The Dutch verb-spelling paradox in social media

Abstract

Although the Dutch verb spelling system seems very straightforward, many spelling errors are made, both by children and adults (e.g., Sandra, Frisson, & Daems 2004). These errors mainly occur with verbs with two or more homophonous forms in their inflectional paradigms. Ample experimental research has been carried out on this topic, but these studies hardly reflect everyday language behavior. In the current corpus study, we reassessed previously found experimental results, but now in a Twitter corpus containing 17,432 tweets with homophonous verb forms. In accordance with previous results, we found a clear preference for the suffix - compared to both - and - , as well as a frequency effect, resulting in fewer errors for more frequent word forms. Furthermore, the results revealed that users with more followers make fewer errors, and that more errors are made during the evening and night.