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The relations between Turkey and Germany have a long history that involves collaboration and partnership in many areas. After 1960s, this relationship gained a new dimension as hundreds of thousands of Turkish workers immigrated to Germany. This paper presents a brief history of the relations between the two countries, and the cultural and language-related problems experienced by Turkish people in Germany. More specifically, it focuses on the background and current state of the Turkish Language and Culture course taught to the Turkish youth in German schools. Problems regarding the implementation of this course are discussed with reference to official statistics. Finally, suggestions are offered to address the challenges faced to improve the Turkish Language and Culture course so that Turkish children can successfully learn their origin-language, and eventually achieve competence in both Turkish and German in their academic studies.
Reduction and deletion processes occur regularly in conversational speech. A segment that is affected by such reduction and deletion processes in many Germanic languages (e.g., Dutch, English, German) is /t/. There are similarities concerning the factors that influence the likelihood of final /t/ to get deleted, such as segmental context. However, speakers of different languages differ with respect to the acoustic cues they leave in the speech signal when they delete final /t/. German speakers usually lengthen a preceding /s/ when they delete final /t/. This article investigates to what extent German listeners are able to reconstruct /t/ when they are presented with fragments of words where final /t/ has been deleted. It aims also at investigating whether the strategies that are used by German depend on the length of /s/, and therefore whether listeners are using language-specific cues. Results of a forced-choice segment detection task suggest that listeners are able to reconstruct deleted final /t/ in about 45% of the times. The length of /s/ plays some role in the reconstruction, however, it does not explain the behavior of German listeners completely.
Pluralization strategies of monolingual German children aged 3-6, median 4;2 (N = 810), and adults aged 18-96, median 24;0 (N = 582), were compared on the basis of eight nonce nouns from the language test SETK 3-5. Differences between younger and older Germans resembled previously described differences between German and immigrant pre-schoolers for most aspects, e.g., use of fewer plural allomorphs (types), more errors in umlauting, and more avoidance strategies in the linguistically weaker groups. However, both German children and adults demonstrated the same universal frequency- and phonology-based pluralization patterns. Surprisingly, ungrammatical plural forms were equally frequent in both children’s and adults' answers.
In the German-speaking regions of Switzerland, dialect is spoken by all social groups in most communicative situations, Standard German being used only when prescribed. Swiss dialects rarely appeared in written form before the 1980s, apart from the genre of dialect literature. Due to the growing acceptance of informal writing styles in many European languages, dialect is increasingly employed for written personal communication, in particular in computer-mediated communication (CMC). In Swiss Internet Relay Chat (IRC) rooms, varieties of German are used side by side as all chatters have a command of both standard and dialectal varieties. Depending on the channel, the proportion of dialectal contributions can be as high as 90 percent. The choice of a particular variety depends on both individual preference and on the predominant variety used within a specific thread. In this paper I take a quantitative approach to language variation in IRC and demonstrate how such an approach can help embed qualitative research on code-switching in CMC.
Quantitative approaches to linguistic variation in IRC : implications for qualitative research
(2008)
Qualitative analysis of code choice, code switching, and language style in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) can shed light on functional-pragmatic aspects of the use of different linguistic varieties. However, in a qualitative analysis, the status of varieties within a channel or for a single chatter can only be guessed at. Moreover, qualitative research on linguistic variation in IRC often fails to generalize its findings due to a restricted database or a restricted view of a database. This article introduces an approach that allows for embedding of qualitative research within a quantitative research design. The quantitative method presented here enables general statements to be made about the use of varieties or the usage of certain chatters in a chat channel. The approach is exemplified with data from Swiss IRC channels, in which Swiss German dialects and standard German are used side by side. A large corpus is analyzed for static and dynamic aspects of dialect share. It is argued that this quantitative approach can provide a background for qualitative analysis and facilitate the selection process of relevant data required for qualitative analysis.
Dialectal variation in german 3-verb clusters : a surface-oriented optimality theoretic account
(2004)
We present data from an empirical investigation on the dialectal variation in the syntax of German 3-verb clusters, consisting of a temporal auxiliary, a modal verb, and a predicative verb. The ordering possibilities vary greatly among the dialects. Some of the orders that we found occur only under particular stress assignments. We assume that these orders fulfil an information structural purpose and that the reordering processes are changes only in the linear order of the elements which is represented exclusively at the surface syntactic level, PF (Phonetic Form). Our Optimality theoretic account offers a multifactorial perspective on the phenomenon.
History films personalize, dramatize and emotionalize historical events and characters. They revive the past by exemplifying it in the present, engage ongoing discourses of history and as a result have proven to be the most influential medium in conveying history to large audiences. History films are regarded as an attractive, motivating and efficient (supplementary) teaching and learning medium in history as well as in foreign language classes. As part of the course "Historical Survey of Germany" (BA German-programme at University Putra Malaysia) history film projects on important periods and events in German history were conducted. The article introduces a film project on World War II and describes the pedagogical approach which aims to develop three core competencies of historical understanding – Content Knowledge, Historical Empathy/Perspective Recognition and Narrative Analysis. It discusses selected general findings provided as qualitative data in group and individual assignments. While the responses to questions related to Content Knowledge and Narrative Analysis show that students achieved higher competency levels, the participants showed shortcomings in the rational examination of historical characters, their perspectives and motivations for their actions. Time, practice and guidance can be identified as key factors in developing historical literacy competencies further.
Theoretical accounts agree that German restrictive relative clauses (RCs) are integrated at the level of syntax as well as at the level of prosody (; , ; ; ; ) in both the default verb-final and the marked verb-second variant (referred to as iV2). Both variants are assumed to show the same prosodic pattern, i. e., prosodic integration into the main clause, and not unintegrated prosody, which would signal a sequence of two main clauses. To date strong empirical evidence for this close correspondence between prosody and syntax in RCs is missing. Findings regarding prosodic integration of verb-final RCs are not consistent, and research regarding the prosody of iV2 structures is very scarce. Using a delayed sentence-repetition task, our study investigated whether subordination is signaled by prosody in RCs in both the verb-final and the V2 variant in adults (n = 21). In addition, we asked whether young language learners (n = 23), who at the age of 3 have just started to produce embedded clauses, are already sensitive to this mapping. The adult responses showed significantly more patterns of prosodic integration than of prosodic non-integration in the V-final and the iV2 structures, with no difference between the two conditions. Notably, the child responses mirrored this adult behavior, showing significantly more patterns of prosodic integration than of prosodic non-integration in both V-final and iV2 structures. The findings regarding adults’ prosodic realizations provide novel empirical evidence for the claim that iV2 structures, just like verb-final RCs, show prosodic integration. Moreover, our study strongly suggests that subordination is signaled by prosody already by age 3 in both verb-final and V2 variants of RCs.