CLiPS

The two national varieties of Dutch, spoken resp. in the Netherlands and Belgium, differ in a considerable number of features. Phonetic differences are among the most stable ones.

This project has three distinct aims:

• the collection of data representative of speech in the two countries
• description of the phonetic variation
• evaluation of the variation.

The analysis will be carried out beyond the traditional limitations of the segmental level, and will encompass both auditive and acoustic analyses. In addition both regional and social variation within both countries will be considered. In this way further substantiation (or refutation) will be provided for claims with respect to the existence of national 'centers' (the Randstad in Holland, the central Brabantic region in Belgium). If possible a representative chart of evaluations on endogeneous and exogeneous variants will be provided.

Both for the sampling of speech fragments and for the evaluation, the focus will be on a group of language teachers. This is a fairly large group of people who are undoubtedly concerned with and interested in the development of norms within the language community. The analyses carried out on this material will be highlighted against findings concerning the lnguage used in broadcasting centers in both countries.