This article discusses the variation between masculine and neuter anaphoric pronouns in Afrikaans, especially in reference to inanimate entities such as objects, abstracts, collectives, and masses. The fact that books, governments, and wine can be referred to as both hy ‘he’ and dit ‘it’ is well known, but it is surprising given what is known about pronominal gender systems. Such systems are usually organized according to clear semantic principles, yielding predictable choices. The article summarizes the available literature, provides new data from the NWU-Kommentaarkorpus, and presents an approach that helps to make sense of the synchronic variation and, to some extent, the diachronic developments.

The development of a sound change can be influenced by linguistic and social factors, both within the language community and from cases of language contact. The present study is an examination of the internally generated ongoing tonogenesis process in Afrikaans, specifically analyzing production and perception of word-initial plosives among different age and gender groups. Results show that female speakers are devoicing significantly more often than male speakers, and the perception of female voices is influenced more by f0 levels than the perception of male voices. This study finds that gender is a larger predictor overall of tonogenetic patterns than age.*

The doubling of auxiliaries ‘have’ and ‘be’ in perfect tense constructions is a European areal phenomenon. It is present in languages of different filiations that have been in contact for a long time. In Dutch its distribution is largely restricted to the southeastern part of Dutch-speaking Belgium and some communities of North Brabant in the Netherlands. Double perfects are attested in contemporary Afrikaans, which is contrary to what we should expect, given that its metropolitan dialectal base is Hollandic, not southern Netherlandic. The Cape Dutch and Afrikaans evidence, sparse as it is, suggests that the range of this feature was significantly broader in vernacular Early Modern Dutch than one might infer from contemporary metropolitan norms.*

Afrikaans is spoken by a wide range of ethnic groups in Namibia, both as an L1 and an L2. Stell (2021) showed that, in its phonetic variation, Namibian Afrikaans forms a continuum between Whites and Blacks with Coloureds1 located in between. This article aims to find out whether a continuum can likewise be observed in the grammatical patterns of Namibian Afrikaans varieties. The dataset is based on a translation task, administered to L1 Afrikaans-speaking Whites and Coloureds and to L2 Afrikaans-speaking Damaras and Ovambos, whose respective L1s are Khoekhoegowab and Oshiwambo. The article finds a contrast between L1 and L2 speakers as the Damara and Ovambo Afrikaans varieties show evidence of L1 transfers. However, it also finds evidence of a continuum linking the Whites, Coloureds, and Damaras in the form of commonly shared Orange River Afrikaans features. The fact that Ovambo Afrikaans does not quite fit into this continuum, the article argues, has to do with the historically late exposure of Oshiwambo speakers to L1 Afrikaans varieties. Finally, the article attempts to match evidence of Khoekhoegowab influence on Damara Afrikaans with Den Besten’s (2001) and Roberge’s (1994a) reflections on historical contact between Khoekhoe and Cape Dutch.

This article examines Afrikaans V1-constructions with the verb laat ‘let’ and compares them with similar constructions in Dutch. I refer to these as pseudo-let imperatives (or PLI-constructions). Although PLI-constructions have the same form as some let-imperatives in both languages, they no longer function as commands and lack the directive force typically associated with imperatives. Instead, PLI-constructions are used to express the speaker’s perspective on a certain event or action. Drawing on grammaticalization criteria used by Van Craenenbroeck & Van Koppen (2015, 2017) in their work on perception and causative verbs in imperative(-like) constructions in Dutch, this article argues that PLI-laat/laten has undergone grammaticalization in both Afrikaans and Dutch. Additionally, I demonstrate that the Afrikaans PLI-laat has grammaticalized further than its Dutch counterpart. I propose that Afrikaans’ contact with a variety of other languages throughout its history may have accelerated the grammaticalization of laat relative to its Dutch counterpart, resulting in the observed differences in the grammaticalization of PLI-laat/laten constructions.

This article concerns the so-called Infinitivus Pro Participio (IPP) effect – in terms of which what appears to be an infinitive surfaces where a selected past participle is expected – as it manifests in modern Afrikaans. Prior research has highlighted the apparent optionality of this effect, leading to conflicting conclusions regarding the continued existence of a productive IPP-effect in contemporary Afrikaans. Here we draw on recent corpus- and questionnaire-based investigations to consider the optionality of the IPP-effect in Afrikaans in more empirical detail, with the objective of establishing (i) the status of the IPP in Afrikaans and (ii) how it differs from the IPP in Dutch. The article’s second objective is to consider the role of language contact in shaping the IPP-effect as it is currently attested in (varieties of) Afrikaans.*