Identification of Differences between Dutch Language Varieties with the VarDial2018 Dutch-Flemish Subtitle Data

摘要

With the goal of discovering differences between Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch, we participated as Team Taurus in the Dutch-Flemish Subtitles task of VarDial2018. We used a rather simple marker-based method, but with a wide range of features, including lexical, lexico-syn-tactic and syntactic ones, and achieved a second position in the ranking. Inspection of highly distinguishing features did point towards differences between the two language varieties, but because of the nature of the experimental data, we have to treat our observations as very tentative and in need of further investigation.