Conceptual tools for the description and the acquisition of the German posture verb 'sitzen'
(2011) „20 years of learner corpus research: looking back, moving ahead” (LCR 2011) — Location: UCL (15.September.2011)
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- In their description of the semantic uses of German posture verbs Kutscher and Schultze-Berndt (2007) disregard the verb sitzen ‘to sit‘ claiming that (i) its use is mostly confined to expressions of the concrete sitting position of animals or human beings and (ii) with inanimate figures, that its use is restricted to a few idiomatic expressions. Kutscher and Schultze-Berndt’s claim seems to be sustained by other studies on German posture verbs, e.g. by Serra-Borneto (1996), which describe different posture verbs except sitzen. A corpus study of sitzen allows to get a more differentiated picture of the different uses of that verb (See also De Knop and Perrez in preparation) and to show that sitzen is not restricted to the concrete sitting position but is also used to express more abstract senses, e.g. Er sitzt in der Falle ‘He sits in the trap‘ or Das Kleid sitzt nicht ‘The skirt does not sit‘ = ‘The skirt does not fit‘. A further look at learner corpora of German essays written by non-natives indicates that foreign learners of German seem to have difficulties with these more abstract or metaphorical uses of the verb sitzen. Interestingly enough, most teaching manuals for German (e.g. Aldenhoff (1994), Bouillon (2001), Helbig and Buscha (1991), Schulz and Griesbach (1978)) do not describe the semantic uses of sitzen either. This study aims at making up for these deficits. With examples from the German corpora from the DWDS and IDS in Mannheim it will first describe the different uses of the verb sitzen. It will then offer a brief critical overview of teaching manuals for German. Based on essays from learner corpora, e.g. Falko, and texts written by our French-speaking students it will further present the difficulties encountered by foreign learners of German with the more abstract or metaphorical uses of sitzen. In the framework of Cognitive Linguistics the study will further present some ‘conceptual tools’ to facilitate the acquisition of the more abstract uses of the verb sitzen. These tools are semantic networks – based on the studies for Dutch by Lemmens (2002) and Lemmens and Perrez (2010), and for German and Dutch by De Knop and Perrez (in preparation) – and Conceptual Metaphor Theory, as described by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and exploited for teaching issues in the studies by Jäkel (1989), Boers and Demecheleer (1998) or Özçaliskan (2003). Spatial distinctions such as those between container and contact are extended to more abstract areas of experience, especially in the context of situations describing abstract states. Here one of the main issues for the learner is to find out whether the abstract goal is conceptualized as a container, a contact or still another basic spatial relation. 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De Knop, S. (2011). Conceptual tools for the description and the acquisition of the German posture verb ‘sitzen’. „20 years of learner corpus research: looking back, moving ahead” (LCR 2011), UCL. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/190453