From ‘civil’ to national grammar

The third period of national grammar continued the approach taken in the second period, but radicalised it. The aim to reach larger parts of the population than in the period of elitist grammar, as grammatical knowledge was an element of mature citizenship, was turned into an educational mission. If people had to learn grammar, they should be taught grammar in school. The Nederduitsche spraekkunst, voor de jeugdt (‘Dutch grammar, for the young’, 1769) by van der Palm marks the transi-tion to the period of natransi-tional grammar. Interestingly, van der Palm explained his grammatical activity by stating that the grammars of the first period as well as the works produced by Natura et Arte, of which de Haes and Elzevier were members, seemed to consist of ideas meant for scholarly discussion rather than lessons for the young. Echoing Elzevier (see Section 4.3), van der Palm wote:

wie immer hunne werken oordeelkundig heeft ingezien, zal gemerkt hebben, dat het oogmerk dier schryveren meer geweest zy der geleerde weereld’ hunne vernuf-tige gedachten, als der jeugd’ hunne lessen, medetedeelen; ja dat men zelfs eenige kundigheit, zoo niet van andere, ten minste van onze tale bezitten moet, wil men de vrucht van hunnen arbeidt plukken. Ons oogmerk, in tegendeel, is alleen der jeugd’ dienstig te zyn: voor haer is het dat wy deze Spraekkunst opgestelt hebben;

moetende men, naer onze gedachten, met de jeugd’ beginnen, indien men immer gegronde hoop kan opvatten, dat onze Nederlandsche spraek, by de Nederlanders, op haren rechten prys gestelt al worden. (van der Palm 1769-I: *3^r-v) Table 4. Examples of Dutch strong verbs (van Belle 1755)

  Principle parts  

Person 1 2 3 English gloss

Ik GEEf, GAf, GegEEven I give, gave, given

  a. b. a.  

Ik ZOEk, ZÓgt, GezÓgt I seek, sought, sought

  a. b. b.  

Ik BrEEk, BrAk, GebrOken I break, broke, broken

  a. b. d.  

anyone who has judiciously examined their works will have noticed that the goal of these writers has been to communicate their clever thoughts to the learned world rather than to communicate their lessons to the young; moreover, that one has to possess a certain knowledge – if not of other languages, then at least of our lan-guage – if one wants to profit from their work. Our goal, on the contrary, is merely to serve the young: for them, we have written our grammar; in our opinion, one has to start with the young if one ever wants to have reason to have high hopes that our Dutch language will be appreciated by the Dutch.

The criticism was similar to Elzevier’s with respect to Moonen, except that van der Palm extended it to include the grammarians of the second period, such as Elzevier.

Considering their works to be still too complicated, van der Palm aimed to render the contents more accessible by taking a different approach. He divided his gram-mar book into four separate, relatively short booklets on the assumption that new learning materials would generate renewed interest (van der Palm 1769-I: *4^r-v). He stressed that he did not provide anything new, but only simplified existing knowl-edge found, for example, in Moonen (1706), Séwel (1712) and de Haes (1764). His aim to render the contents more accessible affected both the form and the contents themselves. He avoided potentially confusing details and remarks, and restricted himself to a basic description of the grammar. As to the form, he avoided long sen-tences, subordinate clauses and participial phrases (Rutten 2009: 68). Furthermore, he reintroduced the age-old dialogue format, which was uncommon at the time in metalinguistic discourse. The dialogue was composed in such a way that the answers to the questions by themselves made up the grammar, so that readers were not forced to read the book as a dialogue (van der Palm 1769-I: *4^v). The dialogue format emphasised van der Palm’s efforts to present concrete grammar lessons for the young instead of ‘clever thoughts’ for ‘the learned’.

One aspect of simplifying the received body of knowledge consisted of reducing the text to its bare essentials. Van der Palm’s (1769-I: 1) definition of grammar was founded on Séwel’s (1712: 1), but whereas Séwel’s took up one four-line sentence, van der Palm reduced it to the following dialogue:

Vr. Wat is de Spraekkunst?

Antw. De Spraekkunst is eene kennis van Letteren en Sprake.

(van der Palm 1769-I: 1) Q. What is grammar?

Answ. Grammar is knowledge of letters and speech.

This is the standard procedure of simplification that van der Palm used through-out his grammar (Rutten 2009). In addition, he also reordered and elaborated ob-servations made by his predecessors in order to present their linguistic insights in a more systematic manner. An example is the discussion of homonyms and

near-homonyms. Séwel (1712: 63) briefly discussed orthographical and phono-logical variation focusing on a limited set of lexical items. De Haes (1764: 15–16) referred to Séwel, while adding a few examples. Van der Palm (1769-I: 46–52) distinguished between four different types of homonyms and near-homonyms that Séwel and de Haes had mixed, viz. homonyms which were not homographs (aert

‘nature’ and aerd ‘earth’), homonyms which were also homographs (aes ‘food’ and aes ‘ace’), homographs which were not homonyms (hóóp ‘heap’ and hoop ‘hope’), and words that were neither, yet were often confused (na ‘after’ and naer ‘to’). Van der Palm also provided, per type, an alphabetical list of the most frequent words.

In cases such as this one, van der Palm did not reduce the text found in the norma-tive tradition. Instead, he reordered insights and problematic issues, and presented them in a clear and systematic way, thus reshaping received grammatical ideas into a coherent and comprehensible framework.

Van der Palm (1769) was part of an increase in grammar production in the northern Netherlands in the final decades of the eighteenth century, i.e. in the period of national grammar (Stijl/van Bolhuis 1776, 1778; van Bolhuis 1793, 1799;

Wester 1797, 1799; van Varik 1799). Many of the new grammars resulted from the activities of private societies, demonstrating the relevance of sociability, that is, the phenomenon that men and women gathered in societies in order to discuss current affairs of a social, political, literary and/or scientific nature. The second half of the eighteenth century is characterised by a true explosion of such private societies. By 1800, every town in the northern Netherlands had at least a couple of book clubs, literary societies, and scientific societies; even hundreds of villages had at least a book club. It is estimated that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, 3–5% of the adult male population was or had been involved in one or more societies (Kloek

& Mijnhardt 2001: 103–104). Many societies organised lectures, produced essay volumes or periodicals, held essay competitions, and published the prize-winning essays. De Vries (2001) argues that the common goal of most societies was to civilise the populace, for which education was considered to be crucial.

In this context of public advancement, three interdependent topics were ad-dressed repeatedly: language, education and the nation (see Chapter 2). Some societies, such as the Leiden-based learned society Minima crescunt, published scholarly treatises on linguistics in the periodical Maendelyksche By-dragen ter Opbouw van Neerlands Tael- en Dichtkunde (‘Monthly contributions to the ad-vancement of Dutch grammar and poetics’, 1758–1763) and its successor Nieuwe By-dragen (‘New contributions’, 1763, 1766). Another Leiden-based society, Kunst wordt door Arbeid Verkreegen (‘Art is Acquired by Effort’), published a norma-tive grammar, but only for internal use (1770: 4–5). It continues the Vondelianist approach taken by de Haes, whose grammar (1764) was one of the main sources.

A third Leiden-based society, the Maatschappij der Nederlandsche Letterkunde

(‘Society of Dutch Language and Literature’), envisaged a national dictionary and grammar, but both projects failed (Van de Bilt 2009: 213–218; see Chapter 7).

One active participant in the debates on language, education and the nation was van der Palm. In 1761 and 1763, the Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (‘Holland Society for the Sciences’) held two essay competitions, the first on the physical education of children, the second on their emotional and intellectual ed-ucation (Los 2005: 183–184). In the second contest, a silver medal was won by van der Palm, who explicitly argued for mother-tongue education at the earliest stage of the child’s school career, stating that “the first thing that a child, in what-ever state it is born, has to learn, is to read and write its Mother tongue, and this should not be ended, unless it has proceeded significantly” (van der Palm 1766: 72 [my translation]). In 1774, the Kunstliefde Spaart geen Vlijt (‘Love of Art does not Spare Diligence’) society in The Hague held an essay competition on the best education of the young. Van der Palm was one of the competitors. In 1782, the Zeeuws Genootschap der Wetenschappen (‘Zeeland Society for the Sciences’) in Vlissingen published the winning essays from a competition on the improvement of schools. Van der Palm, once more one of the winners, argued strongly in favour of knowledge of the mother tongue, among teachers as well as children. Children should learn the grammar of Dutch, for which de ligtste Spraekkunst ‘the easiest Grammar’ was needed. Referring to his own grammar of 1769, he continued: “we may recommend the one by K. van der Palm, which is the easiest I know of, and primarily drawn up for the young” (Van der Palm 1782: 29 [my translation]).

After decades of discussion on the civilisation of the people, on education and on the mother tongue, the most important so-called reformist society was founded in 1784: the Maatschappij tot Nut van ’t Algemeen ‘Society for Public Advancement’, in short: ’t Nut. Arising from the middle classes, from people without political power or influence, ’t Nut adhered to an explicitly inclusive ideology of public civilisation. It focused on and was open to members of many social and religious groups (Mijnhardt 1987: 264–270), including women (Baar-de Weerd 2009: 39–44) and Catholics, though not to Jews until 1864 (van der Meiden 2009: 269). ’t Nut was highly successful, with departments in eight different towns and 470 members in 1787, 25 departments and 2,331 members in 1794, and 106 departments and over 8,500 members in 1810 (Mijnhardt 1987: 265, 290).

The ideal of inclusive citizenship was also at the heart of the democratic gov-ernment of the Batavian Republic, founded in 1795. One of the first things its government called for was a national educational policy (see Chapter 2), for which it turned to ’t Nut in 1796. Two years later, ’t Nut published its influential educa-tional report Algemeene denkbeelden over het nationaal onderwijs (‘General ideas on national education’, see Chapter 2), in which ’t Nut argued for mother-tongue education in schools. In this context ’t Nut stated that an eenvouwige, doch zaaklijke,

Nederduitsche Spraakkunst ‘an easy yet adequate Dutch grammar’ was one of the things most required (Algemeene denkbeelden 1798: 6). The report also rejected the dialogic method in schoolbooks (Dodde 1971: 27), so van der Palm (1769) did not suffice. As explained in Chapter 1,’t Nut had already called for a concise grammar of Dutch a few years before. It was only in 1799 that ’t Nut published its own grammar (van Varik 1799).

Finally, the Enlightenment discourse on education and public advancement, and the tradition of normative grammar converged, and led to the official language policy of 1804 and 1805. As will become clear in the next section, however, the gradual development towards the simplification of a complex body of grammatical rules was halted. The swift implementation of late eighteenth-century discursive ideals in concrete policy measures in the first decade of the following century is probably connected to the close-knit network structures that many of the partici-pants were active in. An illustrative example is the case of Kornelis van der Palm, who had connections with various societies (see above), and who was also the father of Johannes Hendrik van der Palm, the minister for national education responsible for the newly developed official language policy.