Middle Dutch
Middle Dutch is the collective term for the varieties of the Dutch language spoken and written in the Low Countries from approximately the mid-12th century to the early 16th century. This period marks the transition from Old Dutch to Early Modern Dutch, characterized by significant dialectal diversity across regions including the counties of Flanders, Holland, and Zeeland, and the duchies of Brabant and Limburg. The language was not standardized, encompassing West Franconian dialects (Flemish, Brabantine, Hollandic) in the west and East Franconian (Limburgish) in the east, with phonetic spelling that reflected local variations rather than a uniform orthography. Grammatically, it retained a four-case system for nouns (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative) and featured strong and weak declensions, while verbs included weak, strong, and irregular conjugations with present and preterite tenses. Phonologically, Middle Dutch exhibited devoicing of voiced stops and fricatives at word ends, a range of short and long vowels, and diphthongs like ei and ou, with stress typically on the first syllable of simplex words. The literary output of this era was prolific and influential, beginning with early works like Hendrik van Veldeke's Sint Servaaslegende (c. 1160–1170), often considered the oldest substantial Middle Dutch text. Key genres included chivalric romances such as Karel ende Elegast and beast epics like Van den Vos Reynaerde[1], alongside religious texts and mystical writings, particularly in the 14th and 15th centuries influenced by the Devotio Moderna movement.[2] Much of the surviving corpus originates from southern dialects, reflecting the cultural centers in Flanders and Brabant, though northern texts from Holland also emerged. The advent of printing in the late 15th century facilitated wider dissemination, bridging Middle Dutch to the standardization of Early Modern Dutch.[3] This linguistic stage laid foundational elements for modern Dutch vocabulary, syntax, and literary traditions in the Netherlands and Belgium.Historical Context
Periodization and Definition
Middle Dutch is a collective term, often described as a container concept, for the various West Germanic dialects spoken and written in the Low Countries from approximately 1150 to 1500.[4] This period marks a transitional stage in the development of the Dutch language, bridging Old Dutch and Early Modern Dutch, during which written records become more abundant and diverse compared to the preceding era.[5] The exact boundaries of this stage are not rigidly fixed, with some linguistic analyses placing the onset slightly later, around 1200 or the mid-13th century, based on the emergence of consistent textual evidence.[5] A defining feature of Middle Dutch is the heightened dialectal variation, reflecting regional differences in phonology, morphology, and lexicon across its usage areas, alongside the gradual emergence of literary standards, particularly in southern centers like Flanders.[4] This era also witnessed early movements toward standardization, driven by expanding literary production and administrative needs, though full uniformity remained elusive until later centuries.[5] These characteristics highlight Middle Dutch as a dynamic phase of linguistic diversification and cultural expression through vernacular texts. The geographic scope of Middle Dutch centers on the Low Countries, primarily the territories of modern-day Netherlands and Belgium (including Flanders and Brabant), but extends to adjacent areas such as northern France and parts of western Germany where related dialects were spoken.[5] This region, characterized by its river deltas and urban growth, fostered the language's spread through trade, administration, and religious institutions. Periodization of Middle Dutch is shaped by the survival of thousands of manuscripts and textual fragments, which offer primary evidence of its forms and usage, predominantly from the 13th century onward.[6] Additionally, key linguistic innovations, such as vowel shifts, contributed to delineating this stage by distinguishing it from earlier and later varieties.[5]Evolution from Old Dutch
Middle Dutch emerged as a direct continuation of Old Dutch, retaining key grammatical and lexical elements that defined its West Germanic heritage. The case system, which had already shown signs of weakening in late Old Dutch, persisted in Middle Dutch with four cases—nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative—still influencing noun, adjective, and pronoun inflections, though mergers and simplifications began to erode distinct endings by the 13th century.[7] Strong verb classes, characterized by ablaut patterns across seven classes, were largely preserved from Old Dutch, maintaining stem vowel alternations in the present, past, and past participle forms, such as in the verb gān (to go).[7] The basic lexicon, comprising core Germanic vocabulary for daily life, kinship, and nature, remained stable, providing continuity in semantic fields while allowing for gradual evolution.[7] Initial linguistic shifts marked the transition to Middle Dutch around 1100–1200, introducing changes that distinguished it from its predecessor while building on Old Dutch foundations. Phonologically, diphthongs underwent simplification via monophthongization, with sequences like ai developing into long ē and au into ō, a process that stabilized between the 12th and 13th centuries and affected stressed syllables across dialects.[8] Fricatives saw notable alterations, including the voicing of the interdental þ (th) to /d/ in many contexts and the erosion of intervocalic stops such as d, g, and v, leading to forms like lede from earlier legede (suffering).[7] Vocabulary expansion occurred through borrowings, particularly from French, driven by feudal ties and commercial exchanges, incorporating terms for governance (ambt, office), knighthood (ridder, knight), and trade goods, enriching the lexicon without supplanting its Germanic core.[7] Sociolinguistic dynamics in the Low Countries during 1100–1200 profoundly shaped Middle Dutch's development, amid feudal fragmentation and burgeoning urban centers. The political division into counties and duchies fostered dialectal variation, as localized lordships preserved regional speech patterns, yet this fragmentation also spurred written standardization in administrative and literary contexts.[9] Urban growth in Flemish and Brabantine cities like Ghent and Bruges, fueled by textile production and Hanseatic trade, promoted the language's dissemination through guilds, markets, and courts, elevating vernacular use over Latin in civic life.[10] These factors intertwined with economic expansion, enhancing linguistic contact and contributing to the period's textual proliferation. The earliest attestations of Middle Dutch appear in literary works from the late 12th century, signaling the language's maturation into a medium for epic and religious narrative. Texts such as the Roelantslied (an adaptation of the French Chanson de Roland), Renout van Montalbaen, and the Limburg Aiol exemplify this emergence, composed in rhyming couplets and reflecting southern dialects, with fragments dated to around 1170–1200.[11] Adaptations of earlier religious materials, including psalm translations influenced by Old Dutch fragments like the Wachtendonck Psalms (originally 10th century), also surfaced in Middle Dutch by the early 13th century, blending scriptural content with vernacular idiom.[7]Transition to Early Modern Dutch
The late Middle Dutch period, particularly from around 1450 to 1500, witnessed several linguistic innovations that bridged the gap to Early Modern Dutch. Further vowel reductions occurred in unstressed syllables, with short vowels like /a/ and /u/ increasingly leveling to schwa (/ə/), especially in multisyllabic words and regional dialects such as those in the Low Countries; this process accelerated post-1490 in administrative and literary texts, contributing to phonological simplification.[12] Concurrently, word order began to stabilize toward more fixed subject-verb-object patterns in main clauses, supplemented by the growing use of prepositions to replace inflectional case endings, reducing syntactic flexibility inherited from earlier stages.[13] The advent of the printing press around 1450 played a pivotal role in these shifts, enabling the mass production of texts that favored supra-regional forms over local dialectal variants, thus accelerating standardization in printed materials like religious and educational works.[14] Chancery languages in counties such as Holland and Brabant emerged as proto-standards during this era, providing consistent written norms in official documents that mitigated dialectal diversity. The Hollandse Kancellij in Holland and the Brabants Kancellij in Brabant produced administrative texts reflecting aligned linguistic features, such as uniform spelling and morphology, which served as models for cross-regional communication and laid foundational elements for later Dutch norms.[15] These practices, evident in records from 1450–1500, helped integrate Hollandic and Brabantian elements into a nascent shared standard.[15] External pressures from contact with other languages intensified these developments, driven by trade, politics, and cultural exchange. Latin influenced ecclesiastical and scholarly vocabulary through church and administrative use, while French impacts—stemming from Burgundian rule—introduced loanwords in legal and courtly domains, particularly in urban centers like Antwerp.[16] Low German exerted phonological and lexical effects via Hanseatic trade networks, especially in eastern regions, blending with local dialects to enrich mercantile terminology.[16] Key texts marking this transition include late 15th-century legal and administrative documents from the Holland and Brabant chanceries, which exemplify emerging uniformity in orthography and syntax.[15] The first printed books in Dutch, such as the Delft Bible of 1477, further highlighted these changes by disseminating supra-regional variants, with Antwerp presses leading the shift toward standardized forms by the early 16th century.[17][14]Phonology
Consonants
The Middle Dutch consonant system featured a relatively stable inventory across its dialects, comprising stops, fricatives, nasals, liquids, and glides. The core phonemes included bilabial and labiodental stops and fricatives (/p, b, f, v/), alveolar and velar stops (/t, d, k, g/), alveolar fricatives (/s, z/), velar fricatives (/x, ɣ/), glottal fricative (/h/), and additional fricatives like /ʃ/ emerging from palatalization processes in certain contexts. Nasals were represented by /m, n, ŋ/, with /ŋ/ occurring exclusively before velar stops as an allophone of /n/. Liquids included the alveolar lateral /l/ and rhotic /r/, the latter realized as a trill or tap depending on position. Glides /j/ and /w/ functioned semivocalically, often in diphthongal onsets or as approximants. For the stop /g/, allophonic variation was prominent: it appeared as a stop after nasals or intervocalically following short stressed vowels, but lenited to the fricative [ɣ] in other environments, such as word-initially or after long vowels. Similarly, /x/ and /ɣ/ exhibited lenition tendencies in intervocalic positions in some dialects, approaching -like realizations. The fricative /z/ was largely an allophone of /s/, surfacing voiced in initial position before vowels or /w/, and medially between vowels or after nasals and /l/. Distributional rules governed consonant behavior, particularly in syllable codas and across morpheme boundaries. Obstruents underwent progressive and regressive voicing assimilation; for example, a voiced obstruent like /b/ before a voiceless /p/ resulted in , while /p/ before /b/ yielded . Syllable-final (often word-final) devoicing was systematic for voiced obstruents, neutralizing /b, d, g, v, z, ɣ/ to their voiceless counterparts [p, t, k, f, s, x], a process that applied categorically in isolated words but could be suspended in cliticized compounds due to resyllabification. Gemination, while not phonetically long, occurred as an allophonic lengthening in certain inland and eastern dialects, especially after short vowels, to contrast with single consonants; this was more pronounced in coastal varieties influenced by Frisian substrates. Orthographic representations of these consonants varied by scribe and region but generally followed phonetic principles, with digraphs like| Phoneme | Manner/Place | Coastal Dialects | Inland Dialects | Eastern Dialects | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /p/ | Bilabial stop | Voiceless, aspirated initially | Similar, occasional lenition intervocalically | Consistent voiceless | punt 'point' |
| /b/ | Bilabial stop | Voiced, devoices finally | Voiced, gemination after short vowels | Voiced, less gemination | boek 'book' |
| /t/ | Alveolar stop | Voiceless, affricated before /j/ | Voiceless, clear | Voiceless, palatalized in some | tijd 'time' |
| /d/ | Alveolar stop | Voiced, devoices finally | Voiced, occasional deletion before schwa | Voiced, retained | dag 'day' |
| /k/ | Velar stop | Voiceless, palatalized before front vowels | Voiceless, backed | Voiceless, fricative-like in some | kind 'child' |
| /g/ | Velar stop | ~ [ɣ], lenites often | after nasals, [ɣ] elsewhere | [ɣ] dominant, geminated | goed 'good' |
| /f/ | Labiodental fricative | Voiceless | Voiceless, bilabial in some | Voiceless | vis 'fish' |
| /v/ | Labiodental fricative | Voiced, devoices finally | Voiced, occasional [β] | Voiced | vader 'father' |
| /s/ | Alveolar fricative | Voiceless, allophone | Voiceless, palatal [ʃ] before /j/ | Voiceless, affricated | huis 'house' |
| /z/ | Alveolar fricative | Allophone of /s/ | Similar, more frequent voicing | Allophone, less distinct | zilver 'silver' |
| /ʃ/ | Postalveolar fricative | From /sk/, common | Emerging from palatalization | Less common, /s/ retained | schip 'ship' |
| /x, ɣ/ | Velar fricatives | [x, ɣ], lenite to | [x, ɣ], geminated | [x, ɣ], possibly backed | nacht 'night', lachen 'to laugh' |
| /m/ | Bilabial nasal | Unchanged | Unchanged | Unchanged | man 'man' |
| /n/ | Alveolar nasal | [ŋ] before velars | Similar | Similar | naam 'name' |
| /ŋ/ | Velar nasal | Allophone | Allophone | Allophone | zang 'song' |
| /l/ | Alveolar lateral | Clear | Clear | Clear, darker | land 'land' |
| /r/ | Alveolar rhotic | Trill/tap | Trill/tap | Trill/tap | rat 'rat' |
| /j/ | Palatal glide | Unchanged | Unchanged | Unchanged | jaar 'year' |
| /w/ | Labial glide | Unchanged | Unchanged, in some | Unchanged | water 'water' |
Vowels and Diphthongs
The Middle Dutch vowel system, spanning roughly the 12th to 16th centuries, featured a distinction between short and long monophthongs alongside a set of diphthongs, with qualities influenced by regional variations and historical shifts from Old Dutch. Short vowels were typically lax and occurred primarily in closed syllables, while long vowels were tense and often resulted from monophthongization of earlier diphthongs or open syllable lengthening. Long vowels often resulted from open syllable lengthening (OSL), where short vowels in open syllables lengthened, e.g., Proto-Germanic *sali > Middle Dutch sâle (/saːlə/ 'hall').[7] Diphthongs included both rising and falling types, contributing to a rich vocalic inventory that supported lexical contrasts. Short vowels comprised five phonemes: /ɪ/, /ɛ/, /a/, /ɔ/, and /ʏ/. The high front /ɪ/ appeared in words like bit ("bite"), contrasting with the mid front unrounded /ɛ/ as in bet ("bid"). The low central /a/ was unrounded and central, exemplified by kat ("cat"), while the mid back rounded /ɔ/ occurred in kot ("hut"). The short /ʏ/, a high front rounded vowel, showed fronting and rounding variations across dialects, as in buit ("booty," with umlaut effects). These vowels exhibited qualitative differences tied to height and rounding, with /ʏ/ distinguishing rounded front articulation from unrounded counterparts.[7][18] Long vowels included /iː/, /eː/, /aː/, /oː/, and /uː/, generally maintaining stable qualities but derived from monophthongization of Old Dutch diphthongs such as īe > iː. The high front /iː/ is seen in stîch ("stitch"), contrasting with the mid front /eː/ in stêch ("steeple"). The low /aː/ remained open and central, as in mâch ("make"), while /oː/ (mid back rounded) appeared in docht ("seemed") and /uː/ (high back rounded) in huus ("house"). These long vowels often lengthened short counterparts in open syllables, enhancing phonemic oppositions like man (/man/, "man") versus mân (/maːn/, "moon").[19] Diphthongs encompassed rising types like /œi/ and /ui/, alongside falling varieties such as /ei/ and /ou/. Rising diphthongs, characterized by a glide from mid to high, included /œi/ (mid front rounded to high front) in keiken ("to look") and /ui/ (high front rounded to high back) in huît ("skin," showing dialectal variation). Falling diphthongs featured closing movements, with /ei/ (mid to high front) in eî ("egg") and /ou/ (mid to high back) in ouwe ("old"). Minimal pairs illustrate contrasts, such as dei (/dei/, "day") versus dî (/diː/, "thick") and buît (/bui̯t/, "outside") versus bût (/buːt/, "booted"). These diphthongs were prevalent in stressed syllables, often reflecting i-umlaut or regional fronting.[7] Syllable structure imposed constraints on vowel length and quality: short vowels predominated in closed syllables (CVC), resisting lengthening to avoid overlong codas, as in hand (/hɑnt/, "hand"). Long vowels and diphthongs favored open syllables (CVː or CVV), where compensatory lengthening occurred, but shortened before complex onsets or in compounds. Diphthongs were restricted from certain coda positions to maintain sonority hierarchies, ensuring rising glides did not violate peak prominence in stressed nuclei. These patterns underscored the system's role in morphological alternations, such as plural forms triggering vowel shifts.[19]Key Phonological Changes
During the Middle Dutch period (approximately 1150–1500), several phonological innovations transformed the language's sound system, building on West Germanic foundations and varying by dialect, particularly between coastal and inland varieties. These changes included vowel fronting and monophthongization, as well as consonant palatalization and weakening, evidenced primarily through inconsistent spellings and rhyme patterns in surviving manuscripts such as the 14th-century Brabantian Ms. Marshall 29.[8][18] Among the notable vowel shifts, i-umlaut led to the phonemization of front rounded vowels, with Proto-Germanic */u/ (and its long counterpart */u:/) shifting to /y/ (or /y:/) before /i/ or /j/ in the following syllable, creating a new phoneme distinct from unumlauted back vowels. For instance, forms like musi developed into /myzi/ ('mouse'), reflected in Middle Dutch spellings such asOrthography
General Principles
Middle Dutch orthography, used from approximately 1200 to 1500, exhibited no centralized standardization, leading to pronounced inconsistencies shaped by regional dialects and diverse scribal practices. Derived from Latin minuscule scripts, it primarily employed the Gothic bookhand—known as Textualis—for manuscript production, a formal and angular style that facilitated dense text layouts in religious, literary, and administrative works. This regional variation stemmed from the absence of a codified language norm, with scribes adapting conventions to local speech patterns across the Low Countries.[22][23] Influenced heavily by contemporary pronunciation, Middle Dutch spellings tended toward phonetic representation rather than rigid etymological fidelity, though the latter appeared in some loanwords from Latin or French. To denote sounds not present in the Latin alphabet, such as velar fricatives, digraphs like ch and gh were introduced, reflecting evolving phonological features without uniform application. Manuscript evidence from this era, including codices in Gothic bookhand dated to circa 1200–1500, reveals these traits through inconsistent forms, such as variable renderings of common words across copies.[22][24] Orthographic practices were further molded by key institutions: monasteries served as primary scriptoria for copying devotional and scholarly texts, often preserving conservative elements; princely courts and their chancelleries produced official documents with dialect-specific nuances; and urban notaries contributed to legal writings that prioritized clarity in local contexts. For example, the 14th-century manuscripts from the Carthusian monastery of Herne illustrate collaborative scribal work, featuring Latin-derived abbreviations and marginal notations that highlight institutional influences on spelling variability. These spellings offer a window into the era's phonological landscape (see Phonology).[22][25]Vowel Orthography
In Middle Dutch, scribes adapted the Latin alphabet to represent the vowel system, which included seven short vowels (/i, y, e, ɛ, a, ɔ, o/) and corresponding long vowels, as well as diphthongs, though without a standardized orthography across the dialect continuum from approximately 1150 to 1500. Representations varied by region, scribe, and text type, often relying on context such as syllable structure to distinguish length rather than consistent markers.[24] Short vowels were typically denoted by single letters: for /i/,Consonant Orthography
Middle Dutch orthography lacked standardization, resulting in spellings that closely mirrored regional pronunciations and phonetic realizations, particularly for consonants which were generally represented with single letters for basic stops and fricatives.[27] The core consonants included for /p/, for /b/,Dialects
Dialect Continuum Overview
Middle Dutch dialects formed a dialect continuum across the Low Countries, characterized by gradual linguistic transitions without rigid boundaries, primarily along an east-west geographic axis influenced by historical contacts between Franconian and Ingvaeonic substrates.[16] This continuum reflected a spectrum from innovative coastal varieties in the west to more conservative inland varieties in the east, shaped by migrations, trade, and political fragmentation during the period from approximately 1150 to 1500.[28] Isoglosses—lines marking the boundaries of specific linguistic features—clustered to delineate these zones, often based on phonological and lexical traits, such as the distribution of Ingvaeonic s-plurals (e.g., "riks" for "kingdom") prevalent in coastal areas versus Franconian forms inland.[28] Major divisions within this continuum were defined by key phonological developments, including variations in Urmonophthongierung, the monophthongization processes affecting original Germanic diphthongs, which progressed differently across regions and contributed to vowel system distinctions.[28] Consonant shifts, particularly the partial effects of the High German consonant shift in eastern inland dialects, further marked boundaries; for instance, the Uerdinger Line separated "ik" (I) from "ich" in the west-to-east progression, while the Benrather Line distinguished "maken" (to make) from "machen."[28] These isoglosses, often visualized in historical maps, highlighted the continuum's fluidity, with overlapping features like voicing of fricatives more advanced in coastal zones due to North Sea Germanic influences, contrasting with inland conservatism.[21][16] Sociolinguistically, urban centers such as Bruges, Antwerp, and Ghent served as hubs for dialect mixing and early standardization, blending Flemish, Hollandic, and Brabantian traits through commerce and administration, which influenced emerging written norms.[28] In contrast, rural areas acted as conservers of local varieties, preserving archaic features amid limited external contact and slower adoption of innovations.[28] This dynamic reinforced the continuum's structure, with phonological and lexical isoglosses often denser near urban-rural interfaces.[16]Coastal Dialects
The coastal dialects of Middle Dutch, encompassing Flemish and Hollandic varieties, formed the innovative western edge of the dialect continuum, influenced by proximity to the North Sea and urban commerce. Flemish, spoken in the County of Flanders including cities like Ghent and Bruges, underwent notable monophthongization patterns, such as the shift of /ɛi/ to /ɛː/, which simplified diphthongs in open syllables and reflected the dynamic linguistic environment of these prosperous trade hubs.[27][7] In contrast, Hollandic dialects, prevalent in the County of Holland, showed greater preservation of diphthongs, including the retention of /ɔi/, a feature bolstered by the region's extensive maritime trade networks that connected it to broader Germanic linguistic spheres and slowed certain vowel mergers.[7] This preservation contributed to Hollandic's role as a foundational influence on later standard Dutch.[27] Both Flemish and Hollandic shared key innovations, such as the early loss of final -n in unstressed positions (e.g., in infinitives and plurals) and progressive assimilation of consonants, where preceding sounds adapted to following ones for ease of articulation, fostering a characteristic coastal phonetic fluidity.[27][7] These variations often appear in orthographic forms tied to regional scribal practices.[27]Inland and Eastern Dialects
The inland and eastern dialects of Middle Dutch, including Brabantian, Limburgish, and Kleverlandish, are characterized by their relative conservatism compared to coastal varieties, retaining several Old Dutch features while exhibiting internal variations influenced by regional geography.[29] These dialects formed part of the broader Franconian continuum, with Brabantian centered in the Duchy of Brabant, Limburgish in the Meuse-Rhine area, and Kleverlandish along the lower Rhine and Meuse borders, often bridging Low Franconian and Low German traits.[9] Their conservative nature is evident in preserved phonological distinctions and lexical patterns that resisted some of the innovations seen elsewhere in the dialect continuum.[30] Brabantian, spoken in central-southern areas like modern-day Brabant, featured a balanced vowel system where distinctions between back rounded vowels such as /u:/ and /o:/ remained clear, as evidenced by non-neutralized rhymes in 14th-century manuscripts.[29] A notable development was the fronting of /uː/ to /yː/ in certain contexts, such as before /r/ in closed syllables, reflected in spellings likeGrammar
Nouns
Middle Dutch nouns inflect for three grammatical genders—masculine, feminine, and neuter—and distinguish four cases: nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative, alongside number (singular and plural).[31][22] Syncretism emerged during this period, particularly in the merger of accusative and nominative forms for many nouns and a gradual decline in distinct genitive usage, reflecting broader simplification trends toward Modern Dutch.[32] Gender assignment influenced agreement with articles and adjectives, as detailed in the section on adjectives and determiners.[31] The noun system primarily divided into strong and weak declensions, with strong nouns comprising the majority and featuring stems ending in consonants or specific vowels (such as a-stems like gast "guest" and i-stems like herte "heart"), while weak nouns typically ended in -e in the nominative singular (e.g., mensche "person," siele "soul").[22][31] Strong declensions showed varied endings by gender and case, with common plural markers including -e or -s, and dative/genitive plural often in -en; for instance, the masculine a-stem gast declined as gast (nominative singular), gastes (genitive singular), gaste (dative singular), gaste (nominative/accusative plural), and gasten (dative plural).[31] Weak declensions simplified the singular paradigm, often using -e for nominative/accusative and -en for genitive/dative, with plurals uniformly in -en (e.g., mensche, menschen across oblique singular cases and all plural forms).[22] This two-class system, inherited from Old Dutch, began eroding in the later Middle Dutch period, especially in northern dialects where case distinctions weakened.[32] To illustrate case functions, consider the sentence "Die goede gast gaeft den goeden man eenen goeden gaste" ("The good guest gives the good man a good guest"), where gast appears in accusative singular as the direct object and gaste in accusative plural modified by the indefinite article.[31] In possessive contexts, the genitive declined notably, as in "des goeden hoves" ("of the good garden," neuter hof), but by the 14th century, analytic constructions like van den hove increasingly replaced synthetic genitives across genders.[22][32] The following table summarizes representative strong declension paradigms for each gender, including definite articles and agreeing adjectives (strong forms):| Case | Masculine (gast "guest") | Feminine (daet "deed") | Neuter (hof "court") |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative sg. | die goede gast | die goede daet | dat goede hof |
| Accusative sg. | dien goeden gast | die goede daet | dat goede hof |
| Genitive sg. | des goeden gastes | der goeder daet | des goeden hoves |
| Dative sg. | dien goeden gaste | der goeder daet | dien goeden hove |
| Nominative pl. | die goede gaste | die goede daden | die goede hove |
| Accusative pl. | die goede gaste | die goede daden | die goede hove |
| Genitive pl. | der goeder gaste | der goeder daden | der goeder hove |
| Dative pl. | dien goeden gasten | dien goeden daden | dien goeden hoven |
Adjectives and Determiners
In Middle Dutch, adjectives inflected according to two primary paradigms: the strong declension, used when no definite determiner preceded the adjective, and the weak declension, employed when a definite determiner was present. The strong declension featured varied endings to indicate case, gender, and number, such as -e in the nominative singular masculine (e.g., goet man "good man") and -en in the dative/accusative plural (e.g., goede liede "good people"). In contrast, the weak declension was more uniform, typically ending in -e for most forms across genders and cases when following a definite article, as in die goede man "the good man," reflecting a simplification from earlier Germanic patterns.[32][33] The following table illustrates representative paradigms for the adjective goet ("good") in the singular, based on standard Middle Dutch forms from the late 13th to 15th centuries:| Case/Gender | Strong Masculine | Strong Feminine | Strong Neuter | Weak (All Genders) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative sg. | goet-e | goet-e | goet | (de) goet-e |
| Genitive sg. | goet-en | goet-er | goet-en | (des) goet-en |
| Dative sg. | goet-en | goet-er | goet-en | (dem) goet-en |
| Accusative sg. | goet-en | goet-e | goet | (den) goet-en |
Pronouns
Middle Dutch personal pronouns retained a four-case system (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative), though accusative and dative often merged in oblique forms by the later period, with dialectal variations across regions like Flanders and Brabant.[34] The first-person singular nominative was ic (I), with oblique mi (me); plural nominative wi (we), oblique ons (us). Second-person singular nominative du (thou), oblique di (thee); plural nominative ghi (ye), which also served as a polite singular form, with oblique (j)u or u (you). Third-person forms distinguished gender and number: masculine singular nominative hi (he), oblique hem (him); feminine singular si (she), oblique haer (her); neuter singular (h)et (it), unchanged across cases; plural nominative si (they), oblique hun or hen (them).[35] Genitive forms like mins (my), dins (thy), sins (his), and hare (her/their) were used possessively but increasingly replaced by prepositional phrases with van (of).[34] Clitic forms, such as -s for second-person singular, appeared in enclitic positions after verbs, as in gaets du (goest thou). These pronouns functioned as subjects, direct/indirect objects, or possessives, aligning with the language's case alignments for agreement.[3]| Person | Case | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | NOM | ic | wi |
| GEN | mins | onser | |
| OBJ | mi | ons | |
| 2nd | NOM | du | ghi |
| GEN | dins | uwer | |
| OBJ | di | u | |
| 3rd M/F/N | NOM | hi/si/et | si |
| GEN | sins/hare | haer | |
| OBJ | hem/hare/et | hun |
Verbs
Middle Dutch verbs are classified primarily into strong and weak categories, with a smaller group of preterite-present verbs, reflecting the inherited Germanic system. Strong verbs form their past tense and past participle through ablaut (vowel gradation) rather than suffixation, while weak verbs use a dental suffix for these forms. The language distinguishes two main tenses—present and preterite (past)—along with three moods: indicative, subjunctive, and imperative. Finite verb forms inflect for person, number, tense, and mood, with the infinitive and participles serving non-finite roles. An emerging analytic trend is evident in periphrastic constructions, particularly the perfect tense formed with auxiliaries hebben ("have") or zijn ("be") plus the past participle.[37][32] Strong verbs are divided into seven classes based on their ablaut patterns, which derive from Proto-Germanic vowel alternations in the principal parts: infinitive/present stem, preterite singular, preterite plural, and past participle. These classes maintain a core of about 200 verbs in Middle Dutch, though some show leveling or shifts toward weak conjugation over time. Representative examples illustrate the patterns, with the ablaut vowels highlighted:| Class | Ablaut Pattern (Infinitive - Preterite Sg. - Preterite Pl. - Past Participle) | Example Principal Parts |
|---|---|---|
| I | ī - ēi - i - i | rīden - rēd - riden - riden ("ride") |
| II | iu - ou - u - u | biuden - bōd - boden - boden ("offer") |
| IIIa | i - a - u - u | singen - sang - sung(en) - sungen ("sing") |
| IIIb | e - O - O - O (O = long o) | drinken - dranc - dronken - gedronken ("drink") |
| IV | e - ā - ēn - o | nemen - nam - nāmen - genomen ("take") |
| V | e - ā - ēn - e | geven - gaf - gāven - gegeven ("give") |
| VI | a - ō - ō - a | vāren - voer - vōren - gevaren ("fare, go") |
| VII | various - ie - ie - e (reduplicating or mixed) | lōpen - liep - liepen - gelopen ("run") |