cases from the history of
Frisian will be presented in the remainder
of this talk.
Competing suffixes
Frisian has two words meaning ‘wisdom’:
wizens
Dutch only has:
wiisheid
wijsheid
Dutch wijsheid supports Fr. wiisheid
Scheme of secondary activation:
Frisian
wizens
Dutch
<=
WIJSHEID
wiisheid
<=
Competition in Frisian influenced by Dutch!
Suffixes –ENS and –HEID compete:
Dutch –HEID supports Frisian -HEID
Frisian
wiisheid
healwiisheid
dwaasheid
krigelheid
wizens
healwizens
dwazens
krigelens
Dutch
wijsheid
dwaasheid
-
Most frequent item underlined and boldfaced
-HEID and –ENS in Frisian
Specifically, Frisian -HEID formations were
increasingly used if they were more similar
to Dutch -HEID formations.
By implication the semantically equivalent
competing -ENS formations were less
used in those cases.
(Versloot & Hoekstra 2011, ms)
Two types of competition
Competition between individual words.
Competition between classes of words:
all words in –HEID compete as a class
against all words in –ENS
(Words in –HEID share –HEID as a
similarity; the same for words in –ENS)
Another example of competition
between groups of words
Frisian-Dutch phonemic correspondence
Frequent:
Dutch /y(:)/  Frisian /u(:)/
Infrequent:
Dutch /y(:)/  Frisian /e(:)/
Frequent phonemic
correspondence
Dutch words in /y(:)/ correspond to Frisian
words in /u(:)/ in the 16-17th centuries.
Frisian
/lu:d/
/pust/
Dutch
/ly:d/
/pyst/
‘loud’
‘pimple’
Infrequent phonemic
correspondence
Dutch words in /y(:)/ correspond to Frisian
words in /e(:)/ in some rare cases.
Frisian
/hede/
/fest/
Dutch
/hyd/
/fyst/
‘hide’
‘fist’
The infrequent correspondence is
changed to fit the frequent one
/hede/ > /hu:d/
/fest/ > /fust/
Dutch /hyd/ ‘hide’
Dutch /fyst/ ‘fist
on the analogy of:
/lu:d/
/pust/
Dutch ly:d/ ‘loud’
Dutch /pyst/ ‘pimple’
Two types of competition/change
• Competition and change under the
influence of Dutch
• Competition and change within Frisian
itself without influence from Dutch
Irregular plural ‘geese’
• ‘This plural changed twice in the history of
Frisian
• The first change was not influenced by
Dutch but an autonomous development.
• The second was influenced by Dutch.
Irregular plural in Frisian before the
19th century
SG
PL
goes
gies
‘goose’
‘geese’
Assimilated to the frequent pattern
in the 19th century:
goes-guozzen
(exit gies)
following the frequent pattern with vowel
shortening and glide insertion:
koes-kuozzen
‘molar’
hoed-huodden
‘hat’
foet-fuotten
‘foot’
Change two (dialects)
• Goes is replaced with gâns from Dutch
gans.
• Plural is regular gânzen, without vowel
change.
• => This change is under the influence of
Dutch.
• => ‘Frisian’ pronunciation present with
plosive /g/ instead of Dutch fricative /x/.
Irregular verbs
Regularisation of irregular verbs in Frisian
takes place or fails to take place under the
influence of Dutch.
Similarity with Dutch protects
certain types from changing
Frisian klimme klom
Dutch
klimmen klom
(= to climb)
klommen
geklommen
More verbs belonging to this class remain
strong than expected due to their similarity
with Dutch (Versloot 2011).
Lack of similarity with Dutch leads
to increased rate of change
Frisian bliede
blette
blet
Dutch
bloeden bloedde gebloed
(= to bleed)
Verbs belonging to this class change
(become weak) faster than expected due to
their lack of similarity with Dutch.
Lessons 1
Changes within Frisian taking place under
the influence of Frisian itself should not be
resisted.
Lessons 2
Infrequent words and regularities must be
given up; they are doomed. Energy spent
in trying to maintain these is energy
wasted.
Lessons 3
All attention in language maintenance
should go to frequent words and
regularities.
Thank you for your attention on
behalf of Arjen Versloot and
myself.
aversloot@fryske-akademy.nl
ehoekstra@fryske-akademy.nl