Language Loyalty and Linguistic Variation The Radical Autonomy of Syntax

This book contains the papers that were read at the "Sixth Sociolinguists' Days" held at the University of Antwerp (UIA) on 16 and 17 October 1986. The theme of the conference was "Language and Intergroup Relations in the Netherlandic Speaking Area", an area restricted however to its two most salient components viz. The Netherlands and Flanders. Although the programme was supposed to capture all the important areas of linguistic tension currently existing in both countries on the level of social interaction, no overall state of the art report was envisaged. On the contrary, instead of aiming at a synthesis, preference was given to contributions that informed about new research. In other words, this volume is to be regarded as a "book of samples" for the articles contained in it are fairly diverse in nature. Language as a factor in nation and state building is very much a Belgian rather than a Dutch reality. Language therefore plays a much more important role in Belgian politics - it would be difficult to imagine that in The Netherlands a government might fall over a "linguistic" dispute. This does not imply that The Netherlands constitute a monolingual region but rather that speakers of any language other than Netherlandic do not emerge as a force to be reckoned with. Given this fundamental difference it was impossible for both halves of this book to exhibit a high degree of parallelism. The Belgian contributions explicitly deal with relations of power and, as a consequence, with institutional problems. Brussels occupies a key position in this first part, but the wider Belgian context is always highly present. In the Dutch half the dialect-standard language interface and the problems related to the linguistic situation of ethnic minorities are the main themes. In a final paper some aspects of the Frisian situation are discussed.