Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-lrblm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-04T07:52:30.073Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Linguistic Aspects of Regression in German Case Marking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2008

Peter Jordens ,
Kees De Bot  and
Henk Trapman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The tenability of the regression hypothesis as a basic principle for language attrition within languages has not been really questioned until now. In order to find out to what extent attrition might be the reverse of the process of acquisition, phenomena of attrition in the use of the German case system were studied. Two hypotheses were tested: the Linguistic Hypothesis and the Cognitive Hypothesis. the Linguistic Hypothesis is based on the notion of regression. According to this notion, attrition is the reverse of the language acquisition process. The Cognitive Hypothesis is based on the assumption that in natural cases of language acquisition, there is a tendency to establish a one-to-one correspondence between cognitive function and morphological case assignment. The results from experiments on case marking in headline-type constructions showed differences between native (L1) speakers and second language (L2) learners. In L1 speakers the relation between case marking and underlying semantic functioning becomes more prominent, whereas in L2 learners the nominative is used as a default case, indicating that morphological differentiations become reduced. This means that for L1 speakers the Cognitive Hypothesis provides a more adequate explanatory framework, whereas for L2 learners it is the Linguistic Hypothesis that is more appropriate.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , June 1989 , pp. 179 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aksu-Koç, A., & Slobin, D. (1985). Acquisition of Turkish. In Slobin, D. (Ed.), The cross-linguistic study of language acquisition, Vol. 1 (pp. 839–878). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Caramaza, A., & Zurif., E. (Eds.). (1978). Language acquisition and language breakdown: Parallels and divergencies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H. (1984) Der Erwerb von Kasusmarkierungen in der deutschen Kindersprache. Linguistische Berichte, 89, 1–31.Google Scholar
De Bot, K., & Weltens, B. (in press). Recapitulation, regression and language loss. In Seliger, H. W. & Vago, R. M. (Eds.), First language attrition: Structural and theoretical perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ertel, S. (1974). Satzsubjekt und Ich-Perspektive. In Eckensberger, L. H. & Eckensberger, U. S. (Eds.), Bericht ūber den 28 Kbngreß der deutschen Gesellschaft lūr Psychologie in Saarbrūcken 1972. Bd. 1: Wissenschaltstheorie und Psychotinguistik (pp. 129–139) Göttingen: Hogrele.Google Scholar
Ertel, S. (1977). Where do subjects of sentences come from? In Rosenberg, S. (Ed.), Sentence production: Developments in research and theory (pp. 141–167). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Gilbert, G., & Orlovic, M. (1975, 8 January). Pidgin German spoken by foreign workers in West Germany: The definite article. Lecture presented at the International Congress on Pidgins and Creoles, Honolulu, Hawaii.Google Scholar
Givón, T. (1976). Topic, pronoun and grammatical agreement. In Li, C. N. (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 151–188). New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Jakobson, R. (1968). Child language, aphasia and phonological universals. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jordens, P. (1983). Die Kasusmarkierung im Deutschen in unvoilstāndigen Sātzen. Groninger Arbeiten zur germanistischen Linguistik, 22, 101–126.Google Scholar
Jordens, P. (1985) Production rules in interlanguage. Evidence from case errors in L2 German. In Kellerman, E. & Sharwood Smith, M. (Eds.), Cross-linguistic influence in second language learning (pp. 91–109). Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Pfaff, C. (1988, August) Turkish in contact with German: Language maintenance and loss among immigrant children in West Berlin. Paper presented at the International Conference on the Maintenance and Loss of Ethnic Minority Languages, Noordwijkerhout, the Netherlands.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. (1986). The acquisition and the use of relative clauses in Turkic and Indo-European languages. In Slobin, D. & Zimmer, K. (Eds.), Studies in Turkish linguistics (pp. 273–294). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.8.16sloCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomlin, R. S. (1983). On the interaction of syntactic subject, thematic information, and agent in English. Journal ol Pragmatics, 7, 411–432.10.1016/0378-2166(83)90026-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zubin, D. (1975). On the distributional properties of surface morphology and their consequences for semantic analysis. Columbia University Working Papers, 2, 189–218.Google Scholar
Zubin, D. (1977). The semantic basis of case alternation in German. In Fasold, R. W. & Shuy, R. W. (Eds.) Studies in language variation. Semantics, syntax, phonology, pragmatics, social situations, ethnographic approaches (pp. 88–99). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Zubin, D. (1979) Discourse function of morphology. The focus system in German. In Givon, T. (Ed.), Syntax and semantics. Vol. 12: Discourse and syntax (pp. 469–504) New York: Academic.Google Scholar