Dialect en standaardtaal in contact: de vele vormen van het dialect in de Langstraat

Dialect and standard language in contact. The many forms of the Langstraat dialect Over the past century, the dialects of the Langstraat region in the province of Noord-Brabant have structurally changed under the influence of the Dutch standard language. The younger dialect varieties that have emerged, have lost characteristic features through time and have adopted features of Standard Dutch. Despite convergence and dialect levelling, however, more variation arises with new forms that sometimes exhibit even more divergent features than their traditional counterparts. Moreover, all participants in the present study seem to use a diversity of linguistic forms and intermediate forms are all but fixated, and even one and the same speaker shows diversity in the use of his dialect.