The Acquisition of the German Case System by Foreign Language Learners

Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-90-272-0302-1
Verlag: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Buch, Englisch, Band 2, 304 Seiten, Gewicht: 745 g

Reihe: Processability Approaches to Language Acquisition Research & Teaching

This is the first book on the acquisition of the German case system by foreign language learners. It explores how learners in their interlanguage progress from the total absence to the presence of a case system. This development is characterized by an evolvement from marking the argument’s position to marking the argument’s actual function. Theoretically couched within Processability Theory, the book deals with the feature unification and the mapping processes involved in case marking, and critically examines previous findings on German case acquisition. Empirically, the book consists of longitudinal data of 11 foreign language learners of German, which was collected over a period of 2 years. This book will be useful to anyone interested in the acquisition of German and in the acquisition of case systems in general.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Baten, Kristof

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Fremdsprachenerwerb und -didaktik
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Grammatik, Syntax, Morphologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Deutsch als Fremdsprache (DaF)

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
List of tables
List of figures
List of abbreviations
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. The developmental problem in second language acquisition
Chapter 3. The acquisition of the German case system
Chapter 4. Feature unification and linking in case marking
Chapter 5. Methodology
Chapter 6. Results and discussion
Chapter 7. General conclusion
References
Appendix
Index