Ostracizing linguistic forms through metalinguistic comments: The case of ge-dikmek-t

Abstract

Abstract This paper considers the relevance of studying metalinguistic comments about the embedding of Turkish infinitives in Dutch morphology. It focusses on bilingual Dutch and Turkish spoken in the Netherlands. Data of computer mediated communication (CMC) is used. The paper reports on an analysis of the (sparse) occurrence of Turkish verb embedding in Dutch and the accompanying metalinguistic comments. For this, an exploration of the internet as well as of a data set compiled form Turkish-Dutch discussion fora consisting of 1.335.592 words was conducted. I am indebted to Dirk Vet, University of Amsterdam, for invaluable help and assistance with technical issues concerning the compilation of the data corpus. Also I would like to thank Maarten Kossmann and Yaron Matras for their valuable comments. Remaining flaws are mine. A comparison is made with the reverse verbal construction in Turkish-Dutch bilingual speech (Dutch infinitives + Turkish infinitive yapmak ‘to do’). The absence of evaluative comments on the latter construction suggests it has been accepted as norm-behavior in the Turkish-Dutch community. Embedding of Turkish verbs in Dutch morphology, by contrast, is not accepted. The paper discusses the extent to which metalinguistic comment can be used as a diagnostic tool to uncover implicit norms of non-standard varieties.