Abstract
This study examines how different learning settings shape young learners’ acquisition of syntactic and semantic variation in German weil-clauses. Contemporary German displays a well-known register-sensitive alternation in weil-clauses between verb-final (VF) word order, expected in subordinate clauses, and verb-second (V2) word order, frequent in spoken informal usage. For second and foreign language learners, such conflicting input may complicate the acquisition of target-like dependent clause syntax. Using data from three German learner corpora (LEONIDE, Kolipsi, KoKo) comprising lower and upper secondary school writing, we analyse how learners’ exposure settings affect mastery of VF word order and the distribution of non-target structures.
Our research addresses four questions: (RQ1) whether groups with different instructional school settings (A: non-immersed; B: immersed) differ in their interlanguage varieties, and how they compare to a native-speaker reference group (C); (RQ2) whether the semantics of the causal relation influences VF vs. V2 choices; (RQ3) whether the proportional use of VF structures develops over time; and (RQ4) whether similar patterns occur in wenn-clauses, which lack register-dependent syntactic variation.
All occurrences of weil were analysed syntactically and semantically, drawing on Sweetser’s (1990) framework. Quantitative analyses employed generalized linear mixed-effects models to test effects and interaction of group, school level and semantics; qualitative analyses targeted formal and pragmatic features of V2 structures and learner errors.
Results show that non-immersed learners use significantly fewer target-like VF clauses and produce both V2 clauses and additional error types, while immersed learners show higher target accuracy with non-target structures restricted to V2 clauses. VF use increases significantly over time in both groups, but developmental paths in immersed learners resemble those of native speakers more closely. Comparable analyses of wenn-clauses confirm these patterns. Overall, the findings highlight the strong influence of learning settings on syntactic variation and development in young learners’ German.