Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: New evidence from the extinct Dutch-lexified creole Skepi has brought to light the pronoun or as its third person plural form. This article proposes that or is a cognate of standard Dutch haar ‘her’, which in Early Modern Dutch also functioned as a plural pronoun meaning ‘them, their’ (present-day standard Dutch hun∼hen ). As such, the article provides a window into a largely forgotten chapter of Dutch pronominal history: the polysemous role of haar as both a singular feminine and all-gender plural pronoun. We revisit that chapter, focusing on the use of haar as a plural object pronoun (‘them’). The article reconstructs the diachronic development of haar in that role and traces its synchronic distribution in modern non-standard varieties of Dutch, Frisian, and Low German. Finally, we examine the dialectal provenance of Skepi or , with Zeelandic emerging as the primary suspect.
Source: Folia Linguistica
Author: Bart Jacobs
Institution: Jagiellonian University
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,712
OpenAlex ID: W4415420630