Background
The acquisition of spatial language in German has been described as challenging for both German L1 and L2 learners – not least because of the complex system of prepositional and particle constructions for the expression of PATH and GROUND in motion events. However, a less common and mainly colloquially used lexicalization pattern for local/directional marking has not been topic to research in greater detail, namely pleonastic constructions (henceforth: PLEO). Their specificity lies in the two semantically congruent adpositional slots (underlined in the example) such as in: in das Haus rein 'in the house into' which appear to be redundant. This PhD project draws on research that has pointed to PLEO as supporting structures in children's development of the network of closely linked PATH/GROUND expressions in German (Bryant, 2012).
Data and method
3 longitudinal monolingual German corpora (CHILDES) with natural child-adult speech provide the data base for this study (Lieven & Stoll, 2013). The focus is on i) frequency and development of PLEO, and ii) their relation to syntactically simpler, non-pleonastic constructions (particles, prepositions). To that end, all PLEO were extracted from the original corpora and their frequency was traced over time. The question of a supporting function of PLEO is addressed by investigating in how far the (input) frequency of PLEO interacts with children's production of non-pleonastic constructions. The analysis of frequency effects and the consideration of the child-directed input follows the principles of usage-based approaches in language acquisition research (Behrens, 2009).
Conclusions
Preliminary results show that children use PLEO from early on (age 2;0) and that the proportion to non-pleonastic constructions is similar to adults (approximately 3% of all particle/prepositional constructions are pleonastic). In all dyads, correlations between input frequency of PLEO and children's production of PP were found: The more PLEO they hear until a measurement time point, the more PP they produce at that point of time. This might promote the hypothesis of PLEO as supporters in children's acquisition of German prepositional phrases (Bryant, 2012). The findings can make a valuable contribution to the development of authentic teaching materials for the support of spatial language competencies which are essential skills predicting later academic success (Möhring et al., 2021).
Literature:
Behrens, H. (2009). Usage-based and emergentist approaches to language acquisition. Linguistics, 47(2), pp. 383–411.
Bryant, D. (2012). Lokalisierungsausdrücke im Erst- und Zweitspracherwerb. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider.
Lieven, E. & Stoll, S. (2013). Early communicative development in two cultures. Human Development, 56, pp. 178–206.
Möhring, W.; Ribner, A.; Segerer, R.; Libertus, M.; Kahl, T.; Troesch, L.M. & Grob, A. (2021). Developmental trajectories of children's spatial skills: Influencing variables and associations with later mathematical thinking. Learning and Instructions, 75, 101515.
