Additive Linking in Second Language Discourse: Lexical, Syntactic and Discourse Organizational Choices in Intermediate and Advanced Learners of L2 German with L1 French

Abstract

This paper reports results from a study on the acquisition of additive scope particles as a\rmeans to enhance discourse coherence by French learners of German as a second language.\rIt addresses the questions of which additive devices intermediate and advanced learners\rproduce; which possibilities of syntactic integration in relation to the added constituent they\ruse; and whether they choose target-like information units in order to establish additive\rrelations across utterances. Oral production data from an elicited discourse production study\rreveal that the form of the additive expressions among advanced learners nearly always\rcorresponds to the pattern preferred in the target language without, however, tapping its\rfull potential. Rather, learners overuse options that are formally but not functionally similar\rin both languages.\rThis uniform behavior at the utterance level does not go hand in hand with target-like\rpreferences for discourse organization. Native speakers of German tend to construe stretches\rof discourse as an answer to an implicit YES/NO question. They focus on the occurrence\rof events and use the assertion component to establish links and comparisons across\rutterances. Native speakers of French, on the other hand, prefer to construe utterances\ras answering implicit Wh-questions, thereby focusing discourse entities and establishing\rcontrasts between them.\rBased on their fi rst language’s entity-based utterance organization, even advanced\rsecond language learners of German are shown to use a hybrid system, establishing mainly\rentity-based and only a few assertion-based discourse relations.\r Keywords: additive particles, information structure, discourse, second language acquisition,\rquaestio