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The (extended) pragma-dialectical argumentation theory assumes that people engaged in argumentative discourse manoeuvre strategically. In argumentative reality, the strategic manoeuvring is carried out within specific argumentative activity types. In this paper it is argued that pragma-dialectics offers a fruitful approach to study political debate. The approach and its added value are discussed and illustrated on the basis of a specific type of political debate in a specific argumentative activity type: the plenary debate in the Second Chamber of Dutch Parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criminal sponsors of local amateur football clubs: The social role of criminals in local communities has so far received relatively little systematic academic attention. This applies more specifically to their involvement in philanthropic activities. This paper describes and analyses the role of dubious sponsors particularly in Dutch amateur football. Although it is difficult to estimate the scope of the problem, results indicate that criminal sponsorship is not incidental. It mainly concerns corporate criminals, persons involved in drug crimes and outlaw motorcycle gangs. The main goal is to enhance their public image. In most cases, their involvement in crimes or regulatory offenses is difficult to assess without a doubt, which complicates preventative measures. Our analysis shows several interacting factors which increase clubs' vulnerability to criminal infiltration: setting overambitious sportive goals; dependence on volunteers and a lack of formal integrity policies and internal compliance mechanisms; financial problems; and external pressures associated with the club's role as the 'pride' of the city, the village or the neighbourhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four decades of socio-legal research on regulatory enforcement in the Netherlands: Because of the sharp contrast between the law-in-the-books and the law-in-action regulatory enforcement has always been a popular subject in socio-legal research. This paper looks back at forty years of Dutch research on regulatory enforcement, using several key publications in this journal from each decade. First, it is argued that these Dutch studies reveal three general themes: this research can be seen as a time machine that takes us back to some of the most important social and political events of the past decades, these studies emphasize the crucial role of individual enforcement officials, and in everyday enforcement state law only plays a limited role. Next, this review also discusses some of the strengths and weaknesses of Dutch research. Most studies on regulatory enforcement are more interested in the role of the state than in the role of citizens and businesses. As a result, research focuses more on issues of effectiveness and less on questions of legitimacy. Finally, empirical research is seen as more important than theory development. Based on this overview, the author introduces a new research agenda for future research on regulatory enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapeau! (though Popper would not be happy): The paper highlights the contributions on judges and courts published in Recht der Werkelijkheid from 1980-2020. It addresses three general themes, namely communication in court, the consumers of the law and the professionals of the law, in view of the objective of the journal. The authors of the contributions, newcomers as well as well-known experienced researchers, come from different kind of branches like anthropology, psychology, sociology and history, utilizing quite different approaches, methodologies and theories. They elaborate on each other's work, methods, empirical findings and theoretical insights, in order to develop new research questions or to conduct research in different contexts. Although the critical-rational ideas of Popper has no many followers among the authors, lessons can be learned for policy makers, judges, lawyers and academics. By bringing the authors together, the journal has made an invaluable contribution to the debate among socio-legal researchers in the Netherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Towards new dividing lines on the Dutch labour market? A plea for policy feasibility: Recent developments on the Dutch labour market raise questions about the emergence of new social dividing lines. In this paper we discuss two cases. Both address labour market disadvantages which can easily deepen and sharpen with unchanged policies. The first case shows that there are groups that are less able to respond to the defined trends in the labour market due to a lack of education or disabilities. In the second case we focus on the question of sustainable employability as such that creates dividing lines. A first conclusion from our contribution is that a thorough analysis of existing dividing lines in the labour market is crucial for effective policy, but that knowledge about deepening old and creating new dividing lines is at least as relevant. A second conclusion is that the outlined assumptions in policies around self-reliance of, for example, people with a disability or the possibilities of employers to realize sheltered work and to focus on retraining, for example outside working hours, are not always realistic. Much more will have to be done to match the real possibilities of people and organizations to achieve this. Financial, but also organizational and personal. The motivations and behaviors of employees, employers and educational authorities appear to be very relevant explanatory factors in practice, which are often not sufficiently taken into account. Recent experiences with the Participation Act and lifelong learning show us that. More interaction is needed in the coming years between research, policy and the practice of the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At this moment, germline genetic testing is rarely requested in patients with prostate cancer. However, a breast cancer gene mutation is frequently detected in men with metastasized prostate cancer (mainly in BRCA2). In this paper we propose criteria for genetic testing in prostate cancer. Genetic test results may have major implications for relatives who may take appropriate measures to prevent cancer or diagnose it at an early stage. It may also have direct relevance for the treatment of the patient. It is time to set up a new workflow enabling treating physicians to order a DNA test (mainstreaming of genetic testing). It calls for close collaboration between clinical geneticists and treating physicians, and adequate education of urologists, oncologists and specialized nurses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A proposal for a basic income system for the elderly: This paper lays out a proposal for a basic income system for the elderly. The proposed basic income allows elderly people to retire from the work place, or to keep on working (full time or part time). In the latter case employers are allowed to take part of the basic income into account in calculating the wages for their older workers. This characteristic makes employing older workers financially more attractive to employers. On the other hand, the basic income enables workers in physically and/or mentally challenging jobs, which are mostly low-paid jobs, to quit their job early. The effects on the government budget are calculated, based on different assumptions on the labour-participation effects of such a basic-income system. If the starting age of the basic income is 60 years and if the system incites older workers to increase their labour participation, introducing a basic income can have minor effects on the government budget. On the other hand, if the basic income has the same the labour-supply effects as the previous, but far more generous early-retirement schemes, the budgetary effects can be strongly negative. With a starting age of 65, however, positive budgetary effects can be obtained relatively easy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Belgian Dutch (BD) and Netherlandic Dutch (ND) are known to exhibit phonetic and lexical differences, but national variation in the syntax of Dutch has often been claimed to be quasi non-existent. This view is rooted in the fact that both laypersons and researchers are oblivious to national divergences in the grammar of Dutch (unless they are categorical and/or heavily mediatized), but also in the undisputed belief that BD and ND are different surface manifestations of 'the same grammatical motor'. As a result, only a few syntactic phenomena have hitherto been shown to be sensitive to national constraints. In this paper we illustrate a computational bottom-up approach (pioneered in Bannard & Callison-Burch 2005) to cast the net as widely as possible. Building on statistical machine translation and a parallel corpus of Dutch translations of English subtitles, we identify plausible mappings between English n-grams and their Dutch translations. We do this in order to obtain paraphrases, i.e., stretches of interchangeable Dutch text that carry approximately the same meaning. In a first case study, we found corroborating evidence among the discovered paraphrases for many syntactic variables that have previously been attested in Dutch, including complementizer variation, existential er-variation, word order phenomena, and inflection variation. Crucially, we also discovered a number of alternations we had not anticipated as interesting variables. In order to detect national constraints on the newly found variables, we carried out a second experiment with a smaller corpus of Belgian and Netherlandic subtitles: the two variables we investigated in this light - deictic strength variation and subordination variation - did indeed manifest national sensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we revisit earlier analyses of the distribution of er 'there' in adjunct-initial sentences to demonstrate the merits of computational upscaling in syntactic variation research. Contrary to previous studies, in which major semantic and pragmatic predictors (viz. adjunct type, adjunct concreteness, and verb specificity) had to be coded manually, the present study operationalizes these predictors on the basis of distributional analysis: instead of hand-coding for specific semantic classes, we determine the semantic class of the adjunct, verb, and subject automatically by clustering the lexemes in those slots on the basis of their 'semantic passport' (as established on the basis of their distributional behaviour in a reference corpus). These clusters are subsequently interpreted as proxies for semantic classes. In addition, the pragmatic factor 'subject predictability' is operationalized automatically on the basis of collocational attraction measures, as well as distributional similarity between the other slots and the subject. We demonstrate that the distribution of er can be modelled equally successfully with the automated approach as in manual annotation-based studies. Crucially, the new method replicates our earlier findings that the Netherlandic data are easier to model than the Belgian data, and that lexical collocations play a bigger role in the Netherlandic than in the Belgian data. On a methodological level, the proposed automatization opens up a window of opportunities. Most important is its scalability: it allows for a larger gamut of alternations that can be investigated in one study, and for much larger datasets to represent each alternation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In The Netherlands, around 80 castle ruins are preserved. In 1997, a book was dedicated to the castle ruin. A year later, one of the authors of this paper investigated castle remains as part of a historical geographical inventory. In 2012, the Dutch State Heritage Agency wrote a practical guide for the conservation and development of castle ruins. In this article, the authors describe the development of ruins in the past 20 years. They tried to investigate the development of the castle ruins since the late nineties and tried to categorize this. Rebuilding of the castle, partly or totally, appeared in almost 10% of all ruins. In other cases, there was attention for the touristic infrastructure around the ruin. In most cases however (68%), the ruins stayed more or less intact, with sometimes careful consolidation or restoration. Sometimes, the surroundings of the ruin changed dramatically with the development of housing, infrastructure or other forms of urbanization. In other examples, historical gardens were restored or reconstructed. There are however several plans for the rebuilding or reconstruction of ruins. These plans often provide the new castle with functions, from wedding location to hotel or office-space. This could be a good development for castles destroyed relatively short ago, i.e. in the Second World War or in de postwar period. Many ruins are however destroyed centuries ago. Given the limited amount of ruins in The Netherlands and the sometimes centuries old development of the landscape and the ruin itself, the authors plea for more attention for the castle ruins as such. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Dollard, a brackish embayment of the Ems estuary, German and Dutch fishermen used to go out on the tidal flats to collect shrimps and other fish caught in simple fykenets. German fishermen payed little attention to the since 1723 existing border. In 1911, Dutch fishery act came in force, limiting the German fishers to their territory. This paper describes how fishermen and authorities initially maintained their positions, but after some time reached a conditional compromise. After 1945, the conflict faded away due to the mechanization of shrimp fishing and nature protection measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings a cross-cultural analysis of opening and closing rituals and routines in Dutch and Flemish tourist offices, from a Politeness Theory perspective. On the basis of a corpus of 200 interactions it reveals, apart from some general comparable tendencies, quite different communicative habits in both neighbouring regions. The differences point in the direction of more formal institutional interactions in the Flemish tourist offices in comparison with the Dutch interactions. More specifically, Dutch interactions appear to be less formal, show a higher level of freedom with respect to the organisation of the opening and closing sequences and attach more importance to the relational work between the speech participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While most early research on so-called Poldernederlands 'Polder Dutch' (Van Bezooijen 1999; Van Bezooijen & Van den Berg 2001) finds differences in perceptions between this supposedly substandard variety and Standard Dutch, this paper aims to demonstrate that present-day language users do not distinguish between the two varieties (anymore). Two combined matchedguise experiments show that non-linguists are unable to name the variety and that they do not score them differently on a large number of evaluative scales. The results suggest the end of Polder Dutch as a perceptually separate variety, and the absorption of its most marked feature, viz. the lowering of /ei/ to /ai/ into Standard Dutch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to shed light on article omission in Moroccan Flavored Dutch (MFD), a language variety in which Moroccan linguistic material (mainly Berber and Arabic) is combined with Dutch. It is well-known that MFD speakers are often inclined to omit articles in nominal phrases, and by doing so expressions contain so-called bare nouns (nominals without articles, i.e. definite or indefinite articles). This raises the question what triggers article omission in MFD. This study focuses on Dutch expressions that are embedded in MFD discourse and provides an innovative explanation for bare noun constructions. In particular, we argue that article omission in MFD is the result of an interplay between identity marking (article omission indexes the belonging to an ethnic subgroup in contrast to outsiders) and information structure. We show that there is a correlation between the syntactic position of a constituent and the type of article (i.e. definite or indefinite) that is omitted. The direct object position yields an indefinite, discourse-new interpretation of the bare nominal phrase. Since the neutral surface order of a Dutch main clause is subject-initial, the direct object position is canonically a focus position that is associated with new information. Therefore, the information structure of Dutch clauses seems to be a trigger for article omission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lawyers in Europe: Representation at the highest level? Research on the significance of representation indicates that lawyers contribute to positive outcomes of legal procedures not only by their substantive expertise but also by the relational expertise they bring. The latter involves understanding how to navigate the relationships involved in getting work done. In this paper these insights are used to investigate the highly specific and atypical practise of the preliminary reference procedure in the European legal system in order to reveal how lawyers deal with such an unexpected change of (legal) context. The empirical data, collected through semi-structured interviews with twenty-eight lawyers with past experience with the procedure, reveals the significant ways in which lawyers' positive contribution to such cases is undermined by their lack of both substantive and relational expertise in pleading a case before the European Court of Justice. The fact that such cases do not necessarily fall into the hands of the professionals best equipped to plead such disputes before the Court, and the inability of the less well-off parties in particular to hire further expertise, points in the direction of a disadvantaged position for this group of litigants in having their interest represented effectively at the European level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction to the special issue: three acts of increasing housing inequality Access to affordable, decent and secure housing is under increasing pressure in countries across the world, especially in burgeoning cities. This results in displacement, exclusion and increasing housing cost burdens. This theme issue consists of a collection of papers that approach inequality on urban housing markets from different angles. In this introduction to the special issue, we provide a framework to understand these various dimensions of inequality and their interconnectedness. We identify three scales of inequality: First, at the abstract level of housing systems, market developments and housing policies contribute to increasing housing costs and a reduction in affordable housing units. Second, at the urban level we identify increasing spatial segregation between populations as well as the intertwined trends of intensifying gentrification and suburbanization of poverty. Third, at the everyday level we can identify a loss of belonging among long-term residents of changing (gentrifying) neighbourhoods, while other residents may appreciate change. This also fosters the potential for conflict and poses new challenges to professionals dealing with families in situations of poverty. We argue that emerging inequalities at these different scales need to be considered as interconnected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher appreciation for mixed neighbourhood Residents of Rotterdam Zuidwijk about the inflow of new residents in their changing neighbourhood: This paper investigates the effects of neighbourhood change caused by the inflow of new residents in the still existing social rental stock in a post-World War II district next to the effects of the changing population as the result of urban restructuring. All residents, native Dutch and residents that belong to an ethnic minority, are critical about the occurring concentration of the latter in the existing rental housing stock. Loss of respectability and of shared norms and values of how to live in the neighbourhood play an important role in the critical stance of mostly older Dutch native residents. Residents with a migrant background criticize the concentration as a negative influence for their integration in Dutch society. Most residents support the idea of a mixed neighbourhood based on income and ethnicity. Restructuring by demolition of old social rental dwellings and new housing development for owner-occupiers is supported by most residents, based on the positive impact on the liveability. Urban restructuring has however not decreased the share of non-Dutch-native residents but it did bring more middle-class households. In the view of the residents these are 'decent people' as they have to work in daytime and do not linger at night in the streets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question how salience, i.e. the perceptual and cognitive prominence of language features (Kerswill & Williams 2002:63), can be studied and explained. Within language change studies, the concept of salience is often called upon to explain why certain language features are more prone to change than others, but empirical data to substantiate claims of salience are often lacking or non-convincing. In this paper, an overview is offered of ways in which salience can be studied empirically, building on the insights of recent perceptual dialectological research. It will be argued that a combination of techniques should be strived at, as this allows to combine the strengths of each approach. Subsequently, by offering an overview of existing hypotheses, the question will be addressed how salience can be explained. The formulated insights will be illustrated and tested by means of a multi-methodological salience experiment conducted in Flanders. This case study clearly shows (1) the advantage of an approach combining dialect imitation data and several types of interview data and (2) that salience is influenced by a variety of factors, such as the linguistic background of the listener and the context in which the feature occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a quasi-experimental study in two fifth grade classes, the effect of using the computer program ‘Snappet' on the growth in spelling ability was evaluated. Snappet consists of an application for use in primary education to instruct pupils in language, arithmetic and other subjects. Two classes with a total of 46 pupils participated in the study. Results show that pupils using the Snappet application showed a significantly smaller learning gain in spelling ability than students working with pencil and paper. It is concluded that teaching spelling with the Snappet application seems less efficient for the pupils in our sample than teaching spelling with pencil and paper and that further research is needed to ascertain what causes the negative effect of the application use with fifth grade pupils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beyond the polemic. Dutch neoliberalism as a subject of research.: The word neoliberalism has often been the object of fierce controversy in the Dutch public debate. Prominent intellectuals have equated neoliberalism with extremism and fundamentalism, with some going as far as calling it a 'totalitarian faith'. The opposite camp in the debate has argued that neoliberalism is largely a self-invented bogeyman of the left, a swearword used by critics to engage in an intellectual witch-hunt. Of course, neoliberalism is not the only social science term suffering from a polemical status. Common concepts such as populism, socialism, nationalism or conservatism have given rise to similar lasting disagreements and comparable accusations of their derogatory use. What does appear to be exceptional about neoliberalism in the Dutch debate, is that very few conceptual and historical studies have been published on the subject. While the word neoliberalism is commonly employed in Dutch mainstream social science, many scholars seem to use the term without much further qualification. This paper explores the controversy and looks for ways to proceed beyond it. Drawing on a recent wave of international scholarship, it outlines an ideational approach to neoliberalism. After tracing the origins of the term neoliberalism, it closes with a preliminary example of an ideational analysis of Dutch neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two decades there has been a debate about the question whether a simple clause can contain more than one prepositional object. In this paper, I argue that the underlying grammatical model plays a decisive role in opting for either one or two prepositional objects, as becomes clear in the discussion between Vandeweghe and Broekhuis. Moreover, following Vandeweghe, I claim that simple clauses indeed can contain two prepositional objects if the relationship of each of the two objects to the predicate is different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a closer collaboration between Dutch dialect syntax research on the one hand and the synchronic study of Standard Dutch grammar on the other. The central claim is that a thorough grasp of morphosyntactic variation in Dutch dialects can substantially enrich both the description and the analysis of Standard Dutch sentence structure. Three case studies are presented in support of this claim: Infinitivus pro Participio (IPP), the clausal template, and word order variation in verb clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vertrouwen in het notariële tuchtrecht: Ervaren procedurele rechtvaardigheid onder het notariaat This quantitative empirical research project describes how notaries evaluate disciplinary jurisdiction. Findings show that perceived procedural justice matters for notaries' trust in the disciplinary jurisdiction of their cases. For example, those respondents who had been involved in a disciplinary case themselves, rated the disciplinary judge with a 5.3 on a 10-point scale when procedural justice was perceived by them to be relatively low. In contrast, when respondents who had been involved in a disciplinary case perceived procedural justice to be relatively high they rated the disciplinary judge with 7.6 on the same 10-point scale. This suggests that perceived procedural justice matters among an interesting type of professionals (notaries) who are involved in an interesting procedure in their profession (a disciplinary evaluation of their professional handling) in which important decisions are made. The current paper can contribute to the development of a barometer of notary disciplinary law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart enforcement of social security law: Lessons from a national survey among welfare recipients in the Netherlands Using survey data from 1,300 welfare recipients in the Netherlands, this paper explores the effects of different enforcement styles in the field of social security law. Although most policy debates focus on punitive and persuasive enforcement, our findings suggest that both styles only play a limited role in explaining regulatory compliance. Our study also shows that the level of compliance among welfare recipients is related to their 'motivational postures' (Braithwaite 2003; 2009; 2011). While some of these 'postures' are shaped by elements of procedural justice, others are related to the perceived legitimacy of laws or to instrumental motives. Given these findings, we suggest that compliance with social security laws may not only depend on punitive or persuasive enforcement, but also on the degree in which regulatory enforcement is attuned to the individual characteristics of welfare recipients. Finally, these ideas are translated into several practical suggestions for the 'smart enforcement' of social security law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the tax register of the tenth penny from 1562 for the city of Amsterdam. It shows how this source is put into a geographic information system and which methodological choices have been made. Finally, the significance of this source for the knowledge of 16th-century Amsterdam is analyzed. 6,249 entries provide insight into the names, professions and genders of homeowners and tenants and into rental values (real and estimated) of houses, rooms, cellars and attics. Divided into quintiles, the poorest 40% of the population were housed in buildings that represented a mere 9.9% of the total rental value in the city. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the wealthiest 20% of the inhabitants occupied 60% of the total rental value. A pattern of residential segregation occurs when these rental values are entered into an interpolation map. The elite quarters are situated along the waterfront and the main streets. Direct access to the harbour, the market with the weighing house and town hall seems closely linked to the rich merchants and the elite's choice of location. South of Dam Square and along the Burgwallen, the average rent dropped drastically. At a macro level the centre of Amsterdam was occupied by the well to do, although at a meso level the middle classes and also lower-income groups resided in side streets and alleys in the best parts of town. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the results of a perceptions and attitudes study in the West-Flemish town Tielt are reported. Twenty teenagers were subjected to an interview, to gain insight in the way they evaluate intralingual language variation in Flanders and how they judge on the situational appropriateness of this variation. These interviews were analysed by means of a qualitative discourse-based approach. The results show that Standard Dutch is still the superior variety to these teenagers (even though they are not that competent in it), and it is pre-eminently appropriate for more formal situations, which points to the existence of a standard language ideology. At the same time, Standard Dutch is considered an ideal which is hardly ever achieved, and a variety which is unsuitable for everyday informal situations. Tussentaal (lit. 'inbetween language'), on the other hand, is the adolescents' default language, and is appropriate for everyday situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses fi scal developments in South Africa since earlier research (Rossouw, Joubert & Breytenbach 2014) showed that South Africa is heading for a "fi scal cliff". The earlier research found that government expenditure on social grants and civil service remuneration has become unsustainable. A continuation of trends recorded in these two expenditure items between 2008 and 2012 implied that all government revenue will be accounted for by these two items by 2026, hence the notion that South Africa faces a "fi scal cliff'. No income will be left for other expenditure items. Rossouw, Joubert and Breytenbach (2014) showed that the fi scal cliff could still be averted, but that the South African government should take timely steps to ensure such aversion. This paper reassesses the earlier analysis by expanding the research to cover data from the 2014 Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (2014 MTBPS) and Medium Term Expenditure Framework, the 2015 and 2016 Budgets and also covers subsequent developments. In its response to the research warning of a fi scal cliff facing South Africa based on data up to 2012, the South African government has given mixed signals. On the one hand, the budgeted increases in civil service remuneration and social grant expenditure have been contained over the budget period to 2017/18. On the other hand, Government executives make contrary statements, while actual remuneration adjustments for civil servants from 1 April 2015 exceed budgeted remuneration. However, employment growth has been contained. The Minister of Social Development responded to a question in Parliament by saying, inter alia, that "(t)he Department plans to extend the Child Support Grant (CSG) to the age of 21 and not 23. The main reason for extension is to align the CSG and Foster Child Grant (FCG). ... Should the policy be approved the extension of CSG to 21 will be introduced in phase format, starting with 18 - 19 in the fi rst year, 19 - 20 year old in the second year, and fi nally 20 - 21 year olds in the fi nal year. The extension will cost about R1,2 billion in the fi rst year, R2,2 billion in the second year and R3,3 billion in the third year. Overall, about 750 thousand children are set to benefit from extending the CSG" (National Assembly, 2015). We disagree with the Minister's assumptions, as our calculations show that the cost will amount to some R8 billion per annum at current values, once fully phased in. In civil society there is a general view that the government uses social grants to ensure support for the ANC government. Although this matter has not been the topic of extensive research, there is some evidence supporting this view. For example, in the run-up to the general election in South Africa in 2014, the ANC Member of the Executive Council for Agriculture in KwaZulu-Natal, Mr Meshack Radebe, stated that recipients of social grants who do not vote for the ruling ANC, steal from the government. It is disconcerting that Mr Radebe clearly confuses the ruling party and governmental activities. On 27 February 2013 the Minister of Finance stated that "... the old age grant means test should be phased out by 2016, accompanied by offsetting revisions to tax structures ..." (Republic of South Africa 2013a), implying that all South Africans over 60 would qualify for old age pensions. Such expansion implies that some 1,5 million more people of age 60 and older will qualify for an old age pension, amounting to additional expenditure of some R25 billion per annum at current values. However, the implementation date for this proposal was subsequently postponed. This paper analyses these aspects by means of an econometric model and two scenarios for South Afi rca's fi scal future. The fi nding is that the country can move from a fi scal cliff to a fi scal plateau if control is maintained over social grant expenditure and civil service remuneration growth, over and above other government expenditure. To the contrary, if the number of social grant recipients is increased and the historic growth trends in civil service remuneration and employement are maintained, a fi scal cliff is inevitable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of deficiencies in education in South Africa since 1994, voices have become louder in questioning the current education policy and delivery. This is an opportunity to reassess aspects of Bantu Education since 1952, especially the role of two key elements of Bantu education, namely community and parent involvement in the management of schools and vernacular as a medium of instruction. Current critics of education often refer to the dedication of teachers, parent involvement, the accountability of school management and performance of learners. These issues remind one of similar issues under Bantu education since 1952. This paper seeks to consider the role and contribution made under Bantu education to the foundations of community and parent involvement and mother-tongue instruction since 1952 in implementing a strategy for general education to black children. The paper takes as the point of departure the unsatisfactory broad condition of education to black children in South Africa by the early 1950s. The lack of a community driven consciousness towards the education of black children concerned the new National Party government at the end of the 1940s. Verwoerd approached the development of black communities from the perspective of empowerment of ethnic communities as the building blocks of a strategy for peaceful co-existence in southern Africa. By the 1950s African colonies were decolonised and the wave of African nationalism swept across the continent. These developments concerned white people in South Africa, especially the Afrikaner people, who sought to find a solution to seemingly inescapable racial tension and conflict. The National Party policy of separate development was envisioned as the broad framework to develop all black peoples in South Africa towards self-rule and prosperity in their own right. The prerequisite for development was education. The state introduced a system of Bantu education to enhance school attendance and the level of literacy and education of all black children. The paper explains the utilisation of key elements such as community and parent involvement and vernacular tuition to facilitate community buy-in into general education for black children. The paper addresses the development in two parts. Part one explains the context of the need for education to black children as well as the implementation during the first fifteen years. Part two explains the use of vernacular and parent involvement as well as the outcome of the system by 1990. Overall this contribution illustrates the progress with school enrolment, pass rates and performance towards tertiary education of black children from 1952 to 1990. The first part explains the complexity of the political idealism of the political leadership of the National Party wanting to manage black education as part of the macro scheme of separate development in South Africa, and the irreconcilable aspirations of the newly mobilised African majority seeking political power and independence in line with the developments in Africa. In the second part the contribution of vernacular in the provision of education to black children is outlined. The paper shows the agency of the Department of Bantu Education in developing the different vernaculars systematically in order to enhance the teaching and learning of advanced subject matter in schools and beyond. It also shows the support of communities in sending children to school to acquire formal education. The grand scheme of Bantu education was finally derailed because of the irreconcilability of the two political models. Bantu education did in spite of the rejection of the political model of separate development, succeed in enhancing black literacy and education. The paper does not claim to deny shortcomings of the system of Bantu education, nor that it addressed all the aspirations of the growing black elite, but it emphasises the key functionality of community and parent involvement and vernacular tuition (with systematic linguistic development to support such a policy) developed by bantu education, which might be assessed anew. These aspects of Bantu education may be revisited as building blocks to address shortcomings in the current education environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper discusses the VP-topicalization and the mirror effect. According to the Syntax of Dutch (Broekhuis & Corver 2016), these two tests can make a reliable, non-intuitive distinction between the postfield and the afterthought, as well as between the middle field and the postfield, which is often not noticeable in main clauses with only a finite verb. Although these tests seem valuable indeed, even to non-generative studies, there are also some limitations, and especially for prepositional phrases (PPs) which can be either placed in the middle field or in the postfield. Furthermore, this paper also aims at refining the motivations of extraposition, and more particularly extraposition of PPs. We therefore rely on empirical corpus-based research, which can fine-tune the theoretical framework of extraposition in the Syntax of Dutch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory paper outlines the different trends and movements that have in recent years led to a marked increase in the number of linguistic studies that combine a construction-based theoretical outlook on grammar with a dedicated interest in issues of synchronic and/or diachronic language variation. In addition, it gives an overview of the papers included in this thematic issue and links them with broader tendencies in the fields of cognitive linguistics and construction grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contribution to the research on the intersection of argumentation theory and computer science, in this paper a formal approximation is developed of the discussion model that is at the core of the pragma-dialectical analytical method. The aim of the project is to prepare a foundation for the development of software to support the pragma-dialectical analysis of texts. The formal approximation takes the form of a dialogue game for critical discussion. The dialogue game is systematically developed by starting from a simplified foundation to which more complexity is cumulatively added. In the current paper a basic dialogue game for critical discussion is presented to serve as the simplified foundation. After an introduction of the overarching research project, the simplifications are explained that form the starting point of the basic dialogue game. Next, the dialogue game rules for starting and ending a dialogue are specified, as well as the rules for the available moves, the sequences in which these can be made, and the resulting commitments. Finally, the dynamics of the basic dialogue game are illustrated by visualising the sequential structure, and by discussing an example dialogue in accordance with the rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a cognitive-functional account of the 'autonomous use'-- i.e., the use without a main verb elsewhere in the clause -- of the Dutch modals ('can'), ('may') and ('must'), as a deviance from their default auxiliary use. The study is corpus-based and takes a predominantly diachronic perspective on the subject matter. It reveals that the autonomous use is strongly increasing in frequency since Early New Dutch, and that it has distinct grammatical properties (a strong tendency towards intransitive uses with a deictic pronoun referring to a state of affairs as the subject) and semantic properties (featuring the full range of (inter)subjective meanings of the auxiliary uses, but with a strong tendency towards deontic modal and directive uses). These properties are clearly different from those of the original main verbal uses from which these modals have emerged in Old and Early Middle Dutch. The paper offers an explanation for the emergence and increasing importance of this new autonomous use in terms of the principle of iconicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses contexts in which modal verbs occur without a verbal complement. Firstly, I present the properties of Dutch modal verbs and conclude that modals are not strictly speaking auxiliary verbs on a par with hebben 'have' and zijn 'be', but rather lexical verbs selecting a verbal complement. However, they also occur without such verbal complement and the current paper gives an overview of the various types of such 'naked' modal verbs that can be distinguished with respect to their syntactic properties, as the syntactic differences between them lead to different analyses. Some cases involve ellipsis,more specifically PF-deletion (Modal Complement Ellipsis), while in other cases the modals directly select a small clause or nominal phrase for their complement. Although the type involving ellipsis receives most attention, the paper gives an overview of the different types and focuses on the question of whether or not the modal selects a silent verbal complement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modal chains in Afrikaans Sequences of two or more modal auxiliaries in one clause are found in most Germanic languages and varieties, as in Danish, for instance (example and gloss by Brandt 1999:126): Nar jeg kommer i skole vil jeg ikke gide skulle kunne laese latin. When I get to school will I not bother should could read Latin An Afrikaans example would be: Jy sal vinniger moet kan werk. You. SG will quicker must can work "You will have to be able to work more quickly." The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the ordering of Afrikaans modals adhere to a general principle or is constrained in some way. The sequencing of a modal such as kan "can", on the one hand, and of modals with an epistemic (or evidential) function, on the other, may be indicative of such a principle. So is the fact that the modal sal "will" - and similarly Dutch zullen "will" - conventionally occupies the first position. Cognates of the modal kan "can" typically occupy the last position in the chain in various Germanic languages. This modal ascribes a fixed attribute, expressed by the predicate, to the sentential subject. A modal used in epistemic function, e.g. kan "can" in Ben kan 'n Boeing moet vlieg om die werk te kry. Ben can a Boeing must fly to the work to get "Ben may be required to fly a Boeing if he is to get the job." evaluates the probability of the entire proposition and therefore has no special relationship to the sentential subject. This also goes for certain usages of sal "will" and its preterite sou "would", such as prediction, hypotheticals, future tense, and evidentiality as expressed by sou "would": Ben sou 'n vlieënier wees. Ben would a pilot be "Ben is said to be a pilot." There is a sharp functional contrast between epistemic moet "must, should", where a relationship with the sentential subject is completely lacking, and kan "can" when expressing a subject-internal ability, as in Ben moet Boeings kan vlieg. Ben must Boeings be.able.to fly "Ben is expected to have the ability to fly Boeings." While in the case of kan the modal source derives from the sentential subject itself, the modal source related to moet typically has an external nature. In the course of the utterance, i.e. from a discursive point of view, the role assigned to the subject changes: while Ben at first only has a thematic role in relation to moet, it comes to assume a more agentive role in relation to kan. If wil "want to" + kan "can" were to constitute the chain, the modal source remains internal to the subject: it is not fully implemented in the case of wil (i.e. is inchoative), but forms a fixed attribute in the case of kan (i.e. is perfective). In a moet "must" + kan "can" sequence there is both a progression from external to internal source of modality and from inchoative to perfective aspect. In regard to possible orders of modals in chains, it is hypothesized that the position of a particular modal in a chain is a function of the strength of the link forged between the sentential subject and its predicate by the modal in question, where "strength" is defined by the extent to which the source of modality is identical with or internal to the subject and the extent to which the realisation of the source of modality is in the process of coming into effect (inchoative) or has been realised (perfective). While the default assumption in the case of Ben vlieg "Ben is flying" would be factual, the addition of kan, as in Ben kan vlieg "Ben can fly" renders the act of flying counterfactual, and the further addition of moet, as in Ben moet kan vlieg "Ben should be able to fly" in turn renders the ability expressed by kan counterfactual. The factuality expressed by the rightmost verb is therefore cancelled (relativised) by every modal added to the left. A combination of the functional and aspectual relationship of the subject to the modal verb it controls would give rise to the order in Table 1. The actual occurrence of the predicted chains was empirically checked with reference to the Taalkommissiekorpus 1.1 and other sources. The search was restricted to non-negative sequences with two root3 modals, with no clause boundaries between them. Out of 15 predicted orders, such as sal moet, moet wil and behoort te kan, eight were attested. However, only one example was found of non-predicted (or converse) root orders such as kan moet and wil mag. The hypothesis is therefore confirmed in general. However, a number of non-occurrences of predicted orders still require an explanation, e.g. the fact that behoort (te) "ought to" was only followed by kan/kon "can, could", and mag "may" only preceded by sal/sou "will, would". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fallen heroes of business and public office. The 'fall from grace' in white-collar crime: In criminology, it is generally assumed that the high social status of white-collar offenders prevents them of being targeted by criminal law enforcement. But when they do, they suffer greater social and economic damage because of this high social status. Empirical research on the consequences of criminal law enforcement and conviction for white-collar offenders is scarce, and limited to the US and the UK. This paper used biographies of convicted former executives in business and public office in the Netherlands, to analyse these consequences and the process of the 'fall from grace' of white-collar offenders. The consequences are described in four life-domains: health, the private sphere, the occupational sphere and the social sphere. The results show that Dutch executives, in line with findings for the Anglo-American white-collar offenders, experience status degradation and suffer much collateral damage of criminal law enforcement. After the initial horror of imprisonment, they endure prison life fairly well. Individual competences and remaining social and economic capital enable them to return to normal life, although they cannot return to pre-conviction levels of social status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we review the phonological component of Dutch in Taalportaal, a website discussing the language systems of Dutch, Frisian and Afrikaans. We examine the website from the perspective of language variation, with special attention to (varieties of) Belgian Dutch. The discussion on Dutch phonology is comprehensive, including segmental as well as suprasegmental topics. Language variation is certainly not ignored, but seems to be dealt with in a rather ad hoc way. This is linked to the fact that Taalportaal takes 'the Dutch standard variety as it functions in the Netherlands' as its starting point, rather than giving equal attention to the three national language varieties, being Dutch Dutch, Belgian Dutch and Surinamese Dutch. In three case studies - on diphthongs, voice assimilation and vowel reduction - we show that there are interesting differences between Dutch and Belgian Dutch varieties which are not yet discussed on the website. We therefore plead for the addition of a critical reflection on the position of language variation in Taalportaal (and on the question which variation to include or to leave aside), and for taking the pluricentric character of Dutch as a starting point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how the phonologies of Dutch, West-Frisian and Afrikaans are represented in Taalportaal, a digital grammar of the three West- Germanic languages. These languages have similar consonant inventories, but differ in the vowel phonemes that they use. The phonological processes and phonotactic restrictions that refer to laryngeal properties are comparable in the three languages, but for other processes and phonotactic restrictions, it is not quite clear in how far they occur in all three languages or in how far they are unique for one individual language. This part seems to be incomplete in Taalportaal. For Dutch, West-Frisian, and Afrikaans, we find different descriptions of word stress assignment and it is therefore difficult to find the underlying generalisations. Also, the part on phonological processes at morpheme boundaries and other cases of phonology-morphology interaction lack a full description in Taalportaal. Nevertheless, this platform will be highly appreciated by linguists and other researchers who are interested in the sound systems of the languages represented in Taalportaal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the morphological part of the Taalportaal website, which gives access to a comprehensive, scientific grammar of Dutch, Frisian and Afrikaans. More particularly, we investigate how separable verbs are dealt with in Taalportaal. We evaluate the structure of that part of the website, and try to find an answer to three questions regarding this type of verbs, viz. (i) what are separable verbs, (ii) what is their grammatical status and (iii) what are their semantic properties? By doing so, we are able to identify strengths and weaknesses of the Taalportaal website, which are related to consistency and accessibility of the information as well as to the quality of the illustrations and the explanation for non-native speakers. In general, we conclude that Taalportaal provides an introduction to Dutch morphology rather than giving an exhaustive overview of the different word formation possibilities in Dutch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The future of catholic migrant communities in the Netherlands depends on the broader social trends and their impact on religious communities. Four trends are discussed in this paper: general secularization that affects especially the mainline churches, enlargement of scale of organization that diminishes the parish commitment of members, the bricolage of religious behavior that implies that believers make choices about their commitment to one or more religious traditions, and finally the general debates about religion in post-secular society. These trends provide threats and opportunities to migrant communities, but also pose these for dilemmas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prepositions are so-called closed class words and are generally coined as function words. It is not correct, however, to consider prepositions as a homogeneous word class, even though structurally the preposition is always the head of a PP. To, for example, can have different functions: it can have a lexical function, as in the man is walking to the car, a subcategorized function, as in the man is listening to his wife, and a syntactic function, as in the man is giving flowers to his wife. In this paper, we will present the data of a study from the 1980s, completed with more recent spontaneous speech data, to the production and comprehension of prepositions by individuals with a lexical deficit or grammatical deficit due to brain damage. The results indicate that there is empirical evidence for a distinction within the class of prepositions on the basis of their lexical and grammatical characteristics and, hence, that the general statement that all prepositions are function words is not justified. The use of prepositions with a lexical and subcategorized function is compromized in individuals with a lexical impairment, whereas individuals with a grammatical deficit encounter problems with prepositions with a grammatical function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares two Marxist biographical monographs on Dutch 19th century writer Multatuli, by J. Saks and F.W. Driessen, and interprets the differences between their respective approaches in relation to conflicting tendencies within Marxism. Whereas the former adheres to an objectivist (or determinist) strand in Marxist cultural analysis, the latter implicitly relies on a Lukácsian conception of realism and a subjectivist plea for political commitment. In examining these studies and comparing them to Dik van der Meulen's authoritative biography of Multatuli this article aims to reflect on both Multatuli's afterlife in the Dutch socialist movement and the relationship between Marxist literary analysis and the biographical approach to literary studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is little known on settlement negotiations during civil lawsuits in the Netherlands. Settlement negotiations take place during a (suspension of the) public court hearing. The public hearing takes place in the majority of the civil lawsuits in the Netherlands. The qualitative empirical research I am carrying out, intents to give insight in these settlement negotiations and questions what lawyers actually do during these negotiations. The research intents to contribute to the effectiveness of settlement negotiations in the sense that (i) the number of settlements increases and of compulsory settlements decreases, (ii) the perceived fairness of procedure and outcome in settled cases increases, and (iii) the number of resolved underlying conflicts increases. I expect to find that most settlement negotiations can be qualified as distributive negotiations (as opposed to integrative negotiations). Furthermore, based on a literature review on biases and heuristics I hypothesized that settlement could be more effective than they actually are. The paper touches on the methodology and on both hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations and writers striving to use plain language could benefit from evidence-based pieces of writing advice. At present, recommendations for producing comprehensible texts are often based on experience with the target group and/or common-sense logic, while previous effect studies have shown that applying such recommendations does not necessarily improve texts. In this paper we show the complexity of translating research results into evidence-based advice for comprehensible writing by discussing three dilemmas. First, we discuss the selection of a reliable evidence base, with a focus on the selection of measures that objectively reflect comprehension. Second, we discuss the generalizability of research results to types of texts, tasks, modalities, and readers other than the ones actually studied. Third, we address the complexity of turning conflicting results and subtle interaction effects into valid and nuanced but still comprehensible and applicable recommendations. We will argue that, due to its complexity, this ‘translation' needs to be made by linguists instead of laymen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a project on Financial Communication, research has been done in the domains of pensions, mortgages and debt collection. This paper presents the results of three studies, concentrating on the pension domain. In the first study we reflect upon mandated disclosure. We demonstrate that the legal context for pension communication is far more detailed than for the other domains. There is a specific law on pension communication with detailed instructions for different documents. Pension organizations consider these obligations as a hindrance for effective and tailored pension communication. In the second study we tested whether participants could locate and comprehend specific information in two versions (original and revision) of three pension documents. We also measured the level of financial literacy of the participants. We demonstrate that in one case study the revision of the document resulted in a reverse Matthew-effect: participants with lower levels of financial literacy performed better in finding information using the revised document compared to the original. This reverse effect is labelled as a Martinus-effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1345, an Antwerp poet finished the Dietsche doctrinale, a rhymed Middle Dutch translation of Albertanus of Brescia's De amore et dilectione Dei et proximi et aliarum rerum et de forma vitae (1238). Like the Latin original, the Dietsche doctrinale was a great success. Ten complete manuscripts of the work have been preserved, as well as fragments of twenty more manuscripts, a printed edition from 1489, and three German translations. Until now, scholars have studied the Dietsche doctrinale from the author's perspective, focussing on authorship, meaning, and the intended use and reception. This paper combines an analysis of the author's text with a study of the actual manuscripts in which the text is found, with the aim of acquiring a better understanding of the reception of this popular text. Also included are the printed edition from 1489 and booklists. The title Dietsche doctrinale and the notion of leringhe form the starting point of my discussion. Leringhe refers to the world of education and learning, but in the Dietsche doctrinale it is also linked to the attainment of practical skills (artes mechenicae). The author presents himself as a teacher, and addresses children, adults, and educated men who can teach others. Ownership marks and booklists show that the Dietsche doctrinale was not only read by lay people from the urban administrative upper class, but also by clerics and religious men and women. The text was intended for both individual reading and aural reception. Apparently, some manuscripts were designed for public reading or educational use. The Dietsche doctrinale might not only have been used for private study or home teaching, but also by clerics for the moral instruction of the laity and in the context of vernacular education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the results of a salience experiment in Flanders are reported. 80 informants were subjected to a qualitative interview in which they were asked to evaluate seven audio recordings, spoken in several regional versions of tussentaal (literally 'in-between-language') or in Standard Dutch. The informants had to judge which language variety was spoken in the recordings and they had to motivate on which features they based their judgment of the language used. This paper aims to show that research on salience has almost exclusively focused on whether a linguistic item is salient or not and that not enough attention has been paid to interpersonal variation in salience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both Dutch and Afrikaans display three periphrastic progressive constructions, which indicate that an action is going on at a particular moment of time: (i) a prepositional construction with aan het/ die + zijn/wees, (ii) a construction with posture verbs (zitten/staan/liggen) with a to-infinitive (Dutch) or a coordinating verb (Afrikaans) and (iii) a construction with bezig/besig followed by a to-infinitive (see, among others, Bertinetto, Ebert & De Groot 2000; Breed 2012; Donaldson 1993). This paper focuses on the latter of these constructions, which until now has only received little attention in the grammatical literature. In the instances in (1) below, the bezig/besig-construction is used to express that a volitional action is/was going on for a certain amount of time. (1a) Sowat elf brandweerwaens was tot in die vroeë oggendure nog besig om die brand te blus. (Die Burger, 12/01/1998) lit. "About eleven fire engines were busy extinguishing the fire until long into the night." (1b) Brandweerlieden zijn druk bezig een man te bevrijden uit de fel gehavende personenwagen. (Gazet van Antwerpen, gva2) lit. "The firemen are busy rescuing a man from the heavily damaged car." However, progressive besig can also be used to express ongoing processes which do not involve a volitional agent - as shown in (b), Dutch bezig is hardly an option in such contexts. (2a) 'n Groot chaos is besig om onder sy neus te ontwikkel. (Die Burger, 06/02/1998) (2b) ??Een grote chaos is bezig om zich voor zijn neus te ontwikkelen. lit. "A great chaos is busy developing right under his very nose." (3a) Haar nuutste album is besig om goed te verkoop. (Die Burger, 06/02/1998) (3b) ??Haar nieuwste album is bezig om goed te verkopen. lit. "Her newest album is busy selling well." The aim of this paper is to examine the use of this construction in detail from the perspective of the grammaticalization theory, based on corpus data from six Dutch and two Afrikaans newspapers. Firstly, we show that besig in Afrikaans is used more often in a progressive construction than Dutch bezig. As is well-known, grammaticalization goes hand in hand with an increasing frequency (see, among others, Bybee 2003). Secondly, we show that the besig-progressive is more broadly applicable semantically than bezig in Dutch (host-class expansion, Himmelmann 2004). A semantic categorization of the types of verbs and subjects that are used with the construction indicates that the besig-progressive is used more frequently with verbs and subjects which seem incompatible with the basic "busy, acting"-semantics of the adjective besig: process verbs and inanimate subjects. It appears that besig has bleached from its etymological, "busy activity" meaning and is used as an aspectual marker denoting that something is going on, without focusing on the (complexity of the) activity, while Dutch bezig has to a large extent retained its "activity" semantics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses contexts in which modal verbs occur without a verbal complement. Firstly, I present the properties of Dutch modal verbs and conclude that modals are not strictly speaking auxiliary verbs on a par with hebben 'have' and zijn 'be', but rather lexical verbs selecting a verbal complement. However, they also occur without such verbal complement and the current paper gives an overview of the various types of such 'naked' modal verbs that can be distinguished with respect to their syntactic properties, as the syntactic differences between them lead to different analyses. Some cases involve ellipsis, more specifically PF-deletion (Modal Complement Ellipsis), while in other cases the modals directly select a small clause or nominal phrase for their complement. Although the type involving ellipsis receives most attention, the paper gives an overview of the different types and focuses on the question of whether or not the modal selects a silent verbal complement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a cognitive-functional account of the 'autonomous use' - i.e., the use without a main verb elsewhere in the clause - of the Dutch modals kunnen ('can'), mogen ('may') and moeten ('must'), as a deviance from their default auxiliary use. The study is corpus-based and takes a predominantly diachronic perspective on the subject matter. It reveals that the autonomous use is strongly increasing in frequency since Early New Dutch, and that it has distinct grammatical properties (a strong tendency towards intransitive uses with a deictic pronoun referring to a state of affairs as the subject) and semantic properties (featuring the full range of (inter)subjective meanings of the auxiliary uses, but with a strong tendency towards deontic modal and directive uses). These properties are clearly different from those of the original main verbal uses from which these modals have emerged in Old and Early Middle Dutch. The paper offers an explanation for the emergence and increasing importance of this new autonomous use in terms of the principle of iconicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the DiDDD-project (Diversity in Dutch DP Design) which ran at Utrecht University from 2005-2010 and was funded by NWO. The project investigated the morpho-syntactic variation in the nominal domain of Dutch dialects, Frisian dialects and older varieties of Dutch. Its purpose was to describe the variation within the nominal domain, to analyze it within the framework of generative grammar and to identify the parameters within this framework that facilitate the attested linguistic variation. The data from this project are publically available as part of the Mimore-project. This article can therefore be seen as background information for this project. This paper discusses both the practical-methodological aspects of the project (methodology of data collection and storage) as well as the descriptive-theoretical dimensions by discussing the most important empirical generalizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]