How Input Processing Factors into Lexical Semantics: Motion Events with Double Particles in L3 German

Duarte Oliveira

doi:10.3390/languages5030030

Abstract

Motion events are almost absent in the course syllabus of L2 German as a formally addressed structure in the classroom. Learners have merely receptive contact with this type of structure in reading texts or in aural activities. The occurrence of motion events with the so-called “double particles” is even less frequent. These are composed of the deictic morphemes hin- and her- denoting the speaker’s perspective and Path morphemes (-ein-, -aus-, -auf-, etc.). The main goal of the present study is to test a group of Portuguese L3 learners of German regarding their knowledge of double particles, and to apply VanPatten’s Processing Instruction (PI) model (VanPatten 2004; VanPatten and Williams 2015), which rests on an input-based focus-on-form approach for teaching grammar. The theoretical framework is based on Talmy’s typology of motion events (Talmy 2000a, 2000b). The empirical component of this study was divided into three parts: first, I tested the participants by means of a pretest; then, I conducted a pedagogical intervention based on the PI model; finally, a posttest determined the successful effects of PI in the participants’ knowledge of the target forms, both in interpretative and productive contexts.

Highlights

In Portugal, learners of L2 German at university level demonstrate ongoing difficulties in learning the language for various reasons: their limited contact with German in non-classroom contexts, the lack of exposure to the language in their everyday lives, and the occasional deficient acquisition of certain domains of grammar
Motion events per se are already downgraded in the curriculum of German as a foreign language, especially given the complex intricacies they entail, and movement structures with double particles are hardly ever directly handled in instruction
The reduced contact learners have with such structures—which are relatively present in everyday speech—forces them to make lexical associations, i.e., learners at a higher level seem to recognize the morphological features of double particles and relate them to similar lexical items, inferring meaning from these connections, but do not usually produce them spontaneously in free speech

Summary

Introduction

In Portugal, learners of L2 German at university level demonstrate ongoing difficulties in learning the language for various reasons: their limited contact with German in non-classroom contexts, the lack of exposure to the language in their everyday lives, and the occasional deficient acquisition of certain domains of grammar. Since these acquisitional problems and grammatical deficits are mostly due to the lack of contact with the target language, they are likely to form at the input level and should be handled at this stage. With this in mind, I selected an input-based pedagogical model to test the learners’. To test the PI model, I selected a problematic grammatical form that the learners may be able to recognize but have had very little contact with and that is not explicitly addressed in the DaF (Deutsch als Fremdsprache—German as a foreign language) curriculum.

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