The suppression of optional variability is a cornerstone of English prescriptivism. For Dutch, however, it is unknown whether this concept is equally important. The goal of this paper is to investigate which stance towards variation is taken in Dutch prescriptivism, and what arguments are used to support this stance. I address these questions by looking at 236 usage advice items from 73 Dutch prescriptive publications concerning the comparative particles als and dan. This data shows a clear division in the allowance of variation. With the standard comparative (groter als/dan), variation is often allowed, but with equative constructions (even groot als) only one form is ever accepted. Furthermore, the allowance of variation decreases over time. The argumentation that is used shows few patterns, and is frequently completely absent. This indicates the existence of an ipse dixit (‘assertion without proof’) tradition in Dutch prescriptivism since 1900.
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Cited by
Cited by 5 other publications
de Vos, Machteld
2022. In Between Description and Prescription: Analysing Metalanguage in Normative Works on Dutch 1550–1650. Languages 7:2 ► pp. 89 ff.
Hubers, Ferdy, Theresa Redl, Hugo de Vos, Lukas Reinarz & Helen de Hoop
2020. Processing Prescriptively Incorrect Comparative Particles: Evidence From Sentence-Matching and Eye-Tracking. Frontiers in Psychology 11
Hubers, Ferdy, Thijs Trompenaars, Sebastian Collin, Kees De Schepper & Helen De Hoop
2020. Hypercorrection as a By-product of Education. Applied Linguistics 41:4 ► pp. 552 ff.
Schoenmakers, Gert-Jan
2023. Linguistic judgments in 3D: the aesthetic quality, linguistic acceptability, and surface probability of stigmatized and non-stigmatized variation. Linguistics 61:3 ► pp. 779 ff.
Suijkerbuijk, Michelle, Theresa Redl & Helen de Hoop
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