Dissertation: L2 Acquisition
I see my dissertation as founded on three pillars: (1) natural second language (L2) acquisition, (2) the socio-historic language background of my participants, and (3) syntax. I am interested in how the syntactic structure is represented in the mind of adult, natural L2 German acquirers.
Why natural L2 acquisition? The demand for proficiency in a second or foreign language is constantly growing in our globalizing world. Therefore, research on L2 acquisition is of crucial relevance. The increasing number of migrants and refugees in our current world reminds us that a foreign language is often acquired naturally, i.e., primarily by living and working in the host country, rather than through thorough formal instruction. However, the majority of language acquisition research has traditionally focused on relatively highly educated and young college students in the foreign-language classroom. My research involves first-generation Korean immigrant workers in Germany, an underrepresented population of natural L2 acquirers, who are elderly and mostly have a lower educational background.
Why Korean immigrants to Germany? Shortly after WWII, Germany experienced a Wirtschaftswunder (economic boom) and recruited many skilled workers from various countries. Koreans came around the '70s—men mostly as coal miners and women mostly as nurses. This era is an important chapter in both Germany’s and South Korea’s socioeconomic history, influencing especially the present German society. The Korean immigrants received very little or no prior instruction in German and usually started to work right away. The different demands in the workplaces and the diverse degrees of integration into German society have resulted in varying levels of L2 proficiency after more than 40 years of immigration. Around the '90s, many scholars investigated the development of natural L2 German among Turkish or Romance Gastarbeiter (guest workers). But very few studies looked at Korean immigrant workers. Not only is the syntax of Korean and German typologically distinct, but the Korean immigrant workers have also presumably reached a "stable state" in their L2 German acquisition after all these years. This puts us in the fortunate position to evaluate previous theories and claims about natural L2 acquisition of a naturally developed L2 grammar.
Why syntax? Languages allow us not only to communicate but to create abstract concepts, hypotheses, interpretations, a past, a present, and a future. More specifically, I see the syntactic architecture as the "backbone" of grammar, as it structures our words into meaningful expressions. In German, the sentence structure—more specifically the placement of the finite verb—varies depending on the clause type. This poses a challenge in the acquisition of German. Within generative syntax, there is a debate about whether non-target-like utterances of L2 German acquirers are due to incomplete syntactic representations in the mind of the speaker or due to mapping difficulties of abstract syntactic features onto a fully represented syntactic structure. This debate goes back to the question of whether an adult L2 acquirer comes equipped with a full syntactic structure provided from the beginning by universal grammar or whether the syntactic structure develops incrementally. By testing the use of main and subordinating German clauses where the finite verb occurs on different positions, I aim to shed light on this debate about holistic vs. stage-like representation of the syntactic architecture in the mind of the L2 acquirer.
Why natural L2 acquisition? The demand for proficiency in a second or foreign language is constantly growing in our globalizing world. Therefore, research on L2 acquisition is of crucial relevance. The increasing number of migrants and refugees in our current world reminds us that a foreign language is often acquired naturally, i.e., primarily by living and working in the host country, rather than through thorough formal instruction. However, the majority of language acquisition research has traditionally focused on relatively highly educated and young college students in the foreign-language classroom. My research involves first-generation Korean immigrant workers in Germany, an underrepresented population of natural L2 acquirers, who are elderly and mostly have a lower educational background.
Why Korean immigrants to Germany? Shortly after WWII, Germany experienced a Wirtschaftswunder (economic boom) and recruited many skilled workers from various countries. Koreans came around the '70s—men mostly as coal miners and women mostly as nurses. This era is an important chapter in both Germany’s and South Korea’s socioeconomic history, influencing especially the present German society. The Korean immigrants received very little or no prior instruction in German and usually started to work right away. The different demands in the workplaces and the diverse degrees of integration into German society have resulted in varying levels of L2 proficiency after more than 40 years of immigration. Around the '90s, many scholars investigated the development of natural L2 German among Turkish or Romance Gastarbeiter (guest workers). But very few studies looked at Korean immigrant workers. Not only is the syntax of Korean and German typologically distinct, but the Korean immigrant workers have also presumably reached a "stable state" in their L2 German acquisition after all these years. This puts us in the fortunate position to evaluate previous theories and claims about natural L2 acquisition of a naturally developed L2 grammar.
Why syntax? Languages allow us not only to communicate but to create abstract concepts, hypotheses, interpretations, a past, a present, and a future. More specifically, I see the syntactic architecture as the "backbone" of grammar, as it structures our words into meaningful expressions. In German, the sentence structure—more specifically the placement of the finite verb—varies depending on the clause type. This poses a challenge in the acquisition of German. Within generative syntax, there is a debate about whether non-target-like utterances of L2 German acquirers are due to incomplete syntactic representations in the mind of the speaker or due to mapping difficulties of abstract syntactic features onto a fully represented syntactic structure. This debate goes back to the question of whether an adult L2 acquirer comes equipped with a full syntactic structure provided from the beginning by universal grammar or whether the syntactic structure develops incrementally. By testing the use of main and subordinating German clauses where the finite verb occurs on different positions, I aim to shed light on this debate about holistic vs. stage-like representation of the syntactic architecture in the mind of the L2 acquirer.