Final Devoicing in Dutch Medieval and Renaissance Texts: A Preliminary Study on Orthographic Variation

This paper describes a preliminary quantitative study on orthographic variation of word-final devoiced consonants (e.g. altijd vs altijt ‘always’) in Dutch medieval and Renaissance texts. Five epic works in verse, either poems or plays, have been analysed, which cover a period from 1270 until 1637. The computational identification of orthographic marking of word-final devoicing, as well as the occurrence of instances without marking, allows, for each text under examination, to chart the different phases of the devoiced consonants’ spelling. The results show that the earlier medieval texts under investigation exhibit spelling which overtly displays devoiced consonants; later works, those written within the Renaissance period, show more instances of orthographic variation. Besides the preliminary results of this pilot study, this paper highlights the potential of applying similar computational approaches to larger data sets of texts.