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Graduate School of Humanities Graduate School of Humanities

Dr. R.A. (Robert) Cloutier

Faculty of Humanities
Capaciteitsgroep Engelse taal en cultuur
Visiting address
  • Spuistraat 134
  • Room number: 540
Postal address
  • Postbus 1641
    1000 BP Amsterdam
Contact details
  • Profile

    Current Information

    I completed my doctoral work at the University of Amsterdam and successfully defended my dissertation, entitled West Germanic OV and VO: The Status of Exceptions, on February 20, 2009. I was an Assistant Professor of English at Tennessee Technological University and a guest researcher at the University of Amsterdam from August 2008 until July 2012. Since September 1, 2012, I have rejoined the University of Amsterdam where I am an Assistant Professor of English Linguistics. My main research interests are in older Germanic languages and various word order phenomena related to them.

  • Teaching

    I teach primarily for the English Language and Culture Bachelor's program and the Masters program in Linguistics.

    Courses (2018-2019)

    • Language in Use: Acquisition and Variation (MA course taught together with Alla Peeters-Podgaevskaja)
    • Stories of English (1st-year BA course)
    • Language in Society and Pragmatics (2nd-year BA course)
    • Language Variation and Change (2nd-year BA course)
    • Philosophy of the Humanities (English Language and Literature): Linguistics module (3rd-year BA course)

    Previous courses

    • Historical Linguistics (MA course)
    • Comparative Germanic Syntax (MA course)

    Supervised theses

    • Geest, Marieke de. 2016. Alcohol and drug references in popular music from 2005-2015. BA thesis.
    • Slavenburg, Gioia. 2016. Analyzing racism in newspapers: A comparison of articles in The New York Times and De Volkskrant on police violence and the discussion of 'Zwarte Piet'. BA thesis.

     

    • Boendermaker, Lisa. 2015. The distribution of English in print advertisements across three Dutch magazines targeting a female audience. BA thesis.
    • Olde Rikkert, Naomi. 2015. Functions of code-switching in young bilinguals: A study on code-switching behavior in bilingual twins. BA thesis.

     

    • Bosma, Gertje. 2014. The changing use of nonverbal features in online chat. BA thesis.
    • Huijbrechts, Olga. 2014. A sociolinguistic study into the influence of postvocalic /r/ on age and formality in the county of Devon, southwest England. BA thesis.
    • Mulder, Myriam. 2014. Project H.O.U.N.D. Sherlock Holmes's pragmalinguistic politeness strategies in performing the speech act of making requests. BA thesis.
  • Publications

    2025

    • Aalberse, S., & Cloutier, R. A. (2025). Variation and stability in variants of heritage Dutch. In C. Joby, & N. van der Sijs (Eds.), Dutch and Contact Linguistics: The Dutch language outside the low countries (pp. 502-536). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.55.16clo [details]

    2013

    2016

    • Cloutier, R. A. (2016). Prepositions, Particles, Adverbs: The P System in Old Dutch. In A. Bannink, & W. Honselaar (Eds.), From variation to iconicity: festschrift for Olga Fischer on the occasion of her 65th birthday (pp. 49-70). Uitgeverij Pegasus. [details]

    2010

    • Cloutier, R. A., Hamilton-Brehm, A. M., & Kretzschmar, W. A. (2010). Studies in the history of the English language V: variation and change in English grammar and lexicon: contemporary approaches. (Topics in English linguistics; No. 68). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton. [details]

    2006

    2016

    Talk / presentation

    • Weerman, F. P. (speaker), Olson, M. J. (speaker) & Cloutier, R. A. (speaker) (26-4-2012). Synchronic Variation and Loss of Case: Formal and Informal Language in a Corpus of 17th-century Amsterdam,, GLAC, Indiana University, Bloomington.
    • Weerman, F. P. (speaker), Olson, M. J. (speaker) & Cloutier, R. A. (speaker) (4-2-2012). Synchronic Variation and Loss of Case: Formal and Informal Language in a Corpus of 17th-century Amsterdam, Linguistics in the Netherlands, Utrecht.
    • Weerman, F. P. (speaker), Olson, M. J. (speaker) & Cloutier, R. A. (speaker) (13-8-2009). Sifting through the textual evidence: Linguistic variation in 17th century Amsterdam, International Conference of Historical Linguistics, Nijmegen.
    • Cloutier, R. A. (speaker) (6-8-2007). Objects, Relative Clauses, English and Dutch, 18th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada.
    • Cloutier, R. A. (speaker) (21-4-2007). Are you overweight? West Germanic Extraposition and Weight, 6th York-Newcastle-Holland Symposium on the History of English Syntax, Universiteit Leiden.
    • Cloutier, R. A. (speaker) (3-2-2007). Objects, Relative Clauses and Word Order, TiN-dag, Universiteit Utrecht.
    • Cloutier, R. A. (speaker) (21-8-2006). Discourse Factors in the History of English: Relative Clauses and Their Nouns, International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Italië.
    • Cloutier, R. A. (speaker) (2-6-2006). Relative Clauses and Underlying Word Order: Evidence from the History of English and Dutch, TABU-dag, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. http://www.rug.nl.let/onderzoek/onderzoeksinstituten/clcg/events/tabudag/index
    • Cloutier, R. A. (speaker) (28-4-2006). What Relative Clauses Can Tell Us about Underlying Word Order: Evidence from English, Netherland Society for English Studies Symposium (invited), Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen.

    2009

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  • Ancillary activities
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