The intention of this thesis is to show the differences between L1 and L2 acquisition. The focus here is on the acquisition of relative clauses, which is mastered comparatively late by both L1 and L2 learners due to its complexity.
The first part of the thesis is theoretical and will provide an overview of how children acquire relative clauses in German as their mother tongue, and how that differs from young children and adults learning relative constructions in German as a second language. In the second part, an empirical-qualitative corpus analysis will be carried out. For this purpose, test examples from the MERLIN corpus were used with focus on the production of relative clause sentences written by L2 learners. The results of the corpus analysis will be compared with the theories found in relevant literature. In addition, the MERLIN corpus is intended to provide insights into the written application of relative clause structures in L2 learners.
Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations
List of Figures
List of Tables
1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Reference Framework
2.1 Important Terms
2.1.1 Mother tongue and first language, L1
2.1.2 Foreign language (FL) and second language, L2
2.2 Language characteristics of German with focus on relative clauses
2.2.1 The correct word order in German
2.2.2 The properties of the relative clause in German
2.2.3 The relative clause and the verb bracket
2.3 L1-acquisition of the relative clause structure
2.3.1 Acquisition of the structure of relative clauses
2.3.2 Acquisition of the relative clause
2.3.3 Studies relevant to relative clauses
2.4 L2-acquisition of the relative clause structure
2.4.1 The critical or sensitive period
2.4.2 (Early) child L2 learners
2.4.3 Youth and adult L2 learners
2.4.4 Differences between L1- and L2 learners
3. Practical Part: Empirical-qualitative corpus analysis
3.1 Presentation of the German learning corpus MERLIN and CEFR
3.2 Methodological approach
3.3 Quantitative corpus analysis of the subordinate clauses
3.4 Qualitative and quantitative analysis of relative clauses
3.4.1 Examples for correct subordinate clauses
3.4.2 Error in the subordinate clause bracket (sentence position error)
3.4.3 Correlation of reference word and relative pronoun
3.4.4 Conjunction „dass“ instead of relative pronouns der/die/das
3.4.5 Complexity of relative clauses
4. Conclusion and practical application
4.1 Possible applications in German lessons (all levels)
References
- Quote paper
- Anonymous,, 2021, First and Second Language Acquisition of German Relative Clauses, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1024789
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