Causal connectives: forms and their function for text comprehension

• Applicant: Dr. Merle Weicker
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages ; Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics ; Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 554330661

The present project investigates the influence of syntactic and semantic properties of connectives and of the readers’ individual language abilities on text comprehension at the end of elementary school. Connectives are linguistic devices that indicate local relational coherence by making semantic relationships between propositions (e.g., causal, temporal, concessive) explicit. While previous studies have investigated the order in which the various relations are understood and used, and which of them influence text comprehension, the present project focuses on the class of causal connectives. Understanding these connectives is crucial for constructing a mental representation of the text. Interestingly, German has a large lexical inventory of morpho-syntactic devices that express causal relations (e.g. weil, denn, nämlich 'because', deshalb, sodass 'therefore'), which differ in their grammatical features. Based on the following sub-questions, the project investigates how children at the end of elementary school master this diversity: (Q1) Does the presence of causal connectives affect children’s text comprehension? (Q2) Which features of causal clauses affect children’s text comprehension? (Q3) Which learner characteristics mediate the comprehension of causal connectives? The project employs reading experiments, which investigate text comprehension both offline (using comprehension questions after reading) and online (using reading time measurements and eye-tracking during reading). This approach allows for the identification of possible asymmetries between processing levels. Overall, the project can provide insights into the mental representations and processing mechanisms involved in language comprehension. These insights can serve as a basis for conducive learning arrangements and suitable support services and strategies for text comprehension.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants