The renowned Dutch linguist C.B. van Haeringen showed in his 1956 book 'Nederlands tussen Duits en Engels' 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. Though Van Haeringen's account of this 'Germanic Sandwich' pattern focused on how Dutch historically drifted towards more analytic structures, later comparative investigations expanded this work considerably, adding more linguistic phenomena, highlighting structural and typological patterns and differences, and exploring psycho- and sociolinguistic explanations as well.

2005 marked the start of a conference series devoted to the comparative study of Dutch, German and English, commemorating van Haeringen's book. After this first "Germanic Sandwich" in Berlin, subsequent editions were held in Sheffield (2008), Oldenburg (2010), Leuven (2013), Nottingham (2015) and Münster (2017). The next meeting will take place in Amsterdam on May 23-24, 2019.

Submission Guidelines

We invite abstracts for 20-minute talks (+10 minutes discussion), in which Dutch is compared to German and/or English (other Germanic languages may of course be included as well). We welcome typological and/or comparative studies dealing with questions about structural aspects of these languages, their history or their status. Studies from the perspective of language acquisition or psycholinguistics are also welcome. Abstracts should be written in one of the conference languages (English, Dutch, German) and may be no more than 1 A4 in length, including all figures and references.

The deadline has been extended until Monday, January 21st!

Local organizers

• Suzanne Aalberse
• Caitlin Meyer
• Fred Weerman
• Ton van der Wouden

Venue

The conference will be held at the University of Amsterdam, in the VOC-zaal of the Bushuis, which can be found in Amsterdam's city center. (Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012CX, Amsterdam.)

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to germanicsandwich2019@meertens.knaw.nl