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Direct Discourse Methods in Non-Native Speakers’ German Language Use

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Direct Discourse Methods in Non-Native Speakers’ German Language Use DIRECT DISCOURSE METHODS IN NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS’ GERMAN LANGUAGE USE BY Viktória Bagi Submitted to the graduate degree program in German and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas at Lawrence in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Dr. Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm Chairperson ________________________________ Dr. William Keel ________________________________ Dr. Nina Vyatkina ________________________________ Dr. William Comer ________________________________ Dr. Marcellino Berardo Date defended: October 23, 2009 2 The Dissertation Committee for Viktória Bagi certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: DIRECT DISCOURSE METHODS IN NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS’ GERMAN LANGUAGE USE ________________________________ Dr. Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm Chairperson ________________________________ Dr. William Keel ________________________________ Dr. Nina Vyatkina ________________________________ Dr. William Comer ________________________________ Dr. Marcellino Berardo Date approved: November 20, 2009 3 Abstract This dissertation investigates the methods used by intermediate, advanced and superior level learners of German when quoting formerly uttered speech in direct discourse. The study shows that that there are different methods of speech reporting at different levels of language proficiency. Each level of speakers in the study used the quotative methods of the earlier level(s), but also added more. Several superior speakers used a quotative structure without a conjugated verb. This was untypical of intermediate and advanced level speakers, who tended to adhere more to the rules of standard German syntax and avoided structures without a conjugated verb. Thus, it seems and that speakers with greater grammatical competence have a more diversified skillset when it comes to varying their quotation methods, which is a sign of greater communicative competence as well. Based on these results, this investigation contributes to our understanding of communicative competence and interlanguage development in German. 4 Acknowlegdements I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the members of my committee, especially Dr. Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm for her comments, encouragement and extensive help during the course of this study. I also owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Dr. William Keel for his support of my dissertation project and graduate studies at the University of Kansas. I have learned and benefited greatly from their scholarly example and professionalism, and I am immensely thankful for their helpfulness at all times, even at large geographical distances. I extend my warmest thanks to my professors at the University of Kansas, who have conveyed a tremendous amount of knowledge about linguistics and literature as well as about the preparation for the academic profession. They have been an admirable source of inspiration. A very special thanks to the learners of German who agreed to be video- and / or audiotaped for the purposes of this study and thus made it possible to carry out my research. I am greatly indebted to the faculty of the Institute of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Debrecen, who, in preparation for my Master’s degree, paved the way for my further studies of German. My very special thanks go out to my parents in Hungary, without whom none of this project would have been possible. Anya és Apa, köszönöm szépen a támogatást! Brooklyn, NY, fall 2009 5 Table of Contents 1. Introduction......................................................................................................................7 2. Linguistic background of the study: reported speech, direct speech and quotatives….14 2.1 Reported speech and its main types: direct vs. indirect speech……………...14 2.2 The role of quotatives………………………………………………………..26 2.3 Quotatives and the enactment phenomenon in German……………………..30 2.4 Like and so: remarks on their role and grammaticalization process…………33 3. Pragmatic background of the study: Conversational implicature, pragmatic competence and pragmatic markers……………………………………….…45 3.1 General rules organizing conversation. Story telling and the organization of turns at talk……………...………………………………….……………..46 3.1.1 Conversational implicature and the Gricean principles……………48 3.1.2 Turn-taking, politeness, and their implications for storytelling……49 3.2 Pragmatic competence……………………………………………………….54 3.3 Non-native innovative quotatives as pragmatic markers. Deixis and code-switching……………………………………………………………….64 4. Data, methodology and main findings………………………………………………...72 4.1 Data and methodology of the study………………………………………….72 4.2 General overview……………………………...……………………………..82 5. Direct discourse methods of intermediate and advanced level speakers of German….92 5.1 Data analysis and discussion…………………………………………………94 5.1.1 Speakers’ quotatives at the intermediate level……………………..94 5.1.2 Speakers’ quotatives at the advanced level………………...……..100 5.1.3 Speakers’ quotatives at the advanced-mid level………………….116 5.2 Summary / Conclusions…………………………………………………….120 6. Direct discourse methods of superior level speakers of German…………………….123 6.1 Superior level direct discourse methods common with lower-level speakers……………………………………………………………………..124 6.2 Direct discourse methods typical to the superior level: quotatives with 6 verbs other than typical verba dicendi ……………………………………...130 6.3 Direct discourse methods typical to the superior level: quotatives without a conjugated verb…………………………………………………………..141 6.4 General remarks on the quotatives in the study as regards to discourse markers, deixis and code-switching……………………………...173 6.5 Conclusions and discussion………………………………………………...178 7. Differences in the verb tense of the quotatives in native and non-native language use…………………………………………………………………………………...185 8. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...196 References………………………………………………………………………………204 Appendices……………………………………………………………………………...236 Appendix 1: ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines…………………………………………..236 Appendix 2: Information on the participants of the study……………………………...249 Appendix 3: Transcription conventions...........................................................................250 Appendix 4: Native speakers’ evaluation sheet...............................................................252 Appendix 5: Native speakers’ evaluations of reported utterances……………………...254 Appendix 6: Information sheet and approval forms provided for the study by the Human Subjects Committee Lawrence Campus (HSCL)…………………………..255 7 1. Introduction With the study of any foreign language, it is essential to see not only what rules govern the language, but also when and how these rules apply. With ample observations of the language in use, it is possible to draw certain conclusions that we can incorporate into our studies in order to enhance communication and understanding in the language. Similarly, it is also insightful for an instructor to see how students develop their communication skills and understanding of the foreign tongue in use. Our knowledge of the language in its currently existing form along with an understanding of students’ skills and development can greatly facilitate the process of learning and teaching. Thus, it is important to look at various functions of the language and see how they are carried out. One significant area of communication in any language is speech reporting. “News, gossip, stories, indeed the whole fabric of everyday conversation depends heavily on quoting and referring to the words of others, and it is hard to imagine a day of our lives when we do not at some point support our discourse with direct or indirect reference to someone else’s words” (McCarthy, 1998, p. 150). How we decide to render someone else’s words greatly influences our performance of the quote and with that, the impression we make on our audience. Speech reporting is a staple of everyday communication and there is more than one way to produce it. Generally, the grammar rules of reported speech tend to be quite complex, including a shift in verb tenses as well as in all deictic words, that is, those referring to concrete places, times and persons. While written language tolerates such complex sentence structures fairly well, everyday spoken conversation may become 8 cumbersome through their extended use. This might well be a reason why spoken language demonstrates a high level of creativity when it comes to reporting. McCarthy noticed in his data corpus on several English dialects that there were many different ways for speech reporting (1998, p. 151), including verbs greater in variety than those generally used in traditional literary reporting (p. 171). He points out that “spoken data also exhibit choices which are rarely, if ever, found in written-text reports” and the striking fact that “everyday conversational resources for reporting are much richer than is suggested by sentence-based accounts of the structure of direct and indirect speech” (1998, p. 151). Accordingly, when investigating reporting methods in a language, the researcher ought to be looking out for structures that go beyond the scope of a traditional reported speech sentence in the descriptive grammar sense. In my dissertation research project, I am looking at different reported speech methods applied by non-native speakers of German. I have narrowed down the topic “reported speech” to direct reports only, because I was more interested in the performative nature of
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