Papers by Kristel Van Goethem
Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2024
In this article we analyse the use of intensification in the spoken productions of French-speakin... more In this article we analyse the use of intensification in the spoken productions of French-speaking learners of Dutch and English. We compare the strength of intensifiers used by learners in their first language (L1) and in their additional language (AL), and contrast these results with data from control groups of L1 speakers. Our corpus results indicate that L1 English speakers tend to intensify more frequently but opt for weaker intensifiers, while L1 French speakers intensify less frequently but use stronger intensifiers. L1 Dutch speakers take the middle position in both aspects. The analysis of the learner corpora reveals overall more similarities between AL English and L1 English than between AL Dutch and L1 Dutch, confirming the trends observed in previous studies on the same learners (Hendrikx, 2019).
Constructions and Frames 15:2, 2023
Nederlandse taalkunde / Dutch linguistics , 2023
This paper aims to revisit the Dutch Binominal Expressive Construction
(cf. een schat van een kin... more This paper aims to revisit the Dutch Binominal Expressive Construction
(cf. een schat van een kind) through an extensive corpus study and to
explore its comparability with a potential morphological counterpart in
the form of a [N1 N2]N2 compound. We focus on four positively-connotated
N1s, namely schat ‘treasure’, droom ‘dream’, pracht ‘splendor, beauty’
and wonder ‘miracle’, three of which occur in both the syntactic and
the morphological pattern (e.g. een schat van een kind ‘lit. a treasure
of a child’ / *een schatkind ‘lit. a treasure child’, een droom van een huis
‘a dream of a house’ / een droomhuis ‘a dream house’, een pracht van
een dochter ‘a beauty of a daughter’ / een prachtdochter ‘lit. a beauty
daughter’, een wonder van vrouw ‘a wonder of a woman’ / een wondervrouw
‘a wonder woman’). The differences and similarities between the various
patterns are determined through a corpus analysis of their semantic and
formal properties, as well as their frequency and productivity. On the
theoretical level, the case study will allow us to address the question
whether the syntactic and morphological patterns are complementary
or in competition with each other. We will show that some subpatterns
form good alternates (e.g. [een pracht van een N2] vs. [een pracht-N2]),
while others are used in quite divergent ways ([een droom van een N2]
vs. [een droom-N2]).
Journal of Word Formation, 2023
This paper offers a state of the art of approximation within the larger domain of evaluative morp... more This paper offers a state of the art of approximation within the larger domain of evaluative morphology. It provides an overview of the formal means employed by the morphology of different languages to express approximative meanings, as well as a survey of the specific approximative values that can be conveyed. We further discuss the (input and output) lexical categories involved in the expression of approximation crosslinguistically. On an intralinguistic level, we address the issue of competition between different strategies.
Corpus linguistics and linguistic theory, 2020
Dutch features several morphemes with “privative” semantics that occur as left-hand members in co... more Dutch features several morphemes with “privative” semantics that occur as left-hand members in compounds (e.g., imitatieleer ‘imitation leather’, kunstgras ‘artificial grass’, nepjuwelen ‘fake jewels’). Some of these “fake” morphemes display great categorical flexibility and innovative adjectival uses. Nep, for instance, is synchronically attested as an inflected adjective (e.g., neppe cupcake ‘fake cupcake’). In this paper, we combine an extensive corpus study of eight Dutch “fake” morphemes with statistical methods in distributional semantics and collexeme analysis in order to compare their semantic and morphological properties and to find out which factors are the driving forces behind their exceptional “extravagant” morphological behavior. Our analyses show that debonding and adjectival reanalysis are triggered by an interplay of two factors, i.e., type frequency and semantic coherence, which allow us to range the eight morphemes on a cline from more schematic to more substantive “fake” constructions.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 2020
Affixation is the morphological process that consists of adding an affix (i.e., a bound mor pheme... more Affixation is the morphological process that consists of adding an affix (i.e., a bound mor pheme) to a morphological base. It is cross-linguistically the most common process that human languages use to derive new lexemes (derivational affixation) or to adapt a word's form to its morphosyntactic context (inflectional affixation). Suffixes (i.e., bound mor phemes following the base) and prefixes (i.e., bound morphemes preceding the base) are the most common affixes, with suffixation being more frequently recorded in the world's languages than prefixation. Minor types of affixation include circumfixation and infixa tion. Conversion and back-formation are related derivational processes that do not make use of affixation. Many studies have concentrated on the need to differentiate derivation from inflection, but these morphological processes are probably best described as two end points of a cline. Prototypically, derivation is used to change a word's category (part of speech) and involves a semantic change. A word's inflectional distinctions make up its paradigm, which amounts to the different morphological forms that correlate with different mor phosyntactic functions. Form-function mapping in (derivational and inflectional) affixation is a key issue in current research on affixation. Many deviations from the canonical One Form-One Meaning principle can be observed in the field of affixation. From a diachronic point of view, it has been demonstrated that affixes often derive from free lexemes by grammaticalization, with affixoids being recognized as an intermediate step on this cline. More controversial, but still attested, is the opposite change whereby affixes and affixoids develop into free morphemes through a process of degrammaticalization.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM, 2020
Whilst the links between learner corpus research (LCR) and Second
Language Acquisition (SLA) have... more Whilst the links between learner corpus research (LCR) and Second
Language Acquisition (SLA) have long been debated, McEnery et al.
(2019. “Corpus Linguistics, Learner Corpora, and SLA: Employing
Technology to Analyze Language Use.” Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 39: 74-92. doi:10.1017/S0267190519000096) claim that learner
corpus data are not yet sufficiently integrated in SLA research. This
article aims to go one way towards bridging the LCR/SLA gap by
illustrating the benefits of collecting and analyzing data sets that better
document multiliteracy practices. We first contextualize our work within
the field of LCR where calls for more multidimensional data sets have
been made. We then present a new database called MulTINCo -
Multilingual Traditional, Immersion, and Native Corpus - collected in the
framework of a project on Content and Language Integrated Learning in
French-speaking Belgium. As our data set contains rich metadata and
blends corpus data with other data types, we illustrate its potential for
SLA research. In Sections 3 and 4, we describe the data collected and
the interface. In the last section of the paper, we wrap up with a
discussion on the methodological assets of such multidimensional data
sets for SLA studies, and present directions for future research.
International Journal of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education, 2020
Languages differ in their preferences for particular intensifying constructions. While intensifyi... more Languages differ in their preferences for particular intensifying constructions. While intensifying adjectival compounds (IACs) (e.g. ijskoud, ice-cold) are productively used to express intensification in Dutch and English, in French this construction is hardly productive. Consequently, French-speaking learners may encounter difficulties acquiring IACs in Dutch/English. As part of a research project on CLIL in French-speaking Belgium, we explore the effect of CLIL on the acquisition of IACs in the target language (TL) Dutch/English through a multiple-choice test. The results confirm that CLIL students (learning English/Dutch) develop greater receptive knowledge of these constructions. Furthermore, the more frequent IACs are more likely to be recognized by the learners. Moreover, even when the CLIL effect is considered alongside other factors, such as the students' extracurricular exposure to the TL and their overall vocabulary, CLIL is still an important predictor of the learners' receptive knowledge of English IACs, in addition to productive and receptive vocabulary. By contrast, current informal contact with the TL and receptive vocabulary are significant predictors of learners' receptive knowledge of Dutch IACs, but CLIL does not significantly contribute to the regression model for the latter language.
In this chapter, we focus on (syntactic and morphological) [N1 N2] units in French and present th... more In this chapter, we focus on (syntactic and morphological) [N1 N2] units in French and present the different approaches to French complex lexical units. We show how true morphological formations (i. e. compounds) can be distinguished from multi-word phrases (Section 2). At the end of this section, the possible benefits of a constructionist approach to the issue will be highlighted. Section 3 concentrates on [N1 N2] lexical units, which turn out to be the most problematic case in French since it is not easy to determine whether this formation belongs to syntax or morphology. In Section 4, a specific subtype, that of subordinative [N1 N2] units, is examined because the latter most severely challenge this morphology-syntax divide. Whereas Fradin (2009) considers these formations to be true compounds, we show that this only holds for the classifying subtype, and not for the qualifying one. Section 5, finally, is devoted to a constructionist account of qualifying subordinative [N1 N2] formations.
Dans cette contribution, nous nous proposons une analyse de l’adjectivité en néerlandais sur fond... more Dans cette contribution, nous nous proposons une analyse de l’adjectivité en néerlandais sur fond d’une perspective typologique plus large qui la situe par rapport au français. Nous nous intéresserons surtout à l’adjectivité intercatégorielle – appelée « intersective gradience » par Aarts (2007) – et notamment à la frontière entre adjectif et nom. Tout au long de cette analyse contrastive, nous montrerons que le français est caractérisé par une perméabilité catégorielle plus grande, c’est-à-dire par des « softer boundaries » entre nom et adjectif que le néerlandais (Lehmann 2008, Berg 2014).
Journal of Word Formation, 2017
This paper revisits the notions of lexical category and category change from a constructionist pe... more This paper revisits the notions of lexical category and category change from a constructionist perspective. I distinguish between four processes of category change (affixal derivation, conversion, transposition and reanalysis) and demonstrate how these category-changing processes can be analyzed in the framework of Construction Grammar. More particularly, it will be claimed that lexical categories can be understood as abstract instances of constructions (i.e., form-function pairings) and category change will be assumed to be closely connected to the process of construc-tionalization, i.e., the creation of new form-meaning pairings. Furthermore, it will be shown that the constructionist approach offers the advantage of accounting for the variety of input categories (ranging from morphemes to multi-word units) as well as for some problematic characteristics related to certain types of category change, such as context-sensitivity, counterdirectionality and gradualness of the changes.
This paper is concerned with the debonding of three Germanic prefixoids: Dutch kei 'boulder', Ger... more This paper is concerned with the debonding of three Germanic prefixoids: Dutch kei 'boulder', German Hammer 'hammer', and Swedish kanon 'cannon'. Drawing on an extensive corpus-based and statistical analysis, we compare the formal properties (construction types), semantics (degree of bleaching), collocational properties and productivity of bound and free uses of each prefixoid. We show that debonding of prefixoids is a productive process of lexical innovation in Germanic languages, which may lead to the creation of new intensifying adverbs or evaluative adjectives. In addition, we explore whether debonding of prefixoids can be fruitfully analysed from a constructional perspective. More in particular, we address the question of whether the observed changes accompanying debonding are best accounted for by Traugott & Trousdale's (2013) concept of 'constructionalization', or by Hilpert's (2013) concept of 'constructional change'. To this end, we explore a variety of quantitative methods, including productivity measures and distinctive collexeme analysis. We conclude that the quantitative differences between the bound and the free forms of the three prefixoids studied in this paper allow us to consider them as two separate constructions, but that the distinction is a gradient one.
In times of globalization, policies increasingly promote multilingualism as a strong social and e... more In times of globalization, policies increasingly promote multilingualism as a strong social and economic asset. One way to foster multilingualism in education is Content and Language Integrated
Learning (CLIL), a didactic method in which school subjects are taught in a different target language than the mainstream school language. In the French-speaking Community of Belgium, schools have been allowed to provide CLIL education in Dutch, English or German since 1998. To this day, however, we only have an incomplete and fragmented view on how CLIL differs from non-CLIL education and on how it impacts second/foreign language acquisition. The aim of this contribution
is threefold: (a) to discuss the particularities of CLIL education in French-speaking Belgium, (b) to give an overview of the research conducted on CLIL education in French-speaking Belgium, and (c) to briefly present the goals of a large-scale longitudinal and interdisciplinary study currently being conducted at Université catholique de Louvain and Université de Namur. This interdisciplinary study aims to make a strong empirical and theoretical contribution to both the public debate and the ongoing international scientific discussions on multilingualism in general and CLIL in particular.
Van Goethem, Kristel & Matthias Hüning. 2015. From noun to evaluative adjective: conversion or debonding? Dutch top and its equivalents in German. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 27(4). 366–409., Nov 2015
In this study, we address the ways in which nouns can give rise to new adjectives in Dutch and Ge... more In this study, we address the ways in which nouns can give rise to new adjectives in Dutch and German. More specifically, the focus is on words with an evaluative meaning that can be used in a wide range of morphological and syntactic constructions in recent (and informal) language. For example, the German noun Hammer ‘hammer’ can be used in Hammervorstellung ‘very good performance’ or hammer film ‘fantastic film’. In the literature, two distinct hypotheses can be found to account for the adjectival uses of such evaluative nouns. The debonding hypothesis states that the intensifying bound morpheme has developed into a free morpheme. The conversion hypothesis suggests that the new adjectival uses are the result of a syntactic reanalysis of an N as an A that takes place in the predicative position. In our case study, we analyze the synchronic bound and free uses of Dutch top, and we compare them with German top and spitze. We conclude that the emergence of the adjectival uses of these morphemes points toward an interaction between both processes involved, conversion and debonding.
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Papers by Kristel Van Goethem
(cf. een schat van een kind) through an extensive corpus study and to
explore its comparability with a potential morphological counterpart in
the form of a [N1 N2]N2 compound. We focus on four positively-connotated
N1s, namely schat ‘treasure’, droom ‘dream’, pracht ‘splendor, beauty’
and wonder ‘miracle’, three of which occur in both the syntactic and
the morphological pattern (e.g. een schat van een kind ‘lit. a treasure
of a child’ / *een schatkind ‘lit. a treasure child’, een droom van een huis
‘a dream of a house’ / een droomhuis ‘a dream house’, een pracht van
een dochter ‘a beauty of a daughter’ / een prachtdochter ‘lit. a beauty
daughter’, een wonder van vrouw ‘a wonder of a woman’ / een wondervrouw
‘a wonder woman’). The differences and similarities between the various
patterns are determined through a corpus analysis of their semantic and
formal properties, as well as their frequency and productivity. On the
theoretical level, the case study will allow us to address the question
whether the syntactic and morphological patterns are complementary
or in competition with each other. We will show that some subpatterns
form good alternates (e.g. [een pracht van een N2] vs. [een pracht-N2]),
while others are used in quite divergent ways ([een droom van een N2]
vs. [een droom-N2]).
Language Acquisition (SLA) have long been debated, McEnery et al.
(2019. “Corpus Linguistics, Learner Corpora, and SLA: Employing
Technology to Analyze Language Use.” Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 39: 74-92. doi:10.1017/S0267190519000096) claim that learner
corpus data are not yet sufficiently integrated in SLA research. This
article aims to go one way towards bridging the LCR/SLA gap by
illustrating the benefits of collecting and analyzing data sets that better
document multiliteracy practices. We first contextualize our work within
the field of LCR where calls for more multidimensional data sets have
been made. We then present a new database called MulTINCo -
Multilingual Traditional, Immersion, and Native Corpus - collected in the
framework of a project on Content and Language Integrated Learning in
French-speaking Belgium. As our data set contains rich metadata and
blends corpus data with other data types, we illustrate its potential for
SLA research. In Sections 3 and 4, we describe the data collected and
the interface. In the last section of the paper, we wrap up with a
discussion on the methodological assets of such multidimensional data
sets for SLA studies, and present directions for future research.
Learning (CLIL), a didactic method in which school subjects are taught in a different target language than the mainstream school language. In the French-speaking Community of Belgium, schools have been allowed to provide CLIL education in Dutch, English or German since 1998. To this day, however, we only have an incomplete and fragmented view on how CLIL differs from non-CLIL education and on how it impacts second/foreign language acquisition. The aim of this contribution
is threefold: (a) to discuss the particularities of CLIL education in French-speaking Belgium, (b) to give an overview of the research conducted on CLIL education in French-speaking Belgium, and (c) to briefly present the goals of a large-scale longitudinal and interdisciplinary study currently being conducted at Université catholique de Louvain and Université de Namur. This interdisciplinary study aims to make a strong empirical and theoretical contribution to both the public debate and the ongoing international scientific discussions on multilingualism in general and CLIL in particular.
(cf. een schat van een kind) through an extensive corpus study and to
explore its comparability with a potential morphological counterpart in
the form of a [N1 N2]N2 compound. We focus on four positively-connotated
N1s, namely schat ‘treasure’, droom ‘dream’, pracht ‘splendor, beauty’
and wonder ‘miracle’, three of which occur in both the syntactic and
the morphological pattern (e.g. een schat van een kind ‘lit. a treasure
of a child’ / *een schatkind ‘lit. a treasure child’, een droom van een huis
‘a dream of a house’ / een droomhuis ‘a dream house’, een pracht van
een dochter ‘a beauty of a daughter’ / een prachtdochter ‘lit. a beauty
daughter’, een wonder van vrouw ‘a wonder of a woman’ / een wondervrouw
‘a wonder woman’). The differences and similarities between the various
patterns are determined through a corpus analysis of their semantic and
formal properties, as well as their frequency and productivity. On the
theoretical level, the case study will allow us to address the question
whether the syntactic and morphological patterns are complementary
or in competition with each other. We will show that some subpatterns
form good alternates (e.g. [een pracht van een N2] vs. [een pracht-N2]),
while others are used in quite divergent ways ([een droom van een N2]
vs. [een droom-N2]).
Language Acquisition (SLA) have long been debated, McEnery et al.
(2019. “Corpus Linguistics, Learner Corpora, and SLA: Employing
Technology to Analyze Language Use.” Annual Review of Applied
Linguistics 39: 74-92. doi:10.1017/S0267190519000096) claim that learner
corpus data are not yet sufficiently integrated in SLA research. This
article aims to go one way towards bridging the LCR/SLA gap by
illustrating the benefits of collecting and analyzing data sets that better
document multiliteracy practices. We first contextualize our work within
the field of LCR where calls for more multidimensional data sets have
been made. We then present a new database called MulTINCo -
Multilingual Traditional, Immersion, and Native Corpus - collected in the
framework of a project on Content and Language Integrated Learning in
French-speaking Belgium. As our data set contains rich metadata and
blends corpus data with other data types, we illustrate its potential for
SLA research. In Sections 3 and 4, we describe the data collected and
the interface. In the last section of the paper, we wrap up with a
discussion on the methodological assets of such multidimensional data
sets for SLA studies, and present directions for future research.
Learning (CLIL), a didactic method in which school subjects are taught in a different target language than the mainstream school language. In the French-speaking Community of Belgium, schools have been allowed to provide CLIL education in Dutch, English or German since 1998. To this day, however, we only have an incomplete and fragmented view on how CLIL differs from non-CLIL education and on how it impacts second/foreign language acquisition. The aim of this contribution
is threefold: (a) to discuss the particularities of CLIL education in French-speaking Belgium, (b) to give an overview of the research conducted on CLIL education in French-speaking Belgium, and (c) to briefly present the goals of a large-scale longitudinal and interdisciplinary study currently being conducted at Université catholique de Louvain and Université de Namur. This interdisciplinary study aims to make a strong empirical and theoretical contribution to both the public debate and the ongoing international scientific discussions on multilingualism in general and CLIL in particular.
Il met en évidence le fait que ni une approche strictement syntaxique ni une approche exclusivement lexicaliste n’offrent une description satisfaisante de la préverbation. La théorie de la grammaticalisation fournit en revanche un cadre plus approprié grâce à son caractère dynamique : elle permet d’étudier les préverbes dans leurs différents degrés de « préfixisation ». L’analyse proprement dite applique des paramètres de grammaticalisation morpho-syntaxiques et sémantiques aux préverbes sur-, contre- et entre-.
Cette étude aborde des questions de linguistique générale qui dépassent la seule morphologie, comme la relation avec la syntaxe, l’interaction entre la grammaticalisation et la lexicalisation et la validité de l’hypothèse localiste pour décrire le sens des prépositions et des préverbes.
Some of these ‘fake’ morphemes are extravagant in that they display great categorial flexibility and innovative adjectival uses. Nep, for instance, is synchronically attested as free noun (e.g. die keiharde nep ‘this rock-hard imitation’), compound member (e.g. nepdrankjes ‘fake drinks’), but also as an inflected (example 1a) or graded (example 1b) adjective. Fake displays a similar degree of categorial flexibility, including comparative forms (example 2).
(1) a. Dat is geen echte cupcake maar ik vond dat deze neppe cupcake, toch wel op de site mocht.
‘That's not a real cupcake but I thought this fake cupcake was fine for the site.’
b. (…) hoe donkerder je gaat hoe nepper het er vaak uit gaat zien.
‘(…) the darker you go, the more fake it often looks.’
(2) Kim lijkt wel een steeds strakker en faker gezicht te krijgen.
‘Kim looks like she is getting an ever tighter and faker face.’
Namaak is found in constructions that are ambiguous between noun and adjective (e.g. een namaak rieten dak ‘a fake thatched roof’), whereas kunst, fop, lok, imitatie and schijn only seem to be used as nominal/verbal stems and compound members.
In this paper, we present an extensive analysis of 500 token samples of the 8 ‘fake’ morphemes mentioned above, taken from the nlTenTen2014 webcorpus (Kilgarriff et al. 2014). First, we present the semantic-distributional profile of each ‘fake’ morpheme, based on a multiple distinctive collexeme analysis, and compare their morphological profiles and productivity. Second, we explore the question whether high type productivity of the morph correlates with debonding and its emergence as a free adjective.
Our results will be related to Barðdal’s (2008) claim that there is an inverse correlation between type frequency and semantic coherence of a construction. Thus, we expect that high type frequency of the ‘fake’ compounds correlates with low semantic coherence between the compound members and with a higher degree of bleaching of the ‘fake’ morpheme. Moreover, we hypothesize that there is a correlation between semantic bleaching of the ‘fake’ morpheme and debonding from the compound, as evidenced by its usage as an (inflected) adjective (cf. Norde & Van Goethem 2018, among others). Conversely, ‘fake’ compounds with low type frequency are expected to show more semantic coherence, and would therefore less easily be reanalyzed as free adjectives.
References
Barðdal, Jóhanna (2008), Productivity: Evidence from case and argument structure in Icelandic, Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Cappelle, Bert, Pascal Denis, and Manuela Keller (2018), Facing the facts of fake: a distributional semantics and corpus annotation approach, Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association 6(1), 9-42.
Kilgarriff, Adam, Vít Baisa, Jan Bušta, Miloš Jakubíček, Vojtěch Kovář, Jan Michelfeit, Pavel Rychlý, and Vít Suchomel (2014), The Sketch Engine: ten years on. Lexicography 1, 7-36.
Norde, Muriel & Kristel Van Goethem (2018), Debonding and Clipping of Prefixoids in Germanic: Constructionalization or Constructional Change? in G. Booij, (2018), The Construction of Words (Studies in Morphology 4), Cham etc.: Springer, 475-518.
Sketch Engine: http://www.sketchengine.eu
In this paper, we argue that morphological derivation may also serve as a correlating property of (non-)configurationality. More precisely, we focus on denominal verb formation in present-day English, Dutch and Greek. Our hypothesis is that highly configurational languages such as English do not need morphological marking of the change of the noun into the verbal word class because of the presence of syntactic marking of the insertion into the verbal constituent (explicit subject marking, fixed SVO, etc.), whereas in less configurational languages like Modern Greek (with no explicit subject marking and more flexible word order among others) the change of word class requires explicit morphological marking (aside from inflectional markers). Hence, denominal verb formation by conversion can be expected to be predominantly associated with configurational languages like English (e.g. bottleN > to bottleV), while denominal verbalization by affixation is more likely to be found in less configurational languages like Modern Greek (e.g. εμ-φιαλ-ώνω [emfialono] ‘to bottle’, derived by the combination of prefixation and suffixation). Dutch will serve as a test case for our hypothesis: since its syntactic configurationality can be considered intermediate between English and Modern Greek, we expect the proportion of conversion/affixation in the expression of denominal verb-formation to be situated in-between the proportions found for English and Modern Greek.
Our method consists in a synchronic comparative corpus analysis, based on the Ten Ten corpora available on SketchEngine (Kilgariff et al. 2014).
Isa Hendrikx1, Kristel Van Goethem2
Université catholique de Louvain1, Université catholique de Louvain, F.R.S.-FNRS2
[email protected], [email protected]
Intensification can be expressed cross-linguistically by several morphological and syntactic constructions (among others, Kirschbaum 2002; Hoeksema 2011, 2012; Zeschel 2012; Rainer 2015). The diversity of constructions available to express a single function implies a form-function asymmetry; alongside marked language-specific preferences for particular types of intensification complicate the acquisition of intensifying constructions for second language learners. In this contribution we will explore the longitudinal impact of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) on the acquisition of intensifying constructions in an L2 .
Our research is situated within the theoretical framework of usage-based Construction Grammar (cf. Tomasello 2003; Goldberg 2010 among others). Second language acquisition is presumed to be complex because of the competition between L1 and L2 constructions (Ellis & Cadierno 2009). This study focuses on one specific case of such constructional competition, namely the expression of adjectival intensification in the interlanguage of French-speaking learners of Dutch or English.
More specifically, we will address three research questions:
(i) To what extent can we observe variation in the use of intensifying constructions between the native and learner language?
(ii) Does more input provided through a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach lead to a more native-like acquisition of intensifying constructions?
(iii) What developments can we observe in the learners’ use of intensifying constructions from a longitudinal point of view (over the course of two academic years)? Do the learners in CLIL make more significant progress than those in traditional L2 educational settings?
The data for this study come from a corpus of the written productions in the form of fictional e-mails on the subject of a party or holidays. In 2015 we collected the first texts written by the participants, who were 5th year French-speaking secondary school pupils (aged 16-17), in CLIL and non-CLIL settings learning Dutch (CLIL n=132; non-CLIL n=100) or English (CLIL n=90; non-CLIL n=90) as a foreign language, and control groups of 63 native speakers of Dutch and 68 native speakers of English of about the same age. (The data of the English control group was collected in 2016). In April and May 2017, the French-speaking Belgian learners (who are in 6th grade now) will once more write e-mails in their target language (again on similar topics). In the present study the newly gathered data will be compared to the learner data collected in 2015 and the native data collected in 2015-2016, in order to examine developments in the pupils’ use of intensification in their L2.
All instances of intensifying constructions observed in this corpus are subjected to a collostructional analysis, which expresses the degree of attraction/repulsion of a lexeme to an intensifying construction in the form of pbin-values (Stefanowitsch and Gries 2003; Gries 2007; Ellis and Ferreira Junior 2009; Hoffmann 2011). We already conducted a covarying collexeme analysis (Gries 2007) on the data gathered during the first data collection, and showed its benefits: idiosyncratic uses of intensifying constructions are easily identified in the L1 corpora, and misuse (spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes and semantic misuse) is efficiently detected in the learner corpora (Hendrikx et.al. 2017). Analysis of the data collected in 2015 and 2016 shows, for instance, that intensifying compounds are significant collostructions in the L1 corpora, e.g. bloedheet lit. ‘blood-hot’ (pbin=2,668 in native Dutch) and crystal clear (pbin= 2.792 L1 English) while learners use those particular constructions rarely or not at all. The collostructional analysis also unveiled the following erroneous [Intensifier + Adjective] collocations in the learner corpora: *veel leuk ‘many nice’ (pbin 1,533 for non-CLIL learners), *so luxuous (pbin 1.315 CLIL learners) and *amazingly delicious (pbin 1.663 CLIL learners).
In the present study, the collostructional analysis will be utilized to investigate longitudinal developments in the learners’ acquisition of intensifying constructions. In addition, the lexical diversity and productivity of the learners’ use of intensifiers will be compared across groups and longitudinally, to gain insights into the impact of CLIL and traditional foreign language classes on the acquisition of intensification in a second language.
References:
Hendrikx, I., Van Goethem, K. ,& F. Meunier (2017). The expression of intensification in the interlanguage of French-speaking CLIL and non-CLIL learners of English. Oral presentation at Cogling7, January 5th and 6th, 2017. Radboud University, Nijmegen The Netherlands.
Ellis, N., & Cadierno, T. (2009). Constructing a Second Language. Introduction to the Special Section. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 7, 111-139.
Ellis, N. & Ferreira-Junior, F. (2009). Constructions and their acquisition: Islands and the distinctiveness of their occupancy. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 7. 187-220.
Goldberg, A. (2010) [2006]. Constructions at Work. The nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gries, Stefan Th. (2007). Coll.analysis 3.2a. A program for R for Windows 2.x.
Hiligsmann, P., Van Mensel, L., Galand, B., Mettewie, L., Meunier, F., Szmalec, A., Van Goethem, K., Bulon, A., De Smet, A., Hendrikx, I., Simonis, M. (forthcoming) Content and Language Integrated Learning: linguistic, cognitive and educational perspectives. Cahiers du Girsef.
Hoeksema, J. (2011). Bepalingen van graad in eerste-taalverwerving. TABU, 39(1/2), 1 - 22.
Hoeksema, J. (2012). Elative compounds in Dutch: Properties and developments. In Oebel, G. (Eds.), Intensivierungskonzepte bei Adjektiven und Adverben im Sprachvergleich, (pp. 97-142). Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovac.
Hoffmann, T. (2011). Preposition Placement in English: A Usage-Based Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kirschbaum, I. (2002). Schrecklig Nett Und Voll Verrückt Muster Der Adjektiv-Intensivierung Im Deutschen. Thesis. Düsseldorf, Universität, Diss 2002. Düsseldorf.
Rainer, F. (2015) 77. Intensification. In Peter O. Müller (Ed.), Word-Formation: An International Handbook of the Languages of Europe. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
Riegel, M., Pellat, J.-C., Rioul, R. (1994). Grammaire méthodique du français. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Stefanowitsch, A. & Gries, S. (2003). Collostructions: Investigating the interaction of words and constructions. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 8:2, 209-243.
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Boston: Harvard University Press.
Zeschel, A. (2012). Incipient Productivity. A Construction-Based Approach to Linguistic Creativity. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Retrieved 25 Jan. 2017, from http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/180582
Our contribution will present the first results of a research project on the acquisition of Dutch and English intensifying constructions by Belgian French-speaking secondary school pupils. This study forms part of a broader interdisciplinary project on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in French-speaking Belgium. CLIL classrooms provide greater input frequency of the foreign language than traditional education. The present study will describe the ‘interlanguage’ (in terms of overuse, underuse and misuse) of French-speaking CLIL and non-CLIL learners of English, in order to measure the impact of foreign language input on L2 acquisition in general, and on intensifying constructions specifically.
Emotion is a driving force behind the formation and the development of intensifiers: the constant need for emotional expressivity induces rapid renewal in the domain (Van der Wouden & Foolen forth.; Foolen, Wottrich en Zwets 2012). The resulting variety of intensifiers and the continuous change in this field, together with the fact that intensifiers are mostly not the subject of explicit language education, may thoroughly complicate the acquisition of intensifiers in a foreign language.
Another complicating factor is the difference in language-specific tendencies to use syntactic or morphological types of intensifying constructions. In accordance with studies on the idiosyncratic preferences for either morphological or syntactic constructions in Germanic and Romance languages (Van der Wouden & Foolen forth.; Van Haeringen 1956; Lamiroy 20011), we hypothesize that French-speaking learners of English will i) underuse typical Germanic means of intensification such as ‘elative’ compounds (e.g. ice-cold) (Hoeksema, 2012) and ii) overuse syntactic constructions frequently used in French (Riegel, Pellat & Rioul 1994: 620, 622). As CLIL programs can be considered closer to L1 acquisition because of their inherently usage-based approach, we can expect a more native-like acquisition of intensifying constructions by CLIL pupils.
Crosslinguistic influence is widely acknowledged in the domains of phonology and lexis, however morphological and syntactic transfer have been approached with skepticism, due to their interaction with variables such as simplification and overgeneralization (Jarvis & Pavlenko 2008: 92; Jarvis & Odlin 2000). In the present study Gilquin’s (2008) DEE model (serving the purposes of detecting, explaining or evaluating transfer) will be applied in a partial way (because of the lack of data of learners with L1’s other than French). We will thus conduct a comprehensive comparison of ‘native English’, ‘learner English by French-speaking CLIL- and non-CLIL-learners’ and ‘native French’ in order to detangle transfer effects from simplification and overgeneralization of intensifiers (and intensifier types) in the interlanguages of CLIL and non-CLIL learners of English.
Our corpus consists of the written productions (email on a topic prompting the use of intensifiers) of 473 5th graders (16-17 years old) in French-speaking Belgium among whom: 104 CLIL learners of English, and 114 learners of English in non-CLIL education, and a control group of about 100 native English speakers of the same age (data collection in progress).
In our talk, we present the detailed outcomes of the quantitative and qualitative analyses of this study. Besides the analysis of over-, under- and misuse of intensifiers, we will examine the extent of lexical variation and productivity of the intensifiers in the different language groups (type/token ratio, hapax legomena ratio), compare the most frequent intensifiers, and observe possible difficulties related to collocational specialization.
References
Foolen, A., V. Wottrich & M. Zwets (2012). Gruwelijk interessant. Emotieve intensiveerders in het Nederlands. Manuscript.
Gilquin, Gaëtanelle. Combining contrastive and interlanguage analysis to apprehend transfer: detection, explanation, evaluation. In: Gilquin Gaëtanelle Papp Szilvia Díez-Bedmar María Belén, Linking up Contrastive and Learner Corpus Research, Rodopi: Amsterdam, Atlanta, 2008, 3-33. 978-90-420-2446-5.
Hoeksema, J. (2012). Elative compounds in Dutch: Properties and developments. In Oebel, G. (Eds.), Intensivierungskonzepte bei Adjektiven und Adverben im Sprachvergleich, (pp. 97-142). Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovac.
Jarvis, Scott, & Pavlenko, Aneta (2008). Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. New York: Routledge.
Jarvis, Scott, & Odlin, Terence (2000). Morphological type, spatial reference, and language transfer. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22, 535-556.
Lamiroy, B. (2011). Degrés de grammaticalisation à travers les langues de même famille. Mémoires de la Société de linguistique de Paris. Nouvelle Série, 19, 167-192.
Riegel, M., Pellat, J.-C., Rioul, R. (1994). Grammaire méthodique du français. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Van der Wouden & Foolen, forth. A most serious and extraordinary problem. Intensification of adjectives in Dutch, German, and English. Paper delivered at A Germanic Sandwich 2013. Dutch between English and German, a Comparative Linguistic Conference. Leuven (Belgium), January 11-12, 2013.To appear in Leuvense bijdragen/Leuven Contributions in Linguistics and Philology
Van Haeringen, C.B. (1956). Nederlands tussen Duits en Engels. Den Haag: Servire.
From a constructional perspective (cf. Tomasello, 2003; Goldberg, 2010), foreign language acquisition is presumed to be more complex than L1 acquisition because of the competition between the specific constructions of the foreign language with the L1 constructions (Ellis & Cadierno, 2009), which can lead to “constructional transfer”. We can thus hypothesize that French-speaking learners of Dutch and English will i) underuse typical Germanic means of intensification such as ‘elative’ compounds [<N> [ADJ]]ADJ (e.g. ijskoud/ ice-cold) (Hoeksema, 2012) and ii) overuse syntactic constructions frequently used in French, like adverbial modification [[ADV] [ADJ]]AP (e.g. tout rouge, ‘completely red’) and adjectival reduplication [[ADJ] [ADJ]]AP (e.g. rouge rouge ‘completely red’) (Riegel, Pellat, & Rioul, 1994: 620, 622). As CLIL programs can be considered closer to L1 acquisition because of their inherent usage-based approach, we can also expect a more native-like acquisition of intensifying constructions by CLIL pupils.
To test these hypotheses, we analyse the language productions of 378 5th graders in French-speaking Belgium: 198 CLIL learners of Dutch or English, and 180 learners of Dutch or English in non-CLIL education. We compare the results to similar productions by Dutch and English native speakers. Each group carries out two (already piloted) tests (Authors, 2015): the first one consists of a “fill-the-gaps-exercise” in which an adjective has to be intensified; the second one is the production of a written text (email) on a topic prompting the use of intensifiers. A first pilot study on intensification in Dutch (Authors, 2015), carried out with French-speaking learners of Dutch, confirms that native speakers of Dutch use more morphological intensifying constructions than native speakers of French, who favour syntactic constructions. Learner Dutch can be situated ‘in-between’ as, for instance, compared to natives in Dutch, the French-speaking learners use fewer compounds and more intensifying adverbs, which could be a result of “constructional transfer” from French.
In our talk, we present the detailed outcomes of the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Dutch and the French data. Besides the analysis of the construction types, we also examine the extent of lexical variation and productivity of the intensifiers in the different language groups (type/token ratio, number of hapax legomena), compare the most frequent intensifiers, and observe possible difficulties related to collocational specialization. The comparison of the results obtained by the CLIL and non-CLIL learners allows us to assess the impact of CLIL education - in terms of foreign language input - on the production of intensifiers.
References
Hendrikx & Van Goethem 2015. “Alle leerlingen hebben het vrieskoud! Intensivering van adjectieven door Franstalige leerders van het Nederlands” In: S. Lestrade, P. de Swart & L. Hogeweg, Addenda. Artikelen voor Ad Foolen, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen: Nijmegen, 2015, p. 131-147.
Ellis, N., & Cadierno, T. (2009). Constructing a Second Language. Introduction to the Special Section. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 7, 111-139.
Goldberg, A. (2010) [2006]. Constructions at Work. The nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hoeksema, J. (2012). Elative compounds in Dutch: Properties and developments. In Oebel, G. (Eds.), Intensivierungskonzepte bei Adjektiven und Adverben im Sprachvergleich, (pp. 97-142). Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovac.
Riegel, M., Pellat, J.-C., Rioul, R. (1994). Grammaire méthodique du français. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Boston: Harvard University Press.
From such a usage-based point of view, second language acquisition is presumed to be more complex than L1 acquisition because of the competition between the specific constructions of the foreign language with the L1 constructions (Ellis & Cadierno 2009). In our study, we will examine the acquisition of Dutch intensifying constructions by French-speaking learners and will therefore compare the means to express intensity in both languages. In Dutch, adjectives can be intensified through adverbial modification [[ADV] [ADJ]]AP (e.g. heel goed ‘very good’), prefixes [Pref [ADJ]]ADJ (e.g. hypergevoelig ‘hypersensitive’) and within adjectival ‘elative’ compounds [<N> [ADJ]]ADJ (e.g. ijskoud ‘ice-cold’) (Hoeksema 2012), the latter type being quite productive in Dutch. In French, intensification is more typically expressed through syntactic constructions, for example by adverbs (such as très, tout and adverbs in -ment: absolument, totalement) (Riegel e.a.1994: 620), or through reduplication [[ADJ] [ADJ]]AP (e.g. rouge rouge ‘completely red’) (Riegel e.a.1994: 622). Prefixation also occurs (e.g. hypersympa ‘extremely nice’), but adjectival compounding is extremely uncommon as means of intensification, one exception being ivre-mort ‘dead drunk’. In consequence, it can be assumed that French-speaking learners of Dutch will underuse the specific Germanic intensifying constructions (adjectival compounds) and, inversely, overuse syntactic intensifiers such as adverbs by what we call “constructional transfer”.
In order to test this hypothesis, we have collected 21.200 adjectives from the Corpus Hedendaags Nederlands of which 308 are accompanied by an intensifier. In addition we have analyzed 498 intensified adjectives (out of a total of 8.454 adjectives) from the Leerdercorpus Nederlands written by French-speaking students in sixth grade of secondary school (Degand & Perrez 2014). These corpus data have been compared with a similar sample of 353 intensified adjectives (out of a total of 9.009 adjectives), drawn from recent essays in the Frantext corpus.
The findings of our data analysis confirm our hypothesis to a great extent. Learners clearly overuse adverbial intensification (96,6%) in comparison to native Dutch speakers (74,4%), probably influenced by their native language (similar proportion of intensifying adverbs found in Frantext). Furthermore, learners significantly underuse intensifying compounds in comparison to native speakers of Dutch (learners 1,8% vs Dutch natives 13,6%, while no attestations in the native French corpus were found), but also prefixes (learners 1,8% - again in line with the results for French natives (1,1%) vs Dutch natives 8,7%). In addition, the native Dutch corpus contains specific intensifying constructions that are not used by the learners, such as [as ADJ as X] (1,6%), although they do occur – marginally – in French (0,8%).
These results might be explained as transfer effects from French, as there appears to exist a cline between native Dutch, learner Dutch and native French. Besides the comparison of the construction types, we will also take a closer look at the extent of lexical variation and productivity of the intensifiers in the different corpora (type/token ratio, hapax legomena), compare the most frequent intensifiers and intensifying collocations, and investigate the relation between intensifier type and semantic type of the adjective (scalar, limit, extreme) (cf. Paradis 1997, 2001).
Finally, the different corpus results will be confronted with Höder’s diasystemic approach to multilingualism (Höder 2012, 2014). Concretely this theory would imply that a bilingual person has a unified semantic-cognitive representation of intensification to his disposition with a variety of formal means (morphological and syntactic constructions) to be specified for the different languages.
References
Corpus Hedendaags Nederlands. 2013. Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie (ILN) 800.000 texts (1814-2013). Available online at Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN). https://portal.clarin.inl.nl/search/page/search
Degand, Liesbeth & Julien Perrez. 2004. Causale connectieven in het leerdercorpus Nederlands. Tijdschrift n/f 4. 115-128.
Ellis, Nick. & Teresa Cadierno. 2009. Constructing a Second Language. Introduction to the special section. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 7, 111-139.
FRANTEXT, ATILF. 2014. CNRS & Université de Lorraine. 271.599.218 words. http://www.frantext.fr.
Goldberg, Adele. 2010 [2006]. Constructions at Work. The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hoeksema, Jack. 2012. Elative compounds in Dutch: Properties and developments. In Oebel (ed.) 2012, 97-142.
Höder, Steffen. 2012. Multilingual constructions: A diasystematic approach to common structures. In Multilingual Individuals and Multilingual Societies [Hamburg studies on multilingualism 13], K. Braunmüller & C. Gabriel (ed). 241-257. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Höder, Steffen. 2014. Constructing diasystems: grammatical organisation in bilingual groups. In The Sociolinguistics of Grammar [Studies in language companion series 154], T. Afarli & B. Maehlum (ed). 137-152. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Paradis, Carita. 1997. Degree modifiers of adjectives in spoken British English. Lund: Lund University Press.
Paradis, Carita. 2001. Adjectives and boundedness. In Cognitive Linguistics 12-1. 47-65.
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffry Leech, Jan Svartvik. 1997. A comprehensive grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
Riegel, Martin, Jean-Christophe Pellat, René Rioul. 1994. Grammaire méthodique du français. Presses Universitaires de France: Paris.
Tomasello, Michael. 2003. Constructing a language. Boston: Harvard University Press.
In this contribution we will present a corpus-based comparison of the use of intensifying constructions in (written) native Dutch (Corpus Hedendaags Nederlands), Dutch by French-speaking learners (Leerdercorpus Nederlands) and native French (Frantext). The central focus will be on the competition between morphological and syntactic means to intensify adjectives. The analysis will take a constructional perspective on language acquisition and multilingualism (cf. Tomasello 2003; Goldberg 2010; Höder 2012, 2014). From such a usage-based point of view, second language acquisition is presumed to be more complex than L1 acquisition because of the competition between the specific constructions of the foreign language with the L1 constructions (Ellis & Cadierno 2009). Applying this hypothesis of “constructional transfer” to intensification, we can assume on the one hand that French-speaking learners of Dutch will underuse typical Germanic means of intensification such as ‘elative’ compounds (knalrood ‘completely red’) (Hoeksema 2012). On the other hand the learners are expected to overuse syntactic constructions frequently used in French, such as adverbial modification (tout rouge, ‘completely red’) and adjectival reduplication (rouge rouge ‘completely red’) (Riegel e.a.1994: 620, 622).
The provisional findings of our data analysis confirm our hypothesis to a great extent. Learners clearly overuse adverbial intensification (96,6%) in comparison to native Dutch speakers (74,4%). Furthermore they underuse intensifying compounds (learners 1,6% vs natives 13,8%) and prefixes (learners 1,8% vs natives 8,4%). These results will be compared with the data drawn from the Frantext corpus, to examine whereas a cline between native Dutch, learner Dutch and native French exists, and to investigate the constructional transfer more profoundly.
At the semantic level, our corpus study indicates that natives apply intensification far more frequently to limit adjectives than learners e.g. totaal verkeerde aanwijzingen, ‘totally wrong directions’ (learners 0,4%, natives 43,5%). Inversely, learners mostly intensify scalar adjectives e.g. héél goede vraag ‘very good question’ (learners 72,9%, natives 52,9%) and use more frequently extreme adjectives e.g. absoluut perfecte uitspraak ‘absolutely perfect pronunciation’ (learners 26,7%, natives 3,6%) (Quirk e.a. 1997: 590-591; Paradis 1997: 59, 2001).
Finally, the different corpus results will be confronted with Höder’s diasystemic approach to multilingualism (Höder 2012, 2014). Concretely this theory would imply that a bilingual person has a unified semantic-cognitive representation of intensification to his disposition with a variety of formal means (morphological and syntactic constructions) to be specified for the different languages.
Bibliography
Corpus Hedendaags Nederlands (2013). Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie (ILN) 800.000 texts (1814-2013). Available online at Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN). https://portal.clarin.inl.nl/search/page/search
Degand, L. & J. Perrez. (2004). Causale connectieven in het leerdercorpus Nederlands. Tijdschrift n/f 4. 115-128.
Ellis, N. & T. Cadierno (2009). Constructing a Second Language. Introduction to the Special Section. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 7, 111-139.
FRANTEXT, ATILF (2014). CNRS & Université de Lorraine. 271.599.218 words. http://www.frantext.fr.
Goldberg, A. 2010 [2006]. Constructions at Work. The nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hoeksema, J. (2012). Elative compounds in Dutch: Properties and developments. In Oebel (Ed.) (2012), 97-142.
Höder, S. (2012). Multilingual Constructions: A diasystematic approach to common structures. In Multilingual Individuals and Multilingual Societies [Hamburg studies on multilingualism 13], K. Braunmüller & C. Gabriel (eds), 241-257. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Höder, S. (2014) Constructing diasystems: grammatical organisation in bilingual groups. In The Sociolinguistics of Grammar [Studies in language companion series 154], T. Afarli & B. Maehlum (eds) , 137-152. Amsterdam : John Benjamins.
Paradis. C. (2001). Adjectives and Boundedness. In Cognitive Linguistics 12-1. 47-65.
Paradis, C. (1997). Degree modifiers of adjectives in spoken British English. Lund: Lund University Press.
Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum G. Leech J. Svartvik (1997). A comprehensive grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
Riegel, M. J.-C.Pellat, R. Rioul (1994). Grammaire méthodique du français. Presses Universitaires de France: Paris.
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language. Boston: Harvard University Press.
English by French-speaking CLIL and non-CLIL learners
In this contribution I will present the research domain, objectives and methodology of a new interdisciplinary project on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in French speaking Belgium. CLIL is a didactic method in which school subjects are taught in a different target language than the mainstream school language. In particular my PhD research aims to gain insight in the acquisition of Dutch and English intensifying constructions by French-speaking CLIL and non-CLIL secondary school pupils. From a usage-based point of view, second language acquisition is presumed to be more complex than L1 acquisition because of the competition between the specific constructions of the foreign language with the L1 constructions (Tomasello 2003 ; Ellis & Cadierno 2009: 112). In Dutch and English adjectives and adverbs can be intensified through adverbial modification (heel goed /very good) and through prefixes (hypergevoelig / hypersensitive) and adjectival compounds (ijskoud /icecold). However in English adjectival compounds are less productive than in Dutch and in French they do not seem to exist at all. Thus, it can be assumed that French-speaking learners of Dutch and English will underuse the specific Germanic intensifying construction (adjectival compounds) and, inversely, overuse adverbial and prefixal modification by “constructional transfer” (Hiligsmann 1997). Since CLIL programs provide more second language input than non-CLIL programs and can be considered closer to L1 acquisition because of their inherent usage-based approach, we can expect a better acquisition of foreign intensifying constructions by CLIL pupils (Ellis & Cadierno 2009). This will be tested carrying out a study during the 5th and 6th grade of different secondary schools in French-speaking Belgium providing CLIL or non-CLIL education in Dutch and/or English. The analysis will be based on a corpus of videotaped and transcribed spoken interactions, perception and production tests and collected written productions by pupils involved in Dutch and English CLIL programs and non-CLIL contexts (control groups). (308 words)
References
Ellis, N. & Cadierno, T. (2009). Constructing a Second Language. Introduction to the Special Section. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 7, 111-139.
Hiligsmann, Ph. (1997). Linguïstische aspecten en pedagogische implicaties van de tussentaal van Franstalige M.O.-leerders van het Nederlands, Liège, Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l'Université de Liège, Genève: Droz.
Tomasello, M (2003) Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition, Harvard University Press.
Thanks to the innovative combination of mixed research methods and perspectives, our project tackles some under-investigated facets of immersion, viz. oral proficiency, written skills, lexical, morpho-syntactic and phraseological knowledge, cognitive abilities and influence of socio-affective variables. This interdisciplinary approach will allow us to examine by which cognitive [memory, attention…] and socio-affective [motivational, attitudinal…] factors the potential linguistic [typological, cross-linguistic…] differences between immersion learners of Dutch and of English can be accounted for (see for instance Bialystok and Barac 2012 and Katarzyna 2012). We analyse data from French-speaking immersion and non-immersion learners (control group) of English and Dutch as target languages in the last two years of primary and secondary school education. Regarding the methodological approach, we adopt an innovative combination of corpus-based longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses, together with experimental research designs. A longitudinal learner corpus is currently being collected (two data collection points at this stage), annotated and analysed; two experimental tasks have been conducted; detailed sociolinguistic and attitudinal questionnaires have also been collected, and focus groups studies will soon be performed (set of controlled tasks and individual interviews).
During the talk we will focus on the results of the linguistic analysis of the first data collection (carried out in October-November 2015) which comprises 843 texts (emails) written by 438 pupils in the 5th grade of secondary school (enrolled in either an immersion or traditional language learning school setting). We have collected 431 texts in their native language (French), 232 texts in L2 Dutch and 180 texts in L2 English. A first analysis of the global linguistic complexity of these texts indicates that immersion education seems to have a more positive impact on the pupils’ writing skills (in terms of complexity) in Dutch than in English. As for the complexity of the native language (viz. French) it does not seem to be affected by the teaching setting (i.e. immersion or non-immersion). The results of the linguistic analysis will be correlated to the collected cognitive, socio-affective and educational variables.
References
Dalton Puffer, C. (2011), Content-and-Language Integrated Learning: From Practice to Principles? Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 31, 182–204.
Bialystok, E. & Barac, R. (2012). Emerging bilingualism: Dissociating advantages for metalinguistic awareness and executive control. Cognition 122, 67-73.
Katarzyna P. (2012). ‘The impact of students’ attitude on CLIL: A study conducted in higher education’. Latin American Journal of Content and Language Integrated Learning 5(2), 28-56.
(1) (Dutch) een luxeNhotel ‘a luxury hotel’ (compound) / zeer luxeADJ en vernieuwd sanitair ‘very luxury and renovated sanitary facilities’ / de kamer is luxeADV afgewerkt ‘the room is finished in a luxury way’
(2) (Swedish) en kanonNdag ’litt. a cannon-day; a great day’ (compound) / det blir kanonADJ ‘it’s going to be great’ / det funkar kanonADV ‘it works very well’
The process is characterized by some ‘problematic’ features, such as counterdirectionality (from bound to free morpheme) and possible defectiveness (e.g., only partial adoption of inflection). For these reasons, we believe that its analysis may greatly benefit from a constructionist approach. More particularly, it will be examined if the semantic and formal changes accompanying debonding may allow us to consider this process as an instance of ‘constructionalization’ in the sense of Traugott & Trousdale (2013). In this way, we will complement the study by Trousdale & Norde (2013) who examine the relation between two other types of degrammaticalization (degrammation and deinflectionalization), on the one hand, and constructionalization, on the other.
References
Norde, Muriel. 2009. Degrammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Norde, Muriel & Kristel Van Goethem. 2014. Bleaching, productivity and debonding of prefixoids. A corpus-based analysis of ‘giant’ in German and Swedish. Lingvisticae Investigationes 37: 2. 256–274.
Traugott, Elizabeth C. & Graeme Trousdale. 2013. Constructionalization and constructional changes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Trousdale, Graeme & Muriel Norde. 2013. Degrammaticalization and constructionalization: Two case studies. Language Sciences 36. 32–46.
Van Goethem, Kristel & Matthias Hüning. 2015. From noun to evaluative adjective: conversion or debonding? Dutch top and its equivalents in German. Journal of Germanic linguistics 27:4. 366-409.
Van Goethem, Kristel & Nikos Koutsoukos. 2016 (submitted manuscript). “Morphological transposition” as the onset of recategorization: the case of luxe in Dutch. 30 p.
References
Berman, Judith. 2009. The predicative as a source of grammatical variation. Describing and modeling variation in grammar, ed. by Andreas Dufter, Jürg Fleischer, & Guido Seiler, 99-116. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Booij, Geert. 2010. Construction morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marchand, Hans. 1969. The categories and types of present-day English word formation. A synchronic-diachronic approach [2nd edition]. München: C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung.
Schäfer, Roland (2015). Processing and querying large web corpora with the COW14 architecture. Proceedings of Challenges in the Management of Large Corpora (CMLC-3), July 2015, Lancaster.
Schäfer, Roland, & Felix Bildhauer. 2012. Building large corpora from the web using a new efficient tool chain. Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2010), ed. by Nicoletta Calzolari et al., 486-493. Valletta: European language resources distribution agency.
Traugott, Elizabeth C. & Graeme Trousdale. 2013. Constructionalization and Constructional Changes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Online data sources:
Corpus Hedendaags Nederlands: https://portal.clarin.inl.nl/search/page/search
NLCOW14AX (COW-corpora): https://webcorpora.org/
WNT (via Geïntegreerde Taalbank): http://gtb.inl.nl/
The provisional findings of our data analysis confirm our hypothesis. Learners clearly overuse adverbial intensification (96,6%) in comparison to native Dutch speakers (74,4%). Furthermore they underuse intensifying compounds (learners 1,6% vs natives 13,8%) and prefixes (learners 1,8% vs natives 8,4%). At the semantic level, our corpus study indicates that natives apply intensification far more frequently to ‘limit’ adjectives than learners (e.g. totaal verkeerde aanwijzingen, ‘totally wrong directions’) (learners 0,4% vs natives 43,5%). Inversely, learners mostly intensify ‘scalar’ adjectives (e.g. héél goede vraag ‘very good question’) (learners 72,9% vs natives 52,9%) and make more frequently use of ‘extreme’ adjectives (e.g. absoluut perfecte uitspraak ‘absolutely perfect pronunciation’) (learners 26,7%, natives 3,6%) (Quirk e.a. 1997; Paradis 1997, 2001). These results will be compared with the data drawn from the Frantext corpus, to examine the constructional transfer more profoundly.
Finally, the different corpus results will be confronted with Höder’s diasystemic approach to multilingualism (Höder 2012, 2014). Concretely this theory would imply that a bilingual person has a unified semantic-cognitive representation of intensification to his disposition with a variety of formal means (morphological and syntactic constructions) to be specified for the different languages.
Bibliography
Corpus Hedendaags Nederlands (2013). Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie (ILN) 800.000 texts (1814-2013). Available online at Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN). https://portal.clarin.inl.nl/search/page/search
Degand, L. & J. Perrez. (2004). Causale connectieven in het leerdercorpus Nederlands. Tijdschrift n/f 4. 115-128.
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(1) Nutty was far from sure, and Biddy looked doubtful. (BNC)
(2) de långt ifrån marginella förändringar landet genomgår. (SECOW2014)
‘the far from marginal changes the country is going through.’
However, the four languages differ in the extent to which their [FAR FROM X] construction has grammaticalized into a full-blown adverbial degree modifier. The central purpose of our study is to analyze the differences between the languages and to account for them.
It is shown that, semantically, degree modifying senses develop from metaphorical extensions of spatial senses, as in (3-4).
(3) Nous voilà loin de la mondialisation heureuse! (FRCOW2011)
‘Here we are far from happy globalization!’
(4) men det är så långt ifrån sanningen man kan komma. (SECOW2014)
’but it is as far from the truth as one can get’
The availability of the same metaphorical senses supports a gradient of meanings that continue to integrate degree modifying senses and spatial senses into a single semantic network. In French and English, this appears to hinder the development of full-blown adverbial uses. In French, loin de combines spatial, metaphorical and downtoner uses, but does not develop into an adverb. In English, it is found that new adverbial uses appear around the time metaphorical senses decline. In Swedish, by contrast, långt ifrån is always adverbial (as evidenced by the adverbial suffix t in långt), but as in the other languages, it occurs in both spatial, metaphorical and downtoner constructions.
Formally, variation is found to facilitate form-meaning realignment. In Dutch, the variation between ver van and verre van licensed functional specialization of ver van as a spatial expression and verre van as a degree modifying adverb (5). The fact that the -e ending in verre van is an opaque relic obscured its relation to the adjective/adverb ver and as such further disrupted form-meaning unity.
(5) Dit was een verre van marginaal verschijnsel. (NLCOW2012)
‘This was a far from marginal phenomenon.’
The comparison of the respective fates of FAR FROM constructions in four different languages highlights the structural preconditions that favour or hinder syntactic change. Differences between the languages, then, are not explained by the random character of change, but by unevenly spread favouring conditions.
Corpora
BNC = British National Corpus: http://corpus2.byu.edu/bnc/
COW = Corpora from the Web: http://hpsg.fu-berlin.de/cow/colibri/
Cf. Schäfer, R. & F. Bildhauer. (2012). Building large corpora from the web using a new efficient tool chain. N. Calzolari, K. Choukri, T. Declerck et al. (Eds), Proceedings of the Eight International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, Istanbul, 486-493.
Evaluative morphology is by now a well-established domain of investigation. However, not all semantic functions performed by evaluative morphemes have been equally investigated: whereas functions such as diminution, augmentation and intensification have been studied quite extensively, others, like ‘approximation’, have received much less attention until recently. At the same time, approximation has been at the center of interest of other subfields of linguistics, such as pragmatics and discourse studies. The latter, however, have not been paying much attention to morphological means to convey approximation (compared to other strategies such as discourse markers and particles), with the exception of diminutive markers used as attenuation strategies or being derived from approximative values.
ApproxiMo intends to bridge this gap by concentrating on the expression of approximation (intended as a complex functional domain including vagueness, non-prototypicality, attenuation, fakeness/imitation, etc.) by means of dedicated morphological means.