Cognitive Contact Linguistics, The macro, meso and micro influence of English on Dutch

by Eline Zenner

This dissertation presents four multifactorial corpus-based studies describing the influence of English on the two main national varieties of Dutch. Overall, this study aims at three different goals. The first, and most modest goal, is to add to the description of the Dutch-English contact situation. Although the main focus of this work is put on lexical borrowing, a second and more ambitious goal is to illustrate how the study of language contact can be developed simultaneously for three levels of contact: the macro-level (English as a language for communication), the micro-level, (lexical borrowing), and the meso-level (codeswitching and borrowed phraseology). As its most ambitious goal, this study sets out to make a case for Cognitive Contact Linguistics, a new cross-(sub)disciplinary paradigm in which core concepts and theories of Cognitive (Socio)Linguistics are introduced to the field of contact linguistics. To achieve these goals, four case studies are conducted, based on three different (and highly complementary) datasets.

420 pages, Library Binding

First published March 23, 2013