Dutch studies in periodicals

The eighteenth century saw the rise of societies as the central form of social and cultural organisation, and concomitantly the rise of periodicals or journals as main outlets for literary production and scholarly discussion. In this section, I will briefly discuss the main trends in a range of major periodicals that included linguistic topics.

There were, of course, also periodicals focused on wholly different topics such as natural science. But considerable variation can be found even within the field of Dutch language and literature. There were no periodicals solely devoted to the study of language. Literature, on the other hand, could take up an entire periodi-cal, i.e. both the production of original work and poetical and historical studies of such work. For example, the Tael- en dichtlievende oefeningen (‘lit. Language and poetry-loving exercises’, 7 vols., 1775–1790) and the Prijsverhandelingen (‘Prize essays’, 4 vols. 1782–1790) of the Leiden-based society Kunst wordt door Arbeid Verkreegen ‘Art is Acquired by Effort’ were almost exclusively devoted to literature (Thobokholt 1983). As mentioned before (Section 4.4), the Kunst wordt door Arbeid Verkreegen society published a normative grammar for internal use in 1770. In the Tael- en dichtlievende oefeningen, a linguistic essay can only be found in the first volume. The essay deals with the terminology employed for nominal cases (Houtam 1775). Similarly, the Werken (‘Works’) of the Rotterdam-based society Studium

1. Note that – in the spirit of Johannes (2011, 2015) – I am concerned with the earliest stages of discipline formation, i.e. the second half of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century, when the first chairs in Dutch studies were established. At that time, there was as yet no influence from historical and comparative linguistics. Many analyses of historical discipline formation in the humanities and in linguistics in particular focus strongly on the revolution established by the rise of historical and comparative linguistics, i.e. on the nineteenth century;

see, for example, Karstens (2012), Leerssen (2012), Noordegraaf (2015).

Scientiarum Genitrix (4 vols., 1789–1796), the Werken of the Amsterdam-based society Wij Streeven naar de Volmaaktheid (‘We Strive for Perfection’, 1789, 1794) and the various publications of the society Kunstliefde Spaart geen Vlijt (‘Love of Art does not Spare Diligence’) based in The Hague issued in the 1790s and 1800s were dominated by poetry and poetical essays.

In 1800, the three societies, Kunst wordt door Arbeid Verkreegen, Studium Scientiarum Genitrix and Wij Streeven naar de Volmaaktheid, formed the Bataafsche Maatschappij van Taal- en Dichtkunde (‘Batavian Society for the Study of Language and Poetry’), which incorporated Kunstliefde in 1818. The Werken of the Batavian Society comprised various essays on language, all of them written by Siegenbeek (see Section 8.3). In 1806, the society changed its name to Hollandsche Maatschappij van Fraaije Kunsten en Wetenschappen (‘Holland Society of Fine Arts and Sciences’). Except for an elaborate discussion of Dutch prosody in the first volume (Kinker 1810), the Werken of this society (4 vols, 1810–1819) mainly focused on poetry and poetical essays.

Texts on language and grammar can mostly be found in the following periodi-cals. The Tael- en dicht-kundige by-dragen (‘Linguistic and poetical contributions’) constituted a pioneering publication which came out from 1758 onward. The by and large monthly contributions were collected in two volumes published in 1760 and 1762. Many contributors were students or former students of the universi-ties of Leiden and Utrecht, including Tollius, Tydeman and Kluit, who gathered in networks such as the Leiden-based student society Minima Crescunt and the Utrecht-based student society Dulces Ante Omnia Musae (Kossmann 1966). The Tael- en dicht-kundige by-dragen were succeeded by the Nieuwe bydragen tot op-bouw der vaderlandsche letterkunde (‘New contributions to the advancement of the letters of the fatherland’), which came out in two volumes in 1763 and 1766.

In 1775 and 1780, two volumes were published of Proeve van oudheid-, taal- en dichtkunde (‘Example of the study of ancient times, language and poetry’). The Proeve comprised texts created within Dulces Ante Omnia Musae, some of which date from the early 1760s, such as Tydeman’s essays on the importance of a national language and a national education system (Tydeman 1775a, 1775a, see Chapter 2).

The student societies Minima Crescunt and Dulces Ante Omnia Musae were also seminal in the foundation of the Maatschappij der Nederlandsche letter-kunde (‘Society of Dutch language and literature’) in 1766 (Kossmann 1966). The Maatschappij published a series of seven voluminous Werken between 1772 and 1788. Its younger ‘sister organisation’, the Bataafsche Maatschappij van Taal- en Dichtkunde, which had also emerged after the merger of several local networks, published its five Werken between 1804 and 1810. In the 1780s, two periodicals came out that comprised metalinguistic essays, viz. Taal- dicht- en letterkundig kabinet (‘lit. Linguistic, poetic and literary cabinet’, six volumes, 1781–1784) and

Taal- dicht en letterkundig magazijn (‘lit. Linguistic, poetic and literary magazine’, four volumes, 1785–1790). Both were edited by Gerrit Brender à Brandis, who would later become the secretary to the Maatschappij tot Nut van ’t Algemeen

‘Society for Public Advancement’. Finally, many metalinguistic texts were reviewed in the Vaderlandsche letteroefeningen (‘National exercises in the letters’), a general cultural periodical focusing on a wide variety of topics, including Dutch literature and linguistics, published under slightly varying titles from 1761 to 1876.

The metalinguistic commentary found in these periodicals can be organised into four main themes: the position of the study of language in relation to other fields of cultural activity, specifically the production and study of literature (8.2.1), the importance of a national language (8.2.2), linguistics per se (8.2.3), and the historical model of linguistic and cultural change (8.2.4).

8.2.1 The study of Dutch vis-à-vis other cultural fields

The first theme concerns the study of language in relation to the production and study of literature. Despite the gradual development from elitist grammar in the first half of the century to so-called civil and national grammar in the second half (Chapter 4), the study of Dutch in these periodicals was often conceptualised in plainly elitist terms with a strong emphasis on literature. Knowledge of the rules of grammar was deemed essential for anyone “who wants to create a good poem in Dutch”, as argued in the Tael- en dicht-kundige by-dragen (1760: 137–138), an approach that was continued in the Nieuwe bydragen. In the first volume of the Taal- dicht- en letterkundig kabinet, Brender à Brandis wrote that he started his journal primarily to explain grammatical and poetical rules to jonge Taal- en Dichtminnaars “young lovers of language and poetry” (Taal- dicht- en letterkundig kabinet 1781: I), echoing the elitist discourse of the first decades of the century.

The position is repeated in the first essay in the volume (Taal- dicht- en letterkundig kabinet 1781: 1–2). As the elitist approach was part of expensive and learned books, Brender à Brandis (Taal- dicht- en letterkundig kabinet 1781: I–II) also argued that a more simplifying approach was needed, recalling the argument used in civil and national metalinguistic discourse (Chapter 4). The Taal- dicht en letterkundig mag-azijn continued the approach taken in the Taal- dicht- en letterkundig kabinet.

An aspect of the continued interdependency of language and literature is the identification of exemplary writers who excelled in a poetical as well as in a gram-matical respect. These reference points were the literary authors Hooft and Vondel, and the eighteenth-century normative tradition that relied on them (Chapter 4).

The linguistic works by Verwer (1707), ten Kate (1723) and Huydecoper (1730) were considered extremely important. Many essays in the periodicals were replete with references to Hooft, Vondel and the eighteenth-century metalinguistic tradition

(e.g. Tael- en dicht-kundige by-dragen 1760: 77–100, Werken of the Maatschappij 1788: 329–349). The Nieuwe bydragen (1763: 281–352) published an essay on the orthography of Dutch by Adriaan Kluit, which would greatly inspire Siegenbeek, and which was largely written within the historical approach taken by Verwer and ten Kate. In the Proeve van oudheid-, taal- en dichtkunde (1775: 208–21), it was argued that the best way to practise linguistics was to follow in the footsteps of ten Kate. In 1783, the Taal- dicht- en letterkundig kabinet (1783: 127) still confirmed that Hooft and Vondel had been the ijsbreekers onzer Nederlandsche spraak ‘ice-breakers of our Dutch language’. In 1781, they were referred to as the Grootmeesters

‘great masters’ of Dutch poetry in the Werken of the Maatschappij (1781: 130).

When Huydecoper passed away in 1778, he was called de grootste Bevorderaar onzer Taalkunde ‘the greatest promoter of the study of our language’ in the Werken (1779: +3^v), along with ten Kate.

The metalinguistic publications reviewed in the Vaderlandsche letteroefeningen in the late 1700s and early 1800s were of two kinds. On the one hand, the journal reviewed texts intended for the liefhebbers ‘enthusiasts’ of the Dutch language (e.g.

Vaderlandsche letteroefeningen 1776: 241, 242; 1782: 326; 1783: 548, 549; 1784: 304;

1800: 343). These texts mostly included fairly complicated grammatical treatises, conceptualised within the elitist framework of linguistics expertise as a precursory demand for writers interested in literature and rhetoric. On the other hand, the Vaderlandsche letteroefeningen (e.g. 1777: 44–45; 1778: 540; 1800: 344; 1805: 462, 516) also published reviews of schoolbooks, thus confirming the development of a national concern with grammatical expertise as a prerequisite for the entire population.

8.2.2 The national language

Another important theme in the periodicals was the nationalisation of language, particularly the need for a uniform spelling. Whereas it was sometimes claimed that the actual orthographic form of the national language, i.e. the specific choice of graphemes, was not important as long as it was uniformly used throughout the nation, this claim functioned as a rhetorical prelude to a detailed discussion of pre-ferred and disprepre-ferred variants (Tael- en dicht-kundige by-dragen 1760: 205–233;

Proeve van oudheid-, taal- en dichtkunde 1775: 79–102). In line with the popularity of Verwer, ten Kate and Huydecoper, the process of selection and variant reduction was usually dominated by a historicising discourse, that is, historical, often medie-val forms and etymological arguments were used to justify specific choices. This was also Kluit’s approach in his essay on spelling (Nieuwe bydragen 1763: 281–352), in which he argued that Middle Dutch represented an analogical stage of the language to which he thus wanted to turn for guidance, recalling Verwer’s and ten Kate’s position (van de Bilt 2009: 197–198).

As mentioned above (see also Section 2.3), the Proeve van oudheid-, taal- en dichtkunde (1775: 1–20) comprised Tydeman’s essays of the early 1760s in which he argued for a uniformed national language, which the government should im-plement in education. This national language was obviously not the spoken home language of large parts of the population, but the normalised written language pro-moted in literary and metalinguistic sources. In other words, the national language was a learnable variety that members of the Dutch nation should acquire through explicit education (cf. Section 6.5). They should not consider “the language defects that they sucked up from their wet nurses as if they were milk” to be beautiful (Taal- dicht- en letterkundig kabinet 1781: 138). Similarly, though within the elitist framework, young poets should learn their moederspraak ‘mother tongue’ (Taal- dicht- en letterkundig kabinet 1783: 250). By implication, the regional variety that they had grown up with, was not their mother tongue, and may not even have been a language at all (Section 6.5).

The combination of the persisting elitist approach and the historical interest had consequences for the study of the national language as well. To learn zuiver Neêrduits ‘pure Dutch’ implied an intense study of the oldest Dutch texts, i.e. of the Middle Dutch works of Maerlant, Stoke and others (Taal- dicht en letterkundig magazijn 1788: 118). Those who wanted to understand and write their mother tongue well were forced to read and contemplate its oldest sources, so that they would learn what pure and good Dutch consisted of, and to be able to enrich their mother tongue by exploring its own historical sources (Taal- dicht en letterkundig magazijn 1788: 119).

Thus, the national language was in need of codification, but was at the same time a historical object in that decisions in the selection process often depended on historical arguments. Given the controversial position of loans, particularly from Romance languages such as French and Latin, in the debate about a national dic-tionary (Chapter 7), it is not surprising that also here verfransing ‘Frenchification’

was seen as a real risk that could lead to the degeneration of “our old pure language”

(Proeve van oudheid-, taal- en dichtkunde 1780: 139). Loan translations were to be avoided, unless one wanted to advance “the corruption and decay of our Dutch language” (Vaderlandsche letteroefeningen 1810: 215). The gradual corruption of the Dutch language as a result of the ongoing contact with Romance languages should be reversed by the national government through the adoption and the consistent use in its publications of a pure form of Dutch (Taal- dicht en letterkundig magazijn 1788: 143–157).

Contact-induced changes were unpopular. On the contrary, older stages of the language and historical argumentation played an important role in the selection process, and diachronic variation was thus accepted as an inherent characteristic of the national language. But this was the only generally accepted type of vari-ation. Regional variation was only marginally addressed. An illustrative case in

point is a discussion of the sixteenth-century Psalm translation by Datheen (Tael- en dicht-kundige by-dragen 1760: 65–100). The translation had been criticised for Datheen’s use of bipartite negation, which was a common form well into the seven-teenth century (Rutten & van der Wal 2014: 364–365). The Tael- en dicht-kundige by-dragen (1760: 69–71) defended bipartite negation with exactly this argument: it was a common form in the sixteenth century, and even in the seventeenth century, for example in the official Bible translation of 1637. The historical evidence served to prove that bipartite negation was part of the “nature of our language” (Tael- en dicht-kundige by-dragen 1760: 69). Significantly, any references to regional variaties in which bipartite negation was still common in the second half of the eighteenth century are absent (cf. Rutten et al. 2012; Vosters & Vandenbussche 2012). What is extremely remarkable, therefore, is the tolerant position towards a handful of regional variants taken in the Taal- dicht- en letterkundig kabinet (1781: 154–158).

This tolerance is, however, limited to the spoken language, recalling ten Kate’s sug-gestion to apply the rhetorical distinction between lower and higher registers to grammatical variation (Section 4.5).

8.2.3 Linguistics

The periodicals also comprised a range of often detailed linguistic studies of spe-cific linguistic features. Many of these studies entailed etymological exercises in the tradition of the so-called Schola Hemsterhusiana (Noordegraaf 1996), with a focus on ancient root words and sounds signaling original meanings (e.g. Tael- en dicht-kundige by-dragen 1762: 285–296). In fact, the Nieuwe bydragen (1763, 1766) and the Proeve van oudheid-, taal- en dichtkunde (1775, 1780) were dominated by etymological studies of singular words and groups of words, often replete with references to ten Kate.

In addition, the periodicals published essays in which lexical and grammatical variants were compared, usually with the goal of reducing the number of acceptable variants. Topics included functionally and/or formally similar forms such as als ‘as’

and dan ‘than’ (Proeve van oudheid-, taal- en dichtkunde 1775: 145–146), zelf, zelve

‘himself, herself, itself’, zelfs ‘even’, dezelve ‘this one’ and dezelfde ‘the same’ (Taal- dicht en letterkundig magazijn 1785: 65–70), and homonyms and near-homonymic expressions such as komen doen ‘lit. come do’ and komen te doen ‘lit. come to do’

(Proeve van oudheid-, taal- en dichtkunde 1775: 147–149) and nog ‘still’ and noch

‘nor’ (Proeve van oudheid-, taal- en dichtkunde 1780: 151–162, see also Taal- di-cht- en letterkundig kabinet 1783: 127–172, Taal- dicht en letterkundig magazijn 1787: 181–183).

As stated above, the choice between variants was often facilitated by the his-toricising approach. In other words, in many of the grammatical essays discussing

competing variants, etymological arguments and historical evidence figured prom-inently, for example in discussions about the diminutive suffix (-jen or -je, Taal- dicht- en letterkundig kabinet 1783: 179–185), about verleeden vs voorleeden ‘former, past’ (Taal- dicht en letterkundig magazijn 1785: 71–80), and also in the well-known debate about the existence in Dutch of the so-called ablativus absolutus in the first volume of the Werken of the Maatschappij (1772, cf. Komen 1994), and in Alewijn’s contributions to, for example, the seventh volume (Werken 1788: 301–

349), in which he was engaged in detailed discussions of the acceptability of spe-cific variants, relying on historical evidence and the analyses of ten Kate, Verwer, Huydecoper and others.

8.2.4 The historical model of linguistic and cultural change

As discussed before (see above and Section 5.3), the Golden Age of the seventeenth century constituted the prime normative point of reference, from the late seven-teenth century onwards and well into the nineseven-teenth century. The Golden Age, however, represented a period of renewed purity of the Dutch language and the cultural products written in this language. The historical model of linguistic and cultural change propagated in the periodicals assumed a period of regularity in the Middle Ages, which was subject to degeneration, particularly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries due to foreign rule, after which the Golden Ages reset the Dutch language, which regained the purity and regularity of medieval times. The proposed development, both linguistically and culturally, from an original state of purity to increasing degeneration was prominent throughout the Tael- en dicht-kundige by-dragen, the Nieuwe bydragen and the Werken van de Maetschappy. After the Golden Age had restored the Dutch language and literature, a second phase of recovery was necessary in the second half of the eighteenth century due to ongo-ing foreign, i.e. French influence in the Low Countries. This model of longo-inguistics and, more generally, cultural change confirmed the entirely historical view of the language, and the need to recover the national language from historical sources.

8.2.5 Conclusions

The studies of language in the periodicals published in the second half of the eight-eenth century were mostly engaged in etymology and in a selection process in which historical arguments were important. These linguistic studies were part of publications that also contained poetical studies, historical studies and poetry. Thus, the study of language was integrated into a wider field of knowledge, and was also, to a large extent, propedeutical with respect to literature, recalling the elitist ap-proach of the first half of the century.

The significance of historical argumentation and etymology indicate the continuing influence of Verwer, ten Kate and Huydecoper. However, the histor-icisation of the language did not signal a general interest in the description and explanation of language change. On the contrary, historical stages of the language, most prominently the Middle Dutch from before the Burgundian period, and the seventeenth-century Dutch of the Golden Age, were historical mirrors displaying the high level of purity and regularity principally achievable in Dutch. In addition to the elitist approach and the increasingly historical perspective of the language, arguments were developed in favour of a national language, in line with the changes in the tradition of normative grammar (Chapter 4).

Finally, the periodicals were characterised by the uncontested identification of the history of the literary language and the history of the language itself. Variation in the written code remained mostly unacceptable. Where it was acknowledged, it became subject to variant reduction. In the case of lexical variation in particular, a discourse against Frenchification was adopted. Variation in the spoken code was hardly acknowledged, with one notable exception in the Taal- dicht- en let-terkundig kabinet.