Argument structure constructions in the teaching of German as a foreign language: from free instantiations to phraseological ones along the grammatical-lexical continuum.

De Knop, Sabine;Mollica, Fabio
(2023) International Workshop on Multi-Word Units in Multilingual Learners — Location: University of Munich (30.November.2023)

Files

MultiwordUnits_Munchen_20231130_DIAL.pdf
  • Open Access
  • Adobe PDF
  • 1.84 MB
Download

Details

Authors
Abstract
The description of the ditransitive construction constitutes a central topic in Construction Grammar studies (see among others Goldberg 1992 & 2019; Haspelmath 2015; Proost 2014), it has been defined as a form-meaning pair expressing a transfer of a theme/patient (referred to by the direct object) to a recipient (encoded by the indirect object). In spite of this clear definition the learning of the German ditransitive construction and its instantiations is a challenging enterprise for foreign learners, especially with regard to the order of the two objects (unmarked position: indirect before direct object; Lenerz 1977; Røreng 2011) or their case-marking (indirect object in the dative, direct object in the accusative; cf. Wegener 1985; Welke 2013). Moreover, some verbs are used in the ditransitive construction for the expression of a transfer semantics but with both objects in the accusative (Lang 2007). These are, among others, "pedagogical verbs" (Abraham 1983: 51) such as lehren ('to teach'), fragen ('to ask'), abhören ('to intercept'), etc. The talk will address the learning issues with the ditransitive construction for Italian-speaking learners of German, thereby focusing on the principles of Construction Grammar (CxG). To do so, three empirical studies will be discussed. Starting from a detailed description of the ditransitive construction, the empirical study by De Knop & Mollica (fc. 2023a) elaborates on the difficulties with the learning of the ditransitive construction in free use. It further proposes pedagogical interventions based on structural priming (Hartsuiker et al. 2004) and visualization which foster the learning process. De Knop & Mollica (2023b) goes one step further as it deals with collocational instantiations of the ditransitive construction for which another empirical study has been designed which shows that ditransitive collocations can be taught as instantiations of the abstract ditransitive construction. Based on sorting experiments, the third study by De Knop & Mollica (2016) has also shown that even idiomatic instantiations of the ditransitive construction are better learned in the framework of CxG and not simply as lexical units. The talk will discuss and illustrate the assets of the constructionist approach. As CxG does not separate between grammar and the lexicon but considers them both to build a continuum, it is possible to offer an encompassing description of all the instantiations of the ditransitive construction – from free compositional ones to collocational, and up to idiomatic ones. As a consequence, phraseological instantiations can be fully integrated into foreign language teaching and are not relegated to the lexicon. References Abraham, W. (1983). Der Dativ im Deutschen. Colloque du Centre de recherches germaniques. Nancy: Université de Nancy II. De Knop, S. & Mollica, F. (2016). A construction-based study of German ditransitive phraseologisms for language pedagogy. In S. De Knop & G. Gilquin (Eds.), Applied Construction Grammar (pp. 53–87). Berlin: De Gruyter. De Knop, S. & Mollica, F. (fc. 2023a). Ditransitive Argumentstrukturkonstruktionen im DaF-Unterricht. In K. Welke, M. Felfe & D. Höllein (Hrsg.), Regelbasierte Konstruktionsgrammatik. Musterbasiertheit vs. Idiomatizität? Berlin: de Gruyter. De Knop, S. & Mollica, M. (2023b). The German ditransitive construction: A challenge for Italian learners. Presentation at the International Contrastive Linguistics Conference 10 in Mannheim, 18-21 July 2023. Goldberg, A. E. (1992). The inherent semantics of argument structure: The case of the English ditransitive construction. Cognitive Linguistics, 3, 37-74. Goldberg, A. E. (2019). Explain Me This. Creativity, Competition, and the Partial Productivity of Constructions. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Juliana Goschler & Anatol Stefanowitsch (2022). Argumentstrukturkonstruktionen im Fremdspracherwerb: Entrenchment, Transfer und Generalisierung. Präsentation auf der Tagung ‘Konstruktionsgrammatik germanischer Sprachen: Forschungsstand – Desiderata – Perspektiven’, 24-25. März 2022 an der Technischen Universität Dresden. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSnKXkOSu1o. Hartsuiker, R. J., Pickering, M. J. & Veltkamp, E. (2004). Is syntax separate or shared between languages? Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in Spanish-English bilinguals. Psychological Science, 15(6), 409–414. Haspelmath, M. (2015). Ditransitive constructions. Annual Review of Linguistics, 1, 19–41. Lang, P. (2007). Grammatik und Norm: Direktes Objekt, indirektes Objekt und der doppelte Akkusativ. Seminararbeit Universität Zürich, Deutsches Seminar zum Thema ‚Grammatik und Norm’, Wintersemester 2006/07. Lenerz, J. (1977). Zur Abfolge nominaler Satzglieder im Deutschen. Tübingen: Narr. Proost, K. (2014). Ditransitive transfer constructions and their prepositional variants in German and Romanian: An empirical survey. In R. Cosma, S. Engelberg, S. Schlotthauer, S. Stanescu & G. Zifonun (Hrsg.), Komplexe Argumentstrukturen – Kontrastive Untersuchungen zum Deutschen, Rumänischen und Englischen, 19–83. Berlin: De Gruyter. Røreng, A. (2011). Die deutsche Doppelobjektkonstruktion – Eine korpusbasierte Untersuchung zur relativen Abfolge nominaler Akkusativ- und Dativobjekte im geschriebenen Deutsch. Universitetet i Tromso, Ph.Dissertation. Wegener, H. (1985). Der Dativ im heutigen Deutsch. Tübingen: Narr. Welke, K. (2013). Konstruktionsgrammatik (KxG) und Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Deutsch als Fremdsprache, 50, 19–27.
Affiliations

Citations

  • APA
  • Chicago
  • FWB

De Knop, S., & Mollica, F. (2023). Argument structure constructions in the teaching of German as a foreign language: from free instantiations to phraseological ones along the grammatical-lexical continuum. International Workshop on Multi-Word Units in Multilingual Learners, University of Munich.