Definite Articles in Low Saxon Dialects

A prominent characteristic of Low Saxon dialects spoken along the coast of the North Sea, in particular in the Dutch provinces of Groningen and Drenthe, is the absence of definite articles. Despite being quite exceptional for the typology of western European varieties, there have been remarkably few empirical and theoretical contributions. Jeffrey Pheiff attempts to close this research gap through an examination of a large corpus of historical questionnaires studies. The study covers geographic, historical, and functional aspects of this phenomenon, attempting to sketch out a novel hypothesis regarding the grammaticalization of definite articles in Low Saxon dialects.

Jeffrey Pheiff is working as an assistent at the chair for System Linguistics at the University of Bern. His research interests include variation and change, dialectology, and morphology and syntax.