ABSTRACT
First of all, it is unclear when Dutch lost aspiration. The absence or presence of aspiration in Dutch p , t , k is not indicated in spelling, nor has it ever been. We know about non-aspiration only by listening to present-day spoken Dutch and by studying modern dialect descriptions that care to mention this feature, which do not go back in time beyond the twentieth century. As a consequence, loss of aspiration may be attributed to any period between, say, the fi rst and the nineteenth century. That makes it very diffi cult to be confi dent about connecting the phenomenon to any specifi c historical scenario. Who is to say whether loss of aspiration in Dutch is due to contact with Late Latin speakers in the early Middle Ages rather than to, say, the well-known infl uence of French language and culture on the upper-class Dutch of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?
