How to foster the learning of the German ditransitive construction with corpus data

De Knop, Sabine;Mollica, Fabio
(2023) XXIII. Deutscher Hispanistentag, Hispanistik in neuen Umwelten:Digitalisierung-Reinskriptionen-Schnittstellen — Location: Universität Graz (Österreich) (22.February.2023)

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  • De Knop, Sabineorcid-logoUCLouvain
    Author
  • Mollica, FabioUniversità degli Studi di Milano
    Collaborator
Abstract
Ditransitive constructions constitute a central topic in Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1992 & 2019; Proost 2014), they have been defined as form-meaning pairs expressing a transfer of a theme/patient (expressed by the direct object) to a recipient (expressed by the indirect object). Most studies on this topic have focused on the English language. The German ditransitive construction expresses a similar semantics, but it is further characterized by specific (morpho-)syntactic properties (see among others Wegener 1985). The two objects in the construction are marked with a morpho-syntactic case, namely the dative for the indirect object and the accusative for the direct object. In the unmarked order (Lenerz 1977) the dative object comes before the accusative object, as in Der Weihnachtsmann schenkt den Kindern [DAT] Spielzeug [AKK]. If the objects are realized as pronouns, the order is reversed, e.g. Der Weihnachtsmann schenkt es [AKK] ihnen [DAT] (Haspelmath 2004 & 2007). In addition to the prototypical German ditransitive constructions with a ditransitive verb, there are constructions with a verb that also expresses a transfer meaning but which is used with two accusatives (Lang 2007). These are, among others, "pedagogical verbs" (Abraham 1983: 51) such as lehren ('to teach'), fragen ('to ask'), abhören ('to intercept'), etc. The learning of German ditransitive constructions is a challenging enterprise for foreign learners, not only with regard to case-marking and the order of the objects, but especially when the constructions contain two accusative objects. This was confirmed by a test conducted with Italian students of German at the University of Milano (De Knop & Mollica fc. 2023). The presentation will report on the test and show that a purely constructionist approach is not sufficient to explain the idiosyncrasies in the use of the German verbs, let alone to develop a proper teaching methodology for foreign learners. A more adequate approach consists in a description based on corpus data (compare Lang 2007 or Sauermann & Höhle 2018) collected in the Valenzwörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (Valbu) and in the core corpus of the Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (DWDS). But although the information gained with the analysis of corpus data is more reliable, not only from a theoretical perspective but also for the learning process (see also Baten & De Cuypere 2014; Welke 2013), it is also necessary to take into account valency information about the verbs used in the ditransitive constructions according to the "valency realization principle" as advocated by Herbst (2014).
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De Knop, S. (2023). How to foster the learning of the German ditransitive construction with corpus data. XXIII. Deutscher Hispanistentag, Hispanistik in neuen Umwelten:Digitalisierung-Reinskriptionen-Schnittstellen, Universität Graz (Österreich). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/165698