Modeling “constructional transfer”: A corpus-based study of competing morphological and syntactic intensifiers in native and learner Dutch
(2016) International Morphology Meeting 17 — Location: Vienna (18.February.2016)
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Hendrikx, Isa 
- Abstract
- Modeling “constructional transfer”: A corpus-based study of competing morphologic and syntactic intensifiers in native and learner Dutch In this contribution we will present a corpus-based comparison of the use of intensifying constructions in (written) native Dutch (Corpus Hedendaags Nederlands), Dutch by French-speaking learners (Leerdercorpus Nederlands) and native French (Frantext). The central focus will be on the competition between morphological and syntactic means to intensify adjectives. The analysis will be approached from the constructional perspective on language acquisition and multilingualism (cf. Tomasello 2003; Goldberg 2010; Höder 2012, 2014). From such a usage-based point of view, second language acquisition is presumed to be more complex than L1 acquisition because of the competition between the specific constructions of the foreign language with the L1 constructions (Ellis & Cadierno 2009). In our study, we will examine the acquisition of Dutch intensifying constructions by French-speaking learners and will therefore compare the means to express intensity in both languages. In Dutch, adjectives can be intensified through adverbial modification [[ADV] [ADJ]]AP (e.g. heel goed ‘very good’), prefixes [Pref [ADJ]]ADJ (e.g. hypergevoelig ‘hypersensitive’) and within adjectival ‘elative’ compounds [<N> [ADJ]]ADJ (e.g. ijskoud ‘ice-cold’) (Hoeksema 2012), the latter type being quite productive in Dutch. In French, intensification is more typically expressed through syntactic constructions, for example by adverbs (such as très, tout and adverbs in -ment: absolument, totalement) (Riegel e.a.1994: 620), or through reduplication [[ADJ] [ADJ]]AP (e.g. rouge rouge ‘completely red’) (Riegel e.a.1994: 622). Prefixation also occurs (e.g. hypersympa ‘extremely nice’), but adjectival compounding is extremely uncommon as means of intensification, one exception being ivre-mort ‘dead drunk’. In consequence, it can be assumed that French-speaking learners of Dutch will underuse the specific Germanic intensifying constructions (adjectival compounds) and, inversely, overuse syntactic intensifiers such as adverbs by what we call “constructional transfer”. In order to test this hypothesis, we have collected 21.200 adjectives from the Corpus Hedendaags Nederlands of which 308 are accompanied by an intensifier. In addition we have analyzed 498 intensified adjectives (out of a total of 8.454 adjectives) from the Leerdercorpus Nederlands written by French-speaking students in sixth grade of secondary school (Degand & Perrez 2014). These corpus data have been compared with a similar sample of 353 intensified adjectives (out of a total of 9.009 adjectives), drawn from recent essays in the Frantext corpus. The findings of our data analysis confirm our hypothesis to a great extent. Learners clearly overuse adverbial intensification (96,6%) in comparison to native Dutch speakers (74,4%), probably influenced by their native language (similar proportion of intensifying adverbs found in Frantext). Furthermore, learners significantly underuse intensifying compounds in comparison to native speakers of Dutch (learners 1,8% vs Dutch natives 13,6%, while no attestations in the native French corpus were found), but also prefixes (learners 1,8% - again in line with the results for French natives (1,1%) vs Dutch natives 8,7%). In addition, the native Dutch corpus contains specific intensifying constructions that are not used by the learners, such as [as ADJ as X] (1,6%), although they do occur – marginally – in French (0,8%). These results might be explained as transfer effects from French, as there appears to exist a cline between native Dutch, learner Dutch and native French. Besides the comparison of the construction types, we will also take a closer look at the extent of lexical variation and productivity of the intensifiers in the different corpora (type/token ratio, hapax legomena), compare the most frequent intensifiers and intensifying collocations, and investigate the relation between intensifier type and semantic type of the adjective (scalar, limit, extreme) (cf. Paradis 1997, 2001). Finally, the different corpus results will be confronted with Höder’s diasystemic approach to multilingualism (Höder 2012, 2014). Concretely this theory would imply that a bilingual person has a unified semantic-cognitive representation of intensification to his disposition with a variety of formal means (morphological and syntactic constructions) to be specified for the different languages. References Corpus Hedendaags Nederlands. 2013. Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie (ILN) 800.000 texts (1814-2013). Available online at Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN). https://portal.clarin.inl.nl/search/page/search Degand, Liesbeth & Julien Perrez. 2004. Causale connectieven in het leerdercorpus Nederlands. Tijdschrift n/f 4. 115-128. Ellis, Nick. & Teresa Cadierno. 2009. Constructing a Second Language. Introduction to the special section. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 7, 111-139. FRANTEXT, ATILF. 2014. CNRS & Université de Lorraine. 271.599.218 words. http://www.frantext.fr. Goldberg, Adele. 2010 [2006]. Constructions at Work. The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hoeksema, Jack. 2012. Elative compounds in Dutch: Properties and developments. In Oebel (ed.) 2012, 97-142. Höder, Steffen. 2012. Multilingual constructions: A diasystematic approach to common structures. In Multilingual Individuals and Multilingual Societies [Hamburg studies on multilingualism 13], K. Braunmüller & C. Gabriel (ed). 241-257. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Höder, Steffen. 2014. Constructing diasystems: grammatical organisation in bilingual groups. In The Sociolinguistics of Grammar [Studies in language companion series 154], T. Afarli & B. Maehlum (ed). 137-152. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Paradis, Carita. 1997. Degree modifiers of adjectives in spoken British English. Lund: Lund University Press. Paradis, Carita. 2001. Adjectives and boundedness. In Cognitive Linguistics 12-1. 47-65. Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffry Leech, Jan Svartvik. 1997. A comprehensive grammar of the English Language. London: Longman. Riegel, Martin, Jean-Christophe Pellat, René Rioul. 1994. Grammaire méthodique du français. Presses Universitaires de France: Paris. Tomasello, Michael. 2003. Constructing a language. Boston: Harvard University Press.
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Hendrikx, I., Van Goethem, K., & Meunier, F. (2016). Modeling “constructional transfer”: A corpus-based study of competing morphological and syntactic intensifiers in native and learner Dutch. International Morphology Meeting 17, Vienna. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/183789