Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde

Cor van Bree

Inleiding. Een biobibliografische schets van Gesinus Gerhardus Kloeke

Abstract -- This article surveys the work of the Dutch dialect-geographer and historical linguist Gesinus Gerardus Kloeke (1887-1963). His work follows a remarkable course through the various Dutch linguistic regions: from the north east and the fishing villages of the Zuiderzee to the west (Holland) and back again to the north-east. In his ‘western’ period he also paid attention to Standard Dutch and the origins of Afrikaans. Kloeke mostly dealt with phonological and morphological subjects. In his famous book on the Holland expansion (1927) he treated the expansion of the old [y.] in e.g. huus (Standard-Dutch huis with diphtongh) from Amsterdam to the northern and eastern provinces in the 16th and 17th centuries. Important morphological subjects were the diminutives and the forms of adress. He was strongly interested in the problems of language norms and in theoretical and methodological (cartographical) issues. In theoretical respect he defended a top-to-bottom approach of language change. On top of that, he also wrote several articles about literary subjects. Kloeke was a scholar who combined great vision and a polished style with a strong empirical base. His ideas did not remain undisputed, but they do still captivate the attention of modern scholars.

TNTL 121-3 (september 2005), 193-200