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Languages change. They change over time, as they separate and grow apart from each other, and they change as they come into contact with each other. Some changes are relatively easy to trace over time and are almost logical: they follow regular phonetic rules, for example. Other changes are less expected and cannot be explained by reference to language-internal processes. It has long been obvious to historical and comparative linguists that these other changes are often due to the influence of a different language with which the speakers of the first have come into contact. Uriel Weinreich's 1953 study Languages in Contact is generally credited with opening modern research into this topic, and other scholars have over the years followed his lead, although on the whole it has remained one of the less-explored areas of linguistics. It was not until 1988 that the social circumstances of such language contact were fully taken into account in developing a framework to study contact-induced language change. In this year two books appeared independently proposing such a framework, one by Sarah Grey Thomason and Terrence Kaufman, and the other by Frans van Coetsem. Both books consider how a number of social conditions influence the development of languages changed through external means rather than by more familiar (and more extensively studied) internal processes. The importance of factors not systematically considered before are part of this new framework -- factors such as the relative sizes of the shifting or new-language populations, language attitudes of both language populations, length of time of contact between languages and the possible relatedness of the languages or typological similarity. The latter half of Thomason and Kaufman's book consists of a number of case studies based upon their own framework. Additional case studies on other languages have been conducted and published since then by other scholars using this framework, which has proved to be useful in explaining certain changes in various languages as well as in illuminating past social conditions based upon the development of the language(s). I propose to do a multi-faceted study of the effects Frisian has had on the development of the modern Dutch language since the 12th century. The kernel of my thesis is the Frisian substrate of the province of Noord-Holland. I argue that the non-Frisian inhabitants of this province, which was taken over in medieval times by the Counts of Holland who spoke a Frankish language, were affected by the local language just as their arrival affected that language in turn. This interaction ultimately led to the loss of Frisian as the local language and the development of the dialect of Hollands, different from the other Frankish dialects thanks to what it absorbed from Frisian. Due to the rising political and economic importance of the province of Noord-Holland over the following centuries, this local dialect also grew in importance and influence. It became the basis for ABN (modern standard Dutch) and continues to affect the evolution of ABN in contemporary times. Studies of Dutch-Frisian interaction carried out recently focus for the most part on the effects of Dutch on Frisian in the Netherlands, such as Breuker (1984), Cock (1984), Dijk (1982), Gorter (1984), Jelsma (1981), De Jong and Riemersma (1994), and Vries (1993). All the discussions of the reverse which I have been able to find are atomistic collections of Frisian words in Dutch varied by a few conjectures about certain morphological or syntactic developments. By considering the situation of Dutch and Frisian in the Netherlands according to Thomason and Kaufman's framework, I expect to clarify a portion of the historical development of a modern language.
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