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In this paper, we discuss a significant change in the morphosyntax of Dutch, arguing that bringing together evidence from (historical) sociolinguistic and constructional analyses advances our understanding of language variation and change. In so doing, we link up with recent developments in cognitive linguistics, where a "social turn" has been argued for (Croft 2000(Croft , 2009 Kristiansen and Dirven 2008; Geeraerts, Kristiansen, and Peirsman 2010;Harder 2010;Hoffmann and Trousdale 2011). The change under discussion concerns the rise of w-relativizers such as waar 'where' at the expense of d-relativizers such as daar 'lit. there, where'. The change will be introduced in more detail in section 2. In section 3, we discuss previous research, and formulate two hypotheses following suggestions in the literature. First, we hypothesize that the change is a so-called change from above in the social sense, that is a change that spreads from the upper ranks of society to the lower ranks. Second, we hypothesize that the change spreads from construction to construction. We assume, therefore, that the change exhibits diffusion in at least two ways: social and constructional. We will use a socially stratified corpus of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century private letters to investigate this. The corpus will be introduced in section 4. In sections 5 and 6, we argue that both social and constructional diffusion can indeed be found in the change from dto w-relativization. Section 5 shows that w-relativizers are more in use in letters from the upper ranks of society than in letters from the lower ranks. The private letters in our corpora are characterized by a great number of epistolary formulae. In section 6, we will argue that these formulae can be considered as constructions in the sense of construction grammar, after which we will show that w-relativizers appear to spread from formula to formula, that is from construction to construction. In section 7, we discuss the results, and moreover argue that a constructional approach may gain from sociolinguistic analyses.Brought to you by | Stockholms Universitet Authenticated Download Date | 7/28/15 5:12 AM 1 http://www.datingwebsites.nl/reviews/second-love/ 2 http://forums.marokko.nl/archive/index.php/t-1459274%2520%253C/t-1703877-p-3.html 182 Gijsbert Rutten and Marijke van der Wal Brought to you by | Stockholms Universitet Authenticated Download Date | 7/28/15 5:12 AM 6 http://www.dutchdivas.net/sopranen/raymonde_serverius.html 7 http://www.allaboutworldview.org/dutch/bestaat-de-hel.htm 8 A recent syntactic atlas of Dutch dialects shows that the locative relative in De bank waar ze op zaten was pas geverfd 'The bench that they were sitting on had just been painted' is mostly realized as a w-form (267 locations), d-forms (33 locations) being largely restricted to the Dutch provinces of North Brabant and Friesland (SAND 2005, map 88b). As noted in the commentary to the maps (p. 77), it is striking that there are hardly any dialects with solely d-forms. In other words, in dialects wh...

In this paper, formulaic language in seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Dutch private letters is compared with formulae presented in letter-writing manuals. The most frequent formulae in the Dutch letters show a striking similarity with those found in private letters from other language areas. Such an eye-catching similarity points clearly to a shared European epistolary tradition which has been the topic of various previous studies. Being aware of this widespread tradition, we address the question of how letter writers acquired the formulae characteristic of that tradition by first discussing briefl y literacy in the Dutch Republic and by subsequently taking into consideration the possible influence of theory and models provided in letter-writing manuals. After having established similarities and differences between the 'theory' of the more modest manuals or schoolbooks and actual practice of private letters, we conclude that direct influence of letterwriting manuals on the actual practice is not very likely. In the same vein as claims made for other languages, we furthermore argue that letter-writing conventions such as formulae were rather acquired by active participation in writing practice.

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