An Aggregate Analysis of Pronunciation in the Goeman-Taeldeman-Van Reenen-Project Data

Contemporary Dutch dialects are compared using the Levenshtein distance, a measure of pronunciation difference. The material consists of data from the most recent Dutch dialect source available: the Goeman-Taeldeman-Van Reenen-Project (GTRP). This data consists of transcriptions of 1876 items for 613 localities in the Netherlands and Belgium gathered during the period 1980 – 1995. In addition to presenting the analysis of the GTRP, we compare the dialectal situation it represents to the Reeks Nederlands(ch)e Dialectatlassen (RND), in particular to the 350-locality sample studied by Heeringa (2004), noting areas of convergence and divergence. Although it was not the purpose of the present study to criticize the GTRP, we nonetheless note that transcriptions from Belgian localities differ substantially from the transcriptions of localities in the Netherlands, impeding the comparison between the varieties of the two different countries. We therefore analyze the developments in the two countries separately.