Project Details
Projekt
Sensitivity to reduced syllables in learners of L2 German and implications for grammatical learning
Subject Area
General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
Term
since 2025
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 531445091
The main objective of the project is to investigate the sensitivity to different types of German reduced syllables in contrast to full vowels in adult learners of German with Italian, French, and Turkish as L1 and whether these learner groups can use reduced vowels to en-/decode grammatical meanings in morphological paradigms. It has been suggested within the framework of Prosodic Morphology that the canonical trochee plays an important role in German plural forms as in Beet - Beete (Wiese 2009). Whether the sensitivity to reduced syllables is a prerequisite to acquire the plural morphology of German will be tested in foreign-language learners whose L1s systematically differ from the target language: (1) Italian, which is trochaic but lacks reduced vowels, (2) French, which is non-trochaic but includes schwa in its sound system, and (3) Turkish, which is non-trochaic and lacks reduced vowels. We aim to determine how such learners categorize the German reduced vowels [ə] and [ɐ] in contrast to full vowels and whether they are able to produce and comprehend final reduced syllables in plural formation. To investigate the sensitivity of three groups of monolingually raised students from Italy, France, and Turkey to reduced syllables and their function in German plurals, we will collect production data and perform two electrophysiological perception studies. In both strands of research, we will test (1) how contrasts between reduced vowels and between reduced and full vowels are produced and perceived and (2) to what extent prosodic conditions on plural forms determine their production and evaluation. To study the learners’ production abilities, the acoustic characteristics of intended productions of reduced syllables in contrast to full vowels will be analyzed in read, elicited, and semi-spontaneous speech. In addition, the learners’ proficiency will be evaluated in a rating task performed by German native listeners. In the perception experiments, participants will first be confronted with different vowels pairs contrasting either reduced and full vowels or the two vowels to test whether the different learner groups show distinctive sensitivities to reduced vowels. In a second perception task, learners will be presented with correct and incorrect plural forms to test their sensitivity to the prosodic restriction on plural formation. We will further correlate the learners’ perception of reduced syllables with their ability to produce them and to fulfil prosodic requirements on grammatical words in language production, as suggested by the Prosodic Licensing Hypothesis (Demuth 2019). Taken together, the project will investigate the acquisition of prosodic restrictions on morphological operations all the way up from the capacity to categorize reduced vowels to the application of prosodic constraints in plural formation.
DFG Programme
Research Units
International Connection
France, Italy, Turkey
Cooperation Partners
Professorin Dr. Birgit Alber; Professor Hakan Cangir; Dr. Birgit Jallerat-Jabs; Professor Dr. Stefan Rabanus
