The constructional patterns of meteorological events by French-, Italian- and Dutch-speaking learners of German.

De Knop, Sabine;Sambre, Paul;Mollica, Fabio
(2014) 6e conférence de l’Association allemande de Linguistique Cognitive (DGKL6) — Location: Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (30.September.2014)

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Authors
  • De Knop, Sabineorcid-logoUCLouvain
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  • Sambre, PaulKULeuven
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  • Mollica, FabioUniversità degli Studi di Milano
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Abstract
Context – Weather expressions are part of the relevant topics in foreign language (FL) teaching. Traditional teaching methodology focuses on fixed FL expressions like impersonal verbs (e.g. il pleut/es regnet/it rains). This approach is too simplistic, as it solely focuses on isolated weather states, thereby discarding both the rich array of verbal and nominal constructions for typical weather states and changes, as well as the learners’ needs for their production. This study wants to fill this gap by focusing on weather expressions produced by learners of German as a second language (L2). Aims – In this study we will describe and analyze: (1) the variation in the constructional patterns for weather forecasts in three samples of non-native speakers of German (French, Italian and Dutch); (2) the constructional patterns used by the learners in elicited nominal (e.g. der Regen, die Sonne, die Kälte), verbal (e.g.es regnet, die Sonne scheint, es wird kalt), and adjectival (e.g. regnerisches, sonniges oder kaltes Wetter) expressions for weather conditions and change; (3) the constructions displaying deficits in German-L2, compared to the individual L1-speaker patterns. Theoretical framework – The study is based on Goldberg’s Construction Grammar (1995, 2006), on Talmy’s typological considerations (2000) and on the concept of ‘conceptual fluency’ developed by Danesi (2008). Data –The corpus consists of three samples of L2 learners’ written responses to a set of visual stimuli in an elicitation task about weather conditions and meteorological change. The participants are French-, Italian- and Dutch-speaking learners of German (level B1-B2 in the reference frame of the Council of Europe) from three Belgian and Italian universities. The respondents were asked to describe the pictures in the test both in German-L2 and in their mother tongue (Nunan 2004). (Expected) Results – Our study first aims at describing and distinguishing the preferred constructional patterns in L1 French, Italian and Dutch on the one hand, and in German-L2 on the other. In this respect, we will take into account some typological differences between Germanic and Romance languages. In French and Italian, for instance, it is habitually the impersonal verb faire/fare ‘to do’ which is used in expressions of a meteorological state, e.g. Il fait froid/fa freddo, lit. *‘It does cold’, whereas in Dutch and German the verb ‘to be’ is used by default, e.g. Het is koud/Es ist kalt, lit. ‘It is cold’. Moreover, we expect users to produce varied types of constructions, reaching from fully lexical verbs (Morgen wird es regnen), over predications with weather nouns and support verbs (Morgen wird viel Schnee sein) and adjectives or adverbs (Für morgen erwarten wir regnerisches Wetter; es regnet stark). From a contrastive perspective, we will explore the influence of L1 on L2-constructions, in order to show possible learner interferences. More specifically, we contrast the Dutch learners as representatives of a Germanic language, with the speakers of the Romance languages. Finally, we will propose some guidelines for construction-based teaching as an alternative to the conventional lexical approach to meteorological expressions. References Danesi, Marcel. 2008. Conceptual errors in second-language learning. In Sabine De Knop & Teun De Rycker (eds.), Cognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar – A Volume in Honour of René Dirven, 231-256. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Faber, Pamela (ed.). 2012. A Cognitive Linguistics View of Terminology and Specialized Language. Berlin; New York: de Gruyter. Goldberg, Adele E. (1995), Constructions. A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press. Goldberg, Adele E. (2006), Constructions at Work. The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nunan, David. 2004. Task-based language teaching. Cambridge: CUP. Pennesi, Karen. 2007. Improving Forecast Communication: Linguistic and Cultural Considerations. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 88: 1033–1044. Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics, volume 2. Cambridge: MIT Press.
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De Knop, S., Sambre, P., & Mollica, F. (2014). The constructional patterns of meteorological events by French-, Italian- and Dutch-speaking learners of German. 6e conférence de l’Association allemande de Linguistique Cognitive (DGKL6), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/190476