Abstract
Differences have been observed for learners from different learning settings especially with regard to formal and informal registers (Gilquin & Paquot 2008, Lee et al. 2019). This study investigates syntactic variation in German weil-clauses among young learners in different exposure settings and explores how register-related variation challenges second and foreign language learners. Weil, as a subordinating conjunction, typically requires verb-final word order; however, in spoken German, it is also used as a coordinating conjunction with verb-second word order. Our contribution examines how diverse language environments and exposure to German influence learners' mastery of verb-final target word order.
We use German data from three different corpora of secondary school writing from the multilingual Italian province of South Tyrol, containing texts from students with varying language instruction settings: Group A does not use German at home and attends schools where Italian is the primary language of instruction and German is taught as the first additional language. Group B does not use German at home but attends schools where German is the primary language of instruction. Group C consists of L1 German speakers in schools with German as the primary language of instruction.
Our analysis addresses the following research questions:
RQ1: Is there a difference in the interlanguage varieties of groups A and B concerning word order in weil-clauses, and how do they compare to the reference group C?
RQ2: Does the semantics of the causal relation influence the choice of word order in weil-clauses?
RQ3: Does the proportional use of target structures change over time, and is there a developmental difference between groups A and B?
RQ4: Is there a difference in the interlanguage varieties of groups A and B concerning word order in clauses introduced by other subordinate conjunctions (wenn ‘when’)?
Analyzing the overall use of verb-final versus non-verb-final structures, we observed developmental trends using generalized linear mixed-effects models. Additionally, we investigated non-verb-final structures qualitatively, focusing on formal and pragmatic/semantic features (Sweetser 1990). Findings show that group A has a significantly lower rate of target-like structures and a high rate of verb-second word order alongside various learner errors in both lower and upper secondary school learners. In contrast, group B produces a higher percentage of target structures, with non-target structures being exclusively verb-second clauses. The proportional use of verb-final target structures increases significantly over time for both learner groups A and B. Group B's developmental paths are more similar to Group C than to Group A. These differences between the learner groups are even more visible in the analysis of a comparable data set of wenn-clauses, in which no differences between groups B and C occur while group A’s results reflect a learning path comparable to weil-clauses. These results highlight the impact of different learning settings on syntactic variation in weil-clauses among young learners.
References:
Abel, A. & Glaznieks, A. (2020). Textqualität in Sozialen Medien. In K. Marx, H. Lobin, & A. Schmidt (eds.): Deutsch in Sozialen Medien (pp. 53-73). Berlin/Boston.
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Glaznieks, A., Frey, J.-C., Abel, A., Nicolas, L. & Vettori, C. (2023). The Kolipsi Corpus Family: Resources for learner corpus research in Italian and German. Italian Journal of Computational Linguistics 9(2). https://doi.org/10.4000/ijcol.1210
Guilquin, G. & Paquot, M. (2008): Too chatty: Learner academic writing and register variation. English Text Construction 1:1, 61-61.
Lee, J. J., Bychkovska, T. & Maxwell, J. D. (2019): Breaking the rules? A corpus-based comparision of informal features in L1 and L2 undergraduate student writing. System 80, 143-153.
Sweetser, E. (1990). From etymology to pragmatics. Metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure. Cambridge.