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Author: Miriam Fuehrer Publisher: GRIN Verlag ISBN: 364034233X Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 65
Book Description
Bachelor Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1.0, University of Siegen, language: English, abstract: Would you say you '...gave a good friend a scarf' or would you rather say you '...gave a scarf to a good friend'? The grammatical phenomenon underlying the two syntactic variants - the double object dative [a good friend] [a scarf] and the prepositional object dative [a scarf] [to a good friend] - is the so-called 'dative alternation' (DA). The latter term captures this general ability in English to express the same event of giving with two distinct syntactic structures. DA has been researched extensively for native speakers of English. Most of the scientific attention was directed at identifying the semantic and informational variables that give rise to the respective variants. Also, a number of corpus studies have revealed an interesting phenomenon commonly referred to as "lexical bias" (e.g. Wasow 2002). More precisely, researchers have found some dative verbs to occur more frequently in a prepositional dative variant (POD), whereas other dative verbs seem to favor the double object variant (DOD) (e.g. Davidse 1996; Stallings et al. 1998; Wasow 2002; Arnoldet al. 2003; Bresnan & Nikitina 2003). For example, Wasow (2002) found 'give' to occur in a DOD shape in 85% of his data, while Davidse (1996) found the verb 'throw' to occur in a POD shape in 90% of her data. While DA has been widely explored for native speakers of English, relatively little is known about it in contexts of SLA. This study investigates how DA is reflected in the IL of German learners of English and, additionally, whether German learners exhibit similar lexical biases in their choice of dative syntax. Raw data of early research on the acquisition of English DA by French native speakers (Mazurkevich 1984; Hawkins 1987) show similar lexical biases as observed for native speakers. This trend suggests that lexical biases are ac
Author: Miriam Fuehrer Publisher: GRIN Verlag ISBN: 364034233X Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 65
Book Description
Bachelor Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1.0, University of Siegen, language: English, abstract: Would you say you '...gave a good friend a scarf' or would you rather say you '...gave a scarf to a good friend'? The grammatical phenomenon underlying the two syntactic variants - the double object dative [a good friend] [a scarf] and the prepositional object dative [a scarf] [to a good friend] - is the so-called 'dative alternation' (DA). The latter term captures this general ability in English to express the same event of giving with two distinct syntactic structures. DA has been researched extensively for native speakers of English. Most of the scientific attention was directed at identifying the semantic and informational variables that give rise to the respective variants. Also, a number of corpus studies have revealed an interesting phenomenon commonly referred to as "lexical bias" (e.g. Wasow 2002). More precisely, researchers have found some dative verbs to occur more frequently in a prepositional dative variant (POD), whereas other dative verbs seem to favor the double object variant (DOD) (e.g. Davidse 1996; Stallings et al. 1998; Wasow 2002; Arnoldet al. 2003; Bresnan & Nikitina 2003). For example, Wasow (2002) found 'give' to occur in a DOD shape in 85% of his data, while Davidse (1996) found the verb 'throw' to occur in a POD shape in 90% of her data. While DA has been widely explored for native speakers of English, relatively little is known about it in contexts of SLA. This study investigates how DA is reflected in the IL of German learners of English and, additionally, whether German learners exhibit similar lexical biases in their choice of dative syntax. Raw data of early research on the acquisition of English DA by French native speakers (Mazurkevich 1984; Hawkins 1987) show similar lexical biases as observed for native speakers. This trend suggests that lexical biases are ac
Author: Miriam Fuehrer Publisher: GRIN Verlag ISBN: 3640342240 Category : Literary Collections Languages : en Pages : 59
Book Description
Bachelor Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1.0, University of Siegen, language: English, abstract: Would you say you ‘...gave a good friend a scarf’ or would you rather say you ‘...gave a scarf to a good friend’? The grammatical phenomenon underlying the two syntactic variants – the double object dative [a good friend] [a scarf] and the prepositional object dative [a scarf] [to a good friend] – is the so-called 'dative alternation' (DA). The latter term captures this general ability in English to express the same event of giving with two distinct syntactic structures. DA has been researched extensively for native speakers of English. Most of the scientific attention was directed at identifying the semantic and informational variables that give rise to the respective variants. Also, a number of corpus studies have revealed an interesting phenomenon commonly referred to as “lexical bias” (e.g. Wasow 2002). More precisely, researchers have found some dative verbs to occur more frequently in a prepositional dative variant (POD), whereas other dative verbs seem to favor the double object variant (DOD) (e.g. Davidse 1996; Stallings et al. 1998; Wasow 2002; Arnoldet al. 2003; Bresnan & Nikitina 2003). For example, Wasow (2002) found 'give' to occur in a DOD shape in 85% of his data, while Davidse (1996) found the verb 'throw' to occur in a POD shape in 90% of her data. While DA has been widely explored for native speakers of English, relatively little is known about it in contexts of SLA. This study investigates how DA is reflected in the IL of German learners of English and, additionally, whether German learners exhibit similar lexical biases in their choice of dative syntax. Raw data of early research on the acquisition of English DA by French native speakers (Mazurkevich 1984; Hawkins 1987) show similar lexical biases as observed for native speakers. This trend suggests that lexical biases are acquired by L2 learners of English. The latter is tested empirically in the present paper by means of a questionnaire study with 33 German-speaking learners of English. 16 American undergraduate students of the University of Montana serve as a control group. The data obtained from the experiment show a significant influence of verbal lexis on dative argument choice (p
Author: Michelle Blum Publisher: GRIN Verlag ISBN: 3346499774 Category : Literary Collections Languages : en Pages : 27
Book Description
Project Report from the year 2019 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, language: English, abstract: The phenomenon under investigation was the dative alternation, i.e. the factors influencing the choice between the NP/noun phrase dative ("I give him the book") and the PP/prepositional phrase dative ("I give the book to him"). It is generally assumed, that factors holding an influence over the dative choice are, among others, the syntactic complexity/length of the indirect object and the verbs used. In order to find out which factor is more influential in the choice, both factors were considered in the study. Some verbs, like give, promise, lend and mail, have a tendency towards the usage with the NP dative - that means that they would not be used with the PP dative, and this would thus mean that the NP dative would be used more often when these verbs occur - if the verb choice influences the dative form more than the syntactic complexity, that is.
Author: Susa Schnuck Publisher: ISBN: 9783656916369 Category : Languages : de Pages : 20
Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Anglistik), course: Dative Alternation, language: English, abstract: Would you say you '...gave a stranger your phone number' or does '...gave your phone number to a stranger' sound better? In essence, this termpaper is trying to analyse this question. The grammatical phenomenon underlying which decribes those two constructions - the double object dative [a stranger] [your phone number] and the prepositional object dative [your phone number] [to a stranger] - is the so-called dative alternation. The term dative alternation has the ability to express the same event of giving with two specific structures, as shown above. The following paper will focus on the approaches of Krifka and Rappaport Hovav and Levin. At first, a definition of dative alternation will be given. Important facts, examples and a list of verbs, which allow or do not allow dative alternation, will be provided to give an overview of the topic. This term paper will also respond to the differences between the dative alternation and the benefactive alternation and will afterwards compare the two approaches on dative alternation. The main ideas of Krifka's "Semantic and Pragmatic Conditions for the Dative Alternation" (2003) and Rappaport Hovav's and Levin's "The English dative alternation: The case for verb sensitivity" (2008) will be presented and compared. Last but not least, I am going to introduce brief thoughts of dative alternation in the German language and how it is connected to the English dative alternation.
Author: Marie-Louise Häfner Publisher: ISBN: 9783656634607 Category : Languages : en Pages : 24
Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Anglistik), language: English, abstract: Most speakers of English are unconsciously proficient in combining all kinds of information in order to form the grammatical structure they use for language production. In this essay I attempt to describe one of these complex structures linguistically, namely the nature of dative verbs. Understanding the syntactic patterns of the verb is a challenging task - not only for the acquisition of English as a second language, but for linguistic research just as much. We're occupied with transitive verbs that take more than one internal argument.There is a great number of alternations in English grammar which do not involve a change in the transitivity of the verb (Levin 1993), one of them being the Dative Alternation, which will be the topic of this essay. I will begin by introducing some general findings of research in this field whereupon a list of verbs will follow which presents groups of verbs that do or do not perform the alternation. At the core of my dissertation I will compare two different approaches on the subject, namely the works of Manfred Krifka and Rappaport Hovav & Levin. They represent two sites of the debate concerning the semantics of the dative alternation. Whilst the former defends the so-called polysemy view, the latter are enthusiastic for the single meaning approach. I will go into more detail in section 4. In the final analysis I'm going to introduce a brief study of the dative alternation in different variants of English, namely British, Australian and American English.
Author: Alexandra Kinne Publisher: Presses universitaires de Louvain ISBN: 2875589857 Category : Foreign Language Study Languages : en Pages : 234
Book Description
This study seeks to contribute to a better understanding of how syntactic variation is affected by probabilistic factors in English as a foreign language (EFL, L2), exemplified by the effect of weight on the syntactic variation with English transitive verb-particle constructions (e.g. look up, sort out) and transitive verb-prepositional phrase (PP) constructions (e.g. take into account, bear in mind). With these constructions, the particle/PP may occur either adjacent to the verb or separated from the verb by a direct object noun phrase (DO NP). Being highly influenced by the weight of the DO NP in native (L1) English, little is known about the factors, including syntactic weight, that govern this variation in L2 English. Against the background of possible native-language transfer, this study examines whether advanced L1-German EFL learners are sensitive to the probabilistic effect of weight on syntactic choices with verb-particle/PP constructions and whether there are differences when compared to English native speakers. Triangulating comparative corpus data and experimental data, i.e. elicited production and elicited assessment, the study provides converging evidence from language production and intuition that the learners have acquired a near-native awareness of weight effects in verb-particle/PP constructions, with differences indicating a tendency to more conservative choices.
Author: Franziska Scholz Publisher: GRIN Verlag ISBN: 3640477715 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 41
Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar), course: Syntactic structures of English, language: English, abstract: The English grammar has many similarities with the grammar of German, since both have their roots in the Germanic languages. Therefore English and German share lexical and structural, but also semantic properties. In order to deepen one's understanding of these properties this paper will deal with differences and similarities of the English and German verb system. Transitivity alternation is based on the syntactic distinction of verbs that are divided into transtive and intransitive verbs. This paper deals with both verb categories, taking into account semantic matters as well. In English and in German a verb can express the way in which an action affects its object, which is part of the so-called ergative model. This model shall be introduced in Chapter 2 with examples of the English language. After the introduction to the usage of ergative verbs a comparison of English and German structures follows in Chapter 3. Mistakes of translation are often due to structural and semantic differences within the ergative model. English and German verbs do not always provide the same variety of possibilities to express an action, therefore it shall be shown in Chapter 3.1 in which language the verb system is more flexible in regards to ergative processes. Chapter 3.2 deals with morphosyntactic differences of German and English within the ergative model. As the German structure shows similarities as well as differences to the English verbs, an attempt is made in Chapter 4 to discover potential semantic distinctions within those German verbs that either differ or resemble the English structure. The aim of this paper is to bring out a comparison of the English and German language that gives an insight into their verb systems in regards to syntactic as well
Author: Miriam Fuehrer
Author: Miriam Fuehrer
Author: Miriam Fuehrer
Author: Michelle Blum
Author: 
Author: Dong Han Lee
Author: Susa Schnuck
Author: Marie-Louise Häfner
Author: Katja Jäschke
Author: Alexandra Kinne
Author: Franziska Scholz