Modal Particles in Dutch as a Second Language. Evidence from a Perception Experiment

The perception of modal particles in Dutch was studied, contrasting native and speakers of Dutch as a second language (DSL). According to expectations, non-native subjects turned out to have more significant problems with selecting the best fitting stimulus in the contexts designed to evoke a modal use of the target word. Contrary to expectation, however, the non-native subjects had problems with non-modal contexts as well. Work on spontaneous speech elicited from DSL-speakers with Spanish as L1 revealed an unexpected but clear hierarchy in the acquisition of modal particles. The results are t... Mehr ...