Dutch compound constructions in additional language acquisition: A diasystematic-constructionist approach

Studies have demonstrated that Dutch has a much stronger tendency towards compounding than French (e.g., Du. badkamer vs Fr. salle de bains ‘bathroom’) when adopting a restrictive approach of compounding in which the presence of prepositions and/or internal inflection in multi-word expressions is considered evidence for their syntactic formation. The example above illustrates that Dutch compounding differs from French in another important aspect: while Germanic compounding is by definition right-headed, French has a general tendency towards left-hand headed compounds and phrases. In this s... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Hendrikx, Isa
Van Goethem, Kristel
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
Verlag/Hrsg.: JohnBenjamins Publishing Co.
Schlagwörter: compounding / Dutch / French / Diasystematic Construction Grammar / Second Language Acquisition / Learner Corpus Research / Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26672524
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
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Link(s) : http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/281414

Studies have demonstrated that Dutch has a much stronger tendency towards compounding than French (e.g., Du. badkamer vs Fr. salle de bains ‘bathroom’) when adopting a restrictive approach of compounding in which the presence of prepositions and/or internal inflection in multi-word expressions is considered evidence for their syntactic formation. The example above illustrates that Dutch compounding differs from French in another important aspect: while Germanic compounding is by definition right-headed, French has a general tendency towards left-hand headed compounds and phrases. In this study, we investigate the impact of these typological differences on the acquisition of Dutch nominal compounds by Frenchspeaking learners in the context of multilingual Belgium. We provide an in-depth corpus analysis of the acquisition of Dutch compounds at different levels of abstraction (schematic and substantive compound constructions). Moreover, we investigate the impact of additional targetlanguage input through CLIL programs (Content and Language Integrated Learning) on the acquisition of Dutch compounds by French-speaking learners of Dutch. The results are described and interpreted from the perspective of Diasystematic Construction Grammar (DCxG), which conceptualizes the linguistic competence of multilingual speakers as one integrated network of constructions, containing language-specific idioconstructions and shared diaconstructions.