L1 ENGLISH L2 GERMAN LEARNERS‟ GRAMMATICALITY JUDGMENTS and KNOWLEDGE of DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS by Daniel Robert Walter a THES

L1 ENGLISH L2 GERMAN LEARNERS‟ GRAMMATICALITY JUDGMENTS and KNOWLEDGE of DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS by Daniel Robert Walter a THES

L1 ENGLISH L2 GERMAN LEARNERS‟ GRAMMATICALITY JUDGMENTS AND KNOWLEDGE OF DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS By Daniel Robert Walter A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS German Studies 2011 ABSTRACT L1 ENGLISH L2 GERMAN LEARNERS‟ GRAMMATICALITY JUDGMENTS AND KNOWLEDGE OF DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS By Daniel Robert Walter Second language learners are often faced with difficult decisions while interpreting language. One specific difficulty of discourse is dealing with ambiguity, which is often made more challenging by the fact that second language learners‟ native language processes may carry over into their second language processes. Some learners may not have received any explicit instruction on how to deal with ambiguity and must rely on internal processing by their interlanguage to make a guess as to what the speaker means. This thesis explores the acquisition of German demonstrative pronouns by second language learners of German whose native language is English. Unlike German, which allows for both personal pronoun usage (er, sie, es etc.) and demonstrative pronoun usage (der, die, das etc.) to refer back to antecedents, English only allows personal pronouns. Thus English native speakers tend to rely on syntactic structure to resolve ambiguous pronoun usage, while German speakers can differentiate antecedents through the use of demonstrative and personal pronouns. Demonstrative pronouns in German typically encode for object pronoun reference, while English does not have an equivalent form. In order to determine how L1 English learners of German deal with this incongruity between English and German pronoun resolution, learners of German in advanced German classes were tested via a grammaticality judgment test to see whether they were able to successfully identify demonstrative pronouns in German as grammatical or if they interpreted the demonstrative to be an error. Additionally, participants were asked to discuss their thoughts on the use of demonstratives and their purpose in German through the use of a post-test interview. The results show that some participants recognize the difference between pronouns in German and can select the appropriate antecedent. For my loving parents Robert and Loretta for all their support, without which I could have never achieved my dreams. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................................. vi LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................................. vii KEY TO SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................ viii INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Rationale ......................................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Definition of Terms ......................................................................................................................... 5 LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................................................................... 8 2.1 Pronoun Resolution in English ....................................................................................................... 8 2.2 Pronoun Resolution in German ..................................................................................................... 18 2.3 L1 Influence in Second Language Acquisition ............................................................................. 23 2.4 Research Questions and Hypotheses ............................................................................................ 24 METHODOLOGY................................................................................................................................ 27 3.1 Participants .................................................................................................................................... 27 3.2 Procedure ...................................................................................................................................... 33 3.3 Instruments .................................................................................................................................. 34 3.3.1 Pre-test questionnaire. .............................................................................................................. 34 3.3.2 Grammaticality judgment test. ................................................................................................. 36 3.3.3 Post-test interview. ................................................................................................................... 39 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................ 41 4.1 Grammaticality Judgment Test Results ......................................................................................... 41 4.2 Post-test Interview Results ............................................................................................................ 49 4.3 Discussion Summary .................................................................................................................... 53 CONCLUSION...................................................................................................................................... 56 5.1 Implications ................................................................................................................................... 56 5.2 Limitations .................................................................................................................................... 57 5.2.1 Sample size. ............................................................................................................................. 57 5.2.2 Proficiency ratings. .................................................................................................................. 58 5.2.3 Grammaticality judgment test instructions. ............................................................................. 58 5.2.4 Distractor sentences. ................................................................................................................ 59 5.2.5 Closer mirroring of English and German phenomenon. .......................................................... 60 5.3 Future Research ............................................................................................................................ 61 5.4 Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 62 APPENDICES ....................................................................................................................................... 64 APPENDIX A: Pre-test Questionnaire A ............................................................................................ 65 iv APPENDIX B: Pre-test Questionnaire B ............................................................................................ 68 APPENDIX C: Grammaticality Judgment Test A .............................................................................. 71 APPENDIX D: Grammaticality Judgment Test B .............................................................................. 77 APPENDIX E: Post-test Interview ..................................................................................................... 82 NOTES ................................................................................................................................................... 84 REFERENCES ...................................................................................................................................... 85 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................... 86 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1 German der-Paradigm Demonstrative Pronouns ................................................................. 20 Table 2 Population Demographics ....................................................................................................... 29 Table 3 Participant Ratings and Rankings ......................................................................................... 30 Table 4 New Participant Designations ................................................................................................. 32 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Tree Structure for Hobbs (1977) ............................................................................................ 11 Figure 2 Elaboration and Narration in Lascarides and Asher (2003) .............................................. 13 Figure 3 Participants Ranking by Time Abroad ................................................................................ 31 Figure 4 Random Error Distractor Question Individual Results ..................................................... 41 Figure 5 Participants’ Acceptance of Demonstrative Pronouns ....................................................... 44 Figure 6 Participants’ Acceptance of Personal Pronouns .................................................................. 48 vii KEY TO SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS Avg. Average DEM Demonstrative

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