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Document Details : Title: Lebensphasen im pragmatisch-diskursiven System des Friesischen und des Niederländischen Author(s): WOLF, Henk Journal: Leuvense Bijdragen - Leuven Contributions in Linguistics and Philology Volume: 104 Date: 2022-2023 Pages: 338-352 DOI: 10.2143/LB.104.0.3293190 Abstract : This paper addresses the hypothesis put forward by Wolf that in the pragmatic system of Frisian, younger and elderly adults would normally be referred to by mentioning their stages of adult life, whereas in Dutch, all adults would be treated as a uniform group. This presumed difference is not borne out by the findings. A survey among 272 native speakers of three Frisian varieties and 209 native speakers of Dutch shows that a reference to an early or late stage of adulthood is strongly preferred in West Frisian, in Mooring North Frisian and also in Dutch. As for Sater Frisian, the data can neither confirm nor reject the hypothesis. A word count in the Meertens Instituut's online database of folk tales confirms that spoken West Frisian and spoken Dutch behave the same way in this respect. This is also corroborated by a word count in four news websites, among which the Omrop Fryslân website constitutes a remarkable exception. |
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