Register knowledge in advanced learner language (C04)

• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2020 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 416591334

The project will investigate how learners of a foreign language acquire register competence by analyzing spoken and written corpus data produced by advanced learners of German as a foreign language and native speaker control groups. Two hypotheses will be tested: (i) Even advanced learners do not distinguish between registers in the same way that native speakers do, and (ii) even advanced learners do not distinguish between registers as much as native speakers do. Native speakers and learners will first be compared within the same register and then across registers. In the first phase, two different types of register will be studied: written argumentative essays on the one hand and spoken map task dialogues on the other.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1412: Register: Language-Users’ Knowledge of Situational-Functional Variation
• Applicant Institution: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Project Head: Professorin Dr. Anke Lüdeling