ABSTRACT

Phonetic measures extracted from speech data produced by speakers of six West Germanic dialects spoken in the Netherlands reveal a pattern of variation that appears to reflect their geographical locations. From the southwest to the northeast, segmental durations increase, while falling movements are steeper and faster in the northeast than in the southwest. Instead of showing a linear cline, a number of variables reflected an inverted U-shape when projected on a geographical map. This is explained by the fact that the central portion of the geographical cline is the source of the standard language, and that the peripheries of the cline represent conservative stages.