Over de S(T)AND van de Nederlandse dialectsyntaxis

In his 1932 article Syntaxis en dialectstudie I (Syntax and dialect study 1), the
Dutch linguist G.S. Overdiep made a plea for a systematic synchronic and comparative
study ofthe syntax ofDutch dialects. Although Overdiep contributed to
the study of dialect syntax and made various observations about the dimensions
of dialectal variation in Dutch, a broad-scale and systematic study of the syntax
ofDutch dialects was beyond the scope ofthe research possibilities at the time.
The SAND (Syntactische Atlas van de Nederlandse Dialecten) fiUs the gap that
Overdiep noted. Various phenomena of dialect syntax that were only briefly
mentioned in his (1936) Stilistische grammatica van het moderne Nederlands
receive a systematic description and analysis in the SAND. Thus, the SAND
provides us with what Overdiep made a plea for. In this article, I further point out
that the dimensions of dialectal variation as observed in the SAND for the Dutch
clausal domain can be used as a general background for identifying dimensions
of variation in other categorial domains, such as the noun phrase. The underlying
assumption here is that phrases (e.g. clauses and noun phrases) display a certain
amount of cross-categorial similarity. This, arguably, also holds for the types of
variation attested in the two categorial domains.