From Late Middle Dutch to Early New Dutch: the influence of the printing press on the standardization of written Dutch.

这个研究项目涉及荷兰文字标准化的历史，在主要方面必须重新考虑。该项目的总体目标是调查印刷机的技术创新对荷兰文字标准化的影响，这是一项改变文化史的发明。据推测，在印刷书籍中，跨地区荷兰语在16世纪初就已经被使用。因此，书面荷兰语的标准化要比现在所认为的要早得多。根据普遍的观点，标准荷兰语应该是在16世纪末和17世纪初的黄金时代经济和文化鼎盛时期在荷兰发展起来的。虽然在16世纪南部低地国家（Brabant）曾有过标准化的早期尝试，但这些尝试并没有成功。然而，初步研究指出，早在16世纪初，书面书籍中的方言特征就已经系统地被超区域的早期新荷兰语变体所取代。安特卫普市（布拉班特地区）在当时是低地国家最重要的大都市，显然引领了这一进程。同样，在荷兰印刷的书籍中，荷兰方言的特征很早就被其超区域的对口物所取代。在佛兰德斯和东北部的语言区（Ijsselregion），从中荷兰语到早期新荷兰语的转变发生得较晚。提出的研究项目有三个目标：1)通过对上述四个地区从15世纪末到16世纪末印刷书籍中使用的语言进行实证定量和定性调查，确定从中晚期荷兰语到早期新荷兰语在印刷宗教和教育文本中的时空转变。2)通过对手稿和印刷书籍（宗教和教育文本）的经验比较，确定印刷机对荷兰语标准化的影响。如果事实证明，地区荷兰语在手稿中保存的时间比在印刷文本中保存的时间长，这一发现就支持了印刷机的发明有力地促进了书面荷兰语标准化的假设。在标准荷兰语的大纲被编纂之前的几十年里，商业印刷商怎么可能出现一种隐含的语言规范？哪些社会文化因素有利于早在16世纪初就从方言的中世纪晚期荷兰语过渡到超区域的早期新荷兰语？

This research project deals with the history of the standardization of written Dutch that in major aspects has to be reconsidered. The overall aim of the project is to investigate the influence of the technological innovation of the printing press, an invention that changed cultural history, on the standardization of written Dutch. It is hypothesized that in printed books supra-regional Dutch was already used at the beginning of the 16th century. So written Dutch was much earlier standardized than was presumed until now. According to the common opinion, Standard Dutch would have developed in Holland at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century during the economical and cultural height of the Golden Age. Although there had been early attempts towards standardization in the 16th century in the southern Low Countries (Brabant), these would not have been successful.However, preliminary research pointed out that already at the very beginning of the 16th century dialectal features in written books had been systematically replaced by supra-regional, Early New Dutch variants. The city of Antwerp (region Brabant), in those days the most important metropolis in the Low Countries, apparently led the way in this process. Also in books printed in Holland the Hollandic dialectal features were early replaced by its supra-regional counterparts. In Flanders and in the northeastern part of the language area (Ijsselregion) the switch from Middle Dutch to Early New Dutch occurred later. The proposed research project has three objectives:1) Determining the shift from Late Middle Dutch to Early New Dutch in printed religious and educational texts through space and time by means of an empirical quantitative and qualitative investigation of the language used in printed books in the above mentioned four areas from the end of the 15th until the end of the 16th century.2) Determining the influence of the printing press on the standardization of Dutch by means of an empirical comparison between the language written in manuscripts versus in printed books (religious and educational texts). In case it turns out that regional Dutch was longer preserved in manuscripts than in printed texts, this finding supports the hypothesis that the invention of the printing press strongly favoured the standardization of written Dutch. 3) Explaining the research results obtained in 1) and 2). How could an implicit language norm arise among mercantile printers, several decades before the outlines of Standard Dutch were codified? Which sociocultural factors favoured the transition from dialectal Late Middle Dutch to supra-regional Early New Dutch as early as the very beginning of the 16th century?