Dutch Philology in the 16th and 17th Century

Publisher： John Benjamins Publishing Company

E-ISSN： 1569-9781|15|1-2|39-61

ISSN： 0302-5160

Source： Historiographia Linguistica. International Journal for the History of the Language Sciences, Vol.15, Iss.1-2, 1988-01, pp. : 39-61

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Abstract

SUMMARY Within a hundred years the first Dutch vernacular orthographies and grammars were published in the Netherlands, as contributions to the cultivation of the language. In a number of these books the authors assumed the independence of the several Dutch dialects; in other publications we find the tendency towards a cultivated language, or we see that the authors started from the existence of a Refined Standard Dutch. However that may be the orthographists and grammarians aimed at the cultivation of written and spoken Dutch. Generally the grammarians did not pay much attention to two traditional areas of the grammar: orthographia and prosodia, but the etymologia was stressed: the theory of the parts of speech, and — to a lesser degree — the syntaxis. The influence of Latin grammar on Dutch was enormous, but could not prevent particularly van Heule (1633) and Leupenius (1653) from following their own course, for the most part within the traditional framework. In doing so the grammarians based themselves on the language usage, in which the nature of the language was given a concrete form. RESUME Pendant un siecle (de 1550 a 1653) les premiers livres de l'orthographe et de la grammaire du neerlandais ont ete publies, comme des contributions a la creation d'un standard de langue civilisee. Dans certains cas les auteurs prenaient comme point de depart l'independance des differents dialectes; dans d'autres cas les auteurs voulaient contribuer a la creation ou a la perfection d'une seule langue civilisee. En tout cas les orthographistes et les grammairiens essayaient de civiliser le neerlandais ecrit et parle. En general les grammairiens ne s'interessaient pas beaucoup a deux des domaines traditionnels de la grammaire, a savoir l'orthographe et la prosodie. Ce qui retenait leur attention c'etait surtout l'etymologie: la theo-rie des classes des mots et — un peu moins — la syntaxe. L'influencc de la grammaire scolaire du latin sur la grammaire du neerlandais etait tres grande, ce qui d'ailleurs n'a pas empeche certains au-teurs, notamment van Heule (1633) et Leupenius (1653), de developper a l'interieur de ce cadre traditionnel des idees personnelles et originales. Les grammairiens se basaient sur la langue actuellement utilisee, qui exprimait sa nature par des formes concretes.