Conference "A Germanic Sandwich 2017"

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Description

In his 1956 book, the renowned Dutch linguist C.B. van Haeringen showed that Dutch not only holds the middle ground between German and English with respect to the area where it is spoken, but is also 'in between' these languages in a highly systematic way when it comes to its linguistic structure. Whereas Van Haeringen's explanation for this 'Germanic Sandwich' pattern focused on the historical drift in Dutch towards more analytical structures, later comparative investigations have not only included many more linguistic phenomena in the analysis, but also highlighted structural and typological aspects, and explored psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic explanations. Since 2005, in which the appearance of van Haeringen's book was commemorated in Berlin, a conference series is devoted to the comparative study of Dutch, German and English. Subsequent editions of the "Germanic Sandwich" conference were held in Sheffield (2008), Oldenburg (2010), Leuven (2013), and Nottingham (2015). The next edition will be organized on 17-18 March, 2017 at the University of Münster (Germany).