The dative alternation in Danish and Polish – A learners perspective

Abstract

Three experiments investigating how two groups of adult Polish learners of Danish as a foreign language acquire the Danish dative alternation are reported. Experiment 1 is a speeded acceptability judgment task, which shows that Group 1 has the same pattern as native speakers i.e. slower responses to the dispreffered new-given NP-constructions, but no givenness effect with the PP-constructions. Experiment 2 shows that Group 2 also have acquired this pattern, even though earlier research suggests that the givenness asymmetry in the dative alternation is hard to learn. Experiment 3 shows that even in Polish there is a givenness asymmetry, such that the given-new order is clearly preferred in the NP-construction, but less so in the PP-construction. The rapid acquisition of the Danish pattern could thus be explained by Polish having the same pattern. In short: Both Polish and Danish have a givenness asymmetry in the dative alternation, which could explain why Polish learners of Danish in both groups behave almost like native Danish speakers.

Production of the double object construction: An experiment

“…The effect of original order on change is on the other hand very strong and the result is very clear: Indefinite–definite items are almost always altered (only in five cases is the indefinite–definite pattern retained), and the definite–indefinite items are never altered into the indefinite–definite pattern, and only changed at all in four of the cases (see Table 3 above). This is in line with the aforementioned studies that report a processing disadvantage for post-verbal indefinite–definite orders in the double object construction in Danish (Kizach & Balling 2013, Kizach & Vikner published online 21 March 2016; see also Kizach & Mathiasen 2013).…”