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Within the relatively new area of research on Third Language (L3) Acquisition, the subfield of phonology is growing, but still relatively understudied. Testing the current L3 models adopted from research on L3 syntax (see Rothman 2010, Bardel & Falk 2012, Flynn et al. 2004), the studies conducted in the area have mostly focused on the source and directionality of language transfer – both into the L3 and into the respective background languages – with some recent excursions into the role of extra-linguistic factors for multilingual learners (e.g., Wrembel 2015). The findings so far (mostly on production, with perception lagging behind) have been very diverse and, depending on the concrete study, can often be taken to give evidence for any of the prevalent models. This can be attributed to the wide range of different speaker and learner biographies as well as their language combinations and state of acquisition, but crucially the dilemma seems to be inherent in the (phonological) system in and of itself since viewing phonological interlanguage transfer as a one-dimensional and immediately transparent process based on direct correspondences between language systems does not seem to capture the complex nature of the phenomenon.
In this doctoral thesis I investigate the acquisition of an additional phonological system by child and adult German heritage speakers of Turkish. Specifically, I explore how the learners deal with diverse phonological contrasts that promote positive contra negative transfer from their HL (Turkish) and their L2 (German), and how their perception and production is modulated by cognitive and affective variables. Moreover, I test contrasts that can be found neither in the HL nor in the L2 phonological system.
The studies will shed light both on the question of how a new language is shaped and affected by different existing systems and on how two or more phonological grammars co-exist and/or interact in a speaker’s mind. I will argue that, rather than being regarded as simple full projection of language-specific property sets onto the target language, phonological transfer in multilinguals needs to be considered as a process of complex interactions and layers that are established on the level of individual phonological properties and abstract (typological) associations.
The normative use of past tenses is supposed to be a big challenge for learners of Spanish. Although they might understand the grammatical chapter in theory, adequate past tense use in spontaneous oral production is not guaranteed. Morphological errors, overgeneralizations of tenses and interferences with other languages characterize the interlanguage of the learners. Based on two corpuses, we analyse how the past tense use differs between secondary school students from Austria and Romance polyglots. Qualitative and quantitative analyses show that polyglot speakers surpass the secondary school students in some areas such as the distinction of verbal aspect. However, the students tend less to use the perfecto compuesto in an inadequate way in narration.
Multilingualism is part of our everyday lives and has recently entered the medium of film. Based on the linguistic diversity of Spanish-speaking countries, the present paper explores multilingualism as a key competence of foreign language learning. Since film provides students with audiovisual access to multilingual situations, a selection of educational videos that form parts of German textbooks will be critically explored concerning the presentation of multilingual phenomena. The results will be discussed in order to contribute to the systematic acquisition of multilingual skills in the sense of language and cultural awareness during classroom learning.
Interkomprehension im gegenwärtigen Westeuropa : Internationalismen im romanischen Grundwortschatz
(2013)
Die Arbeit untersucht 2500 Wörter des italienischen Grundwortschatzes in einem fünfsprachigen Vergleich. Sie ergänzt damit die an gleicher Stelle erschienene Magisterarbeit „Internationalismen im Grundwortschatz: Untersuchungen zur romanistischen Mehrsprachigkeitsdidaktik” von Anja Büttner (2012). Hier werden nun die Ergebnisse beider Untersuchungen zusammengefasst. Dabei werden erstmalig konkrete Zahlen zur Beantwortung der Frage vorgestellt, wie viele Wörter z.B. ein deutscher Muttersprachler, der Französisch gelernt hat und nun italienische Texte lesen will, tatsächlich lernen muss, um die 5000 häufigsten Wörter erkennen und damit durchschnittliche Texte nahezu vollständig verstehen zu können.