The Frisian Substrate beneath the Groningen Dialect

Abstract

Historical linguists agree in assuming that the Low Saxon dialect of the Dutch province of Groningen is underlain by a Frisian substrate. The aim of this contribution is to scrutinise the linguistic arguments for this assumption. The most convincing arguments concern toponymy, but the formation of diminutives and words denoting small plants or animals, children’s games and agricultural or toponymic referents, including emotional adjectives or adverbs, also point in the direction of the supposed substrate. This does not hold for syntax, even though this is a rather stable domain. Many syntactic phenomena of the Groningen dialect have a wide geographical spread and encompass a large part of Germany.