Lancaster University, United Kingdom (11-12 April 2024)

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The Dutch linguist C.B. van Haeringen showed in his 1956 monograph Nederlands tussen Duits en Engels that, consistent with its geographical intermediate location, Dutch occupies a middle position between English and German in quite a systematic way as far as its linguistic structure is concerned.  Van Haeringen’s take on this “Germanic Sandwich” centered on how Dutch has become more analytical over time but later research, especially since the first workshop commemorating his book in 2005, has broadened the scope substantially – covering a wider range of linguistic phenomena and examining other potential explanations (e.g. of a sociolinguistic or psycholinguistic nature). The initial Germanic Sandwich workshop in Berlin has seen seven further editions in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom and the next meeting will take place in Lancaster on 11-12 April 2024.

We invite abstracts for 20-minute talks (+ 10 minutes for discussion) in which Dutch is compared to German and/or English (other Germanic languages may obviously be included too). We welcome studies with a comparative and/or typological approach, focusing on structural and/or variational aspects of these languages from a synchronic and/or diachronic perspective and are also open to research dealing with language acquisition and/or taking a psycholinguistic point of view.  We especially encourage young scholars to submit their abstracts, in order to achieve a good balance between experienced and new researchers.

Abstracts should be written in one of the three conference languages (English, Dutch, German). They must be anonymous and no longer than 500 words (including examples, tables and figures but excluding references). They should be sent, as a pdf, by Friday 1 December 2023 to germanicsandwich9@lancaster.ac.uk.

Notification of acceptance: 15 January 2024.