Chapter 12. Frisian language changes

This paper is an account of the results of our participation in a national survey of Dutch dialects held in 1994. We have selected from this survey data in order to increase the empirical basis for the description of the process of dutchification of the Frisian language that is going on. We have looked in particular at data that might increase our insight into the degree of borrowing of grammatical words (reflexives and possessives), the borrowing of morphological elements (diminutives), and syntactic borrowing (word order). We believe that our data support the conclusion that borrowing of grammatical words from Dutch is clearly present. Furthermore the data show that the grammar of Frisian is in a process of restructuring under the influence of Dutch, but not yet by simply copying parts of the grammatical system of Dutch.