Entwicklung der Verbstellung beim fortgeschrittenen Erwerb des Deutschen als Fremdsprache

Abstract

This article investigates the acquisition of verb placement in German as a foreign language at an advanced stage of development. The main objective of the investigation is to analyse written and spoken language production in terms of the use of subject-verb-inversion, verbal bracket, and verb-final placement in subordinate clauses. The results reveal a discrepancy between written and spoken language production with respect to correct usage of the verb placement rules. While correctness in the written production task exceeded 97% for all phenomena, the oral translation task generated less correct sentences, but only for inversion and verb-final placement. The non-target usage of inversion and verb-final pattern in spoken production points to processing problems when translating from Polish into German, which are further confirmed by lower accuracy for these two phenomena. At the moment of testing, the verbal bracket has already been acquired, which is in line with the universal developmental sequence in the acquisition of German syntax.

Cross-linguistic influence in the initial stages of L3 German: An empirical study on verb placement and subject pronouns

“…For example, it is widely evidenced that V2 placement poses agreat challengeinadult L2 learning, even after prolonged language exposure to German (e. g.,C lahsen 1984, Schwartz/ Sprouse 1994, 1996. This has been found in learnersofavariety of L1 s, including Romance languages (Clahsen et al 1983), Russian (Czinglar 2014), Turkish (Schwartz/ Sprouse 1994, 1996, and Polish (Barczyk 2009, Długosz 2020. Given these findings, the overacceptance of ungrammaticals entences with *V3 word order in this study could be accounted for in termsofthe general difficulties with V2 placement.…”

“…However, they are restricted to the topic position.Alexicalelement in the clauseinitial position makes the structurew ith ar eferential null argument ungrammatical (see example 6). The acquisition of sentencestructure in adult L2 German is awell-studied subject (e. g., M eisel et al 1981, Clahsen et al 1983, Clahsen 1984, Terrasi-Haufe 2004, Barczyk 2007, Sadownik 2008, Długosz 2020. Most studies converge on the finding that German word order rules are learned according to the same sequence in both untutored and tutored learners, irrespectiveoftheir L1s.…”