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The Frisian arbitrary pronoun men is analysed here as a deficient pronoun (Cardinaletti & Starke 1996), since it does not allow of expansion of its projection by means of premodification, coordination or relativisation. Furthermore, men occurs adjacent to the tensed verb in main clauses and to the complementiser in embedded clauses. To explain these data, we suggest that men is case licensed in PF under adjacency by means of a head head relation, being deficient as a maximal projection. The relation between case and deficiency is further reflected in the deficient (or suppletive) morphological case paradigm of men. Evidence is presented that the paradigm of men in written Frisian originated in the 16th-17th centuries by suppletion of forms of the indefinite pronoun ien/jin ‘one’. Out of these arose the reflexive object form of the arbitrary pronoun men: jin, and as its reflexive jin thus truly became part of men’s paradigm.

This longitudinal study investigated to what extent the acquisition of cognates among bilingual children depends on the degree of cross-language similarity and intensity of exposure to the tested language, and whether children’s sensitivity to cognates with different degrees of cross-language similarity changes over time. For three consecutive years, 120 Frisian-Dutch bilingual children were tested on their Frisian receptive vocabulary. The sample was split into three groups that differed with respect to intensity of exposure to Frisian at home. In the receptive vocabulary task, cross-language similarity was systematically manipulated through four cognate categories, differing in their degree of overlap between Frisian and Dutch. The results showed a gradual cognate facilitation effect for children with a low intensity of exposure to Frisian. The higher the degree of cross-language similarity, the better their performance. This implies that the co-activation of the two languages depends on the degree of cross-language similarity. Over time, their performance improved the most on non-identical cognates with a cross-linguistic phonological regularity between Frisian and Dutch. This suggests that as they grow older, children with a low intensity of exposure to Frisian become better at recognizing regularities in the overlap of the Frisian and Dutch phonological systems.

Frisian is a minority language, taught at least one hour a week in primary schools. As a result, Frisian literature occupies a smaller position in the educational system than Dutch literature, since Dutch is the national language. This chapter discusses systematically the position of fiction and literature in the various types of education in primary schools, secondary schools, universities and courses for adults. Special attention is given to the way in which officially established attainment goals affect the end term requirements set for the final examinations.

This paper evaluates recent developments in the inflection of Frisian past participles and how to account for them with the aid of a model of morphological productivity. In Frisian, there are two alternative types of past participles which both have their origin in the South-western dialect region of Fryslân, but of which only one is spreading productively across the whole language area. The natural existence of contact between the original dialect region and the rest of the language area, in theory enables both alternative types to spread. Also, both of them can be described with rules. We will therefore argue that the reason for the spread of only one of the alternatives is due to the productivity of its underlying rule. Specifically, we will argue that the Tolerance Principle (Yang, Linguis Var Yearb 5(1):265–302, 2005, The price of linguistic productivity: how children learn to break the rules of language. MIT Press, 2016) predicts both the difference in productivity between the two alternatives, as well as the productive spread of one of the alternatives outwards from the dialect region in which it originated.

Closely related languages share cross-linguistic phonological regularities, such as Frisian -âld [ͻ:t] and Dutch -oud [ʱut], as in the cognate pairs kâld [kͻ:t] – koud [kʱut] ‘cold’ and wâld [wͻ:t] – woud [wʱut] ‘forest’. Within Bybee’s (1995, 2001, 2008, 2010) network model, these regularities are, just like grammatical rules within a language, generalizations that emerge from schemas of phonologically and semantically related words. Previous research has shown that verbal working memory is related to the acquisition of grammar, but not vocabulary. This suggests that verbal working memory supports the acquisition of linguistic regularities. In order to test this hypothesis we investigated whether verbal working memory is also related to the acquisition of cross-linguistic phonological regularities. For three consecutive years, 5- to 8-year-old Frisian-Dutch bilingual children (n = 120) were tested annually on verbal working memory and a Frisian receptive vocabulary task that comprised four cognate categories: (1) identical cognates, (2) non-identical cognates that either do or (3) do not exhibit a phonological regularity between Frisian and Dutch, and (4) non-cognates. The results showed that verbal working memory had a significantly stronger effect on cognate category (2) than on the other three cognate categories. This suggests that verbal working memory is related to the acquisition of cross-linguistic phonological regularities. More generally, it confirms the hypothesis that verbal working memory plays a role in the acquisition of linguistic regularities.

This paper addresses the question to what extent morphological blocking in language is a rule-based phenomenon. We argue that language users do not operate with a blocking rule, but that a form preference emerges as a result of cognitive selection mechanisms in a neural network of linguistic information. The actual target form develops its own token frequency in a probabilistic process, known as Preferential Attachment. After some time and some generations, one form will develop a nearly absolute dominance with its own local token frequency. This model implies that there is no blocking as an active negative action, but only a local lemma specific frequency, built up by a stochastic Preferential Attachment process, which favours one of the theoretically possible forms and, as a consequence, ‘suppresses’ the other options.

The synchrony/diachrony issue must be sidestepped, since the ultimate question to be studied is: which psycholinguistic limitations does the human brain impose on its representation of language. These limitations involve frequency and analogy, which are the cause of ill-understood chaos-theoretic patterns of order. In particular, analogy must be formalised, and its interaction with frequency must be further investigated.

The indeclinable relative particle of Old Germanic could be used for at least 3 syntactic functions: for the relativisation of (1) subjects, (2) objects and (3) prepositional complements, for example in Old English and Old Frisian. This is no longer the case in Modern English, Modern Dutch, Modern German or Modern Frisian. It is pointed out that the indeclinable relative particle retained all three functions in Frisian until around 1900, when it stopped being used for the relativisation of subjects and objects. All three functions were retained at least until the middle of the 20th century in the Dutch dialects of Marken and Volendam, which both border on the lake IJsselmeer as does the province of Fryslân. The indeclinable relative particle has been pushed back in Frisian by the declinable relative particle, a process which has its roots in Old Frisian. It is shown that the declinable relative particle (DY, DAT in Frisian) has gradually taken over the function of subject and object relativisation. Historically, the indeclinable relative particle developed into the R-pronoun (Frisian DÊR), and it is still used to relativize prepositional complements in Modern Frisian, thus retaining its third syntactic function.

Taalportaal. A new scientific grammar of Dutch and Frisian (and Afrikaans) We describe the Taalportaal, a new comprehensive on-line scientific grammar of Dutch and Frisian.

Kort interview met focus op taalkunde van minderheidstalen in Europa.

Pyrolysis oil originating from biomass has the potential to replace ‘crude fossil oil’ and to produce fuels and chemicals in a more sustainable way. The favorable perspective of fast pyrolysis as biomass pre-treatment step is directly related to the production of a liquid as main product and the significantly higher density of the oil (~1200 kg/m3) compared to the original biomass (~150 kg/m3). The resulting transportation and storage benefits leads to the concept of small decentralized fast pyrolysis plants for production of oil to be transported to a central processing plant. Despite the large number of studies, the understanding of the chemical reactions and physical processes occurring in the fast pyrolysis process is limited. The same holds for the influence of reaction conditions on the yield and composition of the products. Alleged process requirements to obtain high oil yields are recently challenged in literature, based on experimental evidence. At the moment information to make a reliable science based process design of a pyrolysis unit is lacking. This thesis provides clarification in two areas: First, the initial decomposition reactions in the converting biomass in combination with the transport out of the particles of the decay fragments are studied. Secondly, the homogeneous and heterogeneous reactions of the vapors (including aerosols) are investigated.

Comparability of results is an important feature of the measurements carried out for official controls purposes. In the area of food contact materials and articles comparability of results is dependent on the availability of samples representative of a consignment, the type of exposure and the test conditions used as well as on the performance of the method of analysis. These guidelines contain practical information on sampling, migration testing and methodologies for the analytical determination of primary aromatic amines and of formaldehyde. These guidelines were developed specifically in the context of the Regulation (EU) No 284/2011 laying down specific conditions and detailed procedures for the import of polyamide and melamine plastic kitchenware originating in or consigned from [the] People's Republic of China and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China. These guidelines have been prepared by the European Union Reference Laboratory in collaboration with its EU official Network of National Reference Laboratories and have been endorsed by the European Commission competent service DG Health and Consumers (DG SANCO) and its network of Member State Competent Authorities. They are primarily addressed to official control laboratories, national reference laboratories and third party laboratories. The sampling strategy is addressed to the points of first introduction of import goods in the EU.

The award-winning Syntactic Atlas of Dutch Dialects, 'Syntactische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten, abbreviated as SAND (volume 1) features the latest results of a dialect survey spanning The Netherlands and Dutch (Flemish) speaking Belgium. On the one hand, I will point out research which can be done with the material that has already been collected within the SAND project, but which must be dug out and analysed. An example of this type of research involves testing the hypothesis of Hoekstra & Smits (1997, 1998) on complementiser agreement (section 1.2). On the other hand, I will point out research which entails sending out new questions to informants, hence a continuation of the SAND. An example of this is given in section 4.1. on reciprocals with singular antecedents.

Periodically switching the MOSFET ‘off’ (switched biasing), is known to reduce the low-frequency (LF) noise power spectrum. In this work, the constant and switched biased LF noise has been measured on devices before and after hot-carrier stress. The switched biased LF noise is more sensitive to hot-carrier degradation than the constant biased LF noise. The anomalous noise reduction, due to switched biasing, observed for fresh devices, gradually disappears as the devices are subjected to hot-carrier stress. Devices with a deuterium passivated SiO2/Si interface degrade significantly slower, as seen from our LF noise measurements.

In the study of LF noise in MOSFETS, it has become clear that Random Telegraph Signals (RTS) are dominant. When a MOSFET is subjected to large-signal excitation, the RTS noise is influenced. In this paper, we present different visualizations of the transient behaviour of the RTS.

In the department of Psychology at the university of Groningen, a development toolkit for building real time experiments called Taskit has been used for many years. This development toolkit offers the possibility to create psychological experiments in a MsDos environment using Turbo Pascal. Recently, however, the question was raised to construct a toolkit with at least comparable functionality, but now using the advantages of a Windows based operating system. A thorough investigation was made into the possibilities for translating the existing Taskit toolkit to a Windows based environment. This approach resulted in a new toolkit that can be used for developing real time experiments within Microsoft Windows: WinTask. At present this environment supports all the necessary visual and auditory modes of information presentation with adequate, guaranteed accuracy of timing. The WinTask toolkit has already been used as part of a complex dynamic environment, simulating an ambulance dispatch work domain.