Developing interlanguage: Driving forces in children learning Dutch and German
-
Peter Jordens
und
Dagmar Bittner
Abstract
Spontaneous language learning both in children learning their mother tongue and in adults learning a second language shows that language development proceeds in a stage-wise manner. Given that a developmental stage is defined as a coherent linguistic system, utterances of language learners can be accounted for in terms of what (Selinker, Larry. 1972. Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics 10. 209–231) referred to with the term Interlanguage. This paper is a study on the early interlanguage systems of children learning Dutch and German as their mother tongue. The present child learner systems, so it is claimed, are coherent lexical systems based on types of verb-argument structure that are either agentive (as in Dutch: kannie bal pakke ‘cannot ball get’, or German: mag nich nase putzen ‘like not nose clean’) or non-agentive (as in Dutch: popje valt bijna ‘doll falls nearly’, or in German: ente fällt ‘duck falls’). At this lexical stage, functional morphology (e. g. morphological finiteness, tense), function words (e. g. auxiliary verbs, determiners) and word order variation are absent. For these typically developing children, both in Dutch and in German, it is claimed that developmental progress is driven by the acquisition of the formal properties of topicalization. It is, furthermore, argued that this feature seems to serve as the driving force in the instantiation of the functional, i. e. informational linguistic properties of the target-language system.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the German Bundesministerium fÜr Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) (Grant Nr. 01UG1411).
References
Bittner, Dagmar. 2003. The emergence of verb inflection in two German speaking children. In Dagmar Bittner, Wolfgang U. Dressler & Marianne Kilani-Schoch (eds.), Development of verb inflection in first language acquisition, 53–88. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110899832Suche in Google Scholar
Clahsen, Harald. 1986. Verb inflections in German child language: Acquisition of agreement markings and the functions they encode. Linguistics 24. 79–121.10.1515/ling.1986.24.1.79Suche in Google Scholar
Clark, Eve V. 2003. First language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Corder, S. Pit. 1978. ‘Simple codes’ and the source of the second language learner’s initial heuristic hypothesis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 1. 1–10.10.1017/S027226310000067XSuche in Google Scholar
De Haan, Ger. 1987. A theory-bound approach to the acquisition of verb placement in Dutch. In Ger De Haan & Wim Zonneveld (eds.), Formal parameters of generative grammar. Yearbook 1987, 15–30. Dordrecht: ICG.Suche in Google Scholar
Gillis, Steven. 2003. A case study of the early acquisition of verbs in Dutch. In Dagmar Bittner, Wolfgang U. Dressler & Marianne Kilani-Schoch (eds.), Development of verb inflection in first language acquisition, 171–203. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Suche in Google Scholar
Hoekstra, Teun & Peter Jordens. 1994. From adjunct to head. In Teun Hoekstra & Bonnie D. Schwartz (eds.), Language acquisition studies in generative grammar, 119–149. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/lald.8.08hoeSuche in Google Scholar
Ingram, David & William Thompson. 1996. Early syntactic acquisition in German: Evidence for the Modal Hypothesis. Language 72. 97–120.10.2307/416795Suche in Google Scholar
Jolink, Anke. 2009. Finiteness in children with SLI. A functional approach. In Christine Dimroth & Peter Jordens (eds.), Functional categories in learner language, 235–259. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110216172.235Suche in Google Scholar
Jordens, Peter. 1990. The acquisition of verb placement in Dutch and German. Linguistics 28. 1407–1448.10.1515/ling.1990.28.6.1407Suche in Google Scholar
Jordens, Peter. 2012. Language acquisition and the functional category system. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110216219Suche in Google Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang. 1997. Learner varieties are the normal case. The Clarion. Magazine of the European Second Language Association 3. 4–6.Suche in Google Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang. 1998. Assertion and finiteness. In Norbert Dittmar & Zvi Penner (eds.), Issues in the theory of language acquisition, 225–245. Bern: Peter Lang.Suche in Google Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang. 2008. The topic situation. In Bernt Ahrenholz, Ursula Bredel, Wolfgang Klein, Martina Rost-Roth & Romuald Skiba (eds.), Empirische Forschung und Theoriebildung. Beiträge aus Soziolinguistik, Gesprochene Sprache- und Zweitspracherwerbsforschung. Festschrift für Norbert Dittmar zum 65. Geburtstag, 287–305. Frankfurt am Main: Lang.Suche in Google Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang & Clive Perdue. 1997. The basic variety (Or: Couldn’t languages be much simpler?). Second Language Research 13. 301–347.10.1191/026765897666879396Suche in Google Scholar
Perdue, Clive. 2006. “Creating language anew”: Some remarks on an idea of Bernard Comrie’s. Linguistics 44. 853–871.10.1515/LING.2006.027Suche in Google Scholar
Poeppel, David & Kenneth Wexler. 1993. The Full Competence Hypothesis of clause structure in early German. Language 69. 1–33.10.2307/416414Suche in Google Scholar
Selinker, Larry. 1972. Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics 10. 209–231.10.1515/iral.1972.10.1-4.209Suche in Google Scholar
Verrips, Maaike. 1996. Potatoes must peel. The acquisition of the Dutch passive. Ph.D. dissertation: University of Amsterdam.Suche in Google Scholar
© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Making the most of MOGUL: Reflections on interlanguage in childhood language disorders
- Developing interlanguage: Driving forces in children learning Dutch and German
- Applying the interlanguage approach to language teaching
- Using the discourse domain hypothesis of interlanguage to teach scientific concepts: Report on a case study in secondary education
- Erratum
- Erratum to: The role of formal features in the acquisition of early L3 French DPs by adult Chinese speakers of L2 English
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Making the most of MOGUL: Reflections on interlanguage in childhood language disorders
- Developing interlanguage: Driving forces in children learning Dutch and German
- Applying the interlanguage approach to language teaching
- Using the discourse domain hypothesis of interlanguage to teach scientific concepts: Report on a case study in secondary education
- Erratum
- Erratum to: The role of formal features in the acquisition of early L3 French DPs by adult Chinese speakers of L2 English
