Divergence of dialects in a linguistic laboratory near the Belgian – Dutch – German border: Similar dialects under the influence of different standard languages Marinel Gerritsen University of Nijmegen ABSTRACT This article deals with divergence on the lexical, phonological, and morphological levels in three dialects that were the same until the mid-20th century (Maaseiks in Belgium, Susters in the Netherlands, and Waldfeuchts in Germany) and that have changed under the influence of three different standard languages (Belgian Dutch, Netherlandic Dutch, and Standard German). The investigation is carried out among girls aged 14 to 16 years and women aged 35 to 50 years. Due to the unique laboratory- like situation, it was possible to gain a detailed understanding of the role of the struc- ture of the dialect and the dialect–standard language situation in the process of dialect change under the influence of a standard language. The data indicate that the lin- guistic route of the change is largely the same for all dialects. This means that the re- ceiving dialect plays an important part in the linguistic embedding of a change. However, the rationale of the linguistic road is still far from clear. The divergence of the similar dialects occurred relatively recently. Whereas the women of the three places use the old dialect forms almost exclusively, the girls use forms of the stan- dard languages or “mixed” forms, especially in Waldfeucht. The dialect of Wald- feucht is clearly affected much more strongly by Standard German than are the dialect of Maaseik by Belgian Dutch and the dialect of Susteren by Netherlandic Dutch. This can be explained by a number of factors: the position of the dialect at school, com- prehensibility of the dialect, attitude towards the dialect, and the use of the dialect. The study of dying dialects has been a focus of interest for dialectologists for centuries. In numerous dialectological studies we find alarmist remarks about the loss of traditional dialect forms at the expense of forms of a standard language. This article reports on research being carried out in a doctoral seminar on sociolinguistics at the Department of General Linguistics and Dialectology of the University of Nijmegen. Thanks are due to the participants of the seminar for their help with the design of the study, data collection, and data analysis: Martine Abels, Roel van Beurden, Rianne Doeleman, Claudie van Ginneken, Ineke Huibregtse, Arianne Klaassen, Tina Kuyper, Eugen Kühn, Carien Mensink, Liesbeth van Ooyen, Jolande Pistoor, Léan Seuren, Nelleke de Vries, and Carina de Wijs. I also wish to thank Tom Boves for his help with the SPSS programs; Jan Berns for information on the political and linguistic history of the areas under investigation; and Jo Daan, Helmut Daller, Ludger Kremer, Jürgen Macha, and Georg Cornelissen for fruitful discussions on the study of dialects around the German–Dutch border. Thanks also go to David Sankoff for his critical comments. I am glad that he convinced me to give up statistical analyses for the data presented here. Language Variation and Change, 11 (1999), 43–65. Printed in the U.S.A. © 1999 Cambridge University Press 0954-3945099 $9.50 43