Hoekstra, Dr E. (Eric)
Eric Hoekstra
Areas of expertise
Languages in contact, frequency and analogy, bilingualism, historical syntax, translations, literary studies.
Biography
Eric Hoekstra (Heerenveen, 1960) studied Linguistics in Groningen, where he obtained his PhD degree in 1991. He was employed as dialect syntactician at the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam, where he investigated Frisian substrate in the dialects of the provinces of Groningen, Drenthe and Noord-Holland. He transferred to the Fryske Akademy in 1999, where he specialised in the relation between frequency and analogy and in grammatical interactions in the bilingual brain. He also published articles about Frisian grammar, historical syntax, language politics and language change.
In addition, he made a Frisian translation of the Bhagavad Gita and of Also sprach Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, he created a poetical version of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tse and he published two anthologies of Frisian literature from the 17th and 18th centuries (Midfrysk Goud).
Hoekstra considers himself a humanities scholar in the broadest sense of the word.