Tussen jij en jouw - de spelling van homofone werkwoorden voor het gereduceerd bezittelijk en persoonlijk voornaamwoord je

The number of verb-spelling errors decreases as students’ education level increases (Borsten & Jongenelen, 2012). However, even for the best students in Dutch secondary education, the spelling of homophonic verbs before reduced pronoun je ‘you/your’ remains a problem, as the pronoun may be either the reduced form of personal pronoun jij ‘you’ or the possessive pronoun jouw ‘your’. This affects the spelling of the preceding verb: it gets a final –t or not. In this contribution, we analysed the legal framework, compared teaching methods, and performed quantitative analyses on a large set of students’ spellings of verbs to test possible associations between spelling errors in homophonic verbs and the two functions of the reduced pronoun je, taking into account education level, and education stage. The results show that homophonic verbs preceding je indeed contain significantly more spelling errors than other homophonic verbs. Accordingly, we formulate recommendations for Dutch language education.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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