The crystallization of language over time

Abstract

In this article, we investigate Van der Horst’s (2013) hypothesis that Dutch (like other European languages) underwent a diachronic process of ‘crystallization’, i.e. tighter lexical organization, at the expense of freely combinatorial syntax, in the last centuries. Analysing the collocational association strength in lemma and part-of-speech trigrams using the Δ P measure and entropy ( H ), we find quantitative support for the idea that Dutch has crystallized in the period under investigation (1850–1999). Further enquiry into the diachrony of the lexicon by means of Kullback-Leibler Divergence ( KLD ) suggests that the reason might be what Baayen et al. (2017) have called the ‘Ecclesiastes Principle’, namely a lexical expansion that puts a cap on the combinatorial syntax. This lexical expansion is probably a response to the increasing specialization and cultural turnover in late modern times. The slow change in the syntax of Dutch shows how languages adapt to their cultural niche.