The L2-acquisition of the German particle doch
-
Lotte Hogeweg
,
Helen de Hoop
Abstract
Discourse particles are notoriously difficult to acquire for second language learners. It has been argued that this difficulty is caused by a lack of equivalent concepts in the learner’s native language. In this article we compare the acquisition of the German particle doch by speakers of Dutch and speakers with a native language other than Dutch. Like German, Dutch has a rich inventory of discourse particles and one of them can be considered the cognate of doch: toch. We performed our investigation by means of an online cloze test among 85 Dutch students of German and 76 learners of German with a first language other than Dutch. We tested five different functions of doch, some of which overlapped with the functions of Dutch toch and some which did not. Our results indicate that it is beneficial to have similar particles in one’s mother tongue but we did not find evidence that it is extra beneficial to have form-meaning equivalents between the L1 and L2.
Acknowledgements
Lotte Hogeweg would like to thank the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research for funding this research. Part of this research was carried out by Verena Wottrich within the Radboud Honours Academy program, which is also gratefully acknowledged. We would furthermore like to thank Rob Le Pair and Dymphy Coldenhoff for their help in conducting the experiment with NetQuestionnaire, Vera van Mulken for checking the English of this article, and Thijs Trompenaars for his editorial help. Our thanks also go to the learners of German who participated in the experiment. Finally, we would like to thank the reviewers and editors for their useful comments on an earlier version.
References
Abraham, Werner. 2000. Modal particles in German: Word classification and legacy beyond grammaticalisation. In Petra Maria Vogel & Bernard Comrie (eds.), Approaches to the typology of word classes, 321–350. Berlin: de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110806120.321Search in Google Scholar
Aijmer, Karin. 2011. Well I’m not sure I think…The use of well by non-native speakers. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 16. 231–254.10.1075/bct.52.04aijSearch in Google Scholar
Anderson, Jonathan. 1976. Psycholinguistic experiments in foreign language testing. St. Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press.Search in Google Scholar
Bongaerts, Theo, Susan Mennen & Frans van der Slik. 2000. Authenticity of pronunciation in naturalistic second language acquisition: The case of very advanced late learners of Dutch as a second language. Studia Linguistica 54(2). 298–308.10.1111/1467-9582.00069Search in Google Scholar
Borst, Dieter. 1985. Die affirmativen Modalpartikeln doch, ja und schon. Berlin: De Gruyter.10.1515/9783111352558Search in Google Scholar
Dimroth, Christine, Cecilia Andorno, Sandra Benazzo & Josje Verhagen. 2010. Given claims about new topics. How Romance and Germanic speakers link changed and maintained information in narrative discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 42. 3328–3344.10.1016/j.pragma.2010.05.009Search in Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang, U. & Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi. 1994. Morphopragmatics: Diminutives and intensifiers in Italian, German, and other languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110877052Search in Google Scholar
Enfield, Nick J., Penelope Brown & Jan Peter de Ruiter, J.P. 2012. Epistemic dimensions of polar questions: Sentence-final particles in comparative perspective. In Jan Peter de Ruiter (ed.), Questions: Formal, functional and interactional perspectives, 193–221. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139045414.014Search in Google Scholar
Foolen, Ad. 2010. Partikels volgens de schijf van vijf. Internationale Neerlandistiek 48(2). 41–51.10.5117/IVN2010.2.FOOLSearch in Google Scholar
Gyuris, Beáta. 2009. Sentence-types, discourse particles and intonation in Hungarian. In A. Riester & T. Solstad (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 13 (SinSpeC 05-I), 157–170. Stuttgart: University of Stuttgart.Search in Google Scholar
de Haan, Ferdinand. 2006. Typological approaches to modality. In William Frawley (ed.), The expression of modality, 27–70. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110197570.27Search in Google Scholar
Hara, Yurie. 2006. Non-propositional modal meaning. Ms. Newark: University of Delaware.Search in Google Scholar
Hogeweg, Lotte. 2009a. The meaning and interpretation of the Dutch particle wel. Journal of Pragmatics 41. 519–539.10.1016/j.pragma.2008.06.012Search in Google Scholar
Hogeweg, Lotte. 2009b. Word in Process. On the interpretation, acquisition, and production of words. Utrecht: LOT Ph.D. Dissertation Radboud University Nijmegen.Search in Google Scholar
Hogeweg, Lotte, Stefanie Ramachers & Verena Wottrich. 2011. Doch, toch and wel on the table. In Rick Nouwen & Marion Elenbaas (eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 2011. 50–60. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/avt.28.05hogSearch in Google Scholar
Jarvis, Scott & Aneta Pavlenko. 2008. Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780203935927Search in Google Scholar
Karagjosova, Elena. 2004. The Meaning and Function of German Modal Particles. Saarbrücken Dissertations in Computational Linguistics and Language Technology.Search in Google Scholar
Karagjosova, Elena. 2009. Adverbial doch and the notion of contrast. In Bergljot Behrens & Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen (eds.), Structuring information in discourse: The explicit/implicit dimension, Oslo Studies in Language 1. 131–148. Oslo: University of Oslo.10.5617/osla.9Search in Google Scholar
Kasper, Gabriele. 1992. Pragmatic transfer. Second Language Research 8. 203–231.10.1177/026765839200800303Search in Google Scholar
Kasper, Gabriele & Richard Schmidt. 1996. Developmental issues in interlanguage pragmatics. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 18. 149–169.10.1017/S0272263100014868Search in Google Scholar
Kasper, Gabriele & Kenneth R. Rose. 2002. Pragmatic development in a second language. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar
Kim, Chonghyuck & Lionel Wee. 2008. Resolving the Paradox of Singapore English hor. Ms. Singapore: National University of Singapore.Search in Google Scholar
Li, Boya. 2006. Chinese Final Particles and the Syntax of the Periphery. University of Leiden Ph.D. dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Liao, Silvie. 2009. Variation in the use of discourse markers by Chinese teaching assistants in the US. Journal of Pragmatics 41. 1313–1328.10.1016/j.pragma.2008.09.026Search in Google Scholar
Liu, Binmei. 2013. Effect of first language on the use of English discourse markers by L1 Chinese speakers of English. Journal of Pragmatics 45. 149–172.10.1016/j.pragma.2012.11.002Search in Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Peter D., Kimberly A. Noels & Richard Clément. 1997. Biases in self-ratings of second language proficiency: The role of language anxiety. Language Learning 47(2). 265–287.10.1111/0023-8333.81997008Search in Google Scholar
Möllering, Martina. 2001. Teaching German modal particles: A corpus-based approach. Language learning and technology 5. 130–151.Search in Google Scholar
Möllering, Martina. 2004. The acquisition of German modal particles: A corpus-based approach. Bern: Peter Lang.Search in Google Scholar
Munro, Murry J. & Tracy M. Derwing. 1995. Foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second language learners. Language Learning 45(1). 73–97.10.1111/j.1467-1770.1995.tb00963.xSearch in Google Scholar
Ramachers, Stefanie. 2012. Die Erschließung von Partikelkompetenz in der L2: Eine methodische Herausforderung. In Chiara Cerri, Sabine Jentges & Antje Stork (eds.), Methoden empirischer Fremdsprachenforschung im Prozess - ein Blick hinter die Kulissen aktueller Forschungsprojekte. Materialien Deutsch als Fremdsprache (MatDaF), Band 88, 83–96. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Göttingen.Search in Google Scholar
Rinas, Karsten. 2006. Die Abtönungspartikeln ‘doch’ und ‘ja’. Semantik, Idiomatisierung, Kombinationen, tschechische Äquivalente. Frankfurt: Lang.Search in Google Scholar
Roberts, Craige. 1996. Information Structure in Discourse: Towards an Integrated Formal Theory of Pragmatics. In Jea-Hak Yoon & Andreas Kathol (eds.), Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics, 49. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Rost-Roth, Martina. 1999. Der (Nicht-)Erwerb der Modalpartikeln. Eine Fallstudie zum Partikelerwerb einer italienischen Deutschlernerin mit Vergleichen zu anderen Lernerva-rietäten". In: Norbert Dittmar & Anna Giacalone Ramat (eds.), Grammatik und Diskurs/Grammatica e discorso. Studi sull’acquisizione dell’italiano e del tedesco/Studien zum Erwerb des Deutschen und des Italienischen, 165–209. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.Search in Google Scholar
Steinmüller, Ulrich. 1981. Akzeptabilität und Verständlichkeit – Zum Partikelgebrauch von Ausländern. In Harald Weydt (ed.), Partikeln und Deutschunterricht, 137–147. Heidelberg: Julius Groos.Search in Google Scholar
Waltereit, Richard. 2001. Modal particles and their functional equivalents: A speech-act theoretic approach. Journal of Pragmatics 33. 1391–1417.10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00057-6Search in Google Scholar
Ward, Gregory & Julia Hirschberg. 1985. Implicating uncertainty: The pragmatics of fall-rise intonation. Language 61. 747–776.10.2307/414489Search in Google Scholar
Wen, Xiaohong. 1995. Second language acquisition of the Chinese particle le. International journal of applied linguistics 5(1). 45–62.10.1111/j.1473-4192.1995.tb00072.xSearch in Google Scholar
Wenzel, Veronika. 2002. Relationelle Strategien in der Fremdsprache. Pragmatische und interkulturelle Aspekte der niederländischen Lernersprache von Deutschen. Universität Münster PhD thesis.Search in Google Scholar
Weydt, Harald. (ed.) 1981a. Partikeln und Deutschunterricht. Heidelberg: Julius Groos.Search in Google Scholar
Weydt, Harald. 1981b. Partikeln im Rollenspiel von Deutschen und Ausländern. In H. Weydt (ed.), Partikeln und Deutschunterricht, 161–168. Heidelberg: Julius Groos.Search in Google Scholar
Zeevat, Henk & Elena Karagjosova. 2009. History and grammaticalization of “doch” /” toch”. ZAS Papers in Linguistics 51. 135–152.10.21248/zaspil.51.2009.377Search in Google Scholar
Zimmermann, Klaus. 1981. Warum sind Modalpartikeln ein Lernproblem? In Harald Weydt (ed.), Partikeln und Deutschunterricht, 111–122. Heidelberg: Julius Groos.Search in Google Scholar
Zimmermann, Malte. 2011. Discourse particles. In Paul Portner, Claudia Maienborn & Klaus von Heusinger (eds.), Handbook of Semantics, 2011–2038. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar
©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- The role of formal features in the acquisition of early L3 French DPs by adult Chinese speakers of L2 English
- The L2-acquisition of the German particle doch
- The progressive in spoken learner language: A corpus-based analysis of use and misuse
- Effects of retrieval formats on second language vocabulary learning
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- The role of formal features in the acquisition of early L3 French DPs by adult Chinese speakers of L2 English
- The L2-acquisition of the German particle doch
- The progressive in spoken learner language: A corpus-based analysis of use and misuse
- Effects of retrieval formats on second language vocabulary learning
