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This thesis investigates the acquisition of compositional and lexical semantic properties of adjectives in German-speaking children between the age of two and five years.
According to formal semantic approaches, there are intersective and non-intersective adjectives, subsective and non-subsective adjectives as well as gradable and non-gradable adjectives. These properties concern the compositional mechanisms involved in nominal modification, i.e., the combination of adjectives and nouns. In addition, adjectives differ regarding lexical semantic properties that contribute to the adjectives' meaning. Differences in the adjectives' scale structure have led to the theoretical assumption that gradable adjectives should be distinguished into relative and absolute gradable adjectives. In addition, meaning components such as multidimensionality or subjectivity have led to the distinction between dimensional and evaluative gradable adjectives. These properties have been mostly investigated independently of each other in both theory and acquisition research. I suggest a classification system for adjectives that combines different semantic properties. This system results in six adjective classes constituting a Semantic Complexity Hierarchy. Assuming that these adjective classes differ in semantic complexity, I propose an operationalization of semantic complexity that takes into account the adjectives' length of description, their type complexity, and lexical properties that contribute to the adjectives' meaning.
Regarding the question of how monolingual German-speaking children acquire the semantics of adjectives, I hypothesize that the order of acquisition of adjectives is determined by their semantic complexity. This hypothesis is tested in a spontaneous speech study and a comprehension experiment.
The spontaneous speech study is a longitudinal investigation of the production of adjectives from 2;00 to 2;11 years based on transcripts from a dense data corpus. The results provide evidence that the mean age of acquisition for the adjective classes in the Semantic Complexity Hierarchy follows the order predicted by semantic complexity. The same order was observed for the age at which the number of types for each class increased most. A preliminary analysis of the input indicates that the frequency of parental adjective use is related to the order of acquisition, but it is unlikely that frequency determines the order completely.
The comprehension experiment focuses on two specific adjective classes. I examine children's and adults' interpretation of relative (big, small) and absolute (clean, dirty) gradable dimensional adjectives with a picture-choice task. These two classes are of the same semantic complexity because they are both gradable, but they have different scale structures. As a result, they must be interpreted differently due to lexical semantic properties. I investigate whether children calculate different standards of comparison for relative and absolute gradable adjectives and whether they distinguish between relative and absolute gradable adjectives regarding the relevance of the explicit comparison class. The results indicate that as of age 3, children distinguish between relative and absolute gradable adjectives with regard to the standard of comparison. However, with respect to the relevance of the comparison class, for 3-year-old children, unlike for 4- and 5-year-olds, changes in the noun, i.e., in the explicit comparison class, led to non-adult-like responses regarding both relative and absolute gradable adjectives.
On the basis of the empirical findings, I propose an acquisition path stating that children enter the acquisition process with inherent linguistic knowledge, the Semantic Complexity Hierarchy, and cognitive abilities to categorize their environment. I suggest that initially, children apply the least complex interpretation available in the Semantic Complexity Hierarchy to all adjectives: all adjectives are interpreted as properties of individuals that are not gradable. To access other levels of the Semantic Complexity Hierarchy and to establish more complex adjective classes, positive evidence from the input and conceptual properties of adjectives, e.g., COLOR, MENTAL STATE, PHYSICAL PROPERTY etc., can operate as triggers.
This dissertation investigated the development of the complementiser that from the demonstrative pronoun in the Germanic languages; each chapter dealt with a different aspect. In the introduction, the terms ‘reanalysis’ and ‘analogy’ and their relevance for grammaticalisation were explained, and the issues of the chapters were presented. The second chapter introduced some information about the Germanic language family and the languages which were relevant for this investigation, namely Gothic, Old English, Old Icelandic, Old Saxon and Old High German. Previous assumptions about the diachrony of that were presented and discussed. One of these proposals which mainly draws on evidence from West Germanic involves the idea that the source construction contained two independent main clauses with a demonstrative pronoun (that) at the end of the first clause (cf. e.g. Paul 1962, § 248). In contrast to this, the Gothic evidence showed that the source construction of the reanalysis of ϸatei was not a proper paratactic construction (at least in Gothic) but already a complex construction which contained a complementiser (ei) in the appositional subordinate clause (cf. also e.g. Longobardi 1994 for the diachrony of ϸatei). This contradiction raised the question whether the analysis of the Gothic that-complementiser also applies to the diachrony of that in West Germanic. This issue was taken up in the third chapter which presented an overview of subordination and complementisers in Northwest Germanic. The aim was to show that the Northwest Germanic languages also show a subordinating particle, which functions like the Gothic ei, namely ϸe (OE), er/es (OI), the (OHG, OS). As a result, the subordinating particle could be observed in relative and adverbial clauses in all Northwest Germanic languages. In complement clauses, which are most crucial for the argumentation, the subordinating particle is found in Old English and Old Icelandic but not in Old Saxon. In Old High German, there are only combinations of the with a following pronoun, theih and theiz, in ‘Otfrids Evangelienbuch’ (see Wunder 1965). Consequently, the presence of a subordinating particle is confirmed in North and West Germanic. The fact that the patterns of subordination are quite similar in all Germanic languages suggested a unitary analysis of the development of that in Germanic was appropriate. In chapter four, the similarities and differences between the Germanic languages with respect to the development of that were explained. It was argued that the preconditions of the reanalysis were the same, whereas the consequences of the reanalysis are realised differently in each language. The most important precondition was that the appositional source construction (explained in more detail below) was generally available in Germanic. Since the demonstrative pronoun at the end of the matrix clause and the subordinating particle of the subordinate clause were adjacent, phonological combination might have been crucial for the subsequent reanalysis to take place. After reanalysis, however, different changes can be observed in the different languages. For instance, it appears that during the Old English period the final syllable of the form ϸætte was deleted (see chapter 4 for references), whereas the final –ei is still present in the Gothic ϸatei, and completely absent in Old High German and Old Saxon. The source structure of the reanalysis was discussed in detail in a separate subsection. The appositional source construction, which was already assumed for the reanalysis of Gothic ϸatei, was compared with analyses of clitic left dislocation which propose that two constituents with the same theta-role derive from a Big DP (see e.g. Grewendorf 2009, Belletti 2005). Based on the Big DP analysis of Grewendorf (2009), it was claimed that the appositional clause, introduced by the subordinating particle, is generated in the Spec of a DP, and adjoined to this DP on the surface. It was argued that this whole complement DP-node occurred in an extraposed position in OV-languages so that the verb, when it stays in-situ, does not appear between the demonstrative pronoun and the subordinating particle. The structure in (1) illustrates the syntactic source structure which is assumed to apply to the development of the complementiser that in Germanic. ...
Previous studies suggest that the application of Controlled Language (CL) rules can significantly improve the readability, consistency, and machine-translatability of source text. One of the justifications for the application of CL rules is that they can have a similar impact on several target languages by reducing the post-editing effort required to bring Machine Translation (Ml’) output to acceptable quality. In certain situations, however, post-editing services may not always be a viable solution. Web-based information is often expected to be made available in real-time to ensure that its access is not restricted to certain users based on their locale. Uncertainties remain with regard to the actual usefulness of MT output for such users, as no empirical study has examined the impact of CL rules on the usefulness, comprehensibility, and acceptability of MT technical documents from a Web user's perspective. In this study, a two-phase approach is used to determine whether Controlled English rules can have a significant impact on these three variables. First, individual CL rules are evaluated within an experimental environment, which is loosely based on a test suite.Two documents are then published and subject to a randomised evaluation within the framework of an online experiment using a customer satisfaction questionnaire. The findings indicate that a limited number of CL rules have a similar impact on the comprehensibility of French and German output at the segment level. The results of the online experiment show that the application of certain CL rules has the potential to significantly improve the comprehensibility of German MT technical documentation. Our findings also show that the introduction of CL rules did not lead to any significant improvement of the comprehensibility, usefulness, and acceptability of French MT technical documentation.
Manual development of deep linguistic resources is time-consuming and costly and therefore often described as a bottleneck for traditional rule-based NLP. In my PhD thesis I present a treebank-based method for the automatic acquisition of LFG resources for German. The method automatically creates deep and rich linguistic presentations from labelled data (treebanks) and can be applied to large data sets. My research is based on and substantially extends previous work on automatically acquiring wide-coverage, deep, constraint-based grammatical resources from the English Penn-II treebank (Cahill et al.,2002; Burke et al., 2004; Cahill, 2004). Best results for English show a dependency f-score of 82.73% (Cahill et al., 2008) against the PARC 700 dependency bank, outperforming the best hand-crafted grammar of Kaplan et al. (2004). Preliminary work has been carried out to test the approach on languages other than English, providing proof of concept for the applicability of the method (Cahill et al., 2003; Cahill, 2004; Cahill et al., 2005). While first results have been promising, a number of important research questions have been raised. The original approach presented first in Cahill et al. (2002) is strongly tailored to English and the datastructures provided by the Penn-II treebank (Marcus et al., 1993). English is configurational and rather poor in inflectional forms. German, by contrast, features semi-free word order and a much richer morphology. Furthermore, treebanks for German differ considerably from the Penn-II treebank as regards data structures and encoding schemes underlying the grammar acquisition task. In my thesis I examine the impact of language-specific properties of German as well as linguistically motivated treebank design decisions on PCFG parsing and LFG grammar acquisition. I present experiments investigating the influence of treebank design on PCFG parsing and show which type of representations are useful for the PCFG and LFG grammar acquisition tasks. Furthermore, I present a novel approach to cross-treebank comparison, measuring the effect of controlled error insertion on treebank trees and parser output from different treebanks. I complement the cross-treebank comparison by providing a human evaluation using TePaCoC, a new testsuite for testing parser performance on complex grammatical constructions. Manual evaluation on TePaCoC data provides new insights on the impact of flat vs. hierarchical annotation schemes on data-driven parsing. I present treebank-based LFG acquisition methodologies for two German treebanks. An extensive evaluation along different dimensions complements the investigation and provides valuable insights for the future development of treebanks.
Die hier vorgelegte empirische Untersuchung der Fokuspartikeln im Georgischen zeichnet sich u.a. durch die sprach¬immanente Tatsache aus, dass die Fokusstrukturen im Georgischen mit expliziten Partikeln markiert werden können. Die in dieser Arbeit untersuchten Fokuspartikelgruppen ( ġa, c und c+ḳi) sind entsprechend den semantischen Implikationen der Restriktion, Addition und der Skalierung gegliedert worden.
Trotz gewisser Unterschiede im Einzelnen ergab sich folgendes gemeinsames Modell für die Stellungseinschränkungen in Relation zum Prädikatsverb:
• Durch Fokuspartikeln fokussierte Wörter stehen im Georgischen in der Regel unmittelbar vor dem Prädikatsverb.
• Die Skopi der Fokuspartikeln (wenn die fokusmarkierten Worte grammatische Köpfe der NPs sind) stehen im Georgischen in der Regel vor dem Prädikatsverb.
• Die nächstmögliche optimale Interpretationsposition für fokusmarkierte Wörter ist in der Regel die unmittelbare Verbnachstellung.
• Die nächstmögliche optimale Interpretationsposition der
Fokusgruppe ist in der Regel die unmittelbare Verbnachstellung.
Aufgrund der herausgearbeiteten Stellungseinschränkungen entwerfe ich das pragmatische Modell der informationsgliedernden Verbfinalität als Basisabfolge im georgischen Satz.
If we want to develop a semantic analysis for explicit performatives such as I promise you to free Willy, we are faced with the following puzzle: In order to account for the speech act expressed by the performative verb, one can assume that the so-called performative clause is purely performative and provides the illocutionary force of the speech act whose content is given by the semantic object denoted by the complement clause. Yet under this perspective, the performative clause that is, next to the performative verb, the indexicals I and you that refer to the speaker and to the addressee of the utterance context is semantically invisible and does not contribute compositionally its meaning to the meaning of the entire explicit performative sentence. Conversely, if we account for the truth conditional contribution of the performative clause and deny that the meaning of the performative verb is purely performative, then we have to find a way to account for the speech act expressed by the performative verb. Of course, there is already the widely accepted and very appealing indirectness account for explicit performative utterances developed by Bach & Harnish (1979). Roughly, Bach and Harnish solve this puzzle in deriving the performativity by means of a pragmatic inference process. According to them, the important speech act performed by means of the utterance of the explicit performative sentence is a kind of the conventionalized indirect speech act. However, the boundary between semantics and pragmatics can be drawn in many various ways. Therefore, I think there could be other perspectives regarding the interface between the truth-functional treatment of the declarative explicit performative sentences and the speech acts performed with their utterances and which are expressed by the performative verbs. Hence, this thesis consists in the experiment to develop a further analysis and to check out its consequences with respect to the semantics and pragmatics of explicit performative utterances and the new interface emerged. Briefly, the experiment runs as follows: First, I develop an analysis for explicit performative sentences framed by parenthetical structures such as in (1)(a). In a second step, this parenthetical analysis is applied to the proper Austinian explicit performative sentences in (1)(b). (1) a. Tomorrow, I promise you this, I will teach them Tyrolean songs. b. I promise you that I will teach them Tyrolean songs. To analyze at first explicit performatives framed by parenthetical structures bears the convenience that we are faced with two utterances of two main clauses. In (1)(a) there is the utterance of the host sentence Tomorrow I will teach them Tyrolean songs, and the utterance of the explicit parenthetical I promise you this, where the demonstrative this refers to the utterance of Tomorrow I will teach them Tyrolean songs. Since speakers perform speech acts with utterances of main clauses, I assume that the meaning of the explicit parenthetical I promise you this specifies that the actual illocutionary force of the utterance of Tomorrow I will teach them Tyrolean songs is the illocutionary force of a promise. Hence, instead of deriving an indirect illocutionary force by means of a pragmatic inference schema, we can deal with an ordinary direct speech act that is performed with the utterance of the host sentence. This kind of analysis stresses the particular discourse function of explicit performative utterances. Performative verbs are used whenever the contextual information is not sufficient to determine the illocutionary force of the corresponding implicit speech act. The resulting consequences of the parenthetical analysis are interesting since they cast a different light on performative verbs. Surprisingly, the performative verbs are not performative at all. They do not constitute the execution of a speech act, but are execution supporting. Instead of constituting the particular illocutionary force, they merely specify the illocutionary force of the utterance of the host sentence. For instance, the speaker utters the explicit parenthetical I promise you this for specifying what he is simultaneously doing. Hence the speaker does not succeed in performing the promise simply because he is uttering I promise you this. Rather, by means of the information conveyed by the utterance of I promise you this, the potential illocutionary forces of the utterance of the host sentence are disambiguated. Thus, it is not the case that explicit parentheticals are trivially true when uttered. Their function is more complex. Their self-verifying property (‘saying so makes it so’) is explained by means of disambiguation. Furthermore, according to the parenthetical analysis, instead of being purely performative, the performative verbs contribute compositionally their meanings to the truth conditions of the entire explicit performative sentence. Together with its consequences, this analysis is applied to the proper Austinian performatives, which display subordination. I assume that regardless of their structure, explicit performatives always semantically and pragmatically behave as the parenthetical analysis predicts.
This dissertation explores the linguistic identity changes of Chinese international students in Germany, and the relationship between their identity reconstruction and their multilingual competence. With the social turn (Block, 2003) of applied linguistics, research on study abroad has shown that student sojourners abroad encounter challenges not only to their language abilities, but also to their identities, which explains the vast individual differences in the measurable outcomes of student sojourns abroad. However, the realm of learners’ linguistic identity development in the English as a lingua franca (ELF) and multilingual contexts remains to be further explored, since most existing studies examined learners in the target language community. Guided by poststructuralist views and sociocultural theories, this study is designed with a view towards investigating the lived experience of Chinese international students at German universities.
Employing a qualitative approach, my research tracked seventeen Chinese students’ experiences of language learning and use in both their social lives and academic settings over one year. The empirical work combined semi-structured, in-depth interviews and emails. Three rounds of one-to-one interviews were conducted every 6 months and each round focused on students’ respective past, present and future. The grounded theory approach (Corbin & Strauss, 2015) was used in this study to analyse the data, aiming at generating theoretical explanations for phenomena through constant comparison.
The results of the category-based analysis offer a new lens on the intricate linguistic identity development of Chinese students in the study abroad context. The construction of their new identity facets is related to various contextual elements in experiences of their language learning and use. More importantly, learners’ identity changes related to the use of ELF is conceived as within a framework of multilingualism (Jenkins, 2015). In any given social interaction, learners’ linguistic identities are influenced by a combination of factors: perceived linguistic proficiency gap, power distribution,preferred communication styles, sensitivity to second/third language self-images and openness to new cultures. It is these factors, instead of the lingua franca context or
target language context per se, that come into play in the reformation of learners’
linguistic identities. Learners’ linguistic identity changes, together with their priority setting in studying abroad, are in turn interconnected with their multilingual competence development.
The findings of my study suggest theories for understanding learners’ linguistic identity development and the outcomes of their language learning in the study abroad context in the face of the complexity of individual experiences. My study also demonstrates the importance to foster learners’ “self-presentational competence” (Pellegrino Aveni, 2005: 145-146) so that they could successfully negotiate new subject positions when crossing the borders.
Die vorliegende Arbeit zur Theorie, Praxis und fremdsprachlichen Didaktik der Fachsprache der Chemie geht auf meine unterrichtspraktische Tätigkeit auf dem Gebiet Deutsch als Fremdsprache in fachsprachlich ausgerichteten Kursen der Dublin City University zurück, In der täglichen Praxis des Unterrichtens wurde mir zunehmend deutlich, dass neben den vielen Aspekten, die in der Fachsprachenforschung und in der Erforschung der fremdsprachlichen Fachsprachenvermittlung wohl dokumentiert sind, andere, wie Eva Hund es formuliert, in einen toten Winkel der Fachsprachenbetrachtung geraten sind, Dies betrifft sowohl den philosophischen Hintergrund, als auch semiotische und linguistische Fragen. Der erste, theoretische Teil der Arbeit dient dazu, diese Fragestellungen, soweit dies im Rahmen einer Arbeit wie der vorliegenden möglich und nötig ist, aufzuspannen und auf pragmatische Weise, also wiederum im Rahmen der Möglichkeiten und Notwendigkeiten, zu lösen. Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit werden vier Grundbegriffe der Chemie als Anhaltspunkte verwendet, um anhand von Texten, die im vorgegebenen Rahmen für die fremdsprachliche Ausbildung von Chemikern von größter Relevanz sind, sprachliche, textuelle, diskursive und kulturelle Strukturen in deutschsprachigen Chemietexten offen zu legen, die für Studierende mit der Ausgangssprache Englisch Unerwartetes, Überraschendes, Schwieriges, gerade deshalb aber auch Herausforderndes, Aufregendes, Neues bergen. Dies ist der Ausgangspunkt für den dritten Teil der Arbeit, in dem der Versuch unternommen wird, die Tiefenschichtungen eines an der Entwicklung der Gesamtpersönlichkeit der Studierenden orientierten und interessierten Unterrichtens in der Fremdsprache zu zeigen, wo es nicht nur um den Erwerb eines möglichst funktionalen und utilitären Fachsprachenwissens geht, sondern darum, die durch die Fremdsprachlichkeit eröffneten Möglichkeiten der Distanzierung und Perspektivierung zu nutzen. Im Folgenden werden die Inhalte der drei Teile ein wenig genauer erläutert. Der erste Teil der Arbeit nimmt sich des philosophischen, semiotischen und linguistischen Hintergrunds für die Beschäftigung mit der Chemie in ihrer Erscheinungsform als zu erlernende fremdsprachliche Fachsprache an. Zunächst werden die Positionen des wissenschaftlichen Realismus und Relativismus betrachtet. Dies ist insofern wichtig, als hier der Grund für das Verhältnis von Sprache und Welt oder, anders ausgedrückt, für das Verhältnis von Inhalt und Sprache gelegt wird, oder, in einer weiteren Ausformung, für das Verhältnis zwischen dem Denken und der Wirklichkeit. Die Intensität, mit der etwa in der (muttersprachlichen) Chemiedidaktik die Debatte darum geführt wird, wann, wie und unter welchen Umständen die Modellvorstellung in den Unterricht eingeführt werden soll, vermittelt einen Geschmack von der Bedeutsamkeit diesen Themenfeldes. Für diese Arbeit wird die Spannung zwischen Realismus und Relativismus insofern aufgelöst, als Elemente von beiden verwendet und dem Konzept der Lehrbarkeit untergeordnet werden. In einem zweiten Schritt wird in diesem Teil der Arbeit mit Hilfe des Bühlerschen Zeichenmodells (und einer Erweiterung durch Roman Jakobson) demonstriert, dass, im Gegensatz zu häufig wiederholten Vorstellungen von der Fachsprache als ausschließlich in Sachzusammenhängen verharrender Ausdrucksweise, was der Bühlerschen Referenzfunktion des Zeichens entspräche, auch das Verhältnis zwischen Sender und Zeichen (Ausdrucks- bzw. emotive Funktion) und zwischen Zeichen und Empfänger (appellative Funktion) nicht nur zwangsläufig in der Fachsprache verankert sind, sondern auch eine wichtige Rolle in ihr spielen. Diese Zusammenhänge haben sich u.a. auch deshalb im toten Winkel der Forschung verloren, weil die Forschungstätigkeit sich bisher vor allem auf die sogenannte Theoriesprache der Chemie ausgerichtet hat, während die Textsorten der Wissensvermittlung auf der tertiären Bildungsebene (Lehrbuch, Laborhandbuch, Vorlesungsskripten) weitgehend unerforscht geblieben sind. Dies wird in diesem Teil der Arbeit insbesondere anhand der Unsicherheit der Kategorisierung der Lehrtexte in gängigen fachsprachlichen Textsortenanlysen verdeutlicht. Ein weiteres Ergebnis der Beschäftigung mit Texten der Wissensvermittlung ist die Tatsache, dass die wissenschaftliche Allgemeinsprache (Terminologie in einemweiteren Sinne, im Gegensatz zur chemischen Nomenklatur) ins Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit rückt. Damit rücken auch in der Fachsprachenforschung, insbesondere auf dem Feld der Naturwissenschaften, ansonsten weniger beachtete Elemente (wie die Verben), Ausdrucks weisen (wie Metaphern), Sichtweisen (Zweisprachigkeit der deutschen Chemieterminologie) und Verhaltensweisen (im kulturellen Zusammenhang) in den Vordergrund. Der erste Teil der Arbeit schließt mit einem Vergleich der englischen und der deutschen Fachsprache der Chemie ab, welcher der Tatsache, dass sich der hier zu Grund gelegte Unterricht der deutschen Fachsprache der Chemie in einer homogen englischsprachigen Umgebung abspielt, Rechnung trägt. Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit wird zunächst der Grundlagentext für die ihn ihm erfolgenden Analysen eingeführt. Es ist das zweibändige Praktikum in Allgemeiner Chemie, herausgegeben von Hanns Fischer, das für die Zwecke dieser Arbeit aus mehreren Gründen besonders gut geeignet scheint. Im weiteren Verlauf des zweiten Kapitels werden vier Grundbegriffe der Chemie besprochen, mit deren Hilfe weite Gebiete der Chemie erfasst werden können, ohne die Übersichtlichkeit zu verlieren. Bei der Besprechung dieser Begriffe werden anhand gelegentlicher Fallstudien aus studentischen Arbeiten die Schwierigkeiten verdeutlicht, mit denen sich nichtmuttersprachliche Leser von wissensvermittelnden Texten konfrontiert sehen. In diesen Fallstudien werden studentischen Annotationen (zu einem Universitätsskript) und studentische Übersetzungen als Fenster zum Fremdsprachenverständnis benutzt.1 Der erste der Begriffe ist Stoff (in Verbindung damit die Aggregatzustände), an dem verdeutlicht wird, wie unterschiedlich auch grundlegendste Begriffe der Chemie definiert werden können. Dies mündet in eine Diskussion des Definitionsbegriffs in der fremdsprachlichen Fachsprachendidaktik ein, und erfasst auch kulturelle Aspekte, insofern hier die Zweisprachigkeit der deutschen Chemiesprache ein Synonymenpaar zur Verfügung stellt, das jedoch bei genauerem Hinsehen Zwischentöne ermöglicht, die im englischen Gegenstück nichtverwirklicht werden können. Der zweite der Begriffe ist Atom (mit den verwandten Begriffen Ion und Molekül). Anhand dieser Begriffe werden die Teilchen vor Stellungen der Chemie aufgerollt und zugleich die mit ihnen assoziierten Modelle. Hier wird an Beispielen aus der Praxis der Chemiesprache deutlich, wie sehr die Sprache, mit welcher der Modellcharakter der Teilchenvorstellungen vermittelt wird, mit metaphemhaften Ausdrucksweisen durchsetzt ist. Der nächste Begriff ist Reaktion, in dem vom objekthaften Stoff und Atom zum Prozesshaften übergeleitet wird. In diesem Abschnitt wird die beim Stoffbegriff schon angesprochene Zweisprachigkeit der deutschen Chemiesprache anhand des Begriffspaars Reaktion - Umsetzung nocheinmal aufgegriffen, diesmal aber mit den damit verbundenen Lemschwierigkeiten für Studierende verbunden, Im Zusammenhang mit dem Grundbegriff Reaktion wird die chemietypische Komplementarität von Formel und Text genauer betrachtet. Der vierte und letzte Grundbegriff im praktischen Teil der Arbeit ist der Begriff Labor, in dem eine deutliche Zweiteilung unterschiedliche Aspekte der Fachsprachenvermittlung unterstreicht. Einerseits wird in einer ausführlichen Fallstudie zu studentischen Annotationen in einem typischen deutschen Universitätsskript gezeigt, auf welche Art eine solcher für das Studium essentieller Text (fremdsprachlich erfasst wird. Hier wird anhand einer einfachen statistischen Übersicht deutlich, welch eine wichtige Rolle im Verständnis dieser Textsorte die Verben spielen. Dieser Punkt erfährt anhand einer Analyse zu den Verben, die im Zusammenhang mit der Manipulation von Flüssigkeiten (offensichtlich eine der häufigsten mit dem Labor assoziierten Tätigkeiten) verwendet werden, aus einer anderen Perspektive Bestärkung. Insgesamt zeigt sich im Verlauf des zweiten Teils der Arbeit ein Fortschreiten von der theoretisch ausgerichteten Chemie (über den allumfassenden Stoffbegriff) hin zum praktischen, handwerklichen Aspekt des Chemie-Treibens (im Labor). Der dritte, didaktische Teil der Arbeit beginnt mit einer ausführlichen Begründung für die Zweckmäßigkeit aber auch bildungsmäßigen Sinnhafltigkeit eines fremdsprachlichen Fachsprachenunterrichts auf der tertiären Bildungsebene gegen eine Ansicht, dass für einen solchen Unterricht weder ein Bedarf noch ein Bedürfnis bestehe. Nach einer kurzen Einführung in die Rahmenbedingungen des fachsprachlichen Unterrichts im hier vorliegenden Zusammenhang wird die Brücke zum ersten Teil der Arbeit geschlagen, und es werden, anhand dreier Kompetenzen, die auf das Bühlersche Zeichenmodell zurückreflektieren, Vorschläge für den fachsprachlichen Fremdsprachenunterricht unterbreitet. Diese drei Kompetenzen sind namentlich die Fachkompetenz, die Sozialkompetenz und die Ich-Kompetenz, Ziel dieses dritten Teils ist es, die an der Dublin City University von Françoise Blin, Christine Appel und mir selbst entwickelten Module unter dem Titel German (French/Spanish) for Science and Technology, die für alle vier Studienjahre vorliegen, inhaltlich und fachlich zu unterfüttem.
This dissertation explores the language of three German grammar books and accompanying exercise books which are produced in Germany for international students of German. It examines how the examples and exercises presented in these books constitute ‘colony texts’ which convey different representations of human activity to the reader. Analysis of the language used in the German grammar books centres on the Linguistics of Representation and borrows techniques used normally in Corpus Linguistics. By using WordSmith Tools this study shows how particular terms (nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives) occur with greater frequency than others in the books under analysis thereby representing certain human activities more strongly than others. The activity of ‘work*, in particular, emerges in the grammar books as a key human activity and consequently provides the main focus for analysis in this study. Concordances relating to ‘work’ are grouped and analysed in terms of what they reveal about popular professions, workplace hierarchy and attitudes and approaches to work. Findings are considered from three perspectives: what they reveal to the researcher and learners of German about the representation of ‘work’ in the chosen context, how they compare to findings from comparative analyses of German textbooks and how they can contribute to our overall understanding of ‘text*. Grammar book examples and exercises emerge as ‘texts’ which have significant potential to reflect cultural norms and attitudes despite being considered generally as a source of innocuous and unremarkable language.