Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics (QLVL) and the study of Dutch: a goal as well as a tool

research unit at the Arts faculty has a strong and long-standing research tradition. Within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics, language variation is approached from a predominantly quantitative and corpus-based perspective. This area of investigation entails two specific interests: lexical variation at large, both from a synchronic and a diachronic point of view, and the interaction between internal (structural) and external (lectal) variation. Extensions in various directions further solidify the research group’s methodological, descriptive and theoretical foundations. 2 The study of Dutch: different approaches to a pluricentric stratified language One of the principle preoccupations of the research group is the study of ongoing changes in Belgian Dutch and its relationship with Netherlandic Dutch. To this end, large text corpora of both written and spoken Dutch (from both national varieties) in various registers (from archived newspapers to new online media) are analysed. This corpus-based approach is occasionally complemented by experimental techniques or digitalised dictionary databases. Additionally, attitudinal research looks into the implicit judgement of language users vis-à-vis variation in language. 2.1 Pluricentrism, or having more than one national language variet