Modality in Learner German

A corpus-based study investigating modal expressions in

argumentative texts by British learners of German

A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

by

Ursula Maden-Weinberger

(1. Staatsexamen, M.A.)

Department of Linguistics and English Language

Lancaster University

June 2009

Abstract

This thesis examines, by way of a corpus-driven investigation, usage patterns of

modal expressions by British learners of German as a foreign language. Modality

plays a pivotal role in all texts and discourses that deal with the discussion or

examination of practical or theoretical problems and is crucial for the process of

argumentation and reasoning. It is therefore an integral part of foreign language

learners‟ writing at university level. The study is more comprehensive than previous

approaches, as it incorporates the full semantic range of modal meanings as well as

all the different types of modal expressions in the German language, i.e. modal verbs,

modal adverbials and modal lexical verbs, modal infinitives and the subjunctive

mood. The investigation is methodologically based on a multiple-comparison

approach involving a corpus of learner German (CLEG), which has been compiled for

the study, and several other L1 and L2 native speaker corpora. The results indicate

that learners exhibit in their argumentative writing specific patterns of modality use

that are different from those of native speakers and at various levels of proficiency.

On the whole, learners tend to overuse modal expressions. The specific overuse and

avoidance patterns of epistemic modal verbs are strongly linked to L1/L2 form

meaning equivalents (e.g. MUST – MÜSSEN). Where modal verbs are avoided,

modal adverbials are overused to fill the semantic gap. Modal adverbials tend to

develop into fossilised formulaic sequences, where the expression of modality is

extrapolated from the rest of the utterance in a sentence-initial matrix clause, usually

of the “es ist...” („it is...‟) type. The development of the use of the subjunctive mood is

indicative of the learners‟ growing proficiency; however, learners even at the

advanced stage exhibit difficulties in the morphological distinction between indicative

and subjunctive verb forms. On top of these findings on learner modality, the results

from this study can corroborate previous research on general characteristics of

learner language, specifically the tendency to be more explicit than native speakers,

to overuse personalised expressions that indicate subjective writer involvement, and

to exhibit a less formal, more speech-like register in the learners‟ written

argumentative productions.

Declaration

This thesis is my own work and has not been submitted in substantially the same

form for the award of a higher degree elsewhere.

Some results displayed in chapter 5 have been published in the following article:

Maden-Weinberger, U. (2008). “Modality as Indicator of L2-Proficiency? A corpus-

based investigation into advanced German interlanguage”. Walter, M. and Grommes,

P. (eds). Fortgeschrittene Lernervarietäten: Korpuslinguistik und

Zweitspracherwerbsforschung / Advanced Learner Varieties. Corpus Linguistics and

Research into Second Language Acquisition. Berlin: Niemeyer

Ursula Maden-Weinberger

23 June 2009

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION 10

1.1 Focus of the study 11

1.2 Innovations, research questions, aims and claims 13

2. THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS ON MODALITY 17

2.1 The concept of modality 17

2.1.1 Definitions of modality 18 2.1.2 Epistemic and deontic modality 19 2.1.3 Other types of modality and other means of expressing modality 22 2.1.4 Terminological differences 24

2.2 Modality in the German language 27

2.2.1 Requirements of a theoretical approach for the investigation into learner modality 27

2.2.2 Brinkmann’s account of the modal system 29

2.3 Linguistic means for expressing modality 33

2.3.1 Modal verbs 33 2.3.1.1 Formal characteristics 33 2.3.1.2 Semantic characteristics 38

2.3.1.2.1 MÜSSEN 39 2.3.1.2.2 KÖNNEN 40 2.3.1.2.3 WOLLEN 41 2.3.1.2.4 SOLLEN 42 2.3.1.2.5 DÜRFEN 43 2.3.1.2.6 MÖGEN 43 2.3.1.2.7 WERDEN 45

2.3.2 Modal adverbials 47 2.3.2.1 Brinkmann’s (1971) account of modal adverbs 48 2.3.2.2 Zifonun et al.’s (1997) account of modal adverbials 49

2.3.3 Modal lexical verbs and quasi-modal verbs 54 2.3.4 Modal infinitives HABEN ZU and SEIN ZU 56 2.3.5 Subjunctive mood (Konjunktiv) 62

2.3.5.1 The basic functions of Konjunktiv I and Konjunktiv II 62 2.3.5.2 Syncretism between subjunctives and indicative 65 2.3.5.3 Usage contexts for Konjunktiv I and Konjunktiv II 69

3. MODALITY IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION RESEARCH 75

3.1 Modality in naturalistic acquisition 75

3.2 Modality in instructed acquisition 79

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4. METHODOLOGY 87

4.1 The corpus linguistic basis of the study 87

4.1.1 Learner corpus research 89 4.1.2 Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis and the Multiple Comparison

Approach 91

4.2 Investigating German learner modality within the multiple comparison approach 94

4.2.1 The German learner corpus: CLEG 94 4.2.2 The comparable native speaker corpus: KEDS 98 4.2.3 The general native speaker corpus: LIMAS 100 4.2.4 The translation corpus for contrastive analysis: INTERSECT 100

4.3 Analysing modality in the learner corpus 103

4.3.1 Selecting and retrieving modal expressions 104 4.3.2 Semantic categorisation and annotation 106 4.3.3 Analytical techniques 116

4.3.3.1 Quantitative and qualitative investigations 117 4.3.3.2 Interpretation of results 117 4.3.3.3 Statistics 119

5. RESULTS 122

5.1 Modal verbs 122

5.1.1 Epistemic modal verbs 127 5.1.1.1 Overview 127 5.1.1.2 Modal verbs without English form/meaning equivalents: Evidential

WOLLEN and SOLLEN, DÜRFTE, MÜSSTE 130 5.1.1.3 Modal verbs with English form/meaning equivalents: MÜSSEN,

KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE, WERDEN, MÖGEN, SOLLTE 131 5.1.1.4 MÜSSEN (compelling conclusion) 133 5.1.1.5 KÖNNEN and KÖNNTE (assumption of possibility) 134 5.1.1.6 WERDEN (confident assumption) 136 5.1.1.7 MÖGEN (assumption of possibility) 143 5.1.1.8 SOLLTE (tentative conclusion) 144

5.1.2 Non-epistemic modal verbs 145 5.1.2.1 Overview 145 5.1.2.2 MÜSSEN (duty/compulsion) and MÜSSTE (suggestion) 148 5.1.2.3 SOLLEN (instruction/obligation) and SOLLTE (suggestion/advice) 153 5.1.2.4 KÖNNEN and KÖNNTE (possibility and ability) 158 5.1.2.5 DÜRFEN and KÖNNEN (permission) 161 5.1.2.6 WOLLEN (volition) 164 5.1.2.7 MÖCHTE (attenuated volition) and MÖGEN (affection/liking) 165

5.2 Periphrastic modal expressions 168

5.2.1 Overview 168 5.2.2 Epistemic periphrastic modal expressions 173

5.2.2.1 Assertive periphrastic modal expressions 173 5.2.2.2 Modally qualifying periphrastic expressions 185

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5.2.2.3 Negative periphrastic modal expressions 197 5.2.3 Non-epistemic periphrastic modal expressions 200

5.3 Modal infinitives 213

5.3.1 SEIN ZU 214 5.3.2 HABEN ZU 217

5.4 Subjunctive mood (Konjunktiv) 218

5.4.1 Overview 218 5.4.2 Lexical distribution of Konjunktiv II 222 5.4.3 Context types of Konjunktiv II 224 5.4.4 Konjunktiv II in conditional clauses 226

6. SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION 234

6.1 Summary of results 234

6.2 Discussion 237

6.2.1 Overuse of modal expressions 237 6.2.2 Ranking of modal verbs 240 6.2.3 Form/meaning equivalents in learners’ native and target language 241 6.2.4 Correspondences between usage patterns of modal verbs and

periphrastic modal expressions 247 6.2.5 Difficulties with morphological and semantic distinction of indicative and

Konjunktiv II modal verb forms 249 6.2.6 Personalised expressions 254 6.2.7 Range of modal expressions and formulaic sequences 256 6.2.8 Konjunktiv II as indicator of learner proficiency 263

6.3 Concluding remarks 266

7. CONCLUSION 268

BIBLIOGRAPHY 275

APPENDIX 286

Appendix A 286

Appendix B 290

Appendix C 292

Appendix D 297

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Position of a corpus study of modality in learner German within the wider research context ..................................................................................................... 13

Figure 2: Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA) framework (Granger 2002:12) ................................................................................................................................. 91

Figure 3: Multiple-Comparison Model for learner corpus research (adapted from Tono 2002a) ............................................................................................................... 92

Figure 4: Multiple-comparison model for the study of modality in learner German .................................................................................................................................... 94

Figure 5: Overall frequencies of modal verbs .......................................................................... 124

Figure 6: Individual modal verb frequencies ........................................................................... 125

Figure 7: Epistemic modal verb frequencies ........................................................................... 129

Figure 8: Non-epistemic modal verb frequencies .................................................................. 147

Figure 9: Types of grammatical subject/passive constructions with non-epistemic SOLLTE ............................................................................................................ 156

Figure 10: Frequencies of indeterminate KÖNNEN (annotation category “U”) ........... 160

Figure 11: Comparison of modal verbs and periphrastic modal expressions (PMEs) .................................................................................................................................. 169

Figure 12: Overall frequencies of epistemic and non-epistemic modal expressions ......................................................................................................................... 170

Figure 13: Epistemic vs. non-epistemic PMEs ........................................................................... 172

Figure 14: Frequencies of assertive PMEs ................................................................................... 173

Figure 15: Frequencies of modally qualifying periphrastic expressions ........................ 185

Figure 16: Frequencies of PME categories “subjective assumption” versus “tentative conclusion” .................................................................................................. 188

Figure 17: Frequencies of PMEs affecting negation................................................................. 198

Figure 18: Frequencies of non-epistemic PMEs ........................................................................ 201

Figure 19: Frequencies of Konjunktiv II context types ........................................................... 224

Figure 20: Distribution of Konjunktiv II across context types as percentages of overall Konjunktiv II frequencies ............................................................................... 225

Figure 21: Conditional clause patterns as % of overall frequencies of conditionals ........................................................................................................................ 226

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Aims and claims of the presented study 15

Table 2: Overview of terminology for epistemic and non-epistemic modality 26

Table 3: Present tense indicative and Konjunktiv I 66

Table 4: Present tense indicative and Konjunktiv I 66

Table 5: Preterite indicative and Konjunktiv II (weak verbs) 66

Table 6: Preterite indicative and Konjunktiv II (strong verbs) 67

Table 7: Sein/haben/werden in indicative, Konjunktiv I and Konjunkti II 67

Table 8: Size and Subcorpora of the Corpus of Learner German (CLEG) 97

Table 9: The INTERSECT translation corpus 101

Table 10: Tagset for the annotation of modal expressions 108

Table 11: Tagset for the annotation of modal expressions (translated) 110

Table 12: Overall frequencies of modal verbs in learner and native speaker corpora 123

Table 13: Log-likelihood values for differences in modal verb frequencies between CLEG, KEDS and LIMAS 123

Table 14: Statistical significance of differences in modal verb frequencies between learner year groups and KEDS 126

Table 15: English equivalents to German modal verbs (epistemic) 128

Table 16: Mutual correspondence values (MC) for German and English epistemic modal verb equivalents 132

Table 17: Epistemic MÜSSEN 133

Table 18: Error rate for epistemic KÖNNTE/KONNTE 135

Table 19: WERDEN with present-time reference 136

Table 20: WERDEN used in “habitual” and “general events” contexts 137

Table 21: WERDEN with future-time reference 138

Table 22: Epistemic MÖGEN in concessive contexts 143

Table 23: English equivalents to German modal verbs (non-epistemic) 146

Table 24: Mutual correspondence values (MC) for German and English non-epistemic modal verb equivalents 147

Table 25: Non-epistemic indicative MÜSSEN (MUSSTE) and Konjunktiv II MÜSSTE 149

Table 26: Non-epistemic NICHT MÜSSEN as prohibition 153

Table 27: Errors non-epistemic SOLLEN as suggestion 154

Table 28: Error-corrected frequencies of non-epistemic SOLLEN and SOLLTE 155

Table 29: Non-epistemic SOLLEN in Questions 156

Table 30: Percentage distribution of indicative and Konjunktiv II forms of KÖNNEN 159

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Table 31: Error rate for non-epistemic KÖNNTE/KONNTE 160

Table 32: DÜRFEN and KÖNNEN as permission 162

Table 33: Negated DÜRFEN 163

Table 34: Negated DÜRFEN including *NICHT MÜSSEN 163

Table 35: MÖCHTE in 1st person signposting utterances 166

Table 36: Overall frequencies of periphrastic modal expressions in learner and native speaker corpora 169

Table 37: Lexical diversity of periphrastic modal expressions 171

Table 38: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of purely assertive PMEs 174

Table 39: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of positive evaluative-assertive PMEs 175

Table 40: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of reservedly positive evaluative-assertive PMEs 176

Table 41: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of negative evaluative-assertive PMEs 177

Table 42: Sentence-initial leider 177

Table 43: Evaluative-assertive PMEs along other dimensions 178

Table 44: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of evidence-focused assertive PMEs 180

Table 45: Colligational sequence …Tatsache, dass… 181

Table 46: Top five evidence-focused assertive PMEs 183

Table 47: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of PMEs denoting a compelling conclusion 186

Table 48: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of PMEs denoting subjective assumptions 189

Table 49: Colligational sequences ich denke, dass…/ich glaube, dass.../ich bin der Meinung, dass… 190

Table 50: Sentence initial ich denke/ich glaube/meine Meinung 190

Table 51: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of PMEs denoting tentative conclusions 192

Table 52: Colligational Sequence es scheint 193

Table 53: Colligational Sequence mir scheint/es scheint mir 193

Table 54: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of PMEs denoting assumptions of possibility 195

Table 55: Distribution of adjective möglich and noun Möglichkeit 196

Table 56: Colligational sequences es ist möglich/es gibt die Möglichkeit 196

Table 57: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of PMEs denoting evidential meaning 197

Table 58: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of PMEs achieving a hedging of negations 198

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Table 59: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of PMEs achieving an intensification of negations 199

Table 60: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of PMEs denoting duty or compulsion 202

Table 61: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of PMEs denoting instructions/obligations 203

Table 62: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of PMEs denoting suggestions/advice 203

Table 63: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of PMEs denoting volition 204

Table 64: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of PMEs denoting attenuated volition/wishes 204

Table 65: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of PMEs denoting general affection or liking 206

Table 66: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of PMEs denoting possibility due to circumstances 207

Table 67: Types of –bar-adjectives in the PME category “possibility due to circumstances” 208

Table 68: Colligational sequence es ist (un)möglich… 209

Table 69: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of PMEs denoting possibility due to personal abilities 211

Table 70: Raw frequencies (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets) of PMEs denoting permission 212

Table 71: Overall frequencies of modal infinitive constructins in learner and native speaker corpora 214

Table 72: Raw figures of SEIN ZU across semantic meaning categories 214

Table 73: Colligational sequences es ist (ADJ) zu V, dass… 215

Table 74: Raw frequencies of infinitive verb types in SEIN ZU constructions 216

Table 75: Raw frequencies of colligational sequence sein adj zu inf 216

Table 76: Overall frequencies of Konjunktiv I forms in learner and native speaker corpora 219

Table 77: Overall frequencies of Konjunktiv II forms in learner and native speaker corpora 219

Table 78: Error frequencies: Konjunktiv instead of indicative verb forms 220

Table 79: Distribution of Konjunktiv II forms across verb categories 222

Table 80: Konjunktiv II verb categories as percentages of overall Konjunktiv II frequencies 222

Table 81: Konjunktiv II Lexical verb types and raw frequecy figures 223

Table 82: Overall frequencies of conditionals 226

Table 83: Error rate for conditional clause pattern P(I) – A(KII) 230

Table 84: Error rate for conditional clause pattern P(KII) – A(KII) 230

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Table 85: Errors in conditional clause pattern P(KII) – A(KII) 232

APPENDIX

Appendix A: Examples of learner texts

Appendix B: Periphrastic modal expressions

Appendix C: Data tables corresponding to overview charts

Appendix D: Examples of handouts with “Redemittel” (useful phrases) and exercises in

preparation for writing argumentative texts

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Acknowledgements

Academically, my thanks go to my supervisor, Dr. Andrew Wilson, for his help and

support throughout the process of this PhD and to Marjorie Wood for sorting out all

the administrative issues. I would also like to thank the Economics and Social

Research Council for providing funding for this PhD. A special thanks goes to the

students who gave their permission to use their material in my research and to the

colleagues in the Department of European Language and Cultures, especially Birgit

Smith, Jane Wilkinson, Manuela Piller, Ulrike Tancke and Judith Menzel, who helped

collect the data and also supported me through their friendship.

Personally, I would like to thank my parents for their never ending love and support

whatever I do. Thanks also to Sue, Ross and Alex – especially for all the extra

babysitting in the last year. I thank all my friends in Lancaster for inspiring

conversations, motivating pep-talks and pure and simple distraction. Special thanks

go to Prof. Maurice Kirby and Jo Hardman for letting me squat in their office.

Finally, and most importantly, I am deeply indebted to Will, whose love and care

always pull me through, and to Corin, who always makes sure that I know that work is

never that important. Last but not least, thank you Annika for putting a very definitive

deadline on this PhD.

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1. Introduction

This thesis examines, by way of a corpus investigation, usage patterns of modal

expressions by British learners of German as a foreign language. Corpus linguistics

is a set of tools and methods for the analysis of computerised databases of written or

spoken texts (corpora) which supports linguistic research across all branches of the

subject. With the relatively recent upsurge of corpus linguistic methods, it has

nowadays also been widely recognised that corpora of learner language provide

insightful information that can further our understanding of second language

acquisition through a detailed, yet quantitatively grounded, analysis of learners‟

language production (cf. e.g. Lorenz 1999; Granger et al. 2002; Myles 2005; Walter

and Grommes 2008). The seminal work by Sylivane Granger and her colleagues on

the ICLE corpus (International Corpus of Learner English) has certainly established

the comparative investigation of over-, under- and misuse patterns in different groups

of English language learners and native speakers as an accepted methodology for

studying learner corpora (Granger 1996). This so called „contrastive interlanguage

analysis‟ has become an important field of study for researchers interested in learner

language, but also for teachers and materials designers who strive to incorporate the

knowledge about what kind of language learners produce in their decisions about

what to teach and how to teach it.

However, while a wide variety of general and specialised1 corpora is available for

English, resources for the German language are far more restricted. Large, publically

accessible corpora of native speaker German are available, for example, from the

Institut für Deutsche Sprache in Mannheim (Institute for the German Language) or

the DWDS (Deutsches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache des 20. Jahrhunderts –

„Digital Dictionary of the 20th Century German Language‟), but they do not, in any

respect, reflect the breadth and diversity of English resources (for an overview of

German corpora cf. Lemnitzer and Zinsmeister 2006; Geyken 2009). For German

learner language, the situation is even more limited. At the time this study was

undertaken, no corpus of learner German of reasonable size existed that fulfilled the

strict design and sampling criteria that are crucial in order to obtain reliable

1 „General corpora‟ are large-scale corpora that attempt to reflect a specific language or variety in all its contexts of use. They consist of a large number of written and/or spoken texts to represent a cross-section of text-types, genres, registers and subject fields and are often used as the „norm‟ against which particular aspects of language use are measured. „Specialised corpora‟ are usually smaller corpora where the content is sampled from a particular language variety, subject area, genre or group of language users, often designed with a specific research purpose in mind.

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information2. The first major achievement of this study is therefore the compilation of

a German learner corpus (CLEG) that is comparable in design and size to the

subcorpora of the ICLE corpus, which is the most widely used corpus for studies of

learner language (cf. e.g. Granger 1998a). Secondly, it was necessary to compile a

comparable native speaker corpus (KEDS) in order to carry out contrastive

interlanguage analyses, as this type of corpus had equally not existed previously for

German. This corpus matches CLEG very closely with regard to text type and age

and expertise of writers. These new resources allow for a multitude of comparisons

between learners at different stages of proficiency and native speakers and open up

novel ways of gathering information about German as a foreign language.

The fact that the corpus captures a language other than English brings the added

advantage of allowing for comparisons across languages in order to investigate

universal patterns of learner language. The ICLE is made up of subcorpora of learner

English by learners with different L1 backgrounds. It is therefore possible to

determine certain features of learner writing as L1 dependent or independent. With a

corpus of learner German, comparisons with English learner language can also be

made that enable researchers to discover and establish certain features of learner

language as independent of a particular L2. This adds a new dimension of evidence

to learner language studies, which has the potential for giving wider implications in

second language acquisition research.

1.1 FOCUS OF THE STUDY

One of the major advantages of a corpus is its universality. Once it is compiled, the

corpus can serve as the empirical basis for any number of investigations into different

aspects of language. Within the scope of this thesis, of course, only one of these

aspects can be focused upon. As CLEG consists of argumentative texts written by

student learners, the central topic investigated here is modality.

Modality, as such, is an intriguing concept as it centres around the effect of a

single fundamental human trait, namely to be able to conceive of things as being

otherwise. Modality is grounded in the fact that human beings can, and often do, think

and behave as though things might be other than they actually are and “such a

worldview appears to constitute an essential part of the fabric of our everyday lives”

2 This situation has fundamentally changed with the release of the Falko corpus (Fehlerannotiertes Lernerkorpus – error annotated learner corpus) (cf. Lüdeling et al. 2005 and section 4.1.1 for details). This corpus was, however, not available at the time of data gathering and analysis for the present study.

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(Perkins 1983:6). Modality therefore plays a pivotal role in all texts and discourses

that deal with the discussion or examination of practical or theoretical problems and is

crucial for the process of argumentation and reasoning (Zifonun et al. 1997:1911;

Redder 2001:314).

The language learners that provide the empirical basis for the present study are

students of German as a foreign language in the British university system. In this

context of formal language instruction, the learners regularly perform tasks that

require reasoning and the discussion of problems. As the learners produce

argumentative texts3 as part of their university assessment, mastering expressions of

modality thus forms an integral and important part of the students‟ writing ability,

especially in the more advanced proficiency groups. Furthermore, the various

linguistic manifestations of modality are high frequency phenomena in the German

language (e.g. all modal verbs are ranked in the 100 most frequent words). Learners

are therefore confronted with them early on in the acquisition process and encounter

them frequently as soon as they begin to deal with authentic texts. However, many

learners appear to have difficulties in this area, even at an advanced stage, not just in

terms of grammatical and semantic errors, but also in terms of the rhetoric and

stylistic impact of certain modal expressions.

The present study therefore aims at clarifying, with the help of a learner corpus,

how learners of German make use of modal expressions, where the difficulties lie

and what the underlying reasons for particular usage patterns could be. This implies

that the study can be positioned within current research from three angles that

constitute the foundation for this study in terms of theory as well as research

methodology: modality, second language acquisition (SLA) and corpus linguistics.

First of all, the study has to be based on a theoretical understanding of the concept of

modality including the linguistic manifestations of the German modal system.

Secondly, as it is a study of learner language, it has to be placed within the context of

SLA interlanguage studies and finally, it will be argued that corpus analysis provides

a viable and fruitful methodological framework for investigating modality features in

learner language. The diagram below illustrates that, while there is a high interest

and research activity in all three of these areas (darker shades of grey indicate higher

research output), the present study is the first to combine all of them together:

3 The notion of an argumentative text-type is based on the framework of Werlich (1976), who distinguishes five text-types: narration, exposition, description, argumentation and instruction; according to Biber (1988) these are determined by text internal features, rather than by genre.

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FIGURE 1: POSITION OF A CORPUS STUDY OF MODALITY IN LEARNER GERMAN WITHIN THE WIDER

RESEARCH CONTEXT

1.2 INNOVATIONS, RESEARCH QUESTIONS, AIMS AND CLAIMS

Apart from the general gap in the research, which has been demonstrated in Figure 1

and which is filled by the present study, there are two specific innovations:

i) The study is based on a corpus of learner German. While a variety of learner

corpora are nowadays available for English, a German learner corpus of the scale

and design that was compiled for this study did not previously exist.

ii) The study includes an exhaustive list of modal expressions, which is essential for

a comprehensive study of modality in learner language. Previous research studies

either restricted their scope to one category of modality (usually epistemic) or to

one means (usually modal verbs). The current study is innovative insofar as it

includes all categories as well as all means of modality.

Corpus Study of Modality in

Learner German

SLA

Studies

Modality

Studies

Corpus

Studies

14

Within this research design, the following research questions are addressed:

1. Which modal expressions do learners use to express which modal meanings at

different stages of proficiency?

2. Where and how do these patterns of use differ from native speaker use of modal

expressions, i.e. do learners overuse or avoid certain modal expressions? Which

areas of modality are prone to misuse/errors?

3. What reasons can be indentified for the differences in use (L1 transfer,

intralingual difficulties, teaching materials)?

These research questions are addressed within an empirical research study that

sets out to pursue the following aims and seeks to substantiate the following claims:

Aims Claims

1. Identify a suitable theoretical

framework for the study of learner

modality. This framework has to be

based on semantic categorisations

and include all means of modal

expression.

A comprehensive study of learner

modality cannot be restricted to only one

category of modality or one type of modal

expressions. The analysis of previous

research will show that all modal

expressions have to be taken into

account to give an insightful picture

2. Identify a suitable methodological

framework for the study of learner

modality, that allows for the analysis of

a wide variety of modal expressions

The multiple-comparison approach to

learner corpus data provides meaningful

information for the study of learner

language. A corpus-driven approach

allows for the detection of indicative

features of learner language

3. Identify patterns of modality use in

learner language

Learners differ in their use of modal

expressions from native speakers but

also from learners at different stages of

proficiency

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4. Identify possible reasons for the

deviations in learner use of modal

expression on the basis of previous

modality research and current SLA

theories

The differences in learners‟ usage of

modality can be explained by and provide

corroborating evidence for a number of

universal and L1/L2 specific features of

learner language.

TABLE 1: AIMS AND CLAIMS OF THE PRESENTED STUDY

The thesis is structured in the following way:

Chapter 2 introduces the theoretical concept of modality. This starts off with a

general overview of the different notions and meanings that have been associated

with the term „modality‟ (2.1), before reviewing different accounts of modality

specifically in the German language (2.2). On the basis of this review a choice is

made for the account that forms the basis of the empirical investigation. This account

is then presented in detail (2.3).

Chapter 3 gives an overview of previous research on modality in second language

acquisition. Reference will be made to influential work on the development of modal

expressions in both natural and instructed language acquisition.

In Chapter 4, the methodological basis for the study is explained and justified. This

includes a short rationale of corpus research and learner corpus research in general

(5.1.1 and 5.1.2 respectively) and then details the specific methodological framework

that is adopted for the present investigation: the multiple-comparison approach

(5.1.3). In the second part of the methodology, this framework is applied to the study

of German learner modality and all necessary data gathering and analysis

procedures are introduced (5.2).

Chapter 5 constitutes the presentation of results. These are grouped, first of all, by

type of modal expression (i.e. modal verb, periphrastic modal expression, modal

infinitives, Konjunktiv mood). After brief overviews of these groups, detailed results

are given for individual modal expressions. Links to results for other modal

expressions are made where possible.

In Chapter 6, these results are discussed and evaluated in the context of previous

research on learner modality and current theories of second language acquisition.

Chapter 7 concludes the thesis with a brief review of the aims and claims set out

at the beginning and some remarks on further research.

16

In summary, the design of this study of modality in argumentative learner German

seeks to provide a new and insightful picture into a specific aspect of learner

language that has previously not been investigated with such comprehensiveness. It

may also yield information which points to more universal, i.e. language-independent,

features of learner language that could be useful for the development of improved

teaching methods and materials. The study of modality in learner German is therefore

deemed to be a valuable enterprise not just for the advancement of knowledge of this

particular aspect but also in the wider context of second language acquisition

research.

Before starting with the theoretical considerations on modality, I would like to give

some explanations on notation as used in this thesis: modal verbs and modal

infinitives are given in block capitals (e.g. WOLLEN, HABEN ZU) where they refer to

the lemma rather than specific verb forms. A distinction is, however, made between

modal verbs in the indicative and the subjunctive (e.g. KÖNNEN (ind.) vs. KÖNNTE

(subj.)), as these distinctions are crucial to the present investigation. German

examples and terminology are in italics, as are English examples in the running text.

Double quotes are used for citations, single quotes are used for terminology, i.e.

concepts and categories. Translations are given for all German terminology and

examples in order to make clear for English-speaking readers the points that are

illustrated in the German examples. In many cases simple one-to-one translations

(e.g. of the modal verbs or one-word modal adverbials) are sufficient. Some

translations, however, include glosses where the English translation does not show

the lexical or grammatical issue under discussion. I have tried to stay as closely to

the German text as possible, e.g. modal verbs are translated as modal verbs in all

cases where this is possible. There are, of course, always alternatives with different

modal expressions, but as the translations here are intended purely for the benefit of

non-German readers, this option is the most useful for the intended illustrative

purpose.

17

2. Theoretical Considerations on Modality

2.1 THE CONCEPT OF MODALITY

The concept of modality has come a long way as a topic of interest to formal logic -

and nowadays computer science - as well as philosophy and linguistic reasoning. But

despite the fact that the study of modality originated with Aristotle in the 4th century

B.C. and continued to produce a wealth of publications throughout antiquity, the

Middle Ages and modern times, it was only in the 20th century that linguists started to

concentrate their efforts on the study of modality and the functions of modal features

in individual languages and from a language typological point of view.

However, as Dittmar and Reich (1993:IX) claim, much of these earlier efforts

constituted “theoretical outlines”, and “new insights [...] have been gained by

introspection” while “empirical research on concepts and verification of hypotheses

have [...] been widely neglected” [my emphasis].

Even though the latter part of this quote is no longer quite justified in the face of a

series of empirical studies on modality (some of which will be discussed in this

section), the majority of the literature on modality is indeed more concerned with

theoretical attempts to define modality as a linguistic category. On this basis attempts

are made at defining the range of linguistic phenomena to be included under the term

„modality‟ in any given language.

This has proved immensely difficult and is probably the reason why many of the

accounts of modality concentrate on theoretical considerations: As Öhlschläger

(1984:229) points out in his research review of modality in German4: “While the

expressions commonly subsumed under the term „modal‟ can certainly be considered

one of the most interesting phenomena, it is equally certain to be one of the most

difficult to describe not only for the German language but also for other languages.”5

To this date there is no generally agreed linguistic definition of modality, which also

results in considerable disagreement over linguistic expressions of modal meanings.

In the following sections, the basic issues and controversies concerning the concept

of modality will be summarised briefly. (For an extensive discussion see e.g. Palmer‟s

(1986) “Mood and Modality”, which constitutes a comprehensive attempt at a

4 For ease of reading, quotes from German literature are translated into English in the running text; the original quotes are given in footnotes.

5 "Die gemeinhin als modal bezeichneten Ausdrücke gehören sicherlich zu den interessantesten, aber

ebenso sicher auch zu den am schwierigsten zu beschreibenden Erscheinungen des Deutschen wie auch anderer Sprachen“.

18

systematic and principled cross-linguistic description of modality.) On the basis of this

outline, which will deal mainly but not exclusively with approaches to modality in the

German language, I will explain which definition will be adopted as the theoretical

foundation for the present empirical study and, consequently, which linguistic items

will be included in the investigation.

2.1.1 Definitions of modality

As the plural in this heading suggests, there is a plethora of definitions of modality

that reflect not only the various fields of research that are concerned with the topic,

such as formal logic, philosophy and linguistics, but also the different schools of

thought within these fields. However, since they all use the same term it is assumed

that there is some common notion of what „modality‟ means, at least on a very basic

and broad level.

As mentioned above, a lot of the groundwork on modality originates in formal logic,

where modal logic is concerned with the logic of possibility, necessity and

contingency. In a pioneering work on modality within this logical framework, von

Wright (1951:1-2) postulates four „modes‟:

alethic (modes of truth)

epistemic (modes of knowing)

deontic (modes of obligation)

existential (modes of existence)

which are linked through the two “central notions of traditional modal logic” (Lyons

1977:787) – possibility and necessity.

This kind of categorisation, however, is set up in order to resolve issues in formal

logic. It does not necessarily follow from this that these categories can simply be

transferred to describe the systems of modal expressions and relations in a linguistic

context. Palmer (1986:11) argues, for example, that in language “there is no formal

grammatical distinction […] between alethic and epistemic modality”, i.e. the ways to

“state what is logically true and what the speaker believes, as a matter of fact, to be

true”. It is therefore neither possible nor necessary to keep this distinction in a

linguistic account of modality. It has, however, become apparent for linguistic models

of modality that it is useful to make a fundamental distinction between two types of

modality: epistemic and deontic.

19

2.1.2 Epistemic and deontic modality

The distinction between epistemic and deontic modality is based on the fact that most

modal verbs in many languages (including English and German, but also non-Indo-

European languages) can have both epistemic and deontic interpretations. Without

context – which usually serves to resolve ambiguity – the following sentence can

theoretically be read in terms of “knowledge/belief/opinion of the speaker” (epistemic)

(cf. Lyons 1977:793) or, equally, in terms of “permission/obligation of the subject”

(deontic) (ibid:823). It works the same way in English and German6:

(1)

He must understand that we

mean business.

Er muss verstehen, dass wir es ernst meinen.

epistemic „Surely he understands that we mean business‟

deontic „It is essential that he understand that we mean business‟

Within this framework, which has clearly been developed out of the logical models,

the relationship between the two types of modality – epistemic and deontic – depends

firstly on the link between possibility and necessity and secondly on an assumed link

between possibility and permission on the one hand and necessity and obligation on

the other (cf. Steele et al. 1981). The first proposition (the link between possibility and

necessity) is usually demonstrated through negation: If we take the proposition Er ist

krank (He is ill), the expression of an epistemic necessity of that proposition (2) is

equivalent to the negative possibility of the inverse proposition (2a) or inverse to the

negative possibility of the same proposition (2b):

(2) Er muss krank sein. 'He must be ill.' necessity that p: „It is necessarily the case that he is ill.‟

(2a) Er kann nicht gesund sein.

'He cannot be healthy.' negative possibility of negative p: „It is not possible that he is not ill = that he is healthy‟

(2b) Er kann nicht krank sein. ‟He cannot be ill.‟ negative possibility that p: „It is not possible that he is ill‟

6 Example from Coates (1983:16).

20

The second proposition about the relationships between possibility and permission

on the one hand and necessity and obligation on the other is often assumed without

justification or explanation and seems to be borne out of the fact that in many

languages the same modal verbs can be used for epistemic and deontic modality –

which actually renders the explanation circular.

However, the question does arise as to what the semantic connection between

these two types of modality is to produce such an overlap in forms of modal verbs7. A

compelling explanation is advocated by Sweetser (1982, 1990) within a cognitive

framework. She argues on the basis of first language acquisition research and the

historical development of modal verbs that “the epistemic world is understood in

terms of the sociophysical world” (1982:492) by cognitive extension. This means that

deontic modality refers to various forces or barriers in the socio-physical world, while

epistemic modality, through metaphorical processes, refers to parallel forces in the

world of reasoning (premises, previous knowledge, assumptions). Therefore,

example (1) (He must understand that we mean business.) above in its deontic sense

means that the subject is obliged by the speaker‟s or some other authority to carry

out the proposed action. By extension, the epistemic reading means that the

premises in the speaker‟s mind (through assumption or previous knowledge) oblige

them to draw the conclusion that the proposed action is being carried out. This

cognitive approach is also shared by Heine, Claudi and Hünnemeyer (1991:176):

“The relation between deontic and epistemic modality can in fact be described as

being metaphorical in nature, involving a transfer between two domains of

conceptualization.”

In a similar vein, Brünner and Redder (1983:46) propose that, methodically, modal

verbs are to be treated as an integrative system, in which what they call „inferential‟

(epistemic) and „non-inferential‟ (non-epistemic) meanings can be determined within

an action-theoretical framework. This means that the meanings of modal verbs are

systematically related to elements of action processes, which allows for the fact that

modal verbs (unlike other lexical expressions) only acquire their concrete meaning ad

hoc in a given discourse context (ibid:39). In that way, epistemic uses of modal verbs

7 There is extensive discussion whether this overlap in forms is a manifestation of monosemy or polysemy. Monosemantic approaches (e.g. Ehrmann 1966, Kratzer 1978, Brünner and Redder 1983, Brinkmann 1971) assert a „basic meaning‟ for each modal. Supporters of polysemantic approaches (e.g. Leech 1971, Calbert 1975) on the other hand deal with modals in terms of separate categories, which are assumed to be discrete. To date, “neither approach is wholly satisfactory” (Coates 1983:9) and Coates argues that “it is not simply a case of adopting or rejecting discrete categorisation, or of preferring a monosemantic or a polysemantic approach; analysis of the modals makes clear that both categorical and non-categorical approaches are relevant and therefore an adequate description of the meanings of modals must achieve a synthesis of these two approaches.” (ibid:10)

21

can be explained as derivatives of non-epistemic uses8: while non-epistemic uses

relate directly to their according action processes, epistemic uses relate to the mental

processes that are the precursor of these action processes. Brinkmann (1971) also

proposes a classification of modal verbs based on the notion of actions (be they

physical or mental). His attempt to describe modal verbs in terms of general

communicative functions is fruitful because it arrives at more abstract and systematic

categorisations. Brinkmann‟s framework will be discussed in more detail in section

2.2.2 as the basis for the current investigation.

Brünner and Redder‟s (1983) approach is also compatible with another framework

that proposes one basic meaning for each modal. This is Kratzer's (e.g. 1978, 1991,

forthcoming) account of modality within a Mögliche-Welt-Semantik (possible-world

semantics) framework. Here, modal verbs have a constant, basic meaning and the

different interpretations of the modal verbs are determined by varying

Redehintergründe (discourse backgrounds) – i.e. information supplied through the

utterance situation – which propose a deontic, epistemic etc. reading on the

background of a „possible world‟, in which the suggested proposition is true. This

framework is also adopted for the account of modality in the "Grammatik der

deutschen Sprache" (Zifonun et al. 1997) produced by the Institut für deutsche

Sprache (IDS), which constitutes a modern and one of the most comprehensive

descriptive grammars of the German language: “For each modal verb we therefore

assume one meaning and one syntactic category. This one meaning usually entails

several types of informational backgrounds within one modal relation” (emphasis in

original)9.

All of these approaches advocate the view that the meaning of modal verbs is

entirely dependent on context. This context can be provided by the immediate

surrounding discourse, but Nehls (1986:5) demonstrates that even very broad

contexts such as the speaker‟s or hearer‟s „experience of life‟ can influence how a

modal verb is interpreted: Whereas MUST in the sentence

(3) You must be drunk.

would, in most circumstances, be interpreted epistemically as a confident conclusion

of the stated proposition, MUST in the sentence

8 According to some linguists, rather than through metaphorical processes this derivation is achieved through the conventionalisation of “context-induced reinterpretation” (Heine, Claudi and Hünnemeyer 1991) where specific contexts or circumstances invite new inferences or converstational implicatures and ultimately lead to the emergence of new grammatical meanings. (See also e.g. Traugott and König 1991.)

9 "Wir gehen somit für jedes Modalverb von einer Bedeutung und einer syntaktischen Kategorie aus. Diese jeweils eine Bedeutung umfaßt in der Regel mehrere Arten von Redehintergründen unter einer modalen Relation."

22

(4) You must be sober.

would probably rather be interpreted deontically in the sense of a strong obligation.

2.1.3 Other types of modality and other means of expressing modality

It has to be noted at this point that the majority of the earlier theoretical approaches to

modality concentrated almost exclusively on modal verbs. Öhlschläger (1984:230)

lists several reasons for this preoccupation (and while he only discusses work on

German modality, the same reasons hold true for English). Amongst these are their

unique morphological status (see 2.3.1.1) and etymology, their semantic ambiguity,

but above all the fact that despite their vast variety of meanings they seem to form

some kind of closed semantic system. It is not surprising then that the most influential

work on German modality started out with models of the semantic and paradigmatic

relationships between modal verbs (e.g. Bech 1949) and descriptions of their

variations in function and meaning (e.g. Welke 1965). Even later models of modality

that are based on definitions of modality explicitly not restricted to modal verbs, treat

them as the core repertoire of modality and base their models on them. For example,

Calbert (1975:1) sets out to develop a logico-semantic system of modality as a model

for all utterances with expressions that convey “various degrees of „possibility‟ and

„necessity‟”, but then is again mainly concerned with modal verbs. This focus on

modal verbs, however, brings with it two fundamental issues.

First of all, when investigating modal verbs one cannot fail to realise that they can

be used to express more than epistemic and deontic meanings in the sense

discussed so far. In German, modal verbs are not only used to express speaker

commitment in terms of possibility and necessity (the logical definition of epistemic),

but also in terms of what kind of evidence there is for a proposition („quotative‟). The

modal verbs SOLLEN and WOLLEN can be used for so called „evidentials‟ to express

either what someone other than the speaker or the subject says:

(5) Er soll sich eine Luxusvilla in Monaco gekauft haben. „He is said to have bought a luxury villa in Monaco.‟10

or to express what the grammatical subject of the sentence claims:

(6) Er will auf der Hochzeit der Königin gewesen sein. „He claims to have been to the Queen‟s wedding.‟

Another kind of modality involves the modal verb KÖNNEN. In the sentence

10

In English, evidentials are not grammaticalised in modal verbs.

23

(7) Er kann sehr gut Klavier spielen. „He can play the piano very well.‟

the modal verb expresses a meaning of „having the ability or the mental/physical etc.

disposition to...‟, which is neither epistemic nor deontic, but what has been termed

„dynamic‟ modality (cf. von Wright 1951:28, Palmer 1979:7). There is therefore again

considerable discussion whether everything that can be expressed by modal verbs,

including evidential and dynamic modality, should be subsumed under the term

modality (a view that e.g. Welke (1965), Brinkmann (1971), Zifonun et al. (1997)

embrace, but Öhlschläger (1984) opposes).

Some linguists, however, identify even more types of modality. These other types

usually arise when modality is defined very broadly, as e.g. by Rescher (1968:24-6):

“A proposition is presented by a complete, self-contained statement which, taken as a

whole, will be true or false […]. When such a proposition is itself made subject to

some further qualification of such kind that the entire resulting complex is itself once

again a proposition, then this qualification is said to represent a modality to which the

original proposition is subjected.” This (too) broad definition (cf. Palmer 1986:12)

leads Rescher to identify not only alethic, epistemic and deontic modality, but

additionally also

„temporal‟ (It is sometimes/often/always the case...)

„boulomaic‟11 (It is hoped/feared/regretted/desired that...)

„evaluative‟ (It is a good/ wonderful/bad/horrible thing that...)

„Causal‟ (The state of affairs will bring it about/prevent (impede) its coming about

that...)

and three types of „conditional‟ modalities.

The problem with this definition and is that one of Rescher‟s types of modality can be

applied to virtually every complex sentence, which neither helps to clarify the nature

of modality nor to identify a set of linguistic expressions of modality.

On the other hand, Rescher‟s account at least considers other lexical expressions

that can convey modal meanings and de-focuses modal verbs. And this is the second

of the two issues arising from concentrating on modal verbs: the negligence of other

means to express modality. In empirical research, the restriction to modal verbs is

sometimes justified by the purpose of the study. Coates (1983), for example,

specifically sets out to use corpus analysis in order to develop a model of “The

11

This is usually referred to as „volitives‟.

24

Semantics of the Modal Auxiliaries” in English and thus seeks to contribute to a

clearer picture of the meaning relationships between, specifically, modal verbs.

(Although she recognises paraphrases of modal verbs, such as necessary for,

advisable for, perhaps, possible that etc., they are not included in her analysis.)

Palmer (1979:1) on the other hand, restricts his account of “Modality and the English

Modals” to modal verbs simply by stating that “there is a grammatical, or semantic-

grammatical, category called modality and [...] it is expressed in English by the modal

verbs”, which results in a rather unjustified exclusion of any other means of modal

expression.

More recent work on modality, and especially corpus studies, do, however,

acknowledge that modal meanings are quite commonly expressed by a variety of

modal devices besides modal verbs and incorporate those in their investigations (for

English cf. for example Perkins 1983, Holmes 1988, Hoye 1997, Biber et al. 1999,

Aijmer 2002; for German cf. for example Wichmann and Nielsen 2000).

For German, Öhlschläger (1984:231) specifically identifies it as a "Vorteil"

(advantage), that e.g. Calbert's system of modality is not restricted to modal verbs but

includes other modal devices, for instance lexical verbs such as verlangen,

wünschen, erlauben behaupten, annehmen etc. (demand, wish, allow, claim, assume

etc.). From a contrastive point of view, Nehls (1986:176ff) is able to empirically

underpin Edmondson et al.'s (1977:256) remark that, generally speaking, German

epistemic modality is more often than in English expressed through modal adverbs

such as sicherlich, wahrscheinlich, vielleicht (surely, probably, perhaps) or other

verbal, adjectival or nominal constructions rather than through modal verbs. For

English, the opposite is true as the modal verb occupies a much more central

position, especially in epistemic modality (cf. Leech and Svartvik 1975:292). Perkins

(1983:104) argues that this is the case because the modal verbs are more integrated

into the grammatical and syntactic system of the English sentence and are less

specialised in their meaning than other modal expressions.

2.1.4 Terminological differences

The debate over how to define modality and what to include as modal expressions is

far from resolved. However, there seems to be a general consensus to keep a

dichotomous distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic modality. In this

25

dichotomy, evidentials are usually subsumed under epistemic modality12, whereas

other types of modality such as deontic, dynamic or existential are grouped together

as non-epistemic modality. This is also sometimes referred to as root modality.

Coates makes the point that trying to separate different non-epistemic meanings into

discrete categories (like deontic, dynamic etc.) leads to “arbitrary cut-off points” that

“obscure the essential unity of the Root modals” (1983:21).

In general, the choice of categories and most of all terminology is strongly

dependent on the theoretical framework that the respective researchers adopt.

Realising that – unlike modality in the logical sense – “the overall picture of the

modals is extremely messy and untidy” (Palmer 1979:40), many linguists have turned

to other approaches and frameworks to address the concept of modality. This leads

to a variety of promising approaches to modality but also to a confusing wealth of

categorisations and terminology (for a recent overview of theories and terminology

see also Droessinger 2004). The following (far from exhaustive) list should illustrate

the diversity of terms that have been used just for these two basic categories of

epistemic and non-epistemic modality. The differences in terminology are simply

grounded in the fact that modality is explored within different theoretical frameworks:

12

Cf. however Fagan (2001) for an argument that the evidential functions of the German modal verbs WOLLEN and SOLLEN cannot be included under epistemic modality.

26

Linguists advocating this terminology

epistemic modality non-epistemic modality

Coates (1983), Sweetser (1982)

epistemic root

Calbert and Vater (1975), Brünner and Redder (1983)

inferential

non-inferential

Helbig and Buscha (2001), Palmer (1986)13

subjective objective

Palmer (1990) epistemic discourse-oriented (subject-oriented for dynamic modality)

Quirk et al. (1985) extrinsic intrinsic

Bybee and Fleischmann (1995), Heine (1995)

epistemic agent-oriented

Nehls (1986) wahrscheinlichkeitsorientiert

(probability oriented)

handlungsorientiert (action oriented)

Brinkmann (1971) Bedingungen für die Geltung einer Information (conditions for the validity of information)

Voraussetzungen für eine Realisierung (conditions for an implementation)

Diewald (1999) deiktisch (deictic)

nicht-deiktisch (non-deictic)

TABLE 2: OVERVIEW OF TERMINOLOGY FOR EPISTEMIC AND NON-EPISTEMIC MODALITY

In summary, we can determine that there is a common core in the linguistic

definitions of modality – modality characterises the relationship between speaker and

predication and between predication and reality (Augustin 2006:13). Despite this,

however, it is still widely disputed in the vast amount of thorough explorations of

modality within various theoretical frameworks how modality should be categorised

and which linguistic means count as modal expressions. This wide range of different

theoretical positions, schools of thought and sometimes language-specific linguistic

traditions is reflected in a whole jungle of terminology that has become almost

impossible to trace. The discussion is ongoing and far from resolved, so before an

investigation into modality in learner language can begin, two fundamental points

need to be determined:

13

N.B. These terms are particularly confusing as in some accounts the subjective/objective distinction is a simple replacement of the terms epistemic/non-epistemic (Helbig and Buscha 2001, Dreyer and Schmitt 2000). In other models, however, subjectivity/objectivity is a subdivision of epistemic/non-epistemic modality, so there can be instances of subjective non-epistemic and objective epistemic modality (e.g. Coates 1983, Palmer 1986).

27

1. Which theoretical approach to modality provides a sound basis for the investigation

of learner modality and which types of modality should be included?

2. Which types of modality does the selected approach entail and which linguistic

expressions of these types are to be included in the investigation?

The following sections are dedicated to answering these questions and presenting

the model of modality that has been chosen as the theoretical basis for the present

study and thus to developing a detailed picture of the object of investigation.

2.2 MODALITY IN THE GERMAN LANGUAGE

From the previous section it has become clear that the concept of modality is rather

elusive and 'unwilling' to lend itself to any clear-cut definitions or categorisations. A

wide variety of approaches with different foci have been pointed out and all seem to

have some stronger as well as weaker points with regards to their suitability for the

present investigation, be it because of underlying conceptual or practical reasons.

Palmer (1986:6) stresses that it is “often very difficult to decide what to include and

what to exclude from a grammatical study of modality” as “both semantic

considerations and judgements about grammaticality have to be made

simultaneously”. As this investigation is less concerned with the grammatical study of

modality but rather with the interlanguage modal system of learners, the deciding

factors for an appropriate theoretical framework and definition of modality must be

determined by the purpose of the study.

2.2.1 Requirements of a theoretical approach for the investigation into learner modality

The present study investigates usage patterns of modality features by second

language learners. This means that the account of modality that is chosen for this

investigation has to define modality and modal expressions in an integrative way that

provides a sound theoretical basis for the production of meaningful information about

how second language learners use modal expressions in comparison to native

speakers and how these patterns change with advancing proficiency. The term „use‟

here includes e.g. counts and comparisons of frequencies of certain grammatical and

lexical items, but it goes beyond that. The nature of the corpus data is such that it

allows for more detailed analysis of differences and distributions with regard to

various semantic levels as well as different contextual factors. An appropriate model

28

of modality must therefore provide systematic categorisations of the semantic

functions of modal expressions. As this analysis aims to provide information that

should, eventually, benefit the learners in their acquisition of a native speaker-like

system of modality, the approach to modality in learner language has to start out with

the learner‟s needs in this particular area. On the one hand, language learners have

to come to terms with the morphological and grammatical features of modal

expressions, but beyond that they also have to master the semantic and pragmatic

system of modality and with it its various lexical manifestations in the target language

in order to adequately express modal meanings. And while the morphological and

grammatical rules for expressing various kinds of modality are already relatively

complicated, the actual use of these expressions in terms of their semantic and

pragmatic meaning, but also in terms of their relative frequencies and contextual

restraints, is even more intricate and complex.

At the same time, expressions of modality are high-frequency phenomena in

German, so learners are confronted with them early on in the learning process and

will develop an extensive and complex interlanguage system for modality over a long

period of time. For these reasons, it is proposed for the present study to adopt a

relatively broad research scope that allows taking into account the full breadth of

modal means that learners are presented with and have to deal with in the course of

their foreign language acquisition14. This means that, on the one hand, an account of

modality is chosen that is form-based in a way that it includes all different meanings

of modal verbs, even those that some researchers exclude as not modal in a stricter

sense (e.g. dynamic use of KÖNNEN, Öhlschläger 1984:242). On the other hand, an

account of modality is needed that is content-based in a way that it includes all the

different linguistic means to express modality (that is to say, not only modal verbs, but

also modal adverbials and other lexical expressions) and categorises them according

to abstract and systematic semantic criteria.

This is particularly important as differences in semantic categories across

languages can lead to confusions and difficulties with certain modal items. As Nehls

(1986:5), in his comprehensive contrastive analysis of English and German modal

verbs, states: “The author knows from his own experience, teaching at university

level, how persistent errors involving modal verbs are, from first year right through to

final exams. These errors usually stem from two sources: L1 German interferences

14

It has to be noted, however, that I follow the position of Kątny (1993:42) here, who views modality as "an optional category of the sentence" where the indicative is "unmarked in terms of modality". This study will therefore concentrate on utterances that display some explicit form of lexical or grammatical marker of modality.

29

and confusions within the English modal verb system, which can be traced back to

the inability to semantically discriminate between different modal meanings on the

part of the learners.”15 And there is no reason why the same should not be true in the

opposite direction, i.e. for L1 English speakers learning German. In addition to

employing an inclusive definition of modality, contrastive information on the German

and English modal system will therefore be drawn upon in order to cast as wide a net

as possible to uncover patterns and potential problems in the learners‟ interlanguage

systems of modality. The following sections will explain concretely which items are

included in the analysis on the basis of the theoretical framework underlying this

study. However, as Palmer (1986:6) remarks concisely, “some degree of arbitrariness

in the choice of items is inevitable.”

2.2.2 Brinkmann‟s account of the modal system

An account of modality that offers the kind of abstract semantic categorisation at the

same time as comprehensiveness in terms of linguistic means which have been

defined as the two key components for a suitable theoretical basis for the present

study is provided by Brinkmann (1971).

Brinkmann's account is born out of the Inhaltsbezogene Grammatik16, a

specifically German development of structuralism theories based on the linguistic

philosophy of Wilhelm v. Humboldt17. In this theory, language is taken as a formative

activity of the human mind that constitutes a Zwischenwelt (in-between world)

between reality and thinking. The approach to grammar is holistic insofar as it is

concerned with the exploration of these linguistic Zwischenwelten as mediating

instances between human beings and reality, which is captured and structured by

language.

Unlike other accounts of modality in grammatical and lexicological volumes that try

to list all the different meaning variants of modal expressions (cf. for example Schulz

and Griesbach 1955, Helbig and Buscha 2001), Brinkmann centres his approach to

modality around the abstract relations that modal expressions establish. Modality in

15

"Der Verfasser weiß aus seiner eigenen Erfahrung im Universitätsunterricht, wie hartnäckig sich die Fehler im Bereich der Modalverben vom ersten Semester bis hin zum Abschlußexamen erweisen. Dabei liegen die Fehlerquellen einerseits in der Interferenz der deutschen Muttersprache, andererseits aber auch in Verwechslungen innerhalb des englischen Modalverbsystems, die auf ein zu geringes semantisches Unterscheidungsvermögen in diesem Bereich zurückzuführen sind."

16 Content-based grammar, also called Sprachinhaltsforschung (language content research), developed in the 1950s by Leo Weisgerber.

17 Note, however, that influences of these theories can also be traced in anthropological metalinguistic theories outside Europe, especially in the work of Benjamin Whorf (1956) and Edward Sapir (1958) (“principle of linguistic relativity“) and George Lakoff (1987).

30

this theory is defined from a communicative functional point of view, which on the one

hand leads to more systematic meaning categories, and on the other hand allows for

the inclusion of a variety of linguistic expressions. He begins his account of the modal

system with the following definition:

“Modality is defined as the validity that is linguistically assigned to an utterance.”18

(Brinkmann 1971:357).

He goes on to ascertain that the interpretation of this validity depends on the

communicative aim:

“How the validity is to be understood is expressed through different processes,

which operate on two different levels – two levels of modality. An utterance is

either designed to change reality or to grasp reality. The former is concerned

with reality, or more precisely: an implementation, the latter with truth. The finite

verb formulates either conditions for the implementation or conditions for the

validity of information.”19 [my emphasis] (Brinkmann 1971:359)

These two levels correspond loosely to the non-epistemic/epistemic distinction, but

the crucial point here is that modal expressions are not described in terms of „basic

meanings‟ but in terms of abstract relations (cf. Brünner and Redder 1983:36). To

illustrate this point, Brinkmann (1971:359f) gives the following example:

(8) Er soll Urlaub machen.

He determines that the fundamental function of the modal verb SOLLEN is to signal

the involvement of an external authority or intermediary agent other than the subject

or the speaker. How the role of this external authority functions within a concrete

utterance, however, is not dependent on the modal verb SOLLEN, but on the type of

communication. On the first level of modality, the speaker (e.g. the boss of a

company) addresses the intermediary agent in order to achieve the desired

implementation („Tell him to go on holiday‟). On the second level of modality, the

speaker passes on a piece of information that he has received from the (in the case

of SOLLEN unspecified) external agent („He is said to be on holiday‟). The modal

verb itself only denotes a general aspect of meaning, which is only concretised

18

"Unter Modalität wird die Geltung verstanden, die einer Äußerung sprachlich zuerkannt wird." 19

“Wie die Geltung gemeint ist, bringen andere Verfahrensweisen zum Ausdruck, die auf zwei verschiedenen Ebenen operieren, zwei Ebenen der Modalität. [...] Entweder ist eine sprachliche Äußerung darauf angelegt, die Wirklichkeit zu ändern [...] oder die Wirklichkeit zu erfassen [...]. Im ersten Fall kommt es auf die Wirklichkeit, genauer: eine Realisierung an, im zweiten Fall auf die Wahrheit. Die Personalform des Verbums formuliert entweder Voraussetzungen für die Realisierung oder Bedingungen für die Geltung einer Information."

31

through the connection with a specific infinite verb and through its employment in a

specific situation – they are entirely context dependent.

Brinkmann (1971:361) shows that apart from modal verbs there are three other

types of linguistic means that can fulfil the function of assigning an assessment of the

validity to an utterance, so that he ends up with a list of four linguistic options to

express modality:

1. Modal verbs (KÖNNEN, MÜSSEN, WOLLEN, SOLLEN, MÖGEN, DÜRFEN,

WERDEN)

2. Modal adverbs (e.g. möglicherweise, vielleicht, sicherlich)

3. Modal infinitives (ist … zu, hat … zu)

4. Mood (subjunctive)

These four options will be described in detail in the following section. First,

however, some further general remarks have to be added. Brinkman (1971:362)

picks out modal verbs and subjunctive mood as the most important means for

shaping the modal system, probably because they are the two most flexible and

unspecified means for expressing modality20. In his further explorations of the modal

system, he therefore concentrates on these two means and only makes brief

comments about modal adverbs and modal infinitives. In order to obtain a more

comprehensive picture of all of the modal means, I will draw upon Zifonun et al.

(1997) for additional information. Their “Grammatik der Deutschen Sprache” is an

attempt at an academic German grammar that describes the current state of the art in

German grammar without actually adopting just one theoretical perspective. In the

different parts of the grammar they attempt to develop the complementary effects of

functional and form-based theories. Although they base their model of modality on

different linguistic theories (for the semantic analysis mainly Kratzer‟s (1991)

Mögliche-Welt-Semantik) and use different terminology, their approach displays

some fundamental similarities to Brinkmann‟s. The most prominent one is that

modality is viewed as a concept that establishes through discourse how the validity

(Geltung) of a proposition is to be understood. By introducing a modal element into

an utterance,

“the speaker does not directly claim the truth of a proposition within his/her

understanding of the world, but he/she relates this proposition to a specific

discourse background. These discourse backgrounds are part of the text- or

discourse knowledge: They are introduced in texts or discourses by the 20

“Am wichtigsten für die Gestaltung der Modalität sind von diesen vier Möglichkeiten der Modus des Verbums und das Modalverb.“

32

author or speaker, are perceived by the addressees or participants in an

interaction and are dynamically altered in the course of the interaction.”21

(Zifonun et al. 1997:1882) [emphasis in original]

A second similarity between Brinkmann and Zifonun et al. is that both accounts do

not pertain solely to modal verbs, but what Brinkmann calls the whole „modal system‟.

While Brinkmann, however, focuses on modal verbs and mood, Zifonun et al.

(1997:1884) stress that "the concept of the discourse background is not only to be

applied to the description of modal verbs, but also to other modal expressions,

especially the modal adverbials.”22. This is an important point in the pursuit of a

comprehensive study of modality in learner language. At the same time, they point

out the semantic similarity (N.B. not synonymy) of modal adverbials and modal verbs

(Zifonun et al. 1997:1260), which again underlines the goal of comprehensiveness in

their approach:

(9) Er hat vielleicht/sicher einen guten Grund gehabt, nicht zu kommen. He has maybe/surely a good reason had not to come „Maybe/Surely he had a good reason not to come.‟

(10) Er kann/muss einen guten Grund gehabt haben, nicht zu kommen. He can/must a good reason have had not to come „He may/must have had a good reason not to come.‟

So far, we could establish that Brinkmann (1971) – supplemented with additional

information from Zifonun et al. (1997) – offers an account of the German modal

system that can serve as a fruitful basis for the investigation of learner modality as it

provides both an abstract and systematic semantic description of modal meanings

and inclusivity in terms of linguistic expressions. In the following section, the formal

and semantic properties of the four types of modal means that have been introduced

in this section will be discussed in more detail.

21

“…ein Sprecher nicht direkt einen Wahrheitsanspruch für den thematisierten Sachverhaltsentwurf gegenüber der Welt, wie er sie sieht, anmeldet, sondern daß er diesen Sachverhaltsentwurf auf einen speziellen Redehintergrund bezieht. Einzelne Redehintergründe sind Teile des Text- oder Diksurswissens: Sie werden in Texten oder Diskursen durch den Autro bzw. Sprecher eingebracht, durch die Adressaten oder Teilnehmer einer Interaktion wahrgenommen und im weiteren Verlauf dynamisch verändert.“

22 “[d]as Konzept des Redehintergrundes ist im übrigen nicht nur zur Beschreibung der Modalverben, sondern auch anderer Modalwörter, vor allem der modalen Adverbialia vorzusehen.“

33

2.3 LINGUISTIC MEANS FOR EXPRESSING MODALITY

In this section, the four linguistic means of expressing modality in German will be

presented in more detail. The focus of this description will be a summarising

categorisation of their semantic properties, but formal aspects will also be included

where necessary and appropriate. Unless otherwise indicated, the following details

are based on Brinkmann (1971) and Zifonun et al. (1997).

2.3.1 Modal verbs

The German modal verbs are MÜSSEN, KÖNNEN, WOLLEN, SOLLEN, DÜRFEN,

MÖGEN. All of these verbs are available for both levels of modality, conditions for

implementation (non-epistemic modality) and validity of information (epistemic

modality), but they display different formal and grammatical restrictions within these

two types. It is therefore necessary to introduce some formal characteristics of modal

verbs first, before the semantic categorisation according to Brinkmann (1971) is

presented. A case will be made later on for the inclusion of WERDEN, which is only

available for epistemic modality.

2.3.1.1 Formal characteristics

Morphologically and syntactically modal verbs exhibit the following characteristics23

(examples from Zifonun et al. (1997:1255ff)):

1. They govern the bare infinitive (without zu).

(11) Ich muss gehen. „I must go.‟

2. If they are not used with an infinite verb they can govern a directional complement:

(12) Ich will nach Hause. I want to home „I want to go home.‟

3. The modal verbs WOLLEN (want), MÖGEN (like) and KÖNNEN (can) can also act

as main verbs and take an accusative complement instead of the infinite verb24:

23

N.B. this list is not entirely exhaustive (for a comprehensive illustration see Zifonun et al. 1997:1255ff) but represents a summary of the most prominent features of modal verbs also with a view to differences to the English modal verb system (for the morphological and syntactic differences between German and English modal verbs see Nehls 1986:17ff); each individual characteristic does not distinguish modal verbs from all other verbs and some of the characteristics are typical for but not exclusively inherent to modal verbs. Taken together, however, and in light of the unique semantic characteristics of modal verbs, the list excludes comprehensively other main and auxiliary verbs.

34

(13) Ich will ein Eis. „I want an ice-cream.‟

(14) Ich mag ihn. „I like him.‟

(15) Ich kann Englisch I can English „I can speak English.‟

4. They have no imperative form.

5. They do not form a passive, although they can govern a passivised infinitive.

(16) Die Rechnung muss heute bezahlt werden. „The invoice must be paid today.‟

6. If the modal verb governs an infinitive, the past participle of the modal verb is

replaced by the infinitive:

(17) Er hat das Gedicht nicht aufsagen können. He had the poem not recite.INF can.INF „He couldn‟t recite the poem.‟

The past participle is only used if the modal verb is used as a main verb:

(18) Er hat das Gedicht nicht gekonnt. He had the poem not can.PP „He couldn‟t recite the poem.‟

7. More than one modal verb can occur within the same clause:

(19) Sie muss kommen können. She must come can.INF „She must be able to come.‟

8. Conjugational particularities:

In the present tense, 1st and 3rd person singular have Ø-ending:

ich/er muss – kann – mag – darf – will – soll.

KÖNNEN, DÜRFEN, MÖGEN, WOLLEN change the stem vowel between singular

and plural forms: ich kann – wir können; ich darf – wir dürfen; ich mag – wir mögen;

ich will – wir wollen;

The preterite is formed from the plural stem without umlauts in weak conjugation:

ich konnte – ich durfte – ich mochte – ich wollte – ich musste – ich sollte

The past subjunctive (Konjunktiv II25) forms of DÜRFEN, KÖNNEN and MÜSSEN

keep the umlaut (ich dürfte/könnte/müsste), SOLLEN and WOLLEN have no umlaut

(ich sollte/wollte) and are therefore identical with the preterite indicative forms.

24

Brinkmann (1971:382) explains this conclusively with the fact that WOLLEN, MÖGEN and KÖNNEN imply that the grammatical subject is the agent that can influence its environment. SOLLEN, MÜSSEN and DÜRFEN, on the other hand, imply that the grammatical subject is under the influence of an external agent. The subject is therefore not able to act as agent.

25 The terms Konjunktiv I and Konjunktiv II will be used throughout this study to refer to the two types of German subjunctive mood, which are also often called Konjunktiv Präsens (present subjunctive) and

35

Zifonun et al. (1997:1884) emphasise that there is a clear 'caesura' between

epistemic and all the other (non-epistemic) discourse backgrounds. Apart from the

obvious semantic differences, this is manifest in the fact that the modal verbs exhibit

different grammatical constraints and circumstances depending on which type of

modality they express (Zifonun et al 1997:1268ff):

The most prominent of these is that perfect and future tense paradigms are

restricted for modal verbs in epistemic use. The following sentences can only have

non-epistemic reading:

(20) Sie hat ihre Schulden zahlen müssen. She has.PAST her debts pay must.INF 'She had to pay her debts.'

For an epistemic reading, the perfect tense form of the modal verb is not available,

i.e. to achieve a perfective reading for an epistemic utterance, the infinitive has to

carry the perfect tense marking:

(21) Sie muss ihre Schulden bezahlt haben. She must her debts pay.PP have 'She must have paid her debts.'

Other restrictions include e.g. that DÜRFEN is only available in epistemic sense in

the Konjunktiv II, indicative forms (present tense or preterite) exclude an epistemic

reading:

(22) a) Das Paket dürfte inzwischen in Sydney angekommen sein. The parcel DÜRFEN-KONJII by now in Sydney arrived be 'The parcel should have arrived in Sydney by now.' b) *Das Paket darf inzwischen in Syndey angekommen sein. The parcel DÜRFEN-PRES by now in Sydney arrived be‟ *Das Paket durfte inzwischen in Syndey angekommen sein. The parcel DÜRFEN-PRET by now in Sydney arrived be‟

Furthermore, there is a syntactic restriction on epistemically used modal verbs in

that in combinations with other modal verbs they can only occur as the finite part of

the verbal complex. MUSS in example (19) Sie muss kommen können. above carries

epistemic meaning, KÖNNEN in this example cannot be interpreted epistemically.

Other uses, e.g. with an accusative complement (23), directional complement (24)

or subordinate clause (25) are not possible in epistemic senses, neither are

nominalisations (26), so all these examples have to be interpreted non-epistemically:

Konjunktiv Präteritum or Imperfekt (past subjunctive). For a more detailed account of the subjunctive mood in German see 2.3.5.

36

(23) Das kleine Mädchen will ein Eis. The little girls wants an ice 'The little girl wants an ice-cream.'

(24) Ich muss weg. I must away 'I have to go.'

(25) Ich möchte, dass du ihm hilfst. I would like that you him help 'I would like you to help him.'

(26) Das Wollen allein nützt nichts, Können ist gefragt. The want-NOM alone uses nothing, can-NOM is asked 'Wanting alone is useless, ability is called for.'

On top of these grammatical/syntactical conditions, which can prohibit certain

interpretations, there are other factors that can affect how a modal verb is interpreted,

which leads to different distributional patterns for the two types of modality. Research

into this area benefits immensely from corpus linguistic methods, which enable the

researcher to establish „typical‟ usage patterns through detailed frequency analyses.

Heine (1995) for example examines, by way of a corpus investigation, factors that

contribute to an utterance being associated with one or the other kind of modality. He

identifies the following three groups of factors (Heine 1995:25ff):

The first one pertains to the linguistic context: Non-epistemic readings are very

likely if the main verb is an action or terminative verb, if the modal verb is in the

perfect or preterite tense, if it occurs in interrogative or negative utterances and if

the subject is first or second (rather than third) person. Conversely, epistemic

senses are more likely if the main verb is in the perfect tense or is a stative verb.

Secondly, however, linguistic categorisations alone can often not distinguish

epistemic from non-epistemic meanings. “What has to be taken into consideration

in addition are the contextual frames with which particular uses of a modal are

associated”(Heine 1995:47). Contextual frames, also called „inferential schemata‟

or „frames‟ are defined as “a body of knowledge evoked by the language user in

order to provide an inferential basis for the understanding of an utterance” (Heine

1995:27f). This knowledge can be based on contextual clues, knowledge of the

world, social norms, but possibly also involve factors like frequency of experience,

perceptual salience and stereotypes (and may be roughly equated to Kratzer‟s

(1991) discourse backgrounds). These contextual frames can ultimately override

the expectations evoked by the linguistic context and, for example, discourage a

37

non-epistemic reading even in an utterance with a human agent as subject and a

dynamic main verb.

Thirdly, the most important factor in determining which variety of modality a given

modal utterance receives is, according to Heine, the “presence vs. absence of the

modal force”. This force is characterised by an element of will, i.e. that there is an

interest in an event either occurring or not occurring. Instances of epistemic

modality typically lack exactly this conceptual property.

Although in most instances these factors will produce one or the other reading as

favoured, there are cases that are indeterminate between epistemic and non-

epistemic senses. Coates (1984:15ff) investigates this indeterminacy in detail for the

English modal auxiliaries and establishes three different types: gradience, ambiguity

and merger. Gradience concerns the nature of the continuum of meaning within a

given modal category (epistemic or non-epistemic), for example from the core of

ABILITY to the periphery of POSSIBLITY of English can. Ambiguity concerns

expressions that have two different senses in discrete modal categories and it is not

possible to decide which of these is intended (either/or relationship). Merger also

refers to expressions that have two senses in discrete categories, but they are in a

both/and relationship, i.e. they are mutually compatible. It is not necessary to decide

which of the two senses is intended in order to understand the utterance.

Zifonun et al. (1997), Heine (1995) and Diewald (1999) all agree that the

explanation for the grammatically, syntactically and functionally divergent behaviour

of modal verbs in different meanings is to be found in the course of their

grammaticalisation or, in Diewald's words (1999:54), in the fact that “the structural

options for modal verbs correlate strongly with their different usages, which display

varying degrees of grammaticalisation”26. Diewald (1999:27ff) gives a detailed

account of the proof of the proposed course of grammaticalisation which comes to

the conclusion that what she calls „deictic‟ (epistemic) uses of modal verbs are more

grammaticalised than „non-deictic‟ (non-epistemic) uses. It will be shown in the

discussion of results later on (see 6.2.4) that the varying degree of

grammaticalisation of the different modal verb uses might contribute to explaining

why certain uses seem more difficult for learners to acquire than others.

26

“die strukturellen Möglichkeiten der Modalverben direkt mit ihren unterschiedlich stark grammatikalisierten Gebrauchsweisen korrelieren”

38

2.3.1.2 Semantic characteristics

As discussed in the previous chapter, the semantic characteristics of modal verbs will

be explained in terms of a network of abstract relations according to Brinkmann

(1971). He distinguishes two fundamental types of relations that are relevant for

describing modality. These two types define two groups of modal verbs (for detailed

and exemplified descriptions see individual modal verbs below).

In the first group, we encounter modal verbs “that give the subject an explicit

direction for the execution of the process conveyed by the infinite verb”27 (Brinkmann

1971:386). The modal verbs in this group are WOLLEN, SOLLEN and DÜRFEN. The

difference between them is the source of the authority that gives the subject the

direction for execution. In the case of WOLLEN, the authority lies with the

grammatical subject; SOLLEN, as exemplified above, implies an external authority

that gives the direction for execution to the subject; WOLLEN and SOLLEN can

therefore depict converse perspectives of the same proposition:

(27) Ich soll einkaufen gehen = Jemand will, dass ich einkaufen gehe. „I am supposed to go shopping.‟ = „Somebody wants me to go shopping.‟

With DÜRFEN, the subject itself gives the direction for execution (as with WOLLEN),

but an external authority is required that legitimises this direction.

In the second group, the modal verbs do not determine the direction for an

execution, but rather the nature of the circumstances pertaining to the process

conveyed by the main verb. The modal verbs in this group are KÖNNEN and

MÜSSEN. KÖNNEN implies that the circumstances are viewed as such that an

implementation is possible or conceivable, whereas for MÜSSEN the circumstances

are viewed as making an implementation compulsory.

MÖGEN occupies a special position in this classification as it has parts in both

groups. While the indicative form belongs to the latter group in that it acknowledges

that the circumstances make an implementation possible (like KÖNNEN), the

Konjunktiv II form MÖCHTE has almost become a modal verb in its own right that

belongs to the former group as it expresses the same kind of direction for an

execution originating from the subject as WOLLEN28.

These two fundamental relational types hold true on both levels of modality

identified in the previous section. Each modal verb, therefore, conveys a unique

27

“…, die dem Subjekt eine ausdrückliche Richtung auf den Vollzug des im Verbum (durch Infinit I) genannten Prozesses zuschreiben;”

28 For the analysis of MÖCHTE as independent verb see also Ehlich and Rehbein (1972:318).

39

fundamental relation that defines either the characteristics of the conditions for an

implementation or the characteristics of the conditions for the validity of information. It

is these relational types that give the different modal verbs their different meanings;

what other accounts list as different usages of the same modal verb can in

Brinkmann‟s modal system be explained from just this one basic relation.

2.3.1.2.1 MÜSSEN

MÜSSEN implies that the speaker acknowledges that a necessity exists for the

proposition conveyed in the utterance. Applied to the two levels of modality this

means that this necessity either pertains to an implementation, i.e. the speaker

acknowledges that the conditions are such that there is a necessity to do something,

as in

(28) Die Rechnung muss heute bezahlt werden. „The invoice has to be paid today.‟

The necessity can also pertain to the validity of information, i.e. the speaker asserts

that the conditions are such that there is a necessity to assume the given proposition

as true, as in

(29) Der Brief muss gestern abgeschickt worden sein. „The letter must have been posted yesterday.‟

We are therefore either dealing with some form of duty or compulsion or a compelling

conclusion that excludes other possibilities. The reasons why the given conditions are

viewed as compulsory are manifold. When dealing with implementations, they can lie

in human nature or social/economical/legal etc. rules and norms or the specific

circumstances of a particular situation or they can be necessary prerequisites in order

to achieve a certain goal. When dealing with information they lie in the speaker‟s

knowledge of the world or their knowledge of how certain processes typically take

place.

The Konjunktiv II form MÜSSTE does not imply a different value from MÜSSEN

(like e.g. DÜRFTE, see below). It merely modifies the indicative in the way that is

characteristic for Konjunktiv II in general, namely that it shifts the proposition

conveyed in the utterance beyond the given horizon29, which makes the assumption

or duty more tentative or attenuated (see also Diewald 1993):

29

Brinkmann introduces the term Horizont (1962:105) first in works on the relation between dialect and standard language. Later, he transfers this idea to communication in general where conversational partners meet under the influence of their respective „horizons‟: “This includes their relationship to each other, their social roles, their experiences, memories and expectations, of course also all their previous knowledge, everything they think about.” (“Es schließt ihr Verhältnis zueinander ein, ihre

40

(30) Das Konzert müsste in einer Stunde zu Ende sein. „The concert should end in an hour.‟

Equivalent to negated MÜSSEN is negated BRAUCHEN, which Zifonun et al.

(1997:1252) classify as belonging to the periphery of modal verbs. In formal speech,

it usually governs an infinitive with zu, but it can also govern an infinitive without zu

(esp. in informal speech):

(31) Du musst heute nicht in die Schule gehen. = Du brauchst heute nicht in die Schule (zu) gehen. „You don‟t have to go to school today.‟

2.3.1.2.2 KÖNNEN

Contrary to MÜSSEN, KÖNNEN implies possibility rather than necessity. This can

either be motivated positively, i.e. that there are potential conditions that allow an

implementation or an assumption or negatively, i.e. that there are no known obstacles

that prevent the proposition. Conversely, negated KÖNNEN implies that there are

circumstances that prevent the proposition. Conditions that allow a potential

implementation can be external circumstances or necessary means being available

or simply that there are no known obstacles:

(32) Da ihre Eltern die Studiengebühren bezahlen, kann die junge Frau die Universität besuchen. „Because her parents pay the tuition fees, the young woman can go to university.‟

but they can also be internal circumstances where KÖNNEN denotes abilities,

qualities or habits of human beings30:

(33) Der kleine Junge kann sehr gut schwimmen. „The little boy can swim very well.‟

A third variant of non-epistemic KÖNNEN applies when it is used in the sense of

giving permission as an alternative to DÜRFEN:

(34) In einigen Ländern kann man ohne Waffenschein eine Pistole tragen. „In some countries you can carry a pistol without a gun licence.‟

If KÖNNEN is used, the speaker indicates that there are no obstacles that would

prevent an implementation (in example (34) there is no law against it); if DÜRFEN is

soziale Rolle, ihre Erfahrungen, Erinnerungen und Erwartungen, natürlich auch ihr „Vorwissen“, alles woran sie denken.“ (Brinkmann 1971:730)). During the production of a text (in the broadest sense including e.g. oral conversation), the horizon of speaker/writer and hearer/reader is typically unconsciously taken for granted. In the text itself the horizon of the speaker/writer leads to presuppositions, i.e. contents that are implied rather than explicitly uttered and are taken as given. The notion of Horizont will play an important role in the discussion of the subjunctive mood (see 2.3.5 below).

30 Cf. “dynamic modality” (section 2.1.3).

41

used, the focus is on an external party giving their consent for an implementation, but

in everyday language use this distinction is often neglected.

In epistemic sense, KÖNNEN implies that indications exist that a certain

assumption is possible without, however, categorically excluding other possibilities

(as in the case of MÜSSEN):

(35) Ein heimlicher Verehrer kann die Blumen geschickt haben. „A secret admirer may have sent the flowers.‟

As with MÜSSEN, the Konjunktiv II form of KÖNNEN – KÖNNTE – shifts the

proposition beyond the given horizon, adding a notion of tentativeness to the

utterance without changing the basic value of the modal verb.

2.3.1.2.3 WOLLEN

WOLLEN presents an utterance in a way that the execution of the given proposition

is dependent on the subject alone; other facets are neglected. In the realm of

implementations, this direction from the subject can be motivated by the subject‟s

willingness, intention, plan or decision. In announcements WOLLEN can evoke

expectations: The speaker decides on the direction they want to take:

(36) Im folgenden Bericht will ich die Gründe für meine Vorgehensweise erklären. „In the following report I want to explain the reasons for my course of action.‟

In this respect, WOLLEN expresses the transition from willingness to execution and is

therefore close to WERDEN (see below). This becomes evident when we look at the

English translation of (36), where „…I will explain…‟ would also be an adequate

translation.

It is noteworthy that the direction for implementation in the sense of „intention‟ can

also be ascribed to inanimate objects. In these instances, WOLLEN is often negated

and thus expresses an unfulfilled expectation:

(37) Das Feuer will einfach nicht ausgehen. „The fire just won‟t go out.‟

In the realm of information, the notion of direction pertains to the question who is

responsible for the information conveyed in the utterance (evidential). In the case of

WOLLEN, the direction originates from the subject; this means that the subject is

portrayed as being responsible for the information, therefore such an utterance can

be paraphrased as „The subject claims…‟:

42

(38) Sie will den Axtmörder gesehen haben. = Sie behauptet, den Axtmörder gesehen zu haben. „She claims to have seen the axe murderer.‟

2.3.1.2.4 SOLLEN

SOLLEN assumes the opposite direction to WOLLEN. The grammatical subject

receives its direction from an external authority, which usually remains unspecified

and has to be deduced from context (in this respect, SOLLEN is similar to the

passive). If the direction that the external authority gives pertains to an

implementation, we are typically dealing with instructions or commands:

(39) Die Reporter sollen sich aus dem Krisengebiet zurückziehen. ‟The reporters are told to withdraw from the conflict area.‟

Depending on the nature of the authority and the person of the subject, expectations,

promises, commandments or moral obligations or prohibitions can all be expressed in

utterances with the modal verb SOLLEN. If the Konjunktiv II (SOLLTE) is used, the

meaning changes from instruction to suggestion, the execution of which remains

uncertain, as the subjunctive causes a shift beyond the given horizon. The external

authority in this case is not an agent but unknown factors that the speaker has no

control over:

(40) Die Regierung sollte die Steuern erhöhen. ‟The government should raise taxes.‟

SOLLTE (Konjunktiv II) – but not SOLLEN – can also be used in order to mark a

piece of information as an assumption. In this case the two functions combine in the

same way as for implementations, so that the information is marked as beyond the

given horizon and dependent on unknown factors:

(41) Der Brief sollte mittlerweile angekommen sein. „The letter should have arrived by now.‟

On top of that, SOLLEN can be used analogous to WOLLEN as an evidential. As

SOLLEN fundamentally implies an external agent, in its use as evidential this external

agent is made responsible for the information conveyed in the utterance. It is neither

the speaker nor the grammatical subject that makes a claim but rather an (often)

unspecified „someone‟ or „everyone‟ – hearsay:

43

(42) Er soll sich eine Luxusvilla in Monaco gekauft haben. „He is said to have bought a luxury villa in Monaco.‟

2.3.1.2.5 DÜRFEN

The modal verb DÜRFEN implies two directions. The grammatical subject has one

direction (like WOLLEN), but this alone is not enough for an implementation. What is

required is a second direction from an authoritative instance that legitimises this

direction. It is, however, different from SOLLEN in that with DÜRFEN the grammatical

subject is not subjected to the direction of an external agent – it has its own direction,

but accepts the authority of the external agent.

As always, this fundamental relation can be applied in both types of modality.

Concerning implementations there are two variations (both realised by the same

form), depending on whether the external instance is a person or an inanimate

institution. A person gives permission (43), an inanimate institution legitimises, e.g. by

law (44):

(43) Ich darf heute abend auf die Party gehen. „I‟m allowed to go to the party tonight.‟

(44) Man darf 200 Zigaretten zollfrei einfühen. „You are allowed to import 200 cigarettes duty free.‟

As with SOLLTE, DÜRFEN can only be used for assessing the validity of

information in the Konjunktiv II form DÜRFTE. The subjunctive form shifts the

legitimisation that DÜRFTE infers onto an assumption that the speakers deems

feasible31 and for which they expect agreement from the external authority:

(45) Das dürfte Schwierigkeiten geben. „That will probably cause problems.‟

2.3.1.2.6 MÖGEN

MÖGEN combines two fundamental elements: on the one hand, it expresses a

direction for implementation and on the other hand it implies that there are no known

obstacles that oppose the direction. With regards to implementations this use of

MÖGEN is largely confined to very formal or literary language. The speaker indicates

that the subject is free to implement the given proposition while at the same time

acknowledging that the subject might want to follow a different direction:

31

This assessment is corroborated by Mortelmans (1997:211), who ascertains that DÜRFTE is the most grammaticalised of the epistemic modal verbs and therefore carries the highest degree of „speaker orientation‟, i.e. based on the speaker‟s subjective belief state/attitude towards the proposition.

44

(46) Gegen gesetzliche Sonderregelungen oder besondere Schutzvorschrifen für „Ehen ohne Trauschein“ hat sich Justizminister Engelhard (FDP) in Bonn ausgesprochen: „Wer rechtliche Regelungen haben will, der mag heiraten“, betonte er.32 „Justice Secretary Engelhard (FDP) has spoken out against special laws or protective regulations for domestic partnerships: “Those who want legal regulations might like to get married” he pointed out in Bonn.‟

In non-literary texts, MÖGEN is mostly used in a specific variant, namely to

express liking or affection or, more often, dislike (negated MÖGEN), albeit in a way

that acknowledges the existence of other directions (and is therefore less forceful

than WOLLEN):

(47) Ich mag heute nicht schwimmen gehen. „I don‟t want to go swimming today.‟

If combined with an accusative complement rather than an infinite verb, MÖGEN

expresses a general liking/affection or dislike that is independent of a particular time

or situation:

(48) Ich mag keine Schokolade. „I don‟t like chocolate.‟

As mentioned before, the Konjunktiv II form MÖCHTE has almost developed into a

modal verb in its own right, that is close in meaning to WOLLEN but less forceful due

to the usual subjunctive shift beyond the given horizon. It is this characteristic that

allows MÖCHTE to be used to express wishes in an unobtrusive way, which is why it

often co-occurs with other markers of wishes such as lieber (rather) or gerne :

(49) Ich möchte gerne wissen, was er denkt. „I would quite like to know what he‟s thinking.‟

When applied to the realm of information, the speaker can use MÖGEN in order to

express that they do not know of any indications that opposes an assumption. In this

sense, it is close in meaning to epistemic KÖNNEN. The difference is that MÖGEN

inherently indicates that other directions are not excluded and therefore MÖGEN is

usually used in concessive contexts:

(50) Das mag zwar arrogant klingen, aber es ist die Wahrheit. „This may sound arrogant, but it is the truth.‟

MÖCHTE is not available in epistemic modality.

32

From: Mannheimer Morgen, 1./2.8.1987 (attested in Zifonun et al. 1997:1895).

45

2.3.1.2.7 WERDEN

WERDEN occupies a special position in the system of modal verbs. It has

morphological and syntactic properties that set it apart from the other modal verbs,

yet semantically it has some decisive properties in common with them that warrant its

inclusion in the modal verb system.

There are three distinct syntactic types of WERDEN that also have different

meaning33:

WERDEN as main verb:

has the past participle form geworden

has a full paradigm of verb forms

can combine with modal verbs

combines with adjectives or noun phrases in the sense of to become/to get

(51) Die Studenten werden vor den Prüfungungen immer sehr nervös. „The students always get very nervous before the exams.‟

WERDEN as auxiliary verb:

is used to form the passive

has the past participle form worden

has a full paradigm of verb forms except the imperative

can combine with modal verbs

(52) Das Bild wurde gestern gestohlen. „The painting was stolen yesterday.‟

WERDEN as (semi-)modal verb:

like the other modal verbs, WERDEN in this sense combines with a verb in the

infinitive without zu (bare infinitive)

unlike the other modal verbs, however, it

has no past participle

has a restricted verb paradigm (no imperfect and no imperative)

cannot combine with modal verbs

can only have epistemic meaning (not deontic)

(53) Es hat geläutet. – Das wird der Briefträger sein. The doorbell has rung. – That will be the postman.

The first two types do not carry modal meaning, so it is only the third type of

WERDEN that is of interest here. There are, however, some additional complications

33

Cf. Engel 1988:468ff.

46

that need to be explained. In most German grammars (including learner grammars,

e.g. Helbig and Buscha 2001) WERDEN + bare infinitive is traditionally dealt with

under the heading „future tense‟. An example would be

(54) Die Arbeiter werden morgen streiken. „The workers will go on strike tomorrow.‟

While this is true in parts, there is now general consensus that this tells only half the

story. We can clearly see from example (53) above that this construction can also

refer to present time rather than future time. The present tense, on the other hand,

can also be used to refer to future time:

(55) Die Arbeiter streiken morgen. ?„The workers go on strike tomorrow.‟

The temporal adverbial morgen clearly identifies the future reference; without it the

sentence could refer to either present time or future time. Zifonun et al. (1997:1900),

Helbig and Buscha (2001:137), Nehls (1986:120) and Itayama (1993:233) therefore

all agree that, in terms of temporal reference, present tense and WERDEN + infinitive

constructions can coincide. Therefore, when used with present or past time

reference, rather than a temporal characteristic, WERDEN adds a modal

characteristic to the sentence. It expresses a confident assumption which, according

to Brinkmann (1971:398), is based on the speaker‟s experience, where the level of

confidence in the fact that the proposition is true is not as high as if it was expressed

in the present tense. If we want to make a sentence in the present tense equivalent to

the same sentence with WERDEN (examples (56) and (57)), we therefore need to

add some kind of lexical modal marker:

(56) Er wird im Büro sein. „He‟ll be in the office.‟

(57) Er ist wahrscheinlich/wohl im Büro. ‟He‟s probably in the office.‟

However, WERDEN can, of course, also refer to future time (see example (54)). In

these cases, there is a debate whether all of them carry modal meanings or not.

Zifonun et al. (1997:1901) and Helbig and Buscha (2001:138) state that “these types

can contain a factor of modality (of an assumption), but they do not necessarily do

so.”34 Both do not, however, offer any explanation on how to determine whether a

sentence has an epistemic „hue‟ or not. Itayama (1997:234) distinguishes different

nuances in WERDEN constructions with future reference, but generally assumes a

34

“Diese Variante kann einen Modalfaktor (der Vermutung) enthalten, muss es aber nicht. ”

47

modal element for all of them. He identifies person of the subject, verb semantics and

role of the speaker as factors that influence to what degree an utterance entails

modal meaning. For instance, a sentence like (58), with a first-person subject, a verb

that expresses a volitional action and a speaker who has direct influence on the

realisation of the action, only carries a marginal epistemic modal element and can be

labelled with the additional tag „intention‟.

(58) Ich werde den Entwurf heute noch abschicken. „I will send the draft off today.‟

In a sentence like (59), on the other hand, with a third-person subject, a non-

volitional verb and a speaker that has no influence on the realisation of the

proposition, the modal element is much more prominent.

(59) Die armen Länder werden nicht von diesen Spenden profitieren. „The poor countries will not profit from these donations.‟

On top of that, WERDEN seems to be quite flexible with regards to the degree of

certainty. It can co-occur with modal adverbials like vielleicht, wahrscheinlich

(perhaps) etc. but also with adverbials like sicher, bestimmt, gewiss (certainly,

definitely). Zifonun et al. (1997:1902) therefore place it between the classic opposition

„epistemically necessary‟ (MÜSSEN) and „epistemically possible‟ (KÖNNEN). In the

same vein, Brünner and Redder (1983:83) report that in a test they carried out to

determine the degree of certainty that epistemic modal verbs express, WERDEN was

ranked between MÜSSTE and DÜRFTE, which seems to corroborate Zifonun et al.‟s

analysis.

In summary, we can therefore say that although WERDEN exhibits some morpho-

syntactic differences to the other modal verbs, semantically it behaves like a modal

verb and will therefore be included in the present study together with MÜSSEN,

KÖNNEN, SOLLEN, WOLLEN, DÜRFEN and MÖGEN.

2.3.2 Modal adverbials

We have seen in the previous sections that the concept of modality itself and the

category of modal verbs are saturated with a wide range of disparate terminology

based on different theoretical frameworks. This also applies to the category described

in this section and it is therefore necessary to first delineate the terminology that will

be used in this study. The terms Modalwörter – „modal words‟ (Admoni 1982; Helbig

and Helbig 1990), Modaladverben – „modal adverbs‟ (Brinkmann 1971) and

48

Modalpartikeln35 – „modal particles‟ (Zifonun et al. 1997; Engel 1988) have all been

used, each denoting different sets of items in the respective treatises.

Brinkmann (1971) only considers modal adverbs in this category and since his

account is unsatisfactorily brief for our purposes I will only introduce a short summary

of his ideas. I will then turn to Zifonun et al. (1997) who offer a definition of modal

adverbials that is in accord with Brinkmann‟s but provide a much more

comprehensive account of both syntactic and semantic characteristics of modal

adverbials.

2.3.2.1 Brinkmann‟s (1971) account of modal adverbs

Brinkmann (1971:400) defines modal adverbs as “a class of fixed lexical units that do

not modify the content of the verb but the conception of the whole sentence. We

could also call them „sentence adverbs‟”.36

They are only available for the modification of the validity of information (epistemic

modality) as they denote a particular aspect under which the speaker evaluates the

information. Brinkmann identifies three functions of this modification:

Asserting or negating/restricting the validity of information:

e.g. sicher, gewiss, in jedem Fall, zweifellos (surely, certainly, in any case,

doubtlessly)

keinesfalls, unter keinen Umständen/kaum, schwerlich (not at all, under no

circumstances/hardly)

Marking the content of a proposition as fact or assumption:

e.g. tatsächlich, wirklich, natürlich (as a matter of fact, really, of course)

offenbar, wahrscheinlich, vermutlich, vielleicht, möglicherweise (apparently,

probably, presumably, perhaps, maybe)

Assessing a proposition emotionally:

e.g. leider, hoffentlich, glücklicherweise (unfortunately, hopefully, fortunately)

Brinkmann adds briefly that modifications with modal adverbs can often be

transformed into clauses in the following manner:

35

The term Modalpartikeln is particularly tricky as some linguists (e.g. Weinrich 2005:841) – incorrectly – use it to refer to a group of items like ja, doch, eben etc. that is better subsumed under the term Abtönungspartikel (usually referred to as „illocutive particles‟ or „discourse particles‟ in English). These Abtönungspartikel have no modifying effect.

36 “Als Modaladverb wird eine Klasse unveränderlicher sprachlicher Einheiten verstanden, die nicht den Ihnhalt des Verbums, sondern die Auffassung des Satzes modifizieren […]; man könnte auch von „Satzadverb“ sprechen.”

49

(60) Sie ist wahrscheinlich schon nach Hause gegangen. „She has probably already gone home.‟ = Es ist wahrscheinlich, dass sie schon nach Hause gegangen ist. „It is probable, that she has already gone home.‟

This means that he does acknowledge the fact that this group of modal expressions

is not restricted to the part of speech of adverbs (as his category term „modal

adverbs‟ suggests), but does not address this issue in any more detail.

2.3.2.2 Zifonun et al.‟s (1997) account of modal adverbials

Unlike Brinkmann, Zifnonun et al. (1997:861ff) approach the category from a

functional point of view under the heading Modalfunktion (modal function). Modal

functions transform categorical assertions into evaluative statements, i.e. they modify

the validity of a proposition in that they either express the speaker‟s evaluation of the

existence/occurrence of a certain situation or the speaker‟s assessment of the

probability with which a certain situation exists or will occur. This is, in essence, the

basic definition of epistemic modality, and thus congruent to the function of modal

verbs: “The use of modal functions is not the only way in which we can bring to

account that we do not possess all the information to make categorical statements. A

comparable effect can be achieved with a modalised predicate – actualised by a

modal verb construction.”37 (Zifonun et al. 1997:862)

Modal functions modify sentence meanings. They are therefore syntactically

realised by sentence adverbials. Unlike other adverbials, they do not qualify the

predicate of the utterance but operate on the whole sentence in such a way that they

express the speaker‟s attitude towards the proposition. Zifonun et al. (1997:1126ff)

deal with this category under the term Modale Satzadverbialia (modal sentence

adverbials), in order to distinguish them from other types of sentence adverbials. In

the following, I will refer to this category simply as modal adverbials. Zifonun et al.

(1997:1126) observe that adjectives (61), modal particles (62) prepositional phrases

(63) and subordinate clauses (64) can all fulfill the syntactic function of modal

adverbials:

37

“Die Verwendung von Modalfunktionen ist nicht die einzige Form, in der wir in Rechnung stellen können, daß wir unvollständig informiert sind. Eine vergleichbare Wirkung kann durch ein modalisiertes Prädikat – realisiert als Modalverbgefüge – erreicht werden.“

50

(61) Das Geld wurde offensichtlich gestohlen. ‟The money was obviously stolen.‟

(62) Vielleicht hat es ein Angestellter unterschlagen. ‟Maybe an employee embezzled it.‟

(63) Zum Glück ist die Firma versichert. ‟Luckily the company is insured.‟

(64) Wie zu vermuten ist, wird es eine interne Untersuchung geben. ‟It is assumed that there will be an internal inquiry.‟

This syntactic category of modal adverbials is then divided into subcategories

according to semantic criteria which are based on the following method of conclusion:

There are three possibilities for the effect that these adverbials can have on the

meaning of a sentence. These effects can be summarised in the following logical

conclusions where a sentence s‟ is derived from sentence s by dropping the sentence

adverbial: Either from s follows s‟, or from s follows „possibly (s‟)‟, or from s follows

„not (s‟). All adverbials are assigned to one of these three categories, depending on

what effect they achieve with respect to the relation between sentence s (with

adverbial) and s‟ (without adverbial). The three categories of modal adverbials are

labeled „assertive adverbials‟, „modally qualifying adverbials‟ and „negative

adverbials‟:

Assertive adverbials:

From s follows s‟.

For instance, from sentence

s: Er hat das Geld wirklich gestohlen („He has actually stolen the money‟) follows

s‟: Er hat das Geld gestohlen. (‟He has stolen the money.‟)

This group of adverbials can then be further divided into:

o Purely assertive adverbials:

They comprise the relatively small group of adjectives tatsächlich, wirklich

(actually) and the modal particles gewiss/gewisslich (certainly). They are called

„purely assertive‟ as they do not convey any additional information on the rest of

the sentence other than the emphasised assertion of its validity.

o Evaluative assertive adverbials:

On top of the assertion of the validity of an utterance these adverbials express

some form of evaluation by the speaker. This can be positive, e.g. through

modal particles like glücklicherweise (luckily), Gott sei Dank (thank God) etc;

the evaluation can be reservedly positive with expressions like immerhin,

51

wenigstens, zumindest (at least) or negative with modal particles like leider

(unfortunately), bedauerlicherweise (regrettably) etc.

Other modal particles in this group express evaluations that cannot be arranged

on a positive – negative scale, but add individual evaluative dimensions. They

are all formed from adjectives (which signals the respective evaluative

dimension) by adding the filler-infix -er- and the suffix –weise, so that e.g.

verständlicherweise (understandably) adds the dimension of empathic

reasoning, bemerkenswerterweise (remarkably) adds the dimension of

relevance.

o Evidence-focused assertive adverbials

The elements in this group express, on top of the assertion, a reference to inter-

subjective knowledge and therefore add an extra focus on evidence to the

assertion. These are adjectives like offensichtlich (evidently), nachweislich

(demonstrably) and modal particles like bekanntlich (as is generally known) and

zweifellos (undoubtedly). In addition to this, this group entails adverbials that

express the strongest focus on evidence – necessity. These are modal particles

like notwendigerweise (necessarily), adjectives like notwendig (necessary),

unausweichlich (inescapably) etc. and prepositional phrases like mit

Notwendigkeit (with necessity). It has to be pointed out here that in Zifonun et

al.‟s (1997:1131) analysis, these expressions do not just pertain to epistemic

modality, but can also apply to non-epistemic contexts, e.g. in the sense of

normative obligations. This is important as it gives justification for the inclusion

of lexemes other than modal verbs also for the expression of non-epistemic

modal meanings.

Modally qualifying adverbials

From s follows „possibly (s‟)‟.

For example, from sentence s:

Wahrscheinlich hat er das Geld gestohlen. („He has probably stolen the money.‟)

follows neither Er hat das Geld gestohlen. („He has stolen the money.‟)

nor Er hat das Geld nicht gestohlen. („He has not stolen the money.‟)

but s‟: Möglicherweise hat er das Geld gestohlen. („It is possible that he has stolen

the money.‟)

Adverbials in this group comprise adjectives like angeblich (allegedly),

anscheinend (apparently), wahrscheinlich (probably) etc, modal particles like

bestimmt (surely), vielleicht (maybe), möglicherweise (possibly) etc and formulaic

short forms like wie angenommen (as assumed). It is evident here that these

modal adverbials can be matched up with epistemic modal verb meanings. Modal

52

adverbials like sicher (certainly), vermutlich (presumably) and vielleicht (maybe)

express the scale of a speaker‟s assessment of the validity of a proposition in

roughly the same way as the epistemic modal verb meanings MÜSSEN –

DÜRFTE – KÖNNEN. Adverbials like angeblich (allegedly) or wie verlautet

(reportedly) indicate that the speaker does not take responsibility for the

information conveyed in the utterance in the same way as evidential SOLLEN.

Negative adverbials

From s follows „not (s‟)‟.

From s: Er hat sich auf keineswegs auf die Ferien gefreut. („He did not, by any

means, look forward to the holidays.‟) follows

s‟: Er hat sich nicht auf die Ferien gefreut. („He did not look forward to the

holidays.‟)

This relatively small group of negative adverbials entails the negation particle nicht

(not). This is the least specific negative adverbial, as it simply expresses negation,

whereas other adverbials in this group imply additional meaning components on

top of the negation. Adverbs like nie/niemals (never) or nirgends/nirgendwo

(nowhere) and prepositional phrases like zu keiner Zeit (at no time) additionally

specify the negation within a certain temporal or spatial scope. The expanded

negative particle gar nicht/überhaupt nicht (not at all), modal particles like

keinesfalls, keineswegs, mitnichten (by no means) and prepositional phrases like

auf keinen Fall (in no case) intensify the negation and often negate a proposition

that is to be expected or assumed.

The modal particles fast and beinahe (nearly) take up a special position here. On

top of the negation they express that the occurrence of the event was imminent or

very likely. We can therefore conclude from „fast (s)‟ a past „wahrscheinlich (s)‟

which gives fast and beinahe a secondary modally qualifying meaning. This is why

these modal particles often occur with the Konjunktiv II to indicate the counter-

factuality of the proposition:

(65) Wegen des schlechten Wetters wäre er fast abgestürzt. Due to the bad weather was-KONJII he nearly crashed ‟Due to the bad weather he nearly crashed.‟

It has to be noted here that other descriptions of modal adverbials, e.g. Helbig and

Buscha (2001:436) exclude all of these negation words from the category of modal

expressions for syntactic and semantic reasons. Their explanation is convincing

for the negation particle nicht (not) – a proposition that is negated by nicht does

not contain any modal factor in the same way that I argue that an affirmative

proposition in the indicative without any explicit lexical or grammatical marker of

53

modality is unmarked in terms of modality. The other intensifying adverbials in this

group, like keineswegs or auf keinen Fall, do, however, add additional modally

qualifying meaning to the sentence (analogue to the purely assertive adverbials)

and will therefore be included in the analysis.

Here ends Zifonun et al.‟s (1997) description of modal adverbials. We have seen

that there is an abundance of alternative adverbial expressions to modal verbs that

can serve as modal functions. While modal verbs offer a wide semantic range (and

the possibility for ambiguity) due to their polysemic nature, modal adverbials are more

specific in the type of modality they denote and also in additional meaning overtones

that they can carry. It has to be pointed out, however, that this characterisation is not

entirely universal. Hofmann (1979:3f) calls attention to the fact that, for example,

modal adjectives like possible and necessary can be used epistemically and non-

epistemically – this has already been mentioned briefly in the section on evidence-

focused adverbials above, where Zifonun et al. (1997:1131) make a similar

observation for German. The adjective möglich (possible), for instance, can be used

to express possibility with regard to the validity of information (66) or with regard to an

implementation (67):

(66) Es ist möglich, dass er das Geld gestohlen hat. „It is possible that he has stolen the money.‟

(67) Es war ihm möglich, das Geld rechtzeitig zu verstecken. „It was possible for him to hide the money in time.‟

This raises another important issue. Zifonun et al. (1997) focus their description of

modal adverbials almost exclusively on epistemic modality – Brinkmann (1971)

explicitly states that modal adverbs are only available for epistemic modality. But if,

as can be seen from the example above, some modal adverbials can also be used as

alternatives to non-epistemic modal verbs, then it must be considered which other

expressions can fulfil the same semantic functions as non-epistemic modal verb

meanings and these expressions ought to be included in the analysis. Gutknecht and

Rölle (1988:165f) address this point from a translational perspective:

“Within translational contexts the inclusion of modal expressions other than the

modal verbs is determined by the fact that the modal verb systems in German

and English are not formally congruent (isomorphic) […] This is evident, for

example, in the fact that WOLLEN is usually not expressed by the modal verb

WILL in English, but by a main verb like WANT or INTEND. This raises the

54

question whether verbs like WANT should be marked as modal […] and Perkins

(1983:98) actually categorises WANT NP TO as a modal main verb.”38

If we then take this argument another step further and translate back into German,

then it becomes obvious that e.g. the main verb beabsichtigen (intend to) ought to be

included in an analysis of modal expressions, because it serves as an alternative to

WOLLEN in the meaning of „intend‟. This brings out two crucial points:

Firstly, modal expressions other than modal verbs are not only available for

epistemic modality, but also for non-epistemic modality. Unlike modal verbs, which

can be ambiguous between the different types of modality, however, these

expressions are, for the most part, different from the ones used for epistemic senses.

Secondly, not only adverbial constructions can fulfil modal functions but also

lexical verbs. This is discussed in more detail in the next section.

2.3.3 Modal lexical verbs and quasi-modal verbs

As can be seen from the examples in the previous section, there are a number of

different syntactic ways of imposing additional modal meaning onto a proposition.

Often, these different syntactical solutions can be brought about by paraphrasing the

sentence using the same lexeme as a different part of speech, e.g. from adverb to

matrix clause with adjective:

(68) Möglicherweise hat er das Geld gestohlen. „He has possibly stolen the money.‟

= Es ist möglich, dass er das Geld gestohlen hat. „It is possible that he has stolen the money.‟

These transformations can not only involve adjectives, modal particles,

prepositional/nominal constructions or adverbs, as Zifonun et al. (1997) suggest, but

also lexical verbs, as the following examples show:

38

“Die Einbeziehung anderer Modalausdrücke als der der MVen selbst ist im Rahmen translatorischer Fragestellungen durch die Tatsache bedingt, daß die MV-Systeme in D und E formal nicht deckungsgleich (isomorph) sind […] Dies zeigt sich z.B. daran, daß WOLLEN in E im allgemeinen nicht mit dem MV WILL wiedergegeben wird, sondern mit einem Vollverb wie WANT oder INTEND. Damit ergibt sich die Frage, ob auch Verben wie WANT als modal zu kennzeichnen sind […] und Perkins (1983:98) bezeichnet denn auch WANT NP TO als modales Vollverb.”

55

(69) Hoffentlich ist er nicht ernsthaft krank. „Hopefully he is not seriously ill.‟

= Wir hoffen, dass er nicht ernsthaft krank ist. „We hope that he is not seriously ill.‟

(70) Vermutlich hat er nur eine Erkältung. „He has probably only got a cold.‟

= Ich vermute, dass er nur eine Erkältung hat. „I assume that he has only got a cold.‟

As lexical verbs like hoffen (hope), vermuten (assume), glauben (believe), denken

(think), scheinen (seem) etc. express similar kinds of modal meaning as their

adverbial counterparts and as they can, in part, compete semantically with the modal

verbs (cf. also Diewald 1999:175), these verbs are included in the analysis under the

term „modal lexical verbs‟ (cf. Perkins 1983:94).

In German, some of the lexical verbs that convey modal meaning exhibit not only

semantic but also a certain degree of syntactic affinity to the modal verbs in the fact

that they combine with an infinitive (although always with the particle zu). This is why

the term quasi-modale Verben (quasi-modal verbs) has been suggested for this

group (Weinrich 2005:315). Engel (1988:477f) calls them Modalitätsverben (modality

verbs) and defines them as lexical verbs that combine with an infinitive and

semantically compete with modal verbs, although they are usually more specific in

their meaning:

(71) Sie versteht es, ihre Kollegen zu motivieren. „She knows how to motivate her colleagues.‟

(72) Sie kann ihre Kollegen motivieren. „She can motivate her colleagues.‟

(71) can be paraphrased using the modal verb KÖNNEN (72), but the lexical verb

expresses more specifically and unambiguously the meaning of „having the ability to‟

than the modal verb.

The items that are included in this category differ, again, from one description to

the next. Many of the verbs that Engel (1988:477) lists are nowadays dated or

restricted to formal or literary language, e.g. anheben zu (be about to), belieben zu

(choose to), gedenken zu (intend to), wissen zu (know how to). Weinrich (2005:315)

includes in his list some additional verbs and participial constructions that are more

commonly used, such as imstande sein zu (be able to), planen zu (plan to),

beabsichtigen zu (intend to), gezwungen sein zu (be forced to), verpflichtet sein zu

(be obligated to).

56

Zifonun et al. (1997) present a finer grained syntactical analysis in which three

verbs are analysed as Halbmodale (half-modals): drohen zu (threaten to), scheinen

zu (seem to), pflegen zu (usually do). This analysis is based on syntactical criteria,

however, so that immediately the caveat is made that only scheinen (seem) is

semantically classed as modal. The other verbs that Engel (1988) identifies as quasi-

modal verbs are analysed as verbs with verb complement, but they are not discussed

in any more detail in Zifonun et al.‟s (1997) account. As this study follows semantic

criteria for the identification of modal expressions, all quasi-modal verbs and modal

lexical verbs are included in the analysis. In the analysis of the learner data, both

types of verbs are grouped together with modal adverbials under „periphrastic modal

expressions‟.

Both Zifonun et al. (1997) and Brinkmann (1971), however, present two of the

verbs separately that the other grammars include in the group of quasi-modal verbs:

HABEN ZU and SEIN ZU. I will follow their classification and deal with them in the

next section.

2.3.4 Modal infinitives HABEN ZU and SEIN ZU

In his account of modality, Brinkmann (1971:361) only deals with HABEN ZU (have

to) and SEIN ZU (be to) as verbal alternatives to modal verbs. The term for these

constructions is modaler Infinitiv (modal infinitive) (cf. Brinkmann 1971; Gelhaus

1977; Langhoff 1980). Zifonun et al. (1997) analyse these two forms as the

immediate periphery of modal verbs. Modal infinitive constructions are less common

than modal verbs and adverbials, but they do present an alternative to expressing

deontic modal meanings. The unique quality of modal infinitives is that either of them

can express both necessity and possibility, i.e. they can compete with the modal

verbs MÜSSEN and KÖNNEN; SEIN ZU can additionally be used in the meaning of

obligation or advice (SOLLEN/SOLLTE) or even permission (DÜRFEN).

Helbig and Buscha (2001:112) explain that HABEN ZU is used more often to

express deontic necessity (example (73)) than possibility (74). However, the

possibility reading is more likely in negated sentences. In the end only the context

can clarify which is intended in a particular instance.

57

(73) Ich habe mit dir zu reden. I have with you to talk „I have to talk to you.‟

(74) Was hast du zu berichten? What have you to tell „What can you tell me?‟

From a contrastive point of view, Nehls (1986:35) adds that both German HABEN

ZU and English have to for deontic necessity are only used in contexts where the

source of the necessity is unimportant. However, have to has a much wider range of

application than HABEN ZU, so that all instances of German HABEN ZU (where

denoting necessity) can be translated as English have to but not vice versa.

HABEN ZU constructions have active meaning where the agent subject is typically

a human being. They typically combine with verbs that denote actions, processes or

states that can be influenced or initiated by human beings.

SEIN ZU constructions, on the other hand, have passive meaning where the agent

is usually unnamed. They also combine with physical action verbs, but also often with

verbs of perception, saying/thinking verbs and verbs expressing subjective attitude.

With SEIN ZU the ambiguity between necessity and possibility is even more

pronounced:

(75) Das Fenster ist zu öffnen. The window is to open 'The window must be opened/The window can be opened.'

Again, only the context will resolve the ambiguity. This often happens through further

modifications in the sentence39:

(76) Das Fenster ist jeden Tag für 1 Stunde zu öffnen. The window is every day for 1 hour to open „The window is to be opened for 1 hour every day.‟

(77) Das Fenster ist leicht zu öffnen. The window is easy to open „The window can easily be opened.‟

Helbig and Buscha (2001:112) note that converse to HABEN ZU, sentences with

SEIN ZU express a possibility more often than a necessity (which is typically

restricted to rules and regulations).

There are, however, instances where the variability of HABEN ZU and SEIN ZU

with regard to their modality is deliberately exploited. Langhoff (1980:453) sees it as

“characteristic” for modal infinitive constructions “that they are not tied down to only

39

For a detailed discussion of these constructions as instances of modal infinitives see Holl (2001:219).

58

one perspective, but that they can communicate in a linguistically condensed way the

complex attitude that a speaker often takes towards complicated issues.”40 He offers

as an example the following sentence (Langhoff 1980:269), in which the speaker

avoids specifying whether they want to express a possibility, an obligation, a

necessity or even a permission:

(78) Psychologen, Psychiater und Sexualwissenschaftler streiten sich darum, ob der Baron für die Bluttat verantwortlich zu machen ist. = … verantwortlich gemacht werden kann/soll/muss/darf. „Psychologist, psychiatrists and experts in sexology argue whether the baron can/should/must/may be blamed for the massacre.‟

This concludes the synopsis of lexical means of expressing modality. What remain

to be discussed are the modal qualities of the subjunctive mood in German.

Before that, however, one more important issue is to be addressed with regard to the

large and diverse groups that is referred to here collectively as „periphrastic modal

expressions‟41 (modal adverbials and modal lexical verbs/quasi-modal verbs) and the

modal infinitives. So far, their „modality‟ has been demonstrated by using them as

paraphrases of modal verb meanings, effectively explaining their inclusion in the

investigation at hand by highlighting the semantic similarity between them and modal

verbs. While this is certainly justified, it is at the same time essential to be aware that

periphrastic modal expressions are not synonymous with modal verbs. Perkins

(1983) makes this point very accurately as one of the fundamental principles

underlying his approach to modality. He argues that discussions of modality in

linguistics have been preoccupied with modal verbs because these constitute the

only formally coherent class of modal expressions, while other modal expressions

have been mentioned only in so far as they serve as paraphrases to illuminate the

meaning of modal verbs. These expressions are usually declared semantically

equivalent to modal verb meanings, the only difference being one of stylistic

characterisation. Perkins (1983:19) addresses this issue:

40

“[Für die modalen Infinitivkonstruktionen ist es] charakteristisch, daß sie nicht auf genau eine Sehweise fixiert sind, sondern in sprachlich kondensierter Form jene umfassende komplexe Haltung kommunizieren können, die ein Sprecher ja häufig vielschichtigen Sachverhalten gegenüber einnimmt.”

41 N.B. The term „periphrastic modal expressions‟ suggests that the notion of modality is expressed in more than one lexical/grammatical item within the utterance. This encapsulates the notion that these expressions can be multi-word units, such as „meiner Meinung nach‟ (in my opinion) or even clauses. In this study, however, it also includes single-word lexical items, such as the adverb „vielleicht‟ (perhaps), even though these are, strictly speaking, not „periphrastic‟.

59

“However, the relative „appropriateness‟ of different modal expressions, even

on the rare occasions when it is actually considered, is never dealt with in any

detail, and more often it is ignored altogether […] I shall argue later that in fact it

is the case that the way in which modal auxiliary verbs are used to express

modality is different in some sense from that in which non-auxiliary modal

expressions are used.”

Perkins‟ explorations obviously pertain exclusively to the English language, but the

factors that he shows to be relevant for the distinction between modal verbs and

periphrastic modal expressions are certainly worth considering for the German

language, too. As mentioned before, Perkins (1983:100) postulates that modal verbs

are the least formally explicit of all modal expressions. They only specify the nature of

the relationship (e.g. necessity or possibility) between the truth of some proposition or

the occurrence of some event and a certain set of circumstances or principles which

provide the contextual frame for the utterance. They do not, however, provide any

direct information about the actual identity of these circumstances or principles – they

are unmarked. Therefore, modal verbs can be ambiguous between different types of

modality and they can be vague with respect to, for example, the degree of speaker

involvement (subject-internal/subjective or subject-external/objective modality).

Periphrastic modal expressions, on the other hand, incorporate specific

information about one or more aspects of these variables. Consider the following

examples:

(79) Er muss morgen im Büro sein. „He must be in the office tomorrow.‟

(80) Mit Sicherheit ist er morgen im Büro. „He will certainly be in the office tomorrow.‟

(81) Ich bin überzeugt, dass er morgen im Büro ist. „I am convinced, that he will be in the office tomorrow.‟

(82) Er ist verpflichtet, morgen im Büro zu sein. „He is obliged to be in the office tomorrow.‟

(83) Ich verlange, dass er morgen im Büro ist. „I demand that he be in the office tomorrow.‟

(79) is the unmarked utterance with a modal verb. Without further context this is

ambiguous between epistemic or deontic reading, but also vague in terms of the

source of the necessity. If the speaker wishes to disambiguate the utterance, there

are various options. The modal expressions in (80) and (81) are explicitly epistemic,

the ones in (82) and (83) explicitly deontic. Within this distinction, (80) and (82)

60

additionally convey that the source of the (respective epistemic and deontic)

necessity is speaker-external (objective), while (81) and (83) identify the source of the

necessity as speaker-internal (subjective).

On top of this the speaker has the option of further modifying certain expressions

to achieve a mediating or intensifying effect, e.g.

(84) Ich bin fest davon überzeugt, dass er morgen im Büro ist. „I am absolutely convinced, that he will be in the office tomorrow.‟

Furthermore, because periphrastic modal expressions are less integrated into the

syntactic structure of a sentence as modal verbs, they offer the possibility of

positioning the part that contains the modal element in different places. A modal

adverbial, for instance, can be placed in sentence-initial, interpolating or sentence-

final, adjoining position:

(85) Meiner Meinung nach hat er es getan. ‟In my opinion, he did it.‟

(86) Er hat es meiner Meinung nach getan.. ‟He did, in my opinion, do it.‟

(87) Er hat es getan, meiner Meinung nach. ‟He did it, in my opinion.‟

On top of this, the fact that the modal element can be expressed in different

phrase types (e.g. noun phrases, adjective phrases, prepositional phrases etc.)

means that the same modal meaning can be incorporated into the sentence structure

in different grammatical ways. Both of these factors have bearings on the information

structure of an utterance, i.e. what is the topic and the focus of the utterance, which

pieces of the proposition are depicted as given and new information. There is not

enough space here to go into details about information structure theories42, but it

should be evident that a sentence like (88) below, has a different information

structure from the sentence in (89). In (88) the modal element is extrapolated from

the rest of the proposition in a separate, sentence-initial, clause (which actually

depicts the modal element as a focus of its own with the dass-clause containing a

second focus), while in (89) the modal element is incorporated into the clause as a

42

For a detailed account of information structure, see e.g. Lambrecht (1994). He defines information structure as a component of grammar that governs the relationship between the formal structure of sentences and the communicative situations in which sentences are used to convey pieces of propositional information. “In this information-structure component, propositions, as conceptual representations of states of affairs, undergo pragmatic structuring according to the discourse situations in which these states of affairs are to be communicated. The pragmatic structuring of propositions is done in terms of a speaker‟s assumptions concerning the hearer‟s state of mind at the time of an utterance. Pragmatically structured propositions are then paired with appropriate lexicogrammatical structures.” (Lambrecht 1994:334).

61

sentence adverbial in middle position (which makes the modal element only a part of

the single focus in the sentence).

(88) Es besteht die Möglichkeit, dass er den Diebstahl begangen hat. „There is a possibility, that he has commited the theft.‟

(89) Er hat den Diebstahl möglicherweise begangen. „He has possibly commited the theft.‟

All of these factors contribute to the polarity of modal verbs and periphrastic modal

expressions. The modal verbs are semantically generic and as part of the predicate

they are also syntactically more integrated than other modal expressions. These, in

turn, are often much more specific with respect to one or more of the variables just

discussed.

From a contrastive point of view, it has been stated that, in German, epistemic

modality is more often expressed by modal adverbials than by modal verbs, whereas

the opposite is the case for English, as the modal verb occupies a more central space

in epistemic modality here (cf. Edmondson et al. 1977:256; Leech and Svartvik

1975:292; Lyons 1977:802). Nehls (1986:176ff) mediates this statement slightly as

his own investigation43 reveals that there are different tendencies with respect to the

various levels of certainty of epistemic utterances. He found that for the expression of

confident conclusions as well as possibility, German indeed tends to prefer modal

adverbials such as sicher, gewiss (surely, certainly) and vielleicht, womöglich

(maybe, perhaps, possibly), respectively, whereas in English the modal verbs are

preferred over the modal adverbials. For the expression of confident assumptions,

however, there is no preference of modal verbs (WILL, SHALL) in English and modal

adverbials are used frequently in both languages (wahrscheinlich – probably).

Overall, he confirms that generally modal verbs are preferred over modal adverbials

for the expression of epistemic modality, but the difference between German and

English modal verb/modal adverb relationships is of a gradual rather than categorical

nature. On a general note, we can certainly state that, while English and German

have many modal expressions in common, the two languages differ with respect to

which of these modal expressions are preferred in certain contexts (cf. Heinrichs

1981).

43

Based on the contrastive analysis of the German novel “Die Blechtrommel” (Günter Grass) and its English translation.

62

2.3.5 Subjunctive mood (Konjunktiv)

Unlike English, the German language has two fully fledged, (in parts) morphologically

distinct, paradigms for subjunctive (Konjunktiv) moods, sometimes misleadingly

called Konjunktiv Präsens (present subjunctive) and Konjunktiv Imperfekt (past

subjunctive). These terms are used because the present subjunctive is formed on the

basis of the present tense stem of the verb, whereas the past subjunctive uses the

past tense stem of the verb. This is confusing, however, as the two subjunctives differ

with respect to modality, not tense (cf. e.g. Öhlschläger 1984:239; Brinkmann

1971:362). It is therefore preferable to refer to the two types as Konjunktiv I and

Konjuktiv II. In the following, I will first provide an outline of the basic functions

(“Grundleistung”, Brinkmann 1971:373) of the two subjunctive moods in German and

then explain in more depth how the respective morphological options for the

subjunctive are used in the German language today. The first part is based on

Brinkmann‟s (1971) account of the modal system, the second part draws on Zifonun

et al. (1997) and other relevant works on contemporary German grammar (e.g.

Helbig 2007).

2.3.5.1 The basic functions of Konjunktiv I and Konjunktiv II

Brinkmann (1971:366ff) explains the relationship between the different moods in the

following way: The indicative is the default mood for the assertion of information, i.e.

the indicative is used to signal that the utterance is about information. As such it

stands in opposition to the imperative – the default mood for implementations. It

signals that an utterance is aimed at prompting the conversational partner to carry out

the action expressed in the utterance. The subjunctives are, in principal, available for

both types of communication and therefore either contrast the indicative or the

imperative. They do, however, play a much bigger role in the realm of information.

In order to understand the basic capacity of the subjunctives, it is necessary to

consider again Brinkmann‟s notion of Horizont, which has already been mentioned in

the section on modal verbs (cf. Footnote 29, p. 39). The horizon incorporates all the

general and situational knowledge that people bring to a communicative situation,

including “their relationship to each other, their social roles, their experiences,

memories and expectations, of course also all their previous knowledge, everything

63

they think about”44 (Brinkmann 1971:730). A speaker‟s horizon is what they perceive

as valid and given in „their world‟. This world is the „real world‟ for this one person in a

particular situation, but is not necessarily congruent with other people‟s horizons or

even the same person‟s horizon in a different situation and therefore cannot be

accounted for or verified in terms of truth or reality. Brinkmann (1971:369) phrases

this in the following way:

“As with the tense system, there is no objective reference system. What is

taken as the horizon is established anew in every conversation on the grounds

of the particular conversational situation, the relationship between the

conversational partners and through everything that these partners bring to the

situation.”45

As mentioned before, the indicative (or imperative when an utterance is about

implementation) is the default mode for everything that falls within a speaker‟s

horizon. This can include a goal that is yet to be achieved or a condition that does not

yet exist in the actual world, as long as the speaker wishes to encode the proposition

as unmarked for the characteristic „outside my horizon‟.

According to Brinkmann (1971) the subjunctives, then, modify an utterance in two

different ways with respect to the speaker‟s horizon:

Konjunktiv I expands the given horizon by the introduction of a third party (in addition

to speaker and hearer), who is not present in the current conversational situation.

This affects the two types of communicative aims (implementation or information) in

the following way: For implementations, where the imperative is the default mode,

Konjunktiv I closes a systematic gap: The imperative can only be directed at persons

present in the conversation. As the Konjunktiv I introduces a third party into this

situation, a prompt can be directed at this third person. This usage of the Konjunktiv I,

however, sounds archaic and is nowadays only found in literary language and

formulaic phrases. In everyday speech these forms are now replaced by the modal

verbs SOLLEN or MÖGEN.

44

“Es schließt ihr Verhältnis zueinander ein, ihre soziale Rolle, ihre Erfahrungen, Erinnerungen und Erwartungen, natürlich auch ihr „Vorwissen“, alles woran sie denken.“ (Brinkmann 1971:730))

45 "Wie beim Tempussystem besteht also [beim Modus und dem Modalverbsystem] kein objektives Bezugsystem. Was als Horizont gegeben ist, wird jedesmal neu bestimmt durch die jeweilige Situation, durch das Verhältnis der Partner zueinander und durch das, was die Partner in die Situation mitbringen."

64

(90) Noch ist es Tag, da rühre sich der Mann... (Goethe) „It is still day, so man should still be working…‟

Konjunktiv I plays a much more important role in the realm of information. Here, it

is grammaticalised as the mode for indirect speech, as it enables the speaker to

explicitly mark an utterance as that of somebody else who is not present in the

current communicative situation. But using Konjunktiv I in indirect speech makes no

claim about whether the speaker also commits to this proposition or not.

(91) Er sagte, er sei zu krank um zur Arbeit zu gehen. „He said he was too ill to go to work.‟

Konjunktiv II goes one step further than expanding the horizon insofar as it marks

a proposition as situated OUTSIDE the given horizon. It is the mode for non-

factuality. When used in the realm of implementations, Konjunktiv II expresses

wishes that, from the perspective of the speaker, are unattainable (beyond the given

horizon):

(92) Wäre ich doch noch einmal jung! „If only I was young again!‟

This use is closely linked to conditional clauses in informational contexts (as the use

of „if‟ in English in these cases also indicates). The use in conditional clauses is the

most prominent „operational sphere‟ of the Konjunktiv II. Brinkmann (1971:377)

explains that in conditional clauses the Konjunktiv II stands in distinctive opposition to

the indicative and that it is only the speaker‟s horizon, which is the deciding factor.

Consider the following two sentences:

(93) Wenn ich Zeit habe, komme ich dich besuchen. „If I have time, I‟ll come to visit you.‟

(94) Wenn ich Zeit hätte, käme ich dich besuchen. „If I had time, I would come to visit you.‟

In both sentences the condition (protasis) is a state that does not exist in reality – it is

hypothetical in both cases. Nevertheless, this hypothetical supposition can be put in

the indicative or the Konjunktiv II. The difference is that in (93) the supposition is

declared as within the speaker‟s horizon (i.e. it is in accordance with the speaker‟s

knowledge that the condition can be fulfilled). In (94) on the other hand, the

Konjunktiv II explicitly indicates that the condition is in conflict with the speaker‟s

horizon, in other words it expresses a condition that is only attainable if the speaker

could break out from the given horizon (which is, by definition, impossible). Indeed,

the fact that the condition is unattainable is probably the motivation for the utterance.

65

In a general note, Brinkmann (19971:379) recognises “the importance of this

linguistic breakout of the given horizon [through the subjunctive, but also e.g. modal

verbs], as it attests the freedom of human beings to mentally step out of the

boundaries of the immediate situation”46. He insists that “the crucial point is to regard

reality not as irrevocably determined, but to explore new possibilities. The

grammatical form for such explorations is the Konjunktiv II”47 (Brinkmann 1971:380).

It is this quality of the subjunctive that makes it relevant for argumentative writing.

So far, Brinkmann‟s account of the subjunctive within the modal system gives the

impression of neat and straightforward form-function relationships for both Konjunktiv

I and Konjunktiv II. The linguistic reality, however, is far more complex. Brinkmann

(1971:362) summarises: “The subjunctives […] are [to a large extent] morphologically

indistinct, they are only grammatically compulsory in a very limited range of contexts

and, because of their reference to the (very diverse) horizon, they are also

semantically only vaguely determined.”48 The subjective nature of the horizon has

already been discussed. This leaves two fundamental issues to be clarified: The

extensive syncretism between subjunctives and indicative (plus the so-called

“replacement system” including the analytic subjunctive with würde) and the contexts

in which subjunctives are mandatory or optional. As Zifonun et al. (1997:1731ff)

provide a much more detailed and up-to-date description of both of these aspects,

the following sections are based on their explanations.

2.3.5.2 Syncretism between subjunctives and indicative

Due to space restrictions, the problem of morphological syncretism between

subjunctive and indicative forms is only laid out along very general lines; for a

comprehensive account see Zifonun et al. (1997:1739). Konjunktiv I and Konjunktiv II

are formed by adding the subjunctive morphemes (-e, -est, -e, -en, -et, -en) to the

present tense verb stem and the preterite verb stem, respectively. This has the

following consequences:

46

“Das Ausbrechen aus dem gegebenen Horizont spielt in der Sprache eine große Rolle, weil sich darin die Freiheit des menschen bekundet, die Grenzen der jeweiligen Situation im Geiste zu überschreiten.“

47 “Es geht darum, die Wirklichkeit nicht als endgültig gegeben anzusehen, sondern neue Möglichkeiten zu erproben. Die grammatische Form solcher Erprobung ist der Konjunktiv II.”

48 “Allerdings sind die Konjunktive morphologisch […] undeutlich, nur sehr eingeschränkt in bestimmten Verwendungsweisen grammatisch verbindlich und durch den Bezug auf den (sehr verschiedenen) Horizont nur vage festgelegt.”

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Depending on the phonological structure of the verb and whether a verb is strong

(irregular) or weak (regular), Konjunktiv I and indicative can sometimes be

distinct only in the 3rd person singular:

Indicative Konjunktiv I

1st singular ich arbeite ich arbeite

2nd singular du arbeitest du arbeitest

3rd singular sie arbeitet sie arbeite

1st plural wir arbeiten wir arbeiten

2nd plural ihr arbeitet ihr arbeitet

3rd plural sie arbeiten sie arbeiten

TABLE 3: PRESENT TENSE INDICATIVE AND KONJUNKTIV I

For other verbs, more forms of the paradigm are distinct, but the 1st person

singular and plural and the 3rd person plural are always homonymous:

Indicative Konjunktiv I

1st singular ich gebe ich gebe

2nd singular du gibst du gebest

3rd singular sie geben sie gebe

1st plural wir geben wir geben

2nd plural ihr gebt ihr gebet

3rd plural sie geben sie geben

TABLE 4: PRESENT TENSE INDICATIVE AND KONJUNKTIV I

For Konjunktiv II syncretism with the indicative preterite exists for all weak verbs

in all persons:

Indicative Konjunktiv II

1st singular ich spielte ich spielte

2nd singular du spieltest du spieltest

3rd singular sie spielte sie spielte

1st plural wir spielten wir spielten

2nd plural ihr spielte ihr spielte

3rd plural sie spielten sie spielten

TABLE 5: PRETERITE INDICATIVE AND KONJUNKTIV II (WEAK VERBS)

Strong verbs, which undergo stem vowel change in the preterite, have Umlauts

wherever possible in the Konjunktiv II form and are therefore always distinct from

the indicative:

67

Indicative Konjunktiv I

1st singular ich kam ich käme

2nd singular du kamst du käm(e)st

3rd singular sie kam sie käme

1st plural wir kamen wir kämen

2nd plural ihr kamt ihr käm(e)t

3rd plural sie kamen sie kämen

TABLE 6: PRETERITE INDICATIVE AND KONJUNKTIV II (STRONG VERBS)

All other periphrastic forms of the paradigm (future, perfect etc.) are formed, as in

the indicative, through combinations of the finite subjunctive verb forms of

sein/haben and werden and the participle/infinitive of the main verb. Out of the

copula/auxiliary verbs (sein, haben, werden), sein is the most distinct in

Konjunktiv I, all of them are distinct in Konjunktiv II:

Indicative Konjunktiv I Konjunktiv II

ich bin/war ich sei ich wäre

ich habe/hatte ich habe ich hätte

ich werde/wurde ich werde ich würde

TABLE 7: SEIN/HABEN/WERDEN IN INDICATIVE, KONJUNKTIV I AND KONJUNKTI II

Because of this varied and extensive syncretism, it is often not possible to

determine whether a verb in a particular utterance is in the subjunctive or the

indicative. There is therefore a complex replacement system in place for cases where

the speaker explicitly wants to mark a verb as subjunctive. This used to be portrayed

in the following way: If syncretism between indicative and Konjunktiv I occurs (95),

Konjunktiv II is used instead. If the Konjunktiv II form is homonymous with the

indicative preterite (96), another so-called „replacement subjunctive‟ is used (97). This

is formed analytically with the Konjunktiv II of werden – würde – and the bare

infinitive:

(95) Die Dozenten sagen, dass die Studenten zu wenig arbeiten. =

(96) Die Dozenten sagen, dass die Studenten zu wenig arbeiteten. =

(97) Die Dozenten sagen, dass die Studenten zu wenig arbeiten würden. „The lecturers say that the students work too little.‟

The real situation, however, is more complicated. Bausch (1979:114) argues

convincingly that it is “concepts of language cultivation, which dominate linguistic

criticism, [that] have made it into modern grammars as the desirable standard in the

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description of modality”49, especially where an insistence on synthetic subjunctive

forms and the rejection of the würde-subjunctive is concerned. Zifonun et al.

(1997:1783ff) summarise on the basis of several corpus investigations (including

Bausch‟s (1979)) the actual situation of synthetic and analytic subjunctives in today‟s

language use:

Konjunktiv I is generally restricted to literary texts and public (in particular mass-

media) communication. While in literature, the use of Konjunktiv I is connected to

genre- and author-specific conventions and certain literary effects, in mass-media

communication and in particular in news texts, indirect speech is always marked by

the subjunctive. In everyday spoken discourse, Konjunktiv I hardly occurs at all and if

so, usually only on the verbs haben and sein. The other (rare) instances of the

Konjunktiv I in spoken language can usually be interpreted as interferences from

written language. Instead, Konjunktiv II, würde-subjunctive and indicative50 are used

in indirect speech contexts.

Konjunktiv II is used in spoken and written language and is therefore less

dependent on text type, genre, language variety or speech community. The

differences here are with respect to which verbs are used in the Konjunktiv II. In

spoken language, only haben, sein, werden and the modal verbs are used almost

exclusively with the synthetic Konjunktiv II. Most other main verbs (with the exception

of some very common ones such as kommen, gehen, wissen, geben, tun, brauchen)

are usually used with the analytic würde-subjunctive, even if a distinct Konjunktiv II

form is available. In written language, the range of verbs that occur with synthetic

Konjunktiv II is slightly wider, but there is also a tendency, just as in spoken

language, to restrict its use to certain common verbs and use the würde-subjunctive

in all other cases (cf. Witton 2000). In light of these findings, Zifonun et al.

(1997:1785) suggest that what in terms of the morphological paradigm is taken as the

„replacement subjunctive‟, i.e. the würde-subjunctive, in terms of its frequency of use

in spoken AND written language actually occupies the central position. Bausch

(1979:61) goes as far as to assess the different subjunctive forms as stylistic

variations, where Konjunktiv I is assigned only to written language and the würde-

form is structurally the main variant and most frequently used variant of the Konunktiv

II. Fabricius-Hansen (1997) predicts that “the würde-subjunctive will probably, over

49

“… die dominierenden sprachpflegerischen Konzepte der Sprachkritik in neuere Grammatiken weitgehend als Prämissen in die Beschreibung des Modusbereichts eingegangen sind.”

50 N.B. a subjunctive marker is not grammatically compulsory in indirect speech contexts. This will be discussed in more detail in the next section (2.3.5.3).

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time, entirely replace the analytic Konjunktiv II forms and will in the end possibly be,

with a few auxiliary exceptions, the only Konjunktiv II forms.”51

2.3.5.3 Usage contexts for Konjunktiv I and Konjunktiv II

The final point that needs addressing in the discussion of the subjunctive in German

is that while it is only grammatically compulsory in a small number of contexts it can,

of course, occur in a much wider variety of context types. I will, again, follow Zifonun

et al.‟s (1997:1743) comprehensive description of these contexts types here (cf. also

Helbig 2007). Zifonun et al.‟s definition of the basic function of the subjunctive

corresponds with Brinkmann‟s (1971) description outlined above: “The subjunctive

indicates a break or annulment of the immediacy in the interpretative reference with

respect to two primary coordinates: present speaker and factual world”52 (Zifonun et

al. 1997:1785)(emphasis in original). In light of the results on actual language use

summarised above, however, they state that, while each subjunctive mood can be

primarily ascribed to one of the two functions (i.e. Konjunktiv I for indirect speech,

Konjunktiv II for non-factuality), both subjunctives can reach into each other‟s domain

(especially Konjunktiv II in indirect speech)53. Zifonun et al. (1997:1743) term the two

groups of context types that arise from the two basic functions of the subjunctive

„indirectness contexts‟ and „modality contexts‟. As these context types are crucial for

the analysis of the subjunctive in the present study, they will be summarised here.

First of all, they ascertain that the subjunctive is the marked mood for indirectness

and non-factuality contexts; it excludes directness and factuality contexts. The

indicative, on the other hand, is unmarked for these contexts, i.e. it can generally

occur in all contexts. In these cases, the default interpretation is directness and

factuality unless the context signals the transfer into an indirectness or non-factuality

context.

a) Modality contexts

Modality contexts explicitly or implicitly indicate that a proposition is not to be related

to what is factual. Certain modality contexts even infer that the proposition is

51

“Es steht aber zu vermuten, daß die würde-Formen mit der Zeit generell den Platz als analytische Konjunktiv-II-Formen einnehmen und am Ende möglicherweise, bis auf vereinzelte auxiliare Ausnahmen, die einzigen Konjunktiv-II-Formen überhaupt sein werden.”

52 “Der Konjunktiv zeigt eine Brechung oder Aufhebung der Unmittelbarkeit der interpretativen Bezugnahme auf die beiden primären Koordinaten aktualer Sprecher oder aktuale Welt an.”

53 Cf. also Fabricius-Hansen (1997:20) for a similar summary of the main and peripheral functions of Konjunktiv I and II and areas where their use overlaps without changing the meaning or grammaticality of an utterance.

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decidedly non-factual (counterfactual). Where a subjunctive (Konunktiv II or würde-

form) is used this signals the following semantic restriction [A] (Zifonun et al.

1997:1744):

[A] ‟It is in accordance with the speaker‟s knowledge, that the piece of prepositional

knowledge which is formulated using the subjunctive is not the case.‟ In

counterfactual situations this restriction is tightened to: „It is not in accordance with

the speaker‟s knowledge that the proposition is the case.‟ The interpretation as non-

factual or counterfactual is dependent on context.

Conditional clauses

The most common kind of modality context is conditionals. Syntactically, the

condition is realised by a subordinate clause introduced by wenn, falls, sofern (if) or a

verb-first subordinate clause; the würde-form can occur in subordinate and/or main

clause with or without future reference.

Semantically, the semantic restriction [A] formulated above applies, first of all, to

the condition (p) – which sets up the interpretation as non-factual or counter-factual.

On top of that the following relationship [B] between condition (p) and consequence

(q) applies:

[B] ‟According to the speaker‟s knowledge it is more probable that (p and q) is the

case than (p and not q)‟. This is regardless of whether p is perceived as never true or

possibly attainable (Zifonun et al. 1997:1746).

(98) Wenn er krank wäre, könnte er die Prüfung nicht ablegen. ‟If he was ill, he couldn‟t take part in the exam.‟

Counterfactual conditionals express that, from the speaker‟s point of view, it is not the

case that p and q are both the case at the same time. They often refer to events in

the past (retrospective counterfactual conditionals):

(99) Wenn er mich rechtzeitig gewarnt hätte, hätte ich diesen Fehler nicht gemacht. ‟If he had warned me in time, I wouldn‟t have made this mistake.‟

The relationship [B] also applies to conditionals in the indicative. The semantic

restriction [A], however, is then to be replaced with the following restriction [C]:

[C] „It is in accordance with the speaker‟s knowledge that the proposition formulated

in the condition (p) is the case.‟ (Zifonun et al. 1997:1746)

(100) Wenn sie heute ankommt, hole ich sie vom Bahnhof ab. ‟If she arrives today, I will pick her up from the station.‟

This means, as already pointed out above, that conditionals formulated in the

indicative are still hypothetical arguments (which is why the often used term „real

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conditions‟ is inappropriate) as both p and q refer to the future, but here the

probability that p is the case is emphasised. I will therefore work with Nehls‟ (1978)

terminology here and call this type „direct prospective predicative conditionals‟.

Conditionals of the type exemplified in (98) above (Konjunktiv II in both clauses in

German) are called „indirect prospective predicative conditionals‟ as p and q still both

refer to future events but the propositions are expressed more tentatively (indirect).

Mixed forms are also possible, where one of the two clauses contains the indicative,

the other one the subjunctive:

(101) Wenn auf diese Option verzichtet wird, wären zwei weitere Möglichkeiten zu bedenken. ‟If this option is abandoned, two other possibilities would have to be considered.‟

Potential/non-factual argumentation

These are contexts where other possible (but not factual) circumstances are set up,

under which a non-factual proposition can be viewed. Syntactically this is achieved

e.g. by noun phrases, participle constructions, infinitive constructions or adverbials

which create scenarios by either referring to something as existing just as a thought

or referring to things that are not factual or depicting situations that are not given in

the here and now.

(102) Er hat großes Glück gehabt. Ein schlechterer Schwimmer wäre ertrunken. „He was very lucky. Someone who is a worse swimmer would have drowned.‟

A further series of modality contexts are triggered by certain lexical or semantic

markers in a super-ordinate clause:

Counterfactual consecutive clauses

These have indicative in the main clause and the particle so/zu/allzu (too), while the

subordinate clause is introduced by (als) dass:

(103) Das Wasser ist zu kalt, als dass man darin baden könnte. The water is too cold, as that one in it swim could. „The water is too cold to swim in it.‟

Other variations of this construction are clauses introduced by ohne dass and

(an)statt dass.

Counterfactual comparative clauses

These also have indicative in the main clause, while the subjunctive clause is

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introduced by als/als ob (as if). With these constructions Konjunktiv I or Konjunktiv II

can be used.

(104) Die Unterschrift kam mir keineswegs so vor, als ob sie gefälscht sei. „The signature didn‟t seem to me at all as if it was fake.‟

Counterfactual relative clauses

In relative clauses following a negated main clause, Konjunktiv II can be used to

indicate that the relative clause is within the scope of negation.

(105) Es war niemand auf der Party, der sie verstanden hätte. „There was nobody at the party who would have understood her.‟

Modality contexts with modal verbs

When used in conjunction with modal verbs, Konjunktiv II is often used to signal the

non-factuality of the whole proposition including the modal verb.

(106) Sie hat immer über ihre Verhältnisse gelebt. Das hätte sie nicht machen sollen. „She has always lived beyond her means. She shoudn‟t have done that.‟

This works in the same way with verbs like wünschen, ermöglichen, verdienen, sich

lohnen (wish, enable, deserve, be worth) with infinitive or dass-clause.

(107) Er wünschte sich so sehr, dass sie ihm nur einmal richtig zuhören würde. „He wished so much that she would, just once, really listen to him.‟

Modality contexts for politeness

These contexts include e.g. attitude statements or discourse structuring statements

but also often occur in sales situations. The point here is that the utterance is only

seemingly non-factual in order to reduce the interactional immediacy.

(108) Nach diesem Exkurs wäre es jetzt an der Zeit, dass wir uns wieder auf das eigentliche Thema konzentrieren. „After this excursion it would now be time for us to concentrate on the actual topic.‟

b) Indirectness contexts

In indirectness contexts the speaker indicates that the propositional content they are

expressing does not relate to their own knowledge at the time of speaking, but refers

to a different source. This is commonly referred to as indirect speech of an actual or

imagined original utterance. This has obvious consequences for transferring

personal, spacial and temporal deictic expressions as well as capturing in an

appropriate reporting verb the type of speech act that the original utterance intended.

These issues are not of interest here. The relevant aspect for the use of the

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subjunctive is the directness/indirectness distinction. This refers to the degree of

immediacy that the speaker commits to when making a statement. Directness is

associated with the claim „I say that p‟. Indirectness is associated with a moderated

commitment, as in: „X says that p, but I leave it open whether I say that p‟, or with a

complex commitment (a combination of the previous two), as in „X says that p and I

also say that p.‟

The difficulty here is that in German there is no 1:1 assignment of indicative and

subjunctive to these different degrees of commitment, as the indicative can occur in

any one of these cases. As explained before (2.3.5.2), the use of the subjunctive in

indirectness contexts is highly genre, discourse and text type dependent. We can

distinguish between discourse/text types etc. where indirectness is usually explicitly

marked following the normative directives of prescriptive grammar and discourse/text

types where indirectness is not usually explicitly marked. The former typically occurs

in public communication (esp. mass-media news texts). In these, indirectness is at

least signalled by one marker, either (i) a subordinate clause with a reporting verb in

the main clause or (ii) the subjunctive, but often double marking occurs. Here, the

subjunctive is the „default mode‟ for indirect speech. In non-public, informal

communication, on the other hand, indirectness is not usually marked. Here, the

indicative is the default mode, even in indirectness contexts that express the

moderated commitment of the kind „X says that p, but I leave it open whether I say

that p‟.

So, in summary, the use of the subjunctive always explicitly signals moderated

commitment. If the indicative is used in indirect speech it is entirely text or discourse

dependent whether this to be interpreted as directness (claim) or indirectness

(moderated commitment) or a combination of both (complex commitment).

It should have become clear that the use of the various subjunctive forms in

German is mostly subject to factors other than grammatical rules. These factors

include genre, discourse and text type, but also language variety and individual

speaker choices (cf. also Lauridsen and Poulsen 1995). In the present study on

learner German, the contexts in which the learners employ subjunctives should

therefore give an indication on how their language use fits into the specific

conventions on the use of subjunctives in student argumentative texts.

This concludes the description of the diverse range linguistic possibilities for

expressing modality. Each of the four groups of modality markers – modal verbs,

periphrastic modal expressions, modal infinitives and subjunctive moods – add

slightly different layers of modality to an utterance, as they all differ in their

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morphological and syntactic make-up and integration into the sentence. As disparate

as they are, however, all modal means express the same fundamental function: Any

form of explicit modality marking by any of the means discussed above indicates that

the validity of an utterance is in some way or form mediated, i.e. the utterance is to be

interpreted with respect to the kind of modality that is encapsulated in the modality

marker and not to be questioned in terms of the truth value of the expressed

proposition.

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3. Modality in Second Language Acquisition Research

As pointed out in section 2.1.3, studies of modality in general have mainly

concentrated on modal verbs. The same holds true for investigations of modality in

first and second language acquisition. One reason might be the relative ease of

investigating modal verbs, as they form a closed set of items. Another might be that,

without the possibilities of corpus methods, an investigation beyond modal verbs

would become unfeasible. While this restriction on the research focus is therefore

understandable, it nevertheless also limits the informative value of those studies. This

is even more the case if we consider the fact that, although different languages may

have the same types of modal expressions at their disposal, they often differ

considerably with regard to which of these expressions are preferred in comparable

contexts (Heinrich 1981:74).

There are, however, some qualitative studies that look very closely into the

emergence of modal markers, including not only lexical and grammaticalised means

of expressing modality but also implicit uses of modality via inference from the

discourse context (Giacalone Ramat 1999), as well as 'precursors' of

grammaticalised modalities (Dittmar 1993) in natural language acquisition settings.

3.1 MODALITY IN NATURALISTIC ACQUISITION

Giacalone Ramat (1995; 1999) investigates the order of emergence of (epistemic and

deontic) modal distinctions in learner varieties and the types of encoding of modal

notions preferred by adult learners of Italian. The subjects in her study (from the

longitudinal “Pavia Project”) comprised 25 learners with different L1s, who learnt

Italian in a natural acquisition setting in Italy without formal instruction. The key point

in her results is that “the acquisition of linguistic means for expressing deonticity and

epistemicity show quite different pictures; while deonticity is straightforwardly

expressed by the modal verbs […], epistemic meanings are first conveyed by lexical

strategies, such as propositional attitude verbs, adverbs, adjectives." (Giacalone

Ramat 1999:394).

Evidence from the P-MoLL project (Modalität in Lernervarietäten im Längsschnitt -

Modality in a longitudinal study of learner varieties) suggests that the same can be

observed for learner German. P-MoLL is a longitudinal research project on the

acquisition and grammaticalisation of modality conducted by Dittmar et al. (see

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Dittmar, Reich, Schumacher, Skiba and Terborg 1990) with Italian and Polish

learners starting at elementary proficiency levels in untutored language learning

settings. Within this project, Dittmar and Ahrenholz (1995:206ff) are able to

demonstrate that propositional attitude verbs such as denken, glauben (think,

believe) and adverbs like vielleicht (perhaps) dominate epistemic modality in the early

stages of acquisition while epistemic readings of modal verbs occur later and less

frequently. This seems to be a language-independent feature of learner language, as

similar results could also be attested for French learners of English (Lambert 1995).

Terborg (1993) also shows that the first occurrences of modal verbs in learner

language are exclusively deontic. These deontic modal verbs occur early on in the

acquisition process and play a central role as deontic modal expressions for a long

time, while deontic adjectives and adverbials only occur much later and are rare

(Dittmar and Ahrenholz 1995). Giacalone Ramat (1999:381ff) is able to demonstrate

that this grammaticalisation process in the learner language from deontic to epistemic

meanings of modal verbs maps the historical grammaticalisation process of modal

verbs. On top of this, there is ample evidence that, in first language acquisition,

deontic meanings of modal verbs also precede epistemic ones (e.g. Perkins 1983;

Sheperd 1993; Stephany 1995; for the first language acquisition of epistemic

KÖNNEN versus vielleicht see Doitchinov 2001). Terborg (1993:245) partly assumes

the same underlying reason for this similarity: “[…] marked forms of deontic necessity

occur before marked forms of high degrees of probability in L1- and L2-acquisition,

because a speaker does not need to mark factivity but must mark deontic necessity,

if he wants to express it.”

In first language acquisition, another reason for the later emergence of epistemic

modality is ascribed to general cognitive development: “Young children‟s social status

as well as their physical condition favor their concern with norms for actions and the

possibility of performing them, the attainment of desired states of affairs with the help

of others, rather than the validity of statements” (Stephany 1995:106). This is where

adult second language learners differ from L1 child learners: Adult SLA learners

already have pragmatic knowledge of both deontic and epistemic categories but,

more than that – they also express both types of modality from early on and gradually

develop the linguistic resources in the target language to do so concurrently. Dittmar

(1993), Dittmar and Ahrenholz (1995) and Giacalone Ramat (1999) trace the

emergence of modality before target-like grammatical or lexical means are available

to the learners in the early learner stages. All of these studies show that although no

explicit modal expressions are present, modal meanings can still be conveyed

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through implicit means, i.e. where “some kind of modalization has to be posited on

the basis of discourse context […] Modality is to be inferred from the (native)

interlocutor‟s utterances, or from discourse pragmatic features” (Giacalone Ramat

1999:387). The following utterance (adapted from Ahrenholz 2000:349) exemplifies

how in an instruction the learner (12 months of residence in Germany) explicitly

specifies object, goal and location referents but conveys the modal conditions – non-

factuality, necessity – only implicitly:

(109) mit de journal de aschenbäsch in de boors with the newspaper the ashtray in the bag „(Please put) the ashtray (with the help of) the newspaper into the bag‟

In addition to this so called “pragmatic mode” (Givón 1979), unanalysed formulaic

expressions (stereotypes), which are used in an invariant way and have some kind of

“proto-modal meaning” (Dittmar 1993:224) are employed in these early stages.

Ahrenholz (2000) shows how learners perform instructions in pragmatic mode by

using verbless directives or directives including formulaic, uninflected verb forms.

Dittmar (1993) demonstrates how the German word bitte (please) is used by the

learner in instructions to convey politeness and deontic necessity at the same time

(example from Dittmar 1993:226):

(110) bitte zeitung tasche „please newspaper bag‟ Please put the newspaper into the bag

Terborg (1993:242) adds that his observations indicate that bitte serves more as

an expression of necessity than of politeness. This is also supported by evidence

from the syntactic development in learner varieties from sentences containing bitte to

those containing the conventional modal verb müssen to express deontic necessity

(Skiba 1993).

The repertoire for expressing epistemic modality in basic learner varieties

comprises paralinguistic cues, such as hesitations or gestures, and intonation (e.g.

Dittmar 1993). As the acquisition progresses, formulaic expressions such as I don‟t

know (no so in Italian; weiß nicht in German) are added as markers of epistemic

possibility. Vielleicht (perhaps) is regarded as a kind of epistemic „joker‟, which is

used extensively either on its own or as reinforcement of epistemically used verbs of

sensory perception, thinking and believing, such as denken, finden, glauben (think,

find, believe), which mark a further step in the grammaticalisation process that

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learners go through. Giacalone Ramat (1992) refers to this process as “acquisitional

grammmaticalization”, which is defined as

“The transformation of pragmatic and semantic formats of expression (words,

unanalyzed “chunks”)

1. Into specific productive syntactic patterns of the individual learner variety,

which are important for the organization of meaning and which tend to

converge in the long run with the target variety; and

2. Toward morphosyntactic norms of the target language.” (Skiba and Dittmar

1992:324)

This can be seen in the development from implicit modality in example (109) to

explicit marking with bitte in example (110) to the next step where deontic necessity

is expressed by the appropriate modal verb MÜSSEN as in example (111) below,

even if the whole utterance is not yet entirely target-like (example from Terborg

1993:240):

(111) du muss die Zeitung bisschen höher you must the newspaper a little higher „You have to (hold) the newspaper a little higher.‟

Where the acquisitional grammaticalisation of modal verbs is concerned, it could,

again, be shown that they emerge according to an order that is regularly followed by

learners, although this order differs between different L2 languages and L1-transfer

also seems to play a role here. Dittmar and Terborg (1991) determined that Polish

learners of German display deontic MÜSSEN (must) first, whereas for an Italian

learner WOLLEN (want) is the first modal verb to appear, followed by MÜSSEN and

KÖNNEN(can). Dittmar (1979) determines in his functional analysis of emergent

modal verbs that the high frequency of WOLLEN and MÜSSEN is also due to an

expansion of meanings where e.g. MÜSSEN is not only used for demands,

suggestions and advice but also for temporal meanings, ability and permission. While

these three modals (in their deontic and volitive meaning, respectively) are acquired

at an early stage, a second group of modals including SOLLEN (is supposed to),

MÖCHTEN (would like to) and DÜRFEN (be allowed to) emerges considerably later.

Dittmar and Ahrenholz (1995:231) add, however, that conceptual proximity to the

native language plays an important role. For the Italian learner WOLLEN is the

prototypical volitional expression, which corresponds both in syntactic form and

semantic function to the Italian VOLERE – it is acquired first. Polish learners, on the

other hand, develop MÖCHTEN before WOLLEN, because there is an analogy to

the corresponding Polish modal verb.

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It has to be added here, though, that the data basis for these qualitative studies is

not very extensive and this is a major drawback. The Pavia Project comprises only 25

learners with various L1-backgrounds. This means that the data that is available for

speakers of the same mother-tongue is relatively small, although L1 is a significant

variable for differences in learner language. The P-MoLL project only comprises 16

learners, but for the studies reported on here that draw on this data, not even all of

the data is used. Dittmar and Terborg (1991) and Dittmar (1993), for example, only

analyse the recordings of one Polish learner. Ahrenholz‟s (2000) study is based on

the recordings of 10 learners. Despite the fact that the findings of the various studies

in the different projects seem to corroborate each other, we should be cautious of

overgeneralising these results.

3.2 MODALITY IN INSTRUCTED ACQUISITION

In all the evidence for the grammaticalisation process of adult learners presented so

far we have seen that, at the beginning of the acquisition process, pragmatic needs

are the driving force behind the development of lexical and grammatical means. The

learners “build on their pragmatic knowledge, making do with whatever L2 grammar

they have and at the same time acquiring the grammar needed to accomplish actions

in the L2” (Kasper and Rose 2001:188). This “primacy of pragmatics” hypothesis

(Dittmar 1992:254) therefore states that “pragmatic categories precede syntactic

ones” (cf. also Kasper and Rose 2002 for further evidence of this hypothesis in areas

other than modality). Conversely, there is rich evidence, especially from more

advanced L2 learners in instructional settings, where correct grammar is used in a

pragmatically inappropriate way. This is the so called “grammar-precedes-pragmatics

scenario” (Kasper and Rose 2001:174). This scenario comes in three different forms

(cf. Kasper and Rose 2001:190):

Firstly, learners demonstrate knowledge of a particular grammatical structure or

element but do not use it to modify illocutionary force. Secondly, they demonstrate

knowledge of a grammatical structure but use it to express pragmalinguistic functions

that are not conventional in the target language. And thirdly, learners demonstrate

knowledge of a grammatical structure and its pragmalinguistic functions yet use it in

inappropriate sociopragmatic contexts.

The first form essentially says that grammatical knowledge does not necessarily

enable appropriate pragmalinguistic use (utterances which convey the intended

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illocutionary force) and is well documented in two studies of learner modality. In a

one-year longitudinal study with twelve participants in an intensive instructional

programme, Salisbury and Bardovi-Harlig (2000) examined the emergence of

epistemic modality in beginning English as a second language (ESL) learners with

varying L1s. Despite considerable variability in the learners‟ modality profiles, modal

expressions emerged in a consistent acquisitional pattern:

maybe > think > CAN > WILL > WOULD > COULD

As with the learners in natural settings, we can see that adverbials and

parenthetical expressions precede modal verbs in epistemic modality, but the crucial

outcome of this study is that even the availability of modal verbs in the learners‟

grammars did not necessarily translate into the use of these verbs in pragmatically

appropriate ways (in this case for mitigating disagreement). Salsbury and Bardovi-

Harlig (2000:73) observe that “even learners with grammaticalized expressions of

modality rely heavily on lexical forms to unambiguously mark their pragmatic intent”.

This corroborates evidence from an earlier cross-sectional corpus study on epistemic

modality by Finnish learners of English conducted by Kärkkäinen (1992). She found

that her lower-proficiency learners preferred to modify their speech acts by

parentheticals and lexical verbs (mainly I think) as a compensatory strategy for both

modal verbs and adverbs. The higher-proficiency learners chose to use modal verbs

and adverbs more frequently, though not as much as the native speakers. Their

preferred epistemic options were still parentheticals. Both of these sets of evidence

seems to suggest, then, that syntactically integrated, non-routinised expressions of

epistemic modality (such as the modal verbs and adverbs) – which convey speaker

attitudes implicitly – are more difficult to acquire than explicit, extra-clausal and

routinised expressions, such as the parentheticals. Kärkkäinen (1992:213) suggests

that this implicitness makes it difficult to pinpoint and describe the exact pragmatic

functions of these expressions, which in turn means that they are not explicitly taught

and can evade the learner‟s attention for a very long time.

To sum up the relationship between grammatical and pragmatic L2 acquisition, we

have seen that, while the direction from pragmatic categories to grammatical

expressions characterises the very early stages of (mainly untutored) L2 acquisition,

the reverse seems to be the case for more advanced learners (and, we might add,

learners in instructional settings). Their learning task increasingly changes to figuring

out the various pragmatic, often secondary meanings that specific grammatical forms

(e.g. modal verbs) have.

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So far, all the studies I have discussed investigated the spoken language of

beginning to mid-proficiency learners, and considered mainly the involvement of

pragmatics on grammatical development. The selection of beginning learners –

especially in natural acquisition settings – explains the focus on spoken language in

these studies, as this group of learners would not produce much written text in the L2

in their everyday lives and asking them to do so for a research project would bring in

additional issues and complications that would negatively influence the validity of the

results. The study presented within this thesis, however, deals with mid- to high-

proficiency university students of German who produce written texts in the L2

regularly as part of their degree course. As discussed before (see 1.1), the

argumentative texts that the learners are asked to write as part of their assessment is

one type of text where expressions of modality are essential. Unlike the beginning

learners in the studies discussed previously, the university students are expected to

have already acquired a substantial part of the modal system with its various

linguistic manifestations and have these modal expressions available for both spoken

and written discourse. How they employ these expressions in comparison to native

speakers is therefore the focus of this study, rather than the development of early

forms of modality. In the following part of this review I shall therefore include two

modality studies on advanced learners in instructional settings and written discourse.

These are particularly relevant here, as both medium and learner proficiency matches

more closely the study presented in this thesis. Their design, results and discussion

of findings will be presented separately in slightly more detail. On top of this, other

corpus studies on learner modality are discussed very briefly.

The first investigation is a corpus study by Aijmer (2002) involving Swedish

learners of English at Swedish universities, who have already gained a relatively

advanced level of proficiency. The data forms part of the ICLE (International Corpus

of Learner English) corpus collected at the university of Louvain (for a full description,

see Granger 1998) and consists of a 52,000 word sample of the 200,000 word

Swedish subcorpus of argumentative written texts. Recognising that, despite the

central role of modal verbs in the English language, a wide variety of alternative

modal expressions exists and needs to be taken into account, especially when

investigating learner language, Aijmer seeks to investigate the range and frequency

of some key modal verbs and (epistemic) adverbs in the learner corpus. She does

not, however, consider adjectival or noun phrases in her analysis. The learner data is

compared against a similar corpus of native speaker writing as well as other

components of the ICLE corpus (French and German L2 writers) in order to ascertain

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whether features of the Swedish L2 writing are likely to be L1-induced or more

general phenomena of L2 writing54.

Her results can be summarised as follows: In terms of frequency, the category of

modal expressions as a whole is significantly overused by the learners. The overuse

of modal verbs seems to be a universal feature of learner language, as the French

and German learners show the same tendency. One explanation Aijmer offers for

this, which would also explain the universality of this feature, is that a high frequency

of certain modal expressions (e.g. the modal verb WILL) in English is characteristic of

spoken discourse. The fact that learners (as well as novice writers55) often adopt a

more speech-like style in their writing than English native speakers is well

documented in a number of research studies that have drawn on the ICLE data (e.g.

Granger and Tyson 1998; Meunier 2000). Another result from Aijmer‟s study

underpins this impression: The significant and striking overuse of the epistemic

lexical verbs I think and I believe by all learners. I think is regarded as a feature

indicating writer/reader visibility (involvement) and also acts as a parenthetical

discourse frame („sentence builder‟). It is one of the most frequent phrases in spoken

English and therefore a firm fixture of spoken discourse, again pointing towards the

speech-like style of learner writers. Moreover, Petch-Tyson (1998) showed that all

non-native speaker groups used more features of writer/reader visibility than native

speakers and Granger (1998) proves the learners‟ preference for active „discourse

frames‟ over passive ones.

Another feature of learner writing, and possible explanation for the overuse of

modal expressions as a whole, is the tendency to use pleonastic expressions, i.e.

where the same modal meaning is expressed twice in the same utterance by different

means, such as can perhaps, must certainly etc.56 For the Swedish learners, this

general tendency could further be reinforced by interlingual factors. “Whereas in

English, modal meanings are prototypically and frequently expressed by modals, in

Swedish, the epistemic modal meanings are more often realised as an adverb or as

an adverb plus a modal verb” (Aijmer 2000:72). As the modal verbs therefore have a

weaker position in Swedish than in English, the use of pleonastic modal expressions

might well be a factor for the higher frequencies.

Other results from the study showed that the overuse of certain modal expressions

corresponded directly to the overuse of certain modal functions. MUST for example

was overused only as a marker of deontic necessity, not of epistemic. This creates

54

A detailed account of the methodology of learner corpus investigations will be given in chapter 4. 55

See 4.2.2 for a definition of the term „novice writer‟. 56

Cf. also results in Lorenz (1998:64) for the same tendency in the area of adjective intensification.

83

the impression of a very „strong opinion‟ through a direct and emphatic style, which is

not always appropriate to the given topic and certainly contributes to the rhetorical

effect of a text, often marking it as non-native like without overt grammatical or lexical

errors. This uncertainty in striking the right balance between tentativeness and

assertiveness by learners also shows in the overuse of epistemic MIGHT in contexts

where a more strongly assertive modal would make the writer seem less “equivocal,

diffident or naïve” (Hyland and Milton 1997:186).

Aijmer‟s discussion makes it clear that there is no single factor that explains the

diverging patterns of modal expressions between learners and native speakers, but

that a number of interlingual and developmental aspects have to be taken into

consideration as well as the influence of teaching material on learner production. At

the same time, Aijmer (2002:72) admits that

“It is important to point out however, that the study was non-exhaustive and

although it considered a variety of modal expressions the ways of expressing

modality are so numerous that it would require a completely manual study,

using a corpus manually tagged for every kind of modal expression, before any

firm statements could be made about global use of modality in learner writing.”

It is exactly this kind of shortcoming that the present study aims to address.

There are a number of other studies that aim to identify the specific characteristics

of modality use in L2 English using corpus linguistics methods. Hinkel investigates

the effects of different cultural values and norms (Hinkel 1995) as well as different

essay topics (Hinkel 2009) on the use of modal verbs in L2 writing and finds that

“frequency rates of obligation and necessity modals in L2 essays are, in fact, affected

by the writing topic to a great extent. On the other hand [...] the frequency rates of

possibility and ability modals appear to be less topic and context-dependent.”

Similarly, Kwachka and Basham (1990), Basham and Kwachka (1991) and Byrd and

Reid (1998) conclude in their respective studies that in L2 writing, modal verb uses

are affected by contexts and different systems of cultural values and norms, as well

as expectations of discourse and persuasion. Xiaoling and Xiao (2008) carried out a

comparative study of modal verb use between Chinese writers of English as a foreign

language and American native speaker writers. They found that the Chinese

students' writing featured a significantly higher percentage of modal verbs than the

native speakers‟ writing. Furthermore, they uncovered that Chinese students usually

only employ modal verbs in one specific meaning and tend to be blunter and less

tentative than the native speakers. Viana (2006) found that Brazilian learners of

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English significantly overuse modal verbs, especially WILL, and ascribes this to the

fact that learners “tend to use structures which characterise the oral production of

speakers of English as a first language” (Viana 2006:84). Vethamani, Manaf and

Akbari (2008) investigate Malaysian learners of English and also showed that

learners overuse WILL as well as CAN and COULD to express certainty and ability

and underuse modals expressing probability/possibility.

Although these studies are concerned with L2 English, they will be useful in the

discussion of the findings in this study, in order to determine whether there are

characteristics of modal verb use by language learners that are independent of the

L2, i.e. that occur in learner English as well as learner German. However, it is difficult

to compare the findings of these studies as they use different categorisations for the

modal verbs, sometimes distinguishing between epistemic and non-epistemic uses

and sometimes not. The study by Vethamani, Manaf and Akbari (2008) is also

problematic as it uses a corpus of narrative compositions rather than argumentative

texts. This is not a text type that is very suitable for modal verb use investigations as

the frequencies of modal verbs is relatively low and the functions of modal verbs can

be expected to differ from those in argumentative texts. This hinders further the

comparability of the results.

Additionally, a major drawback of all of the studies in this section is that they,

again, exclusively deal with modal verbs and neglect other modal expressions. Two

studies that seek to avoid this are Gabrielatos and McEnery (2005) and McEnery and

Kifle (2002), who include modal adverbials in their corpus investigations. These

studies are only concerned with epistemic modality but also find differences in the

assertiveness with which learners from different cultural backgrounds present their

arguments. McEnery and Kifle (2002), however, tentatively conclude that these

differences could also be influenced by teaching materials. The relationship between

modal verb frequencies in native speaker corpora and second language teaching

materials is also the topic of a study by Mindt (1996). He finds that the use of

grammatical structures in textbooks for teaching English differs considerably from the

use of these structures in L1 English. WOULD, CAN and WILL were the most

common modals in his research corpus, but in the teaching materials he investigated

WILL is only introduced in the second year of study, whereas the infrequent modals

MUST and MAY are introduced much earlier in the first year. On the basis of these

findings he recommends that frequency of usage should be used as “a guide to

priority for teaching” (Mindt 1996:245f). The influence of teaching material will be

another factor that will be taken into account when discussing the results of the

present study.

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Lindemann (1996) is the last study that will be discussed in this chapter and is the

only detailed investigation of modality in advanced learners of German to date. Unlike

the previous studies, however, it deals exclusively with modal verbs and disregards

entirely any other modal means. Lindemann (1996:2) stresses in the preface to her

work that, in her view, a study of learner language always has to be concerned with

the individual, actual learner, as language acquisition has to seen as a learner-

individual process. The main focus of her longitudinal study is therefore the detailed,

qualitative and individual analysis of the interlanguage development of every

individual subject with respect to the acquisition of the German modal verb system.

The informants for this study were pupils in the last two years at a Norwegian

secondary school (16-18 years), who were classed as intermediate learners, and

students at a Norwegian university during their first and second year of study, who

had to have passed German at school and were classed as intermediate to advanced

learners. The data collected from all informant groups comprised classroom

observation, informal interviews and written texts and includes ca. 1500 written and

1500 oral occurrences of modal verbs.

Lindemann‟s investigative focus mainly centres on questions of transfer from the

L1, the influence of the learners‟ first foreign language (English), the relationship

between individual learner‟s interlanguage development and the respective learner

group they belong to, and the role of input and material. She bases her analysis on a

contrastive description of the forms and functions of the German and Norwegian

modal verb system and discovers that the fact that several of the German and

Norwegian modal verbs are not only formally congruent (e.g. KÖNNEN/KUNNE) but

also fulfil equivalent functions in both languages (e.g. WOLLEN/VILLE – volition,

wish) plays the most significant role in the development in the learners‟ modal verb

systems.

Despite great variety between individual learners, she distils the following general

trends: The learners‟ modal systems develop continuously from school to first year to

second year of university. At the end of school, the learners have generally only

acquired what Lindemann (1996:27) calls the “Standardrepertoire” (standard

repertoire). This comprises the four modal verbs that are form/function equivalents in

German and Norwegian, i.e. where L1-transfer is positive: KÖNNEN/KUNNE in the

functions of epistemic or deontic possibility, ability and permission; MÜSSEN/MÅTTE

as epistemic or deontic necessity; SOLLEN/SKULLE as request/demand;

WOLLEN/VILLE as volition, plus the L2-specific modal verb DÜRFEN as permission.

Characteristic of the school leavers‟ modal system is furthermore the persistent use

86

of WOLLEN and SOLLEN for future events (instead of WERDEN) or as substitute for

subjunctive form WÜRDE, and the use of NICHT MÜSSEN for prohibitions. These

occurrences can be traced to L1-interferences, as Norwegian forms the future with

the cognates VILLE and SKULLE. In the case of WOLLEN this is probably further

reinforced by the positive transfer in the learners first foreign language – English

(VILLE/WILL for future events). At the end of the first year of university study, the

students have generally expanded their modal verb systems by at least one of the

L2-specific modal verbs (DÜRFEN, MÖGEN, MÖCHTE) although their productive

use is still very limited. A minority of students additionally manage to avoid the

incorrect L1-transfer of WOLLEN, SOLLEN and NICHT MÜSSEN. At the end of the

second year of study, all students have at least partially acquired the L2 specific

modal verbs into their repertoire, but Lindemann (1996:144) notes that even then, “an

interlanguage system that equates to the target-language norm could still not be

attested […] in any of the learners”57.

Apart from the influence of the first language and other foreign languages learnt

before, Lindemann identifies input and teaching materials as a significant factor in the

development of the learner‟s modal verb system. The relative infrequency of certain

modal verbs and modal verb meanings in authentic texts (e.g. MÖGEN) may

contribute to the learners‟ insecurity about how to use these appropriately on top of

the fact that there is no equivalent modal verb in their native language. In this

respect, it is a definite shortcoming of Lindemann‟s study that she does not consider

other strategies of expressing modality.

In this chapter, I have aimed to give an overview of existing studies of modality in

second language research. Each of them contributes considerably to our

understanding of the development of the system of modality in second language

learners and the factors that influence this development. It should, however, also

have become obvious that the previous research on learner modality has left a gap.

There is, as yet, no study of modality in advanced learners of German that takes into

account not only modal verbs but also all the other means that have been identified

as equally valid – and in some cases even more prevalent – markers of modality. It is

the goal of the present study to address this void and fill it with insightful information.

57

“Ein den zielsprachlichen Normen entsprechendes Lernersprachensystem ist allerdings […] bei keinem der Lerner zu verzeichnen.”

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4. Methodology

4.1 THE CORPUS LINGUISTIC BASIS OF THE STUDY

The methodological foundations of this study lie firmly within corpus-based linguistics.

Countless articles and monographs have laid out, discussed and defended the value

of the corpus approach to linguistics against intuition-based approaches58. I will

therefore not recount the full stretch of the argument here, but rather point out only a

few of the key characteristics of corpus linguistics in general and of learner corpus

research and then concentrate on the situation for German learner corpus research,

as this is the main aim of the present study.

The rapid development of ever more powerful and affordable computer resources

in the past decades has promoted corpus-based studies to the forefront of linguistic

research. But technical advancement alone would not be able to change linguistic

analysis, if it was not grounded in a fundamental change in what linguists perceive as

the essence of language – from “Language as System” to “Language as Instance”

(Halliday 1992)59, focusing strongly on performance data. Therefore, corpus

linguistics as a method for analysing computerised language data is intrinsically

rooted in a Firthian60 view of language that places meaning at the centre of interest,

where meaning configures itself within discourse through lexis and grammar. There is

no sharp distinction between lexis and grammar as both manifest themselves in the

process of creating meaning, as much as there is no distinction between meaning

and pattern61 (Sinclair 1991). Lorenz (1999:1) writes in his excellent introductory

summary of the debate between the two approaches to linguistics:

“Over the last decade and a half, corpus-based linguistics has gained more and

more ground, up to the point of becoming the more popular approach in most

(European) quarters. […] But despite the current popularity of data-based

analysis, it would be wrong to assume that modern corpus linguistics is only

58

The reader is referred here to a small selection of relevant works, e.g. Leech and Svartvik (1975); Aarts and Meijs (1990); Aarts (1991); Sinclair (1991); Leech (1992); Svartvik (1992); Stubbs (1993); Hunston (2002). For German see Lemnitzer and Zinsmeister (2006).

59 This fundamental distinction has been discussed by many linguists under many different terms: „Intuition-based‟ vs. „observation-based grammars‟ – „Chomskyan‟ vs. „Firthian‟ linguistics – „Corpus Linguist vs. Armchair Linguist‟ etc.

60 Cf. the original writings of J.R. Firth (e.g. Firth 1951; 1956). A brief overview of Firthian principles can be found in Stubbs (1993).

61 This means that, firstly, if a word has several senses, each sense will tend to be associated most frequently with a different set of patterns. Secondly, the pattern/meaning association means that words with the same pattern tend to share aspects of meaning.

88

interested in external facts, with a disrespect for theoretical abstraction.”

In fact, the most widely followed analytical procedure in corpus-based studies

seems to aim at synthesising intuitive reasoning and language production data by

incorporating them into a cyclical research routine: Native speaker intuition or

introspection is an efficient means for forming initial hypotheses. On top of this,

already codified knowledge of language, e.g. in dictionaries or grammars, can be

drawn upon, even if it is not corpus-based. However, parts of this knowledge are

inaccessible to introspection, or as Hunston (2002:20) puts it: “Intuition is a poor

guide to at least four aspects of language: collocation, frequency, prosody and

phraseology” (cf. also McEnery and Wilson 1996:12; Alderson 2007). Corpora can

provide the necessary quantitative data to test these initial hypotheses, which, in turn,

is used to refine the original assumptions. When corpora are used in this way of

reconciling theoretical and empirical approaches to language, we usually speak of a

corpus-based approach. The other typical way of using corpora is in the so-called

corpus-driven approach, which takes corpus data as the starting point and aims at

developing linguistic theory through forming hypotheses on the basis of systematic

corpus analysis (cf. Hunston 2002).

The study in this thesis presents a mixture of the two approaches by embracing

the following statement from Hunston (2002:92): “It is important to recognise that no

method of working is neutral with regard to theory. […] Although it may be considered

an ideal to „have the data speak for itself‟, in practice what the data says will depend

to a large extent on how it is able to be accessed.” It might therefore be advisable to

conceive of the corpus-based/corpus-driven division as two ends on a continuum,

rather than either/or categories, where the present study fits in towards the corpus-

based end, but encompasses some corpus-driven elements. As the goal of this study

is to investigate learner modality, in order to first of all establish and delineate the

scope of the study, knowledge from theoretical accounts of modality has to be drawn

upon (cf. chapter 2). Some of this knowledge is corpus-based (e.g. parts of Nehls

1986; Zifonun 1997), some of it is purely introspective (e.g. Brinkmann 1971).

Together, these accounts define which items are investigated in the learner corpus.

The actual analysis of the learner data, however, is more corpus-driven. The aim is to

look at the different modal expressions in order to discover the usage patterns that

are indicative of learner language and extract from them hypotheses about modality

in learners‟ interlanguages and possible implications for the characteristics of learner

language in general. This requires a close scrutiny of the functions that the modal

expressions fulfil in the learner output. This interpretative step is captured in the

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following statement by Biber, Conrad and Reppen (2004:9): “A crucial part of the

corpus-based approach is going beyond the quantitative patterns to propose

functional interpretations explaining why the patterns exist. As a result, a large

amount of effort in corpus-based studies is devoted to explaining and exemplifying

quantitative patterns.”

4.1.1 Learner corpus research

The methodological footing of the present study implicitly presupposes the validity

and usefulness of learner corpora in the study of learner language. Much the same

as with corpus linguistics in general, there is nowadays a vast range of literature that

convincingly argues exactly this point, especially when the focus is on advanced

learners (cf. Walter and Grommes 2008). Granger (1994) suggests that, in addition to

native corpora, researchers should also compile learner corpora, i.e. electronic

databases of learners‟ interactions in their L2, in order to ensure that their linguistic

needs are accurately and adequately described as well as met. This enables

researchers to ascertain patterns of difficulty in learners‟ foreign language

development, to attend to them through calculated pedagogical intervention, and to

compare systematically learners‟ L2 productions with native speaker productions,

provided they are available in comparable corpora. Again, I will not repeat the full

account of the argument here and instead refer the reader to some key publications,

in particular the pioneering work of Granger and her colleagues at Louvain-la-Neuve,

Belgium, in the development of the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE),

e.g. Granger (1994; 1998a; 2002), Granger et al. (2002)62. Lorenz (1999) presents a

concise yet compelling rationale for learner corpus research (cf. also Nesselhauf

2004 and Tono 2002). Therein, he traces the development of learner language

research from error analysis and the concept of „interlanguage‟ and positions learner

corpus research within the context of the advantages and criticisms of these two

approaches63. Lorenz concludes with the remark that

“with the recent upsurge in corpus linguistics, and in extending its methods to

the analysis of non-native varieties of English, it is indeed plausible that we

should return to analysing learner language as a separate linguistic variety, only

62

Cf. also publications on the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES), which was first established to investigate child first and second language acquisition, but has since grown to incorporate a wide variety of spoken data, including older second language learners; see e.g. MacWhinney (2000).

63 Cf. also Weinberger (2002) for an overview of the historic development of learner language research.

90

this time with the help of computers, and with the aim of discovering learners‟

deviations that would otherwise go unnoticed.” (Lorenz 1999:8)

Up to now, most of the research effort in learner corpora has focused on English

as a second/foreign language. While the amount of learner corpus resources for

English has grown substantially over the last decade64, other languages are lagging

behind. This certainly does not affect the methodological validity of the corpus

approach to learner language. But it does, of course, impact on the amount of

research output for those languages where the availability of learner corpora is very

restricted. One such language is German. There is a small error-annotated corpus

(95 texts, 27695 words) of German learners with English as L1 that was collected at

Lancaster University (Weinberger 2005), but this is not publically available. Similarly,

an unpublished corpus of L2 telecollaborative data between American students of

German and German students of English was collected at Pennsylvania State

University (Belz 2004). To date, the only publically available German learner corpus

is the Fehlerannotiertes Lernerkorpus (Falko) (error-annotated learner corpus),

collected by Anke Lüdeling and her colleagues at the Humboldt Universität in Berlin65

(e.g. Lüdeling et al. 2005; Lüdeling et al. 2008). This corpus of advanced learners of

German with a variety of L1 backgrounds is continuously being extended and can be

accessed online via a web-interface66. It comprises a so-called „core corpus‟ and

several extension corpora. All subcorpora are part-of-speech tagged; the core corpus

is additionally error-tagged using a multi-layer stand-off annotation model (see

Lüdeling et al. 2005).

The systematic annotation of errors is essential for one of the two main ways in

which hypotheses of second language acquisition are tested with learner corpora.

This is referred to as „computer-aided error analysis‟ (cf. Dagneaux et al. 1998). On

the basis of the error-annotated data, areas of difficulty can be established and it can

be investigated what the potential reasons for these difficulties are. We are not

concerned with this approach here. The study presented in this thesis is based on the

second type of learner corpus research: „contrastive interlanguage analysis‟.

64

For an overview of English learner corpus resources see Nesselhauf (2004) and Pravec (2002). 65

N.B. Falko was not yet available at the time of data collection for the corpus in the present study. 66

For up to date information on corpus size and design and to access the corpus, see http://www.linguistik.hu-berlin.de/institut/professuren/korpuslinguistik/forschung/falko.

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4.1.2 Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis and the Multiple Comparison Approach

Contrastive interlanguage analysis (CIA) is defined as the quantitative comparison of

learner language productions and native speaker language in order to detect specific

features of learner language (Granger et al. 2002:12f). This approach intrinsically

embraces the notion of learner „interlanguage‟ (IL), introduced by Selinker (1972):

Interlanguage describes the learner's underlying mental knowledge of the second

language at a particular point in the course of learning. The linguistic concepts in this

interlanguage are not only potentially different from the target language, they are also

involved in various dynamic processes and therefore constantly changing. CIA is

therefore comprised of two types of comparisons as depicted in Figure 2:

FIGURE 2: CONTRASTIVE INTERLANGUAGE ANALYSIS (CIA) FRAMEWORK (GRANGER 2002:12)

The first type of comparison in the CIA framework is between non-native speaker

(NNS) data – i.e. interlanguage data from the learner corpus – and native speaker

(NS) data, in order to detect non-native features of learner language, i.e. patterns of

overuse, underuse or misuse. A crucial issue for the validity of this kind of

comparison is the selection of an appropriate native speaker corpus. This selection

essentially defines the „norm‟ against which the leaner data is measured, therefore

factors such as medium, genre and text-type have to be considered, and also the

level of proficiency of the native speakers, i.e. novice writers vs.

accomplished/professional writers, as Lorenz (1999) demonstrates (cf. also 4.2.2

below).

The second type of CIA work involves NNS versus NNS comparisons, i.e.

comparing different learner populations with each other. These learner groups can

CIA

NNS NS NNS NNS vs. vs.

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differ, for example, with respect to their mother tongue backgrounds, which helps

determine which features of learner language are more likely to be L1-induced and

which are developmental, i.e. shared by several learner populations. Another aspect

that can distinguish learner populations is proficiency. A comparison of learners at

different stages of proficiency can give a more detailed insight into the developmental

patterns of certain learner language features.

The most fruitful approach to studying learner language phenomena with learner

corpora has proven to be one that combines the different types of CIA with yet more

comparative data derived from corpus-based contrastive analyses. This model of

analysing learner corpus data is called “Integrated Contrastive Model” (Granger 1996;

Gilquin 2001) or “Multiple Comparison Approach” (Tono 2002). Figure 3 illustrates the

intricate net of multiple comparisons:

FIGURE 3: MULTIPLE-COMPARISON MODEL FOR LEARNER CORPUS RESEARCH (ADAPTED FROM

TONO 2002A)

The idea in this model is to utilise a variety of corpora to investigate a linguistic

phenomenon from more than one angle. Contrastive interlanguage analysis is carried

out to detect specific patterns in the learners‟ interlanguage – either compared to

native speakers or other sets of learners. Detailed, corpus-based contrastive analysis

Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis

Learner Corpus 1 Learner Corpus 3 Learner Corpus 2

L1 Target Language

Native speaker corpus

Native speaker corpus

Contrastive Analysis

Translation corpus

Contrastive Interlanguage

Analysis

Contrastive Interlanguage

Analysis

93

is carried out on corpora of the first and target language. Although traditional

contrastive analysis, as practiced in the 1960s and 1970s, was largely discredited as

uninformative and inaccurate due to methodological problems (James 1998:4), the

recent efforts of contrastive analysis based on authentic (corpus) data have proven

more reliable. They are usually more modest, making no claims about the

predictability of learner difficulties, and can even challenge some of the claims made

in the intuition-based contrastive analysis literature of the past (cf. e.g. Gilquin

2001:100). The results of this type of contrastive analysis can therefore be used as a

diagnostic tool to establish areas where L1-transfer can explain why the learners‟

production deviates from the native speakers‟. In pulling CIA and contrastive analysis

together we can achieve a triangulation of information that can help not only to

discover specific learner patterns, but also to diagnose their roots. Although the

pedagogical implications of such findings are not the primary concern of this thesis, I

agree with Lorenz (1999:12) on the usefulness of our endeavour for foreign language

teaching:

“It is assumed here that, once patterns of non-native deviance have been

discovered, students can be explicitly made aware of these patterns, and that,

given time, motivation and opportunity to practise, they will eventually be able to

modify their linguistic behaviour into a more native-like direction.”

The next section explains how the multiple comparison approach is applied in the

study of German learner modality presented in this thesis.

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4.2 INVESTIGATING GERMAN LEARNER MODALITY WITHIN THE

MULTIPLE COMPARISON APPROACH

Figure 4 below replicates the multiple comparison model of Tono (2002a) from the

previous section, but this time indicating the specific corpora that are used in the

present study on German learner modality. The individual corpora will be described in

detail in the following sections.

FIGURE 4: MULTIPLE-COMPARISON MODEL FOR THE STUDY OF MODALITY IN LEARNER GERMAN

4.2.1 The German learner corpus: CLEG

CLEG is the Corpus of Learner German that forms the analytical centre of this study.

It has already been discussed in the introduction that modality occupies a pivotal

place in the construction of arguments. The decision to collect a corpus of

argumentative writing is therefore justified on the basis that this particular text type

demands exactly the types of modal expressions that are investigated here. It should

Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis

CLEG YEAR A CLEG YEAR C CLEG YEAR B

L1 Target

Language

KEDS

LOCNESS

Contrastive Analysis

INTERSECT translation

corpus

Contrastive Interlanguage

Analysis

Contrastive Interlanguage

Analysis

LIMAS

95

therefore provide a rich source of relevant data67. The texts chosen for the corpus

can be classified as “expository-argumentative”. This is defined in a purely

operational way as texts where the task instructions imply “the presentation and

weighing up of arguments, writer‟s criticism or systematic outlines of abstract

concepts” (Lorenz 1999:12). Incidentally, expository-argumentative texts are also the

kind of texts that learners are asked to produce most frequently throughout their

study course at Lancaster University. This means that this collection criterion yielded

the largest amount of reasonably homogeneous texts from all year groups68. All texts

are free compositions, which can be broadly divided into text-based tasks and

essays. Text-based tasks are kritische Zusammenfassung (critical summary) and

kritischer Kommentar (critical commentary). The kritische Zusammenfassung is used

in the first two years of study, where students are asked to first summarise a German

text in their own words and then take a critical stance towards the arguments

presented in the text. The kritischer Kommentar is a task from the final year of study,

where students have to develop their own arguments on a topical question, but they

receive a suitable text as background information. Essays, on the other hand, are

independent argumentative texts on general topics such as violence in the media,

tuition fees, the death penalty etc. (see Appendix A for examples). This distinction is

important to keep in mind when carrying out lexical studies as the lexis in a text-

based composition may be influenced by its source text. As the current study is

concerned with very general vocabulary items, the influence on the results presented

here are assumed to be minimal.

The corpus was compiled over two years following the same guidelines that were

applied to the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE), as set out in Granger

(1998). This means that the following meta data was collected from each contributing

student:

Age

Sex

Father‟s L1, Mother‟s L1

67

On top of this, there simply is no available learner corpus for L2 German which is controlled for text type, learner L1 and other learner variables AND allows access to the source files, which was crucial for the specific annotation required for the study.

68 The only slight deviance to this occurs in the second year of study (Year B), due to different foci in the course design in that year. Firstly, in preparation for their year abroad, the students have to work on an “intercultural project” where they explore differences in student life and culture between British and foreign students by means of a questionnaire. Secondly, many students take a module on the German press and write a critical analysis of either two German news articles or a German and English news article or a critical summary of the history of the German press after WWII. This means that these two projects (which add up to about 63% of Year B tokens) contain large sections of descriptive writing, although both also contain some elements of argumentative writing. The Year B subcorpus therefore also contains longer but fewer individual texts.

96

Language spoken at home

Years of German tuition in school

Number/length of stays in Germany

Other foreign language in acquisition order

Textbooks used during A-level studies

On the basis of these learner profiles those participants were selected that have

British English as their mother tongue (spoken by both parents), have passed A-level

German before entering the university, which equates to between five and seven

years of German tuition at school, and are not mature students (i.e. they were

between 18 and 19 years of age at the start of their degree).

Texts were collected from those students who had given written consent that their

language productions can be used for the corpus. Texts were taken from all year

groups of undergraduate study at Lancaster University. Most students in the first two

years (Year A and Year B) have spent a few weeks in Germany on vacation or as

part of a school exchange. The students in the final year (Year C) have all spent

between six and twelve months in a German-speaking country as part of their “year

abroad”, which is a compulsory part of the degree scheme for all language majors in

the third year of study. Different levels of proficiency are determined by the external

criteria of “year of study”. In accordance with the guidelines by the DfES (Department

for Education and Skills) achieving an A-level in a Modern Foreign Language is

equivalent to level B1/B2 in the Common European Framework of References

(CEFR) for Languages69. During their university course, students are expected to

work at levels B1/B2 and B2 in Years A and B respectively and at level C1 in Year C,

after the year abroad. For practical and confidentiality reasons, it was not possible to

verify these levels for individual learners or to record marks and degree classes, so

their passing the overall assessment each year and moving into the next year was

considered their qualification for the advancing proficiency levels.

For each text that a student produced, a text profile was created detailing:

Text type (essay, “kritische Zusammenfassung”, “kritischer Kommentar”)

69

The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) is developed by the Council of Europe and provides a basis for the mutual recognition of language qualifications, thus facilitating educational and occupational mobility.The CEFR is a document which describes in a comprehensive manner i) the competences necessary for communication, ii) the related knowledge and skills and iii) the situations and domains of communication. The CEFR defines levels of attainment in different aspects of its descriptive scheme with illustrative descriptors scale. On the CEFR scale, levels A1 and A2 are classed as “basic users”, B1 and B2 as “independent users” and C1 and C2 as “proficient users”. For detailed descriptions of these levels see: Council of Europe (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

97

Topic

Number of words

Timed/untimed (homework or exam)

Available reference materials (grammar books, dictionaries, online resources etc.)

Date of production/year group

Learner and text profiles are stored in a Microsoft ACCESS database, where a

unique text ID is created for each entry, which enables the researcher to link each

text to the relevant text and learner information and create subcorpora according to

different specifications if desired. The text ID is devised in the following format that

gives information on year group and point of collection at a glance:

[a1030_04] means the text was produced by learner „1030‟ in their first year of study

(„a‟) and it is the fourth text produced by that learner („_04‟).

Together, this procedure produced a corpus of the following size and make-up:

Year group Learners Texts Tokens No. of different

topics

Year A 54 181 46 139 12

Year B 38 94 65 865 10

Year C 34 176 87 610 14

Total 126 451 199 614 36

TABLE 8: SIZE AND SUBCORPORA OF THE CORPUS OF LEARNER GERMAN (CLEG)

As the data was collected over the course of two years, some of it is truly longitudinal

(from students in Year A that went on into Year B). Due to the year abroad, no truly

longitudinal data is available from Year B to Year C; the majority of the data is

therefore considered quasi-longitudinal70. The maximum number of texts that an

individual student contributed to the corpus is seven, but no more than four in one

year; on average students contributed four texts71.

In terms of size, this learner corpus – as, in fact, most learner corpora – can, of

course, not compete with the general native speaker corpora of several hundred

million words that are available nowadays. Restrictions in the availability of suitable

data and especially time and research resources prohibited a larger corpus, but, for

the present purpose, the corpus should be large enough to warrant quantitative

inquiries and comparisons, but offers the added advantage of being closely controlled

for many learner and text variables. On top of this, markers of modality are very

70

Texts from a further two years were collected after the initial two years, which gives truly longitudinal data for one complete cohort of students. This data has not been digitised yet and is not incorporated into the study presented here.

71 See also 4.3.3 for a discussion of the problem of dispersion.

98

frequent phenomena, so even a smaller corpus should yield plenty of instances. The

medium size also means that the corpus is manageable enough for qualitative

investigations with the help of manual annotations. The result might therefore be

considered to be more reliable and indicative than those from larger corpora where

strict design criteria have to be sacrificed to achieve a bigger corpus size.

4.2.2 The comparable native speaker corpus: KEDS

In order to follow the multiple comparison approach, a comparable native speaker

corpus to CLEG is required. As no such a corpus existed previously, KEDS (Korpus

von Erörterungen Deutscher Schüler72) was compiled in preparation for this study

alongside CLEG. KEDS contains 62 texts (47 different topics), all by different authors,

totalling 82084 tokens.

The main priority here was to achieve comparability in terms of text type. While

modality is a central feature of argumentative writing, it will almost certainly play a

different or less significant role in other text types such as e.g. descriptive or narrative

texts. Text type is suggested to have a distinctive impact on the use of modality,

which in turn calls for a reference corpus to be comparable in that respect. The type

that matches exactly the type of texts produced by the learners in CLEG is the

Problemerörterung (argumentative essay)73, which is a specified part of the German

secondary school curricula. This format is introduced in year 9 and practiced and

developed in the following years, right up until the Abitur in year 12 (formerly year

13). By selecting texts from the Oberstufe (years 10-13) for the comparable corpus, it

is even possible to almost achieve comparability in terms of age group. The pupils in

years 10-13 are between 16-19 years old. The first year students at Lancaster

University included in the CLEG corpus are 18-19 years old. So, while not entirely the

same, there is at least close proximity and even a slight overlap in age groups.

All texts are collected from open-access internet resources that do not require

membership to a forum or internet community. Some of these are so called

“homework forums”74 where pupils post their essays in order for other pupils to get

ideas (or plagiarise) on a variety of popular topics for argumentative essays,

presentations etc. Other resources include examples from websites that give

guidelines and help for writing (and teaching how to write) argumentative essays75.

72

Corpus of argumentative essays by German pupils. 73

As opposed to e.g. the “literarische Erörterung” (a critical discussion based on a work of literature). 74

http://www.hausarbeiten.de. 75

http://www.teachsam.de; http://www6.digitale-schule-bayern.de/ds.py.

99

As no contact details for the authors of these texts are available, it was not possible

to obtain their consent for contributing to the corpus. It was assumed that the pupils

who posted their work on a freely accessible website, which is clearly intended for

others to take ideas from or even copy their work altogether, would not object to the

texts also being used for research purposes. Although the background information on

authors and text production circumstances is sparser for these texts, all texts

included in KEDS have information on the sex of the author, school year, topic and, in

most cases, grade received. None of the given grades were below a B; where there

is no grade provided it is assumed that only pupils who feel sufficiently confident

about their work (i.e. received a good grade), would post their work on websites for

other pupils to take as successful examples.

Sampling data from pupils in secondary school also provides comparability in

another aspect: For both native speaker pupils and foreign language students these

texts are produced in the context of writing for assessment in an instructional setting.

This specific production setting also marks CLEG and KEDS as corpora of novice

writers. The distinction between novice and expert writers, although often used

especially in research on writing processes (e.g. Ackerman 1991; Smith 2008) and

writing in a second language (e.g. Neff van Aertselaer 2008), is not always clearly

delineated. In this thesis, novice writing is defined as in Scott and Tribble (2006:133)

as “unpublished pieces of writing that have been written in educational or training

settings, (often) for purposes of assessment.” This includes writing in the L1 and a

foreign language. In this respect, the learners in CLEG count as novice writers in both

English and German. In contrast to this, expert writers are defined as those who

regularly produce texts in professional settings for publication, e.g. authors of

newspaper articles and editorials, novels, academic research papers, etc. I realise

that this definition is not without problems, but it is in line with previous research (e.g.

Neff van Aertselaer 2008) and certainly workable for our purposes. This is especially

the case as research has shown convincingly that writing processes are similar for

novice writers, whether they write in their L1 or an L2 and, at the same time, different

from expert writers (see e.g. Raimes 1994; Cumming 1994). Furthermore, Taylor

(1986) and Ringbom (1987) suggest that the problems of less proficient native writers

are comparable to non-native writers‟ problems. In view of these findings comparing

foreign language learner writing with expert native speaker writing seems even more

inadequate. The controlled selection process of CLEG and KEDS participants should

ensure that there is no overlap with a population of expert writers in either of these

corpora.

100

4.2.3 The general native speaker corpus: LIMAS

For reasons of text-type comparability, KEDS is the corpus that is primarily drawn on

in the learner vs. native speaker part of the contrastive interlanguage analysis.

Occasionally, however, reference to a general native speaker corpus is required in

order to determine whether certain patterns of modality use could be features of

novice writing in general, rather than specifically those of foreign language writing.

For these purposes, the LIMAS76 (Linguistik und Maschinelle Sprachbearbeitung)

corpus will be used in this study as a general written NS corpus. LIMAS is similar in

structure to the English LOB and BROWN corpora, aiming at a balanced and

representative cross section of written German. It contains 500 texts (ca. 2000 words

each) of various genres in 33 topical categories (e.g. religion, politics, law,

economics, literature, history, geography, medicine, technology, fiction, arts) which

amount to just over one million running words (1,062,624). One of the drawbacks of

LIMAS, apart form its rather modest size, is its age, as the corpus contains texts that

were produced in 1970 and 1971. It has been shown that in this kind of time span,

the use of English modals has changed (cf. Leech 2003) and it has to be assumed

that there might also have been changes in the German modal system since then.

There are much larger and more recent German corpora available, most notably the

DWDS corpus (Deutsches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache des 20. Jahrhunderts

– „Digital Dictionary of the 20th Century German Language‟) or the corpora provided

by the „Institut für deutsche Sprache‟ (IDS) in Mannheim77. Both of these are

accessible online, but do not allow access to or annotation of the source files, which

was necessary for my analysis. The two main drawbacks of LIMAS were therefore

acknowledged but had to be neglected in the present study.

4.2.4 The translation corpus for contrastive analysis: INTERSECT

For reliable contrastive analysis data of German and English modal expressions,

corpus data is used to complement and verify the statements in the more

introspective contrastive accounts of the German and English modal systems. With

corpus data, it can be established which modal expressions are actually used in

similar situations in two languages. This corpus-based contrastive data can be

obtained from parallel corpora. These are either comparable corpora, containing texts

76

http://www.korpora.org/Limas. 77

For a detailed and up-to-date overview of available German corpora see Geyken (2009).

101

in two languages that cover the same content within the same text format, e.g. a

German and English newspaper article on the same topic. The other type of parallel

corpora are translation corpora, containing texts in the source language and their

translations into the target language.

The INTERSECT translation corpus is used for these purposes. INTERSECT was

compiled by Raphael Salkie at the University of Brighton (Salkie 1995) and consists

of translations in both directions of fictional and non-fictional German and English

source texts. The corpus is constructed in the following way:

INTERSECT German English English German

Source texts(ST)/ Target texts(TT)

German ST English TT English ST German TT

No. of tokens 519 540 585 693 205 359 200 379

Fiction 6 texts 5 texts

Non-fiction 21 texts 10 texts

TABLE 9: THE INTERSECT TRANSLATION CORPUS

This type of corpus allows the researcher to obtain information on how certain

expressions in one language are translated into another78, and – more crucially – how

often the different ways of translation occur. In this study, the INTERSECT corpus

was analysed with the parallel concordancer ParaConc79 (cf. Barlow 2002). Using

ParaConc, the source and target texts were aligned and could then be searched for

specific modality items, e.g. modal verbs. The results window then shows the

concordance lines for the search word in the source language, while at the same time

displaying their target language translations in a parallel window. The program also

allows for some basic annotation of the data so that e.g. deontic and epistemic

meanings of modal verbs could be separated. Results from these kinds of

investigation proved that so called „translational equivalents‟ in two languages “rarely

have the same distribution or 100% equivalents in parallel corpora” (Salkie

1997:298). This can help, for instance, to empirically underpin claims about the

prevalence of epistemic modal verbs over periphrastic modal expressions in English,

where German supposedly offers the opposite picture (see 2.3.4). Consider the

following examples from the English source-text/German translations part of the

78

We are aware that the language of translations („translationese‟) harbours its own problems (cf. e.g. Schmied and Schäffler 1996). In the face of the unavailability of other corpora, however, we have to neglect these in the current study.

79 see http://www.athel.com/para.html.

102

INTERSECT corpus. In the first one, the modal verb MUST is translated with its

German cognate MÜSSEN, in the second one a modal infinitive is used instead:

[INTERSECT] To do so, the new peace camp must lead public opinion to a brave reassessment of the national "narrative" and rid it of false myths. Dazu muss das neue Friedenslager die öffentliche Meinung zu einer mutigen Neubewertung der nationalen Geschichtsdeutung und deren Befreiung von falschen Mythen bewegen.

[INTERSECT] A number of issues must be addressed immediately to ensure that the ICC can function effectively in its initial years. Damit der Internationale Strafgerichtshof seinen Aufgaben von Beginn an effektiv nachkommen kann, sind noch eine Reihe von Fragen zu klären.

If these observations are quantified, more reliable statements can be made about

the tendency to use modal verbs or other modal expressions for the expression of

certain modal meanings. Altenberg (1998) has developed a measure called “mutual

correspondence” that mathematically captures the degree of correspondence

between pairs of linguistic (grammatical, semantic or lexical) expressions in parallel

or translation corpora. So, for example, if the English modal verb MUST is always

translated as MÜSSEN in German translations and MÜSSEN is alway translated as

MUST in English translations then the mutual correspondence (MC) between MUST

and MÜSSEN is 100%. The formula for calculating MC values is:

MC = (At + Bt) x 100

(As + Bs)

where At and Bt are the frequencies of the compared items in the translations and As

and Bs are the frequencies of the compared items in the source texts. To take the

actual frequencies of MUST and MÜSSEN in the INTERSECT corpus as an example:

Epistemic MUST occurs 26 times in the English source texts (= As) and is translated

as MÜSSEN in the German translations 21 times (= Bt). MÜSSEN occurs 62 times in

the German source texts (= Bs) and is translated as MUST 48 times in the English

translations (= At). The formula then looks like this:

MC = (48 + 21)

x 100

(26 + 62) The MC for the pairing MUSTMÜSSEN is therefore 78.4. In order to determine

whether this correspondence is stronger in one direction that in the other, the

“translation bias” (TB) can be calculated using the following formula (Merkel 2001:4):

TB = Bt x 100

or TB =

At x 100

As Bs

103

In our example, the TB from English to German is 80.8, the TB from German to

English is 77.4.

Applying these calculations to data from the INTERSECT corpus produces

information that can feed directly into the contrastive analysis between German and

English. Where the learners‟ L1 (English) is concerned, another corpus is

occasionally consulted and that is the LOCNESS (Louvain corpus of native English

essays) corpus80. This 325,000 word corpus was compiled as the native speaker

reference corpus for the ICLE corpora and is therefore similar in design to the KEDS

corpus81. This corpus can be used in order to find evidence for transfer or novice

writer phenomena in the learners‟ writing by triangulation. A certain modal

expression, e.g. Ich denke, that is prominent in CLEG can, for instance, be checked

for its frequency in LOCNESS via translation into English I think. This gives

indications whether a certain linguistic behaviour by the German learners might be

L1-induced.

Having described all the corpora that are utilised in this study, we will now turn our

attention to the actual analysis process. This includes a detailed summary of which

items are being investigated, how they are extracted and annotated and what kinds of

quantitative and qualitative analyses are performed on them.

4.3 ANALYSING MODALITY IN THE LEARNER CORPUS

Two steps had to be taken to prepare the raw corpus data for analysis. The first step

was to identify exactly which expressions of modality to extract from the data. The

second step consisted of annotating the extracted forms according to meaning

categories. Only after this step could different analytical techniques be applied to the

data. All searches and concordance retrievals were carried out with WordSmith Tools

5 (Scott 2008).The following sections detail these three processes.

80

http://www.fltr.ucl.ac.be/fltr/germ/etan/cecl/Cecl-Projects/Icle/locness1.htm. 81

Although one drawback of LOCNESS is that it contains many essays on literary topics, which do not exactly match the text types of ICLE, CLEG or KEDS.

104

4.3.1 Selecting and retrieving modal expressions

Modal expressions were selected according to the theoretical criteria outlined in

section 2.3. In order to make this selection comprehensive, and facilitate automatic

retrieval wherever possible, the different types of modal expressions were

categorised according to Gilquin‟s (2002:187) typology of structures:

Modal verbs form a closed class of lexically-based items. These are: MÜSSEN,

KÖNNEN, SOLLEN, WOLLEN, MÖGEN and DÜRFEN.

In order to retrieve modal verbs in the learner corpus, the corpus was part-of-

speech tagged using the TreeTagger (University of Stuttgart)82 (Schmid 1994).

The tagset includes the categories <VMFIN> (modal verb, finite) and <VMINF>

(modal verb, infinitive). Most modal verbs could thus be retrieved automatically for

annotation through searches for the two categories. However, since learner

language contains errors with respect to spelling and conjugation of modal verbs,

not all instances could be retrieved automatically. Some instances had to be

retrieved by searching for specific word forms (e.g. „*konnen‟). This was possible

since the texts had originally been digitised manually, so a list of common

malformations had already been assembled at that point.

The semi-modal verb WERDEN is classed as an auxiliary verb <VA*> in the

TreeTagger tagset. Therefore, all instances of the lemma WERDEN had to be

checked manually to distinguish modal uses (as defined in 2.3.1.2.7) from others

e.g. passives.

Periphrastic modal expressions are part of a set of open class, non-lexically based

items including nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs. This means that the open

classes had to be narrowed down to specific lexical items that could be retrieved

from the data. Zifonun et al. (1997) provide examples in their discussion of these

modal expressions, which were included, as well as additional items from other

publications discussed in sections 2.3.2 and 2.3.3. In order to arrive at a more

comprehensive list of periphrastic modal expressions and because Zifonun et al.

(1997) do not include periphrastic modal expressions for deontic meanings, two

dictionaries were consulted: Dornseiff (2004) and Wehrle and Eggers (1993). Both

of these, rather than listing entries alphabetically, are ordered according to subject

areas. Each entry therefore contains an abundance of words from all parts of

speech belonging to the same subject area or concept. For example, in Dornseiff

(2004) in the chapter Handeln (action), we find the subheading Erfordernis

82

http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/projekte/corplex/TreeTagger/DecisionTreeTagger.html.

105

(necessity), which is concordant with the concept of deontic necessity that can

also be expressed by the modal verb MÜSSEN. In this entry, we find items such

as erfordern, erforderlich, nötig, Notwendigkeit, unabdingbar, unentbehrlich,

unerläßlich etc. (different variants for expressing „necessity‟). With the help of

these dictionaries, an even more comprehensive list of lexical items was compiled

that could be used for automatic retrieval from the corpora. Although

comprehensiveness was the main objective, the categories are so broad that it is

impossible to include all imaginable expressions. Pre-analysis searches

confirmed, however, that many of the items on the original list did not occur at all

in either CLEG or KEDS83. It is therefore fairly safe to assume that the list of 227

items that was eventually entered for the analysis captured the vast majority of

periphrastic modal expressions in the learner and native speaker data (see

Appendix B).

Modal infinitives represent non-lexically based syntactic structures that can be

retrieved from the part-of-speech tagged corpus by searching for the pattern:

(Lemma SEIN or HABEN) co-occurring in the same clause with <PTKZU>

<VVINF> (particle zu (to) immediately followed by an infinitive verb form).

The Konjunktiv mood is either manifest in a specific morphological paradigm on

the main verb (synthetic variant) or, for the Konjunktiv II, in a combination of the

Konjunktiv paradigm on the auxiliary verb WERDEN (i.e. WÜRDE) and an infinitive

main verb (analytical variant). Due to the extensive syncretism between indicative

and Konjunktiv synthetic verb forms, only those instances were analysed where

the Konjunktiv form is morphologically distinct from the indicative. These were

identified by performing word searches that signal the specific usage contexts of

the Konjunktiv as laid out in section 2.3.5.3, e.g. wenn/falls (if) for conditional

clauses, als ob (as if) for counterfactual comparative clauses etc.

All analytical instances of the Konjunktiv II could be retrieved automatically through

a simple word search for WÜRDE. In the same way, all instances of the Konjunktiv

could be retrieved automatically that involve the auxiliary verbs HABEN, SEIN and

WERDEN as all of these have distinct Konjunktiv paradigms. As expected from the

theoretical outlines, these last two types make up the majority of Konjunktiv

occurrences in all investigated corpora.

83

These included, for example, all of the quasi-modal verbs (see 2.3.3).

106

4.3.2 Semantic categorisation and annotation

Once retrieved from the raw data, the modal expressions were then annotated

according to the semantic categories established from the theoretical literature (see

Table 10 and Table 11 below). This process of adding information to the corpus is

what Hunston (2002:79) calls a “category-based methodology, because the parts of

the corpus – the words, or phonological units, or clauses etc. – are placed into

categories and those categories are used as the basis for corpus searches and

statistical manipulations.”

The main binary distinction in this classification is that between epistemic and non-

epistemic modality. Within this distinction, the different meaning categories of modal

expressions are differentiated. As the semantic categorisations applied in this study

are based primarily on Brinkmann‟s (1971) account of the German modal system, the

abbreviations used in the annotations reflect his terminology (see 2.2.2). The

category of epistemic meanings is therefore encoded „I‟, as it denotes conditions for

the assertion of information. Non-epistemic meanings are coded as „R‟, as they

formulate prerequisites for the implementation (German: Realisierung) of an

assertion. The following table (Table 10) gives an overview of the different

subcategories of both „I‟ and „R‟ and the tagset used to annotate the modal

expressions. For ease of reference, the modal verbs corresponding to each category

are also given. The tagset uses abbreviations of the original German classification.

Table 11 gives a translation of the same table.

107

(<Neg> Negation)

(<U> Unklar)

<I> Bedingungen für die Geltung einer Information <R> Voraussetzungen für eine Realisierung

<AZ> Zuversichtliche Annahme, Annahme (oft über zukünftige Ereignisse) aufgrund von Erfahrung

WERDEN

<N> Feststellung, dass Notwendigkeit besteht (Verpflichtung, Zwang)

MÜSSEN

<S> Schlussfolgerung, zwingende Annahme MÜSSEN

<F> Fremde Instanz gibt Vollzugsrichtung vor (Auftrag, Verpflichtung, Erwartung anderer, Versprechen, Gebot, moralische Pflicht)

SOLLEN

<SA>

Abgeschwächte Schlussfolgerung

Eintritt hängt von unbekannten Faktoren ab (Konjunktiv II)

SOLLTE MÜSSTE

<FV> Vorschlag (Vollzug offen) von fremder Instanz SOLLTE

<V> subjektive Vermutung, die dem Sprecher berechtigt erscheint, für die er mit Zustimmung rechnet (Konjunktiv II)

DÜRFTE

<W> Wille, Absicht, Plan, Intention, Bereitschaft

Vollzugsrichtung vom Subjekt aus WOLLEN

<A> Annahme einer Möglichkeit für die Anhaltspunkte bestehen; es ist nichts bekannt, das der Annahme im Weg steht

KÖNNEN MÖGEN

<WA>

abgeschwächter Wille (Wunsch) (aus Horizont hinaus verlagert, daher Konjunktiv II)

MÖCHTE

<AV> Vorsichtige Annahme (Konjunktiv II) KÖNNTE <Z> Zuneigung/Abneigung (negiert) MÖGEN

<BS> Sprecherfremde Behauptung Verantwortung bei grammatischem Subjekt

WOLLEN

<MU> Möglichkeit zum Vollzug gegeben aufgrund äußerer Umstände, erforderliche Mittel, keine Hindernisse

KÖNNEN

<BA> Sprecherfremde Behauptung Verantwortung bei anderen

SOLLEN

<MF> Möglichkeit aufgrund von Fähigkeiten, Eigenschaften, Gewohnheiten

KÖNNEN

<E> Erlaubnis Richtung des Subjekts und Legitimierung durch fremde Instanz

DÜRFEN KÖNNEN

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TABLE 10: TAGSET FOR THE ANNOTATION OF MODAL EXPRESSIONS

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<Neg> negation

<U> unclear

<I> conditions for the assertion of an information <R> prerequisites for implementation

<AZ> confident assumption assumption (often referring to future events) based on experience

WERDEN

<N> ascertainment that a necessity exists for a realisation (duty, compulsion etc)

MÜSSEN

<S> conclusion, compelling deduction MÜSSEN

<F>

an external authority dictates the direction of the realisation (instruction, obligation, expectation of others, promise, commandment, moral obligation)

SOLLEN

<SA> tentative conclusion occurrence depends on unkown factors (Konjunktiv II)

SOLLTE MÜSSTE

<FV>

suggestion (realisation uncertain) from an external authority

SOLLTE

<V>

subjective assumption, speculation that seems feasible to speaker, for which they expect agreement from others (Konjunktiv II)

DÜRFTE

<W> volition, intention, plan, willingness subject controls direction of action

WOLLEN

<A> assumption of a possibility for which there are indications; nothing is known that opposes the assumption

KÖNNEN MÖGEN

<WA>

attenuated volition (wish) (outside the subject‟s horizon, hence Konjunktiv II)

MÖCHTE

<AV> tentative assumption (Konjunktiv II) KÖNNTE <Z> affection, liking/aversion, dislike (negated) MÖGEN

<BS> claim made by the grammatical subject, not the speaker

WOLLEN

<MU> possibility of realisation due to external circumstances, necessary means, no obstacles

KÖNNEN

<BA> claim made by others, neither speaker nor grammatical subject

SOLLEN

<MF> possibility of realisation

due to abilities, attributes, qualities, habits KÖNNEN

<E> permission for a realisation direction of subject and legitimisation by external authority

DÜRFEN KÖNNEN

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TABLE 11: TAGSET FOR THE ANNOTATION OF MODAL EXPRESSIONS (TRANSLATED)

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As Brinkmann‟s (1971) categorisation was developed on the basis of modal verb

meanings, the other modal means had to be categorised to the same semantic criteria in

order to fit into the modal system. Modal infinitives could be slotted into the deontic

categories necessity <RN>, possibility <RMU>, advice/suggestion <RFV> and

permission <RE>.

For the periphrastic modal expressions, this process was more intricate as each one

had to be matched as closely as possible to one of the existing categories. For epistemic

expressions, this included assessing the degree of certainty that each expression

conveys in an utterance, e.g. sicherlich (certainly) is placed into the category „compelling

conclusion‟. For some items, additional factors such as speaker-internal vs. speaker-

external epistemic source also had to be taken into account. The category <ISA>

„tentative conclusion‟ (modal verbs SOLLTE/MÜSSTE) is roughly on a par in terms of

epistemic certainty with the category <IV> „assumption‟ (modal verb DÜRFTE). The

difference is that <IV> indicates a high degree of „speaker orientation‟, i.e. it is based on

the speaker‟s subjective belief state/attitude towards the proposition (see Brinkmann

1971:391; Mortelmans 1997:211, cf. also section 2.3.1.2.5, whereas <ISA> is neutral in

this respect. Periphrastic modal expressions that explicitly indicate speaker orientation,

such as ich denke, ich glaube, meiner Meinung nach etc. (I think, I believe, in my

opinion) are therefore classed as <IV>, all those that indicate a similar degree of

certainty but no explicit speaker orientation are classed as <ISA>, e.g. wahrscheinlich,

vermutlich (probably, presumably). Although this assignment process was carried out on

the basis of objective criteria as much as possible, some degree of subjective

arbitrariness could not entirely be avoided (see also the discussion of inter-rater reliability

below), as the delineations especially of epistemic modal categories are often more

gradual than clear cut.

Furthermore, it was explained in section 2.3.2.2 that there are periphrastic modal

expressions that do not fit easily into the categories set up for modal verb meanings.

These are, specifically, the assertive modal expressions (encompassing the

subcategories „purely assertive‟, „evaluative assertive‟ and „evidence-focused assertive‟)

and „negative‟ periphrastic modal expressions. These are part of the epistemic

repertoire, but display additional characteristics (e.g. evaluation) that are not captured in

the differentiations of modal verb meanings. Extra categories were therefore set up for

items belonging to these groups. For a full list of categories and items see Appendix B.

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In a similar vein, Konjunktiv II does not indicate modality in terms of the different

semantic categories that apply to modal verbs, periphrastic modal expressions and

modal infinitives, but rather merely signals the feature [- facutality] in an utterance.

Instances of Konjunktiv are therefore annotated according to their status as Konjunktiv I

and Konjunktiv II and are analysed separately with regard to the different context types

they occur in.

After determining the different meaning categories and converting them into a tagset,

the data was annotated. For modal verbs, modal infinitives and Konjunktivs, this

annotation had to be carried out entirely manually, as a high degree of disambiguation

was required. Periphrastic modal expressions were annotated semi-automatically, using

CoAn84, a German software package for text and content analysis. This program requires

a list of items that can be set either for automatic annotation (e.g. for items like vielleicht

(perhaps), which are unambiguous) or for manual annotation, which is necessary for

items that need disambiguating (e.g. möglich (possible) which can denote epistemic or

deontic modality).

Tags for modal verbs and modal infinitives are constructed from top to bottom level,

simply adding the different codes together. They were inserted as „flat annotations‟ (i.e.

text and annotation are stored within the same file) in the following fashion:

[c1048_04] Wenn wir eine gute Zukunft haben wollen_RW [= deontic volition], so müssen_RN [= deontic necessity] wir uns heute vorbereiten. „If we want_RW to have a good future, we must_RN prepare today.‟

[c2045_01] Letztendlich muss_IS [= epistemic necessity] die Fähigkeit der Gentechnik , Erbkrankheiten und genetische Defizite sehr fruh zu diagnostizieren , als gefährlich gesehen werden. „In the end, the ability to diagnose hereditary diseases and genetic deficits with the help of genetic engineering must_IS be considered dangerous.‟

In clauses containing a negation, the tag is preceded by „Neg‟, regardless of whether the

modal expression or the proposition is negated:

[c2044_06] Hat man das Recht zu entscheiden, sein Leben zu enden, damit er nicht mit unerträglichen Schmerzen leben muss_NegRN, oder...? „Do we have the right to decide to end our lives, so that we do not have to_NegRN live in unbearable pain, or…?‟

84

Developed by Matthias Romppel: http://www.coan.de.

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In cases where a decision between deontic modality „R‟ and epistemic modality „I‟ could

not be reached due to ambiguity or merger (see 2.3.1.1), the category „U‟ (unclear) is

chosen. This category is most common with the modal verb KÖNNEN (see 5.1.2.4

below):

[c1054_04] Eltern wissen nicht, was ihre Kinder auf dem Internet finden können_U. „Parents do not know, what their children can_U find on the internet.‟

The annotation of periphrastic modal expressions looks slightly different. One of the

constraints of the CoAn program is that it only allows numerical codes as tags. The

different categories from the tagset as well as the additional categories therefore had to

be translated into such numeric codes (see Appendix B for the list of codes)85. CoAn

then inserts these in square brackets after the items to be annotated:

[a2014_03] Wegen dieser Gefahr, vielleicht [240] sollten_NegRFV Eltern ihren Kinder nicht erlauben das Internet zu nutzen. „Because of this danger, maybe [240] parents shouldn‟t_NegRFV allow their children to use the internet.‟

Corrections are inserted for modal verbs and Konjunktivs only. These corrections are

inserted after the tag. For modal verbs a distinction is made whether there is an error in

the selection of modal verb or in verb morphology. If the right modal verb has been

selected in a given context, but its form is wrong, only the correct form is inserted:

[b1011_07] Wir mussen_RN &müssen# von die Nazizeit lernen. „We have to learn from the Nazi era.‟

If the wrong modal verb is used in a given context, the appropriate expression plus the

according tag is inserted:

[c1054_02] Mit dem Verbot muss_RN man auch alle Kruzifixe usw. auch verboten und Nonnen müssen_NegRN &dürfen_NegRE# ihre Ordenstracht nicht im Unterricht tragen. „With this ban one has to also ban all crucifixes and nuns *need not (target: must not) wear their habit when teaching.‟

85

These can easily be converted into the tag format used for the modal verbs. In the present investigation, the numerical codes were kept in order to be able to distinguish modal verbs from periphrastic modal expressions.

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For Konjunktivs, the annotation of errors signals cases where an indicative form is

applied in cases where Konjunktiv is correct or vice versa. For indicative forms, a

distinction is made between preterite (PR) and present tense (IND) forms:

[b1003_05] Natürlich wenn wir weniger arbeiten_IND &arbeiten würden_KII# , würden_KII die Stressniveaus nehmen ab. „Of course, if we work_IND &worked_KII#86 less, stress levels would go down.‟

[c2028_01] Diese Chemikalien töten Schädlinge und deswegen haben die Räuber kein Fütter. Als Folge von der Benutzung von Schädlingsbekämpfungsmittel hätten_KII &haben_IND# wir die Nahrungskette verändert und natürlich ist das keine gute Sache... „These chemicals kill vermin and therefore the predators have no food. As a consequence of the use of pesticides we would have_KII &have_IND# changed the food chain and that is, of course, a bad thing…‟

[c1052_03] Die heutige Schülen bieten den Kindern an, die Chance sich frei zu außern und ihre eigene Meinungen zu formulieren. Wenn die Schüler so diszipliniert wurden_PR &würden_KII# wie in den früheren Zeiten , würde_KII diese Möglichkeit weggenommen. „Schools today offer the children the chance to speak freely and formulate their own opinions. If pupils were_PR &would be_KII#87 disciplined in the same way as in former times, this possibility would be taken away.

Errors are inserted between „&‟ and „#‟ signs, so the strings between them can be

disregarded in automatic searches and counts, e.g. when using corpus analytical

programs such as WordSmith Tools (Scott 2008). Annotated in this way, they could,

however, also be included in searches without manually adding aberrant spellings to the

search list.

The annotation of errors in the depicted fashion is certainly not without problems.

Lüdeling (2008) discusses these problems in great detail. The main issue that is relevant

here is that a flat annotation, unlike a multi-level architecture, only allows for one tag to

be inserted for each item in question. For error annotation, this means that the

researcher has to decide at the time of annotation how a particular error is categorised

without the option of including alternatives. This categorisation depends on the so called

„target hypothesis‟, i.e. the native speaker‟s interpretation of how an erroneous utterance

86

The annotation of the English translation is for illustration purposes only; the verb form “worked” is, of course, not an English subjunctive form.

87 As before, the English translation is for illustration purposes only, hence the (incorrect) form “would be” in the error tag. “Were” does not reflect the fact that in German, a distinct form (i.e. Konjunktiv II) is required instead of the preterite form. The error emerges probably exactly because, in English, the preterite form “were” is used in this type of conditional clause.

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should be corrected. Lüdeling (2008:131) has shown that one and the same error can

evoke several different target hyptheses. For example, the following sentence can be

corrected in two ways to resolve the subject-verb agreement error:

[a2027_02] Das ist sehr gefährlich , aber ich denke, daß dieses Problem This is very dangerous, but I think that this problem.SING

leicht gelöst werden können. easily solved become can.PL „This is very dangerous, but I think that this problem can be solved easily.‟

target hypothesis 1: Das ist sehr gefährlich, aber ich denke, daß dieses Problem leicht gelöst werden kann.

target hypothesis 2: Das ist sehr gefährlich, aber ich denke, daß diese Probleme leicht gelöst werden können.

Even this relatively simple error can be interpreted as a number error on either the

subject or the verb. Other errors can prompt many more different target hypotheses that

locate the error in very different places of the utterance and, as a consequence, result in

very different error annotations. A multi-level annotation architecture allows for all of

these alternative hypotheses to be recorded and tagged at the same time, whereas in a

flat annotation, only one target hypothesis can be reflected in the error tag. The choice of

error tag is therefore subject to individual annotators‟ preferences and inter-rater

inconsistencies that can severely limit the indicative power of the error categorisation.

This was, indeed, a problem that arose during the annotation process for the present

study. Its severity, however, was attenuated by the fact that the error annotation was

only limited to expressions of modality, which meant that in cases of doubt, the target

hypothesis was chosen that reflected the error on the modal item in question. In this way,

the annotation of errors involving modal expressions could be kept relatively consistent.

The second problem with error tagging on learner data – inter-rater reliability – was cut

out as there was only one native speaker annotator. This, however, obviously creates a

whole new set of issues. With only one researcher and annotator working on the raw

data, decisions about not just errors, but also about any other forms of annotation and

interpretation are always in danger of being subjectively skewed. These decisions

involve, for example, judgements on what is grammatical or acceptable in the target

language, and these judgements are by no means immune to inter-rater disagreements.

(For in-depth discussions of these issues see e.g. Schütze 1996:77ff; Fetzer 2004:12ff).

Judgements on style or pragmatic force are even more difficult to carry out as a single

researcher. As the nature of the corpus data prevents communication with the authors of

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texts, it is, for example, difficult to decide whether the learner in the following utterance

used MÜSSEN deliberately in order to convey a strong necessity, or whether they

actually wanted to convey attenuated necessity, but were not able to deploy the correct

subjunctive form MÜSSTE.

[b1040_01] Wenn es wirklich Gleichberechtigung gabe, dann ?muss (target: müsste?) man anerkennen, dass es Hausfrauen und Hausmännern gibt. „If we really had equality, then we have to (would have to)88 acknowledge that housewives as well as househusbands exist.‟

The hypothetical, irrealis context set up by the conditional clause speaks for the

subjunctive form, but the indicative form is by all means conceivable here.

With any of these decisions, a more objective result could be achieved through native

speaker judgement tasks for grammaticality or acceptability involving several test

persons or through a group of annotators, where inter-rater reliability scores can be

calculated. If these scores are high, then the annotation can be considered consistent

and reliable89. Unfortunately, the circumstances of the current study as research for a

PhD thesis did not allow for these measures. As pointed out before, the upside of this is

that the way the data is annotated and interpreted should be internally consistent and

every effort was made to base any decisions on grammaticality, acceptability and

pragmatic force or intentions on objective criteria as much as possible.

4.3.3 Analytical techniques

The analytical process in this study follows a data-driven agenda. This means that, while

the data was prepared on the basis of pre-defined categories of modal meanings, the

analysis focused purely on the way that the data presented itself with respect to these

categories. For this, several analytical techniques were employed within the contrastive

interlanguage analysis framework.

88

Note that the sequences of tenses/subjunctive forms in German conditional clauses is much freer than in English and a mix of indicative and subjunctive forms is not uncommon (see 2.3.5.3)

89 For a discussion of consistency and accuracy in human annotator post-editing of automatically tagged data cf. Baker (1997).

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4.3.3.1 Quantitative and qualitative investigations

Firstly, quantitative comparisons were conducted for each category of modal meaning

and each type of modal expression. This involved, e.g. frequency counts of individual

modal verbs, which lead to a comparison of the rankings of modal verbs between

different learner groups (Year A to Year C) and between learners and native speakers.

Frequency counts were also conducted in order to establish similarities and differences

in the distribution of types of modal expressions, e.g. the proportion of modal verbs to

periphrastic modal expressions between the learner and native speaker corpora.

Furthermore, frequencies were established within categories and types, e.g. the

distribution of individual periphrastic modal expressions within each meaning category.

Secondly, qualitative investigations were carried out especially in those areas where

the quantitative analysis had uncovered discrepancies between learners and native

speakers. This required close scrutiny of individual concordances, taking into account

the surrounding context of the modal expressions, in order to detect whether there were

any qualitative differences in the use of certain modal expression in addition to

quantitative differences. Aspects that were discovered included e.g. specific collocational

and colligational patterns. This facilitated the detection of areas where the learners‟

usage of modal verbs simply diverged from native speaker patterns but also of specific

problem areas for learners.

These two processes serve to answer the first two research questions: Which modal

expressions do learners use to express which modal meanings at different stages of

proficiency and where and how do these patterns differ from native speakers‟. The third

research question, i.e. identifying reasons for the diverging learner patterns can then be

answered through interpretation of the results in the light of current language acquisition

theories.

4.3.3.2 Interpretation of results

As explained in 4.1.2, the corpus methodological approach to learner language within the

„contrastive interlanguage analysis‟ framework rests on the concept that learner

language can be described in terms of evolving „interlanguages‟. These encompass the

learners‟ underlying mental knowledge of the second language at a particular point in the

course of learning. Interlanguages show linguistic characteristics of the learners‟ L1 and

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L2, but also characteristics that seem to be independent of L1 and L2 (cf. Selinker 1972).

According to Selinker (ibid), the following processes shape the design and development

of interlanguages:

language transfer – the use of the L1 or other L2s as resource

overgeneralisation – the use of an L2 structure in situations where a different structure

would be used by a native speaker

strategies of language learning – processes that learners use to systematically

generate, test and revise their hypotheses about the L2, e.g. simplification

strategies of second language communication – processes that learners use in order

to achieve successful communication, e.g. formal or functional reduction

transfer of training – the influence of teaching materials, exercises and teaching

progression on language production, e.g. overuse of certain lexical items or

grammatical structures due to overrepresentation in text books

He further identifies „fossilisation‟ as a key characteristic of learner language, where

“fossilized linguistic phenomena are linguistic items, rules and subsystems which

speakers of a particular NL [native language] will tend to keep in their IL [interlanguage]

relative to a particular TL [target language] no matter what the age of the learner or the

amount of explanation and instruction he receives in the TL” (Selinker 1972:215).

All of these aspects are taken into consideration when interpreting the results from the

present study in order to identify reasons for particular learner patterns in the use of

modal expressions. The process here is not to test a specific theory, but to explore which

of the factors that influence interlanguage can serve to explain the data. Where transfer

is concerned, recent theories (e.g. Jarvis and Pavlenko 2008) have identified cross-

linguistic similarity, frequency and prototypicality as crucial factors influencing which

items are prone to transfer. The quantitative results from the various corpora will provide

useful information on all of these aspects. Similarly, overgeneralisations and learning

strategies, such as simplification, can be detected by identifying overuses of certain

structures or items and categorising the semantic functions that learners use them for.

The avoidance of certain items or the replacement of items to fill semantic gaps can also

point to language learning processes. Strategies of second language communication can

be expected to produce features of learner language that are independent of L1 and L2.

The use of fixed phrases or formulaic expressions, for example, constitutes a way of

meeting communicative needs while at the same time reducing the strain on the learner.

Finally, teaching materials must be taken into consideration as influencing factors on the

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learner output.90 The textbooks considered in this study are “Brennpunkt” (Sandry et al.

2000) and “Zeitgeist”(Herman et al. 2001), which the learner profiling found to be the

most widely used A-level text books that the students in the corpus had used in school.

These also include grammar sections. During their university studies no set textbook was

used, but exercise sheets and materials that the tutors put together for the students from

various sources were also looked at. The recommended grammar for the students was

“Hammer‟s Grammar” (Durrell 2002), and this was also taken into consideration.

4.3.3.3 Statistics

As a large part of the analysis in this study rests on quantitative investigations, it has

to be stressed that modality is conceptualised as a „probabilistic‟ notion here. Modality is

considered an integral part of argumentative writing and, as such, is expected to be

manifest in a variety of forms in the corpora. The interest here is, thus, to determine how

they are realised and with what frequency. Whenever these frequencies are referred to

in comparisons between different corpora (which are of different size), they are therefore

normalised to „frequency per 10,000 words‟. This might be an unusual reference figure,

but as several modal expressions that are reported on are relatively infrequent, it makes

the numerical lists far more readable than higher reference figures of 100,000 words or

even 1 million words.

The statistical significance of differences in frequencies between the learner

subcorpora and the various native speaker corpora as part of the contrastive

interlanguage analysis was tested using log-likelihood statistics (cf. Rayson and Garside

2000) on the raw frequencies. This has been chosen for practical reasons as well as the

fact that other statistical hypothesis testing methods, such as Chi-squared, have been

shown to be less reliable on relatively small corpora and lower frequency items (Dunning

1993; Rayson et al. 2004). Log-likelihood calculations are used to determine whether a

difference between two corpus samples is statistically significant, or in other words,

whether the difference is due to chance. In the present study this operation has been

applied to most frequency counts where learner data is compared to native speaker

90

The textbooks referred to in this chapter are “Brennpunkt” (Sandry et al. 2000) and “Zeitgeist”(Herman et al. 2001), which the learner profiling found to be the most widely used A-level text books that the students in the corpus had used in school. These also include grammar sections. During their university studies, no set textbook was used. The recommended grammar was “Hammer‟s Grammar” (Durrell 2002).

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data. Log-likelihood values have a direct link with statistical significance: the higher the

value the greater the probability that the difference in the two samples is due to chance.

The following values mark the cut-off points for different degrees of significance:

LL-value ≥ 3.84: The probability of differences being due to chance is p < 0.05

(5%). This marks a significant difference (indicated by *).

LL-value ≥ 6.63 The probability of differences being due to chance is p < 0.01

(1%). This marks a highly significant difference (indicated by **).

LL- value ≥ 10.83 The probability of differences being due to chance is p < 0.001

(0.1%). This marks an extremely significant difference (indicated

by ***)

As all statistical calculations, log-likelihood has its drawbacks. One of the issues in the

specific design of the learner corpus CLEG is the problem of dispersion. This means that

with some items it occurs that a handful of learners use them excessively, thus boosting

their frequency, although many learners do not use them at all (cf. also Lyne 1985).

Another issue is the fact that some learners contributed more texts or longer texts than

others to the corpus. The length of texts ranges from around 100 words to 2500 words,

with a mean of 442 words and a standard deviation of 385. On top of this, learners

contributed from as little as two to as many as seven texts to the corpus, which means

that the interlanguage of some learners is overrepresented. While these problems are

recognised, an undogmatic stance is taken in the present study and all suitable texts

were included. Within the research design for this study, statistical significance is merely

a corroborative argumentative tool. This means that significance tests are taken as

additional evidence for certain tendencies that are detected in the learner data. However,

they never form the basis of decisions to exclude certain categories or expressions form

closer analysis; all categories and modal means are investigated in detail, regardless

whether any statistically significant differences between learner and native speaker

corpora were established.

To conclude, the methodological basis of the present study rests on the supposition

that a learner corpus, such as CLEG, is a valid instrument for uncovering otherwise

undetectable patterns of learner language and that the analytical procedures described

in the multi-comparison model produce valid results. It is, of course, not proposed that

this is the only way of procuring reliable information on learner language, but it should

have become clear that for a study of a linguistic phenomenon such as modality, which is

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manifest in such a diverse range of lexical and grammatical features, corpus data

provides the most diversely exploitable source of information and the multiple

comparison approach provides valuable results.

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5. Results

In this chapter, results of the analysis of expressions of modality are presented. Each of

the groups of modal expressions (modal verbs, periphrastic modal expressions, modal

infinitives and the subjunctive mood) is initially dealt with separately. As the modal verbs

in their different meanings set up the semantic categories that this exploration will look

into, they will be dealt with first. The other expressions will then be investigated following

the same semantic categorisations as the modal verbs and the additional categories that

have been identified, e.g. for the periphrastic modal expressions (see 4.3). At the

beginning of each of the sub-sections, general results and observations are given in

order to offer first insights into differences between native speaker and learner usage of

modality. Then, the different types and categories of modality are investigated in more

detail. Generally, there are two (often interlinked) aspects that will be focused on in each

section. On the one hand, comparisons between the learners and native speakers will be

drawn, and on the other hand, comparisons between learner year groups will be made in

order to uncover patterns of progression in the interlanguage system for modality from

less to more advanced learners. Where appropriate, connections between the different

means of modality (e.g. underuse of modal verbs and overuse of periphrastic modal

expressions in the same meaning category) are also pointed out and will be discussed

more comprehensively in chapter 6.

5.1 MODAL VERBS

Overall, 4760 modal verbs were annotated in the learner corpus CLEG and 1388 in the

comparable NS-corpus KEDS. In the general NS-corpus LIMAS, raw frequencies of

modal expressions were retrieved, but no manual annotation was carried out91.

The following table (Table 12) gives raw and normalised frequencies of modal verbs in

CLEG, KEDS and LIMAS.

91

This means that a figure for WERDEN cannot be included from the LIMAS corpus, as WERDEN is used not only as a modal verb but also as an auxiliary verb to form the passive and as a main verb in the sense of "to become" with adjectives and noun phrases, all of which do not carry modal meaning (see 2.3.1.2.7).

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CLEG (learners) KEDS (comparable NS) LIMAS (general NS)

raw per 10000

words raw

per 10000 words

raw per 10000

words

KÖNNEN 1775 88.9 659 80.3 5413 50.9

MÜSSEN 799 40.0 278 33.9 2565 24.1

SOLLEN 706 35.4 190 23.1 1990 18.7

WERDEN 687 34.4 82 10.0 --- ---

WOLLEN 522 26.2 82 10.0 1161 10.9

MÖGEN 171 8.6 45 5.5 157 1.5

DÜRFEN 103 5.2 52 6.3 326 3.0

TOTAL 4763 238.6 1388 169.1 11612 109.3

TABLE 12: OVERALL FREQUENCIES OF MODAL VERBS IN LEARNER AND NATIVE SPEAKER CORPORA

Two tentative observations can be made from these figures. Firstly, the order of

frequencies of modal verbs in CLEG and KEDS is almost the same (with a slight

variation of MÖGEN and DÜRFEN at the bottom of the table), which in turn is the same

as in LIMAS. This means that in terms of frequency of use in relation to each other (i.e.

for instance KÖNNEN used the most, SOLLEN used more than WOLLEN etc.) the

learners show the same pattern as the native speakers.

Secondly, in general learners seem to be overusing modal verbs in comparison to

both NS corpora. The statistical significance of different frequency scores for the different

items in the respective learner corpora compared to KEDS have been examined through

calculating log-likelihood (LL) values, which are presented in Table 13 (cf. Chapter 5.3.3

for details). Figures preceded by (+) indicate overuse in the learner corpus, (-) indicate

underuse in the learner corpus.

CLEG vs. KEDS CLEG vs. LIMAS KEDS vs. LIMAS

KÖNNEN (+) 4.51* (+) 377.49*** (+) 113.18***

MÜSSEN (+) 4.78* (+) 144.67*** (+) 30.53***

SOLLEN (+) 28.76*** (+) 191.50*** (+) 8.04**

WERDEN (+) 179.37*** --- ---

WOLLEN (+) 79.35*** (+) 240.12*** (-) 0.36

MÖGEN (+) 8.69** (+) 239.47*** (+) 46.15***

DÜRFEN (-) 1.19 (+) 20.56*** (+) 19.70***

TOTAL (+) 137.58*** (+) 1071.19*** (+) 161.37***

TABLE 13: LOG-LIKELIHOOD VALUES FOR DIFFERENCES IN MODAL VERB FREQUENCIES BETWEEN

CLEG, KEDS AND LIMAS

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(* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

Table 13 reveals that the overuse of modal verbs is statistically highly significant in

both CLEG and KEDS compared to LIMAS (with the exception of WOLLEN for the KEDS

vs. LIMAS comparison, which is very slightly underused in KEDS, but not to a degree

that is statistically significant). This supports the argument that the use of modal

expressions is highly text type dependent and plays a more central role in

argumentative, problem-discussing writing. For this reason, all subsequent analyses of

differences between learner and NS use focus on CLEG vs. KEDS comparisons. Data

from the LIMAS corpus is only drawn upon where the additional dimension of general NS

writing is appropriate and necessary.

However, modal verbs are also significantly overused by learners in comparison to

native speakers writing the same text type (CLEG vs. KEDS). This does not only apply to

the overall figures, but also to every individual year group compared to KEDS, as Figure

5 demonstrates (the differences in frequencies compared to KEDS is statistically

significant for every year group):

FIGURE 5: OVERALL FREQUENCIES OF MODAL VERBS

0.0

50.0

100.0

150.0

200.0

250.0

300.0

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

freq. per

10,000 words

modal verbs

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Table 13 shows that while this overuse effect is less pronounced (yet still statistically

significant) for KÖNNEN and MÜSSEN, it is highly significant for SOLLEN, WOLLEN and

MÖGEN. DÜRFEN is the only modal that is slightly underused by learners, although not

at a statistically significant level.

In order to see whether there are any changes in these patterns as students progress

from Year A to Year C, Figure 6 presents frequency figures separately for each year

compared to KEDS. Three-dimensional charts such as in Figure 6 are displayed to give

an overview of figures. Corresponding data tables for all such charts are given in

Appendix C.

FIGURE 6: INDIVIDUAL MODAL VERB FREQUENCIES

Figure 6 gives a more detailed picture of where the overall impression of a modal verb

overuse stems from. It can, in fact, be seen that some modal verbs contribute more to

this effect than others:

KÖNNEN is substantially overused in Year A and again quite considerably in Year C,

while actually being underused in Year B as compared to the native speaker corpus92.

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A possible explanation for the deviances in Year B that result in slightly lower overall frequencies of modal verbs could be the slightly different text types (see Footnote 68 in 4.2.1)

0.0

20.0

40.0

60.0

80.0

100.0

120.0

freq. per

10,000 words

KEDS

YEAR C

YEAR B

YEAR A

KÖNNENMÜSSENSOLLENWERDENWOLLENDÜRFENMÖGEN

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MÜSSEN is used in almost equal frequencies to the native speakers in Year A and B,

but heavily overused in Year C.

SOLLEN exhibits a similar pattern to KÖNNEN, being overused in Years A and C, but

underused in B.

WERDEN and WOLLEN are both substantially overused throughout all 3 years.

DÜRFEN is actually underused in Years A and B, but slightly overused in Year C.

MÖGEN exhibits exactly the opposite pattern, being overused in Years A and B, but

slightly underused in Year C.

Table 14 replicates the frequency scores from Figure 6 and indicates where the

different frequency scores of modal verbs for the three learner year groups in

comparison to the NS-group in KEDS are statistically significant at p < 0.01. This table

also highlights another interesting fact, namely that the frequency ranking of the modal

verbs for Years A and B are identical, yet considerably different from KEDS, while Year

C is almost identical with KEDS with the exception of SOLLEN and MÜSSEN being

reversed93. This means that, while overall the frequency ranking of modal verbs is the

same as the native speakers‟ for the whole learner group, split up into individual year

groups (and thereby assuming different proficiency levels) some remarkable changes

take place during the progression from Year A to Year C.

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

freq. per 10,000 words

modal verb modal verb freq. per 10,000 words

freq. per 10,000 words

modal verb modal verb freq. per 10,000 words

110.8> KÖNNEN KÖNNEN 64.5< 95.8> KÖNNEN KÖNNEN 80.3

35.5 MÜSSEN MÜSSEN 35.2 53.8> SOLLEN MÜSSEN 33.9

28.6> WOLLEN WOLLEN 23.8> 46.0> MÜSSEN SOLLEN 23.1

27.3 SOLLEN SOLLEN 16.5< 26.5> WOLLEN WOLLEN 10.0

11.1> MÖGEN MÖGEN 12.4> 8.6 DÜRFEN DÜRFEN 6.3

2.6< DÜRFEN DÜRFEN 2.4< 4.3 MÖGEN MÖGEN 5.5

38.4> WERDEN WERDEN 34.2> 32.5> WERDEN WERDEN 10.0

TABLE 14: STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF DIFFERENCES IN MODAL VERB FREQUENCIES BETWEEN

LEARNER YEAR GROUPS AND KEDS (FIGURES FOLLOWED BY „>‟ INDICATE SIGNIFICANT

OVERUSE IN LEARNER GROUP; „<‟ INDICATES SIGNIFICANT UNDERUSE IN LEARNER GROUP)

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N.B. the modal verb WERDEN is excluded from this ranking here, as its status is slightly different from the other modal verbs. (see 2.3.1.2.7)

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In order to find out more about why these patterns of use emerge in the way they do,

it is necessary to look at the different types of modality – epistemic and non-epistemic –

and the individual categories of modality more closely.

5.1.1 Epistemic modal verbs

5.1.1.1 Overview

Lindemann (1996), in her study of Norwegian learners of German, found out that most of

the learners she investigated (after roughly equal times of instruction in the L2) could

only use in their productions what she calls the "Standardrepertoire" (Lindemann 1996:

27) (standard repertoire) which consists of those German modal verbs that are similar in

both form and meaning to those in the L1, plus the L2 specific modal verb DÜRFEN in

the meaning of be allowed to (see 3.2). In order to be able to investigate whether

something like this standard repertoire can also be observed for the British learners of

German, a comparison of the English and German modal verb system is needed. Nehls

(1986:27ff) provides a comprehensive overview of differences and similarities between

epistemic and deontic uses in the two systems, which forms the basis of Table 15

(epistemic modal verbs – this section) and Table 23 (non-epistemic modal verbs, see

section 5.1.2 below). In these tables information from Nehls on which modal verb

cognates in English and German are also equivalent in meaning (gray areas) has been

combined with the classification based on Brinkmann (1971) used for the annotation of

modal verbs in the present study. For example, if a speaker wants to express a

compelling conclusion in German, they can use the modal verb MÜSSEN; if a speaker

wants to express the same kind of compelling conclusion in English, they can use the

cognate modal verb MUST:

(1) Der Dieb muss von den Diamanten gewusst haben.

The thief must have known about the diamonds.

If we want to express a subjective assumption in German, we can use the modal verb

DÜRFTE; in English, however, there is no cognate modal verb that expresses the same

modal meaning, so we have to use a different construction, e.g. probably:

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(2) Der Dieb dürfte von den Diamanten gewusst haben.

The thief probably knew about the diamonds.

This way, it can be investigated whether learners show any kind of pattern in their modal

verb use that relates to form and meaning equivalences, which in turn would strongly

suggest that transfer plays an important role here.

EPISTEMIC USES OF MODAL VERBS

NECESSITY

Schlussfolgerung MÜSSEN MUST compelling conclusion

abgeschwächte Schlussfolgerung

MÜSSTE OUGHT TO more tentative conclusion

SOLLTE SHOULD

POSSIBILITY

Vermutung DÜRFTE is probably

subjective assumption will probably

Annahme einer Möglichkeit KÖNNEN CAN

assumption of a possibility MÖGEN MAY

vorsichtige Annahme einer Möglichkeit

KÖNNTE COULD

tentative assumption MIGHT

zuversichtliche Annahme (Gegenwartsbezug)

Präsens present tense

confident assumption (present) WERDEN WILL

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zuversichtliche Annahme (Zukunftsbezug)

Präsens BE GOING TO

confident assumption (future) WERDEN WILL/SHALL

sprecherfremde Behauptung

(des Subjekts) WOLLEN

CLAIM TO PRETEND TO

claim made by grammatical subject

sprecherfremde Behauptung (von anderen)

SOLLEN BE SAID TO

SUPPOSED TO REPORTED TO

claim made by neither speaker nor grammatical subject

(hearsay)

TABLE 15: ENGLISH EQUIVALENTS TO GERMAN MODAL VERBS (EPISTEMIC)

This table gives the impression that for epistemic modality the German and English

modal verb systems are very similar (gray shading indicates modal verbs equivalent in

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N.B. From a diachronic perspective, the German cognate of English WILL is, of course, WOLLEN. In the synchronic use of both WILL and WERDEN as markers of a possible present or, more often, future event, however, we can assume these two as the form/meaning equivalent pairing (cf. Nehls 1986:25f). The learners have also, by and large, internalised this, as there are only 4 instances of WOLLEN in “confident assumption” contexts in the whole of CLEG.

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both form and meaning). Therefore, from a predictive contrastive point of view, not many

problems are to be expected. The following chart displays the learner data (in year

groups A to C) and comparable NS data (KEDS) for these categories:

FIGURE 7: EPISTEMIC MODAL VERB FREQUENCIES

From this overview chart it can be seen that, although epistemic modal verbs are

generally less frequent than non-epistemic modal verbs, all different categories (that is to

say, all different modal verbs in their different epistemic uses) are present in the native

speaker data, but quite a few of them are not actively used by all learner groups, namely

SOLLTE, MÜSSTE, DÜRFTE and the two evidentials SOLLEN and WOLLEN. It is

important to note here that some of the modal verbs, and indeed other modal

expressions, only occur witht low overall frequencies. These do not allow for statements

about statistical significance of over- or underuse, but only for those of a binary nature,

i.e. the modal verb in question is either used or not used in the respective learner group.

It also has to be kept in mind that it is problematic to generalise any results from such a

small number of occurrences, which makes their detailed qualitative analysis even more

important. With respect to the low frequency items, a bigger corpus would probably yield

more instances, which would in turn allow for more quantitative evaluations.

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

freq. per

10,000 words

Year A

Year B

Year C

KEDS

WERDEN

KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE

MÜSSEN

MÖGEN

SOLLTE

MÜSSTE

DÜRFTE

SOLLEN (evid

ent.)

WOLLEN (e

vident.)

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Another point to make here is this: the fact that these modal verbs were not used by

some learner groups does not mean that these learners do not have passive knowledge

of these meanings/uses or would not, for example, be able to produce them in e.g. an

elicitation exercise. It does mean, however, that they actually did not actively choose to

use them in their free compositions whereas more advanced learner groups and the

native speakers did. It is also remarkable that once a particular modal verb use has

occurred in one year group, from then on it also occurs in the more advanced learner

groups, i.e. there are no modal verb uses that occur, for instance, in Year A and then not

in Year B or C (even though the data is not truly longitudinal).

5.1.1.2 Modal verbs without English form/meaning equivalents: Evidential WOLLEN and SOLLEN, DÜRFTE, MÜSSTE

But what about the predictions from the contrastive analysis? If we compare the

frequency scores for the modal verbs with the list of modal verb equivalents in Table 15,

we can see that those modal verbs that only start being used in higher year groups

match exactly those that have no English form/meaning equivalent modal verb:

Evidential WOLLEN is actually not used at all by any learner, evidential SOLLEN is

attempted twice by a learner in Year C, but only one of these is actually successful:

[c1047_04] Eine von Feshbach entwickelte Hypothese ist die bekannte Katharsisthese, die lautet, dass das Medienerlebnis von Gewalt, zum Beispiel in einem Film, als reinigender Prozess dient, und deshalb ermöglicht das Nachvollziehen der Gewaltakte im fiktionalen Geschehen und nimmt die Zuschauerbereitschaft ab, sich selbst gewalttätig zu benehmen . Diese Katharsisthese soll im Prinzip eine deutliche Aggressivitätsminderung provozieren und hat einen inhibitiven oder hemmenden Effekt. „A hypothesis developed by Feshbach is the well-known catharsis hypothesis, which says that the experience of violence in the media, for example in a film, serves as a cleansing process, and therefore the disposition of the viewers to act violently themselves is being diminished. This catharsis hypothesis is said to provoke a significant decrease in aggressive behaviour and has an inhibiting or restraining effect.‟95

95

The following basic principles are applied in the translations of learner examples: 1. The focus is on conveying the specific point that the example is trying to illustrate (usually in bold print). In the translation of the surrounding context, errors or mistakes that do not pertain to the particular point under discussion are ignored. 2. Only grammatical errors are marked by * and the correct target form is supplied in brackets. Language use that is stylistically questionable is explained in the running text but remains unmarked in the example.

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The modal verb for subjective assumptions, DÜRFTE, is used once in Year B (where

it is actually within a direct quote) and once in Year C:

[c2032_03] Bundeskanzler Schröder hat zugegeben, dass er zum Teil schuldig ist das die NPD jetzt mehr Einfluß hat. Er dürfte jetzt Angst haben seine Stelle zu verlieren, weil er nicht genug gemacht hat die Rechtsextreme zu bekämpfen. „Chancellor Schröder has admitted, that he is partly to blame for the fact that the NPD has more influence now. He is probably afraid to loose his job now, because he didn‟t do enough to fight the right extremists.‟

MÜSSTE as the modal verb for tentative conclusions is also only used once in Year C:

[c1060_04] Es gab Problemen mit dem Defizit für drei Jahren, die sehr peinlich für die Deutsche sein müsste, als sie aüßerst hart für bestimmte Regeln für Defiziten in Europa gearbeitet hatten. „There were problems with the deficit for three years, which should be very embarrising for the Germans, as they worked very hard for certain regulations concerning deficits in Europe.‟

We can therefore summarise that these modal verbs are only attempted by a few

individual learners in very isolated cases, which means they are definitely not part of a

standard repertoire of modal devices that learners have at their disposal, even in the

most advanced year group.

5.1.1.3 Modal verbs with English form/meaning equivalents: MÜSSEN, KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE, WERDEN, MÖGEN, SOLLTE

On the other hand, the group of modal verbs where English form/meaning equivalent

modal verbs do exist are used throughout all year groups (KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE,

MÜSSEN, MÖGEN, SOLLTE, WERDEN). Within this group, however, we can make one

observation that does not fit the contrastive analysis so neatly. While for the modal verbs

KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE, MÜSSEN and WERDEN the frequency figures generally indicate

either roughly the same use or – sometimes extensive – overuse on the part of the

learners, the modal verbs for the assumption of a possibility (MÖGEN) and tentative

conclusions (SOLLTE) are actually underused by the learners as compared to the native

speakers. SOLLTE is even not used at all by Year A learners.

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It is at this point that a corpus approach can help improve the contrastive analysis

data in a way to explain this conflict. Nehl‟s synoptic account of differences and

equivalences in the German and English modal verb system offers a summary of what is

linguistically possible, i.e. correct, not on what is likely in terms of frequencies96, that is to

say, how often the respective modal verbs are actually used as equivalents of each

other. In order to obtain this kind of information we can draw upon the translation corpus

INTERSECT described in section 4.2.4 and calculate “mutual correspondences” (MC),

which give a ratio of the frequency with which the respective modal verbs are translated

into each other, for instance how many times epistemic MÜSSEN is translated as MUST

in the German-to-English translations and vice versa. The calculation of “translation bias”

reveals whether this correspondence is stronger in one direction than in the other97.Table

16 shows these three values for the form/meaning equivalent modal verbs:

translation bias

epistemic modal verb equivalents

MC German English

translations English German

translations

MÜSSEN MUST 78.4 77.4 80.8

WERDEN WILL 68.7 62.4 73.4

KÖNNEN CAN 57.8 50.8 82.8

KÖNNTE COULD 51.5 45.5 58.3

SOLLTE SHOULD 26.1 0.0 32.4

MÖGEN MAY 22.0 45.7 8.3

TABLE 16: MUTUAL CORRESPONDENCE VALUES (MC) FOR GERMAN AND ENGLISH EPISTEMIC MODAL

VERB EQUIVALENTS

These figures show high MC values for MÜSSEN and WERDEN and although the

values for KÖNNEN and KÖNNTE are not quite as high, they are still high enough to

argue that the direct modal verb to modal verb translation is still the preferred option in

most cases98. For SOLLTE and MÖGEN, however, the MC values are low, indicating

that the mutual correspondence between the German and English modal verb is not very

96

Although he does include corpus-informed comments on whether certain constructions are frequent or infrequent throughout the detailed discussion; however, no systematic frequency data is given.

97 For a more detailed description of mutual correspondence, translational bias and their mathematical formulas see section 4.2.4.

98 Note also that if the distinction between the categories “assumption of a possibility” and “tentative assumption” is neglected and the frequency counts for KÖNNEN and KÖNNTE and CAN and COULD respectively are combined, this results in an even higher MC value of 60.6.

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strong. Instead, we find the following examples of how these two modal verbs were

translated in the INTERSECT corpus:

[INTERSECT] Daß es uns aber ein klareres und vor allem gerechteres Bild gibt und daß es ernsthafte Gespräche zwischen den Kulturen erleichtert, das sollte doch niemand bestreiten. However, no-one can deny that it gives us a clearer and, above all, fairer picture which makes it easier to engage in cross-cultural talks.

[INTERSECT] Mag sein, dass der Handel neue Impulse erhält, wenn nach dem EU-Beitritt Polens die Zollkontrolle auf der Neiße-Brücke verschwindet. Perhaps trade and crossborder traffic will receive new impetus when the customs controls cease after Poland‟s accession to the European Union.

Interestingly, the learners follow this pattern exactly – overusing only those German

modal verbs that both share their meaning with the English cognate modal verb and

have a high MC value (MÜSSEN, KÖNNEN, KÖNNTE, WERDEN) and actually

underusing the two modal verbs where a direct modal verb to modal verb translation is

certainly possible but often not the preferred option (SOLLTE and MÖGEN).

5.1.1.4 MÜSSEN (compelling conclusion)

Epistemic MÜSSEN is used in all three learner groups and the normalised figures show

that Year A and B use it less than the native speakers while Year C use it slightly more,

but a closer look reveals that there are also distinct qualitative differences between the

learner groups.

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

MÜSSEN (raw figures) 4 5 16 12

MÜSSEN (per 10,000 words) 0.9 0.8 1.8 1.5

successful instances 2 5 16 12

TABLE 17: EPISTEMIC MÜSSEN

Despite attempting MÜSSEN four times, only two learners in Year A actually do so

successfully. The other attempts are infelicitous:

[a1018_03] Es scheint auch, dass die Kinder, die kein Computer haben, *müssen (target: Ø) verschiedene andere Probleme haben. „It also seems that those children who don‟t have a computer must have several other problems.‟

[a2006_04] Ich liebe Deutschland und es interessiert mich sehr, aber ich kenne keine deutsche Filmschauspieler. Deshalb *müssen (target: dürften) anderen

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Leute, die Deutschland sich nicht interessiert auch keine Schauspieler kennen. „I love Germany and I‟m very interested in it, but I don‟t know any German actors. Therefore other people, who are not interested in Germany, must also not know any actors.‟

As MÜSSEN expresses a conclusion that excludes any other possibilities, it is

incompatible with a tentative expression like “es scheint” (it seems), with which the first

example is introduced. In the second instance, the speaker cannot have enough

evidence to make that kind of exclusive conclusion. The utterance is beyond the

speaker‟s given horizon, so it would seem more appropriate to use e.g. DÜRFTE as a

subjective assumption or MÜSSTE as a tentative conclusion. Both cases are not based

on transfer errors, as MUST is also inappropriate in the English sentences. It seems,

therefore, that the error lies within the students‟ interlanguage system of German

modality, as the appropriate alternatives (MÜSSTE or DÜRFTE) have not been acquired

yet and this gap is, in these instances, filled with MÜSSEN as a compelling conclusion.

In Years B and C, all instances of epistemic MÜSSEN are correct, for example:

[b1017_05] Es ist of der Fall, dass man Aufstiegsmöglichkeiten in Erwägung zieht, das muss positiv sein. „It is often the case that one considers career opportunities, that must be positive.‟

[c2030_05] Aktive Sterbehilfe oder der medizinisch assistiert Suizid muss als Gefahrlich angesehen werden, und soll verboten sein und verboten blieben. „Active euthanasia or medically assisted suicide must be seen as dangerous and should be and remain forbidden.‟

We can see that while the learners in Year A are still insecure about the use of epistemic

MÜSSEN, in Year B the learners who attempt to use it do so successfully and in Year C

the learners are confident with it and have incorporated it well into their interlanguage

modal system.

5.1.1.5 KÖNNEN and KÖNNTE (assumption of possibility)

KÖNNEN is the modal verb that students in any year group seem to have the least

problems with. Nehls (1986:109) points out that in German KÖNNEN is the default

modal verb to express a possible assumption, while MÖGEN is only available in this

function under certain circumstances (e.g. concessive statements, see 2.3.1.2.6). In

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English, on the other hand, the default modal verb is MAY, although CAN is also

available for this modal meaning99. There are different constrictions in either modal

system as to when the respective verbs can or must be used, but on the whole German

KÖNNEN is more generically applicable than English CAN100. The same holds true for

English COULD and the German Konjunktiv II form KÖNNTE. L1 English learners

therefore do not need to grammatically or semantically differentiate as much in German

as in English so that they have no problems with the appropriate use of

KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE . This modal verb does, however, pose a problem of a different kind.

As described in section 2.3.1.1, KÖNNEN keeps the Umlaut in the Konjunktiv II form

KÖNNTE, while the preterite form is KONNTE. In English, no such distinction exists as

both forms are represented by COULD. The following table shows that the learners have

difficulties differentiating between preterite and subjunctive form:

Year A Year B Year C

KÖNNEN (raw figures) 70 26 61

KONNTE instead of KÖNNTE 16 8 7

KÖNNTE instead of KONNTE 0 1 2

errors in % 22.9 34.6 13.1

TABLE 18: ERROR RATE FOR EPISTEMIC KÖNNTE/KONNTE

This produces the following types of errors:

[a2019_03] Wenn die deutsche Filmindustrie gleich Erfolg erleben *konnte (target: könnte), wird es fantastich für Deutschland sein, seit diese amerikanische Filme sehr viel Geld verdienen ... „If the German film industry *could experience the same success, it would be fantastic for Germany as these American films make a lot of money …‟

[b1034_01] Ich glaube, dass es sehr gefährlich sein *konnte (target: könnte), wenn man jede in die Zeitung glaubt und … „I think that it *could be very dangerous if you believe everything in the paper and …‟

Some of these errors are perhaps mistakes due to inattentiveness, but the fact that they

also occur in typed texts and that they occur (though less so) the other way round, i.e.

KÖNNTE instead of KONNTE indicates that these are errors due to lack of differentiation

99

Nehls (1986:110) summarises the difference between MAY and CAN: MAY expresses an assumption for a particular single incident whereas CAN expresses a general possibility.

100 Evidence for this can also be seen in the MC scores above (Table 16): CAN is translated as KÖNNEN in

82.8% of cases, whereas only 50.8% of KÖNNEN are translated as CAN. The fact that MÖGEN is much more restricted in its epistemic use than MAY is evident in the fact that only 8.3% of MAY are translated as MÖGEN, but 45.7% of MÖGEN are translated as MAY.

136

rather than “slips of the pen”. We will encounter more evidence that learners have

profound and continuing problems with Umlauts in various forms later on.

5.1.1.6 WERDEN (confident assumption)

Looking back at the overview chart in Figure 7, the one modal verb that stands out

through its extreme and consistent overuse by the learners is WERDEN (the differences

between each year group and KEDS are all statistically highly significant). It is the modal

verb that is used most to express epistemic modality by all learner groups, whereas the

native speakers use a much more balanced amount of WERDEN in comparison to other

modal verbs like KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE. As was explained in section 2.3.1.2.7, WERDEN

can denote present-time or future-time reference, as can the English modal verb WILL.

There are, however, contextual areas where the English use of WILL and the German

use of WERDEN do not match up and they will be the key to exploring why learners

overuse this particular verb so significantly. For this, it is necessary to analyse uses of

WERDEN in more detail and decide for each case whether it has present or future-time

reference.

We will first turn our attention to uses of WERDEN with present-time reference. These

are utterances like the following:

[b1008_03] ...aber ‚Shut endlich up!‟ ist möglicherweise die leidenschaftlichste Verteidigung des Papstes gegen der britische Presse, die man im Internet finden wird. „...but „shut finally up!‟ is possibly the most passionate defence of the pope against the British press that one will encounter on the internet.‟

[keds_055] Trotzdem wird man aber merken, dass ein „Normaler“ im Vergleich zu einem Spitzenathleten nur sehr wenig verdient. „Nevertheless one will notice that compared to a top athlete a “normal” one only earns very little.‟

For present-time reference, the difference between native speakers and learners is

striking:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

WERDEN (raw figures) with present-time reference

3 8 15 21

all WERDEN (raw figures) 177 225 284 80

as % of all WERDEN 1.7 3.6 5.3 26.3

TABLE 19: WERDEN WITH PRESENT-TIME REFERENCE

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Table 19 shows that in the NS corpus, over 26% of all sentences containing WERDEN

refer to the present101, whereas the figures for all learner groups barely reach over 5%.

So, while on the whole, learners use WERDEN a lot more than the native speakers, they

hardly ever use it as a „pure‟ modal verb. There are, however, two other (related)

present-time contexts, in which the English WILL is used but WERDEN is not. Nehls

(1986:123) describes these contexts as “habitual WILL” (“charakterisierendes WILL”) on

the one hand and “events of a general nature” (“Ereignisse allgemeiner Art”) on the

other. He gives the following examples for the two:

(3) He‟ll sit there hour after hour looking at the traffic go by.

(4) Don‟t mention it, Kettle. These things will happen.

In both of these contexts the present tense is used in German.

The detailed analysis shows that these uses make up over 10% of all WERDEN in all the

learner groups. (The fact that these uses do not occur in the NS corpus corroborates

Nehls‟ analysis that WERDEN is not used for this context in German.)

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

WERDEN (raw figures) in “habitual” and “general events” contexts

21 23 38 0

all WERDEN (raw figures) 177 225 284 80

as % of all WERDEN 11.9 10.2 13.4 0.0

TABLE 20: WERDEN USED IN “HABITUAL” AND “GENERAL EVENTS” CONTEXTS

Learner examples for these are:

[a2009_03] Heute velassen alle Betrunkner die Kneipe zusammen, und dann werden sie Kampfen schaffen oder Strafrat machen wann sie Banden formieren. „Today all drunks leave the pub together, and then they will start fights or commit crimes when they form gangs.‟

[b1037_01] Es sagt, dass, Frauen werden Arbeitsplätze mit niederer Stellung annehmen weil, sie mehr Biegsamkeit brauchen. „It says that women will take jobs in lower positions because they need more flexibility.‟

While these cases explain some of the overuse of WERDEN by learners, the majority of

it stems from WERDEN with future-time reference:

101

Note that this figure is almost identical to that determined by Pfeffer and Conermann (1977) in their comprehensive corpus analysis. They established that in written language 25% of instances of WERDEN have present-time reference as opposed to 40% in spoken language.

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Year A Year B Year C KEDS

WERDEN (raw figures) with future-time reference

155 194 229 59

all WERDEN (raw figures) 177 225 284 80

as % of all WERDEN 87.6 86.2 80.6 73.8

TABLE 21: WERDEN WITH FUTURE-TIME REFERENCE

According to Nehls (1986:127), English and German exhibit different patterns in

dealing with future events. WILL and WERDEN respectively can be used to express

future-time events. Theoretically, the present tense can be used in both languages to

express future events if a close link to present time exists (e.g. volition of an agent, event

is already beginning) or if an adverbial marker of future time makes the future-time

reference explicit, although in English this requires the present progressive.

(5) Susanne wird morgen einen Vortrag halten. „Susanne will give a talk tomorrow.‟

(6) Susanne hält morgen einen Vortrag. „Susanne is giving a talk tomorrow.‟

While this is straight-forward in German, because morpho-syntactically there is only one

present tense and one future tense, in English there are more options that compete in

these contexts: There is the GOING TO-future as another possibility of expressing

events that have a close link to present time or that will happen in the very near future

and then there is the distinction between simple present tense and present progressive.

Nehls (1986:128) states that the GOING TO construction is by far the most generally

applicable option in this context, while the use of the present tense is much more

restricted. Leech and Svartvik (1975:72) explain that “the present progressive is used for

future events resulting from a present plan, programme, or arrangement […] the simple

present is used (but not too often) to refer to future events which are seen as absolutely

certain […] In these sentences, we may say that the speaker treats the event as a fact,

and puts aside the doubt one normally feels about the future”. From these remarks we

can summarise that while in German the present tense can be considered a general and

unmarked option for expressing these types of future events102, in English the GOING

TO construction would be the equivalent unmarked option rather than the present tense.

102

Cf. Nehls (1986:127): “… die Annahme über einen zukünftigen Sachverhalt [wird] durch WERDEN + Infinitiv ausgedrückt, während das Präsens in der Regel auf zukünftige Ereignisse hinweist, die sich bereits

139

It therefore seems feasible to argue that in these contexts the learners avoid the

present tense in German in their argumentative essays as, from an L1 English

perspective, they would seem to make claims of absolute certainty that the described

events will happen, while the point of their „pro and con‟ argumentation is that they

explore different possible scenarios. This is why they seek to introduce an explicit

expression of futurity/modality into their sentences in order to allow for „the doubt one

normally feels about the future‟, and in German this explicit expression is WERDEN.

The following concordances exemplify this. In the three pairs of examples similar

propositions on various topics are put forward by the learners and the native speakers,

but while the learners use WERDEN in their statements, the native speakers feel that the

unmarked present tense is sufficient:

[c2043_01] Der Artikel handelt von der Polemik der Gentechnik und, ob die Menschheit wirklich davon profitieren werden oder es wird eigentlich nur problematisch. „The article is about the problem of genetic engineering and whether human kind will really benefit from it or whether it will actually only be problematic.‟

[keds_20] Ich verstehe die Ängste, die bei diesem Thema vorhanden sind, da es sehr neu und noch relativ unerforscht ist, doch muss man vor allem auch die Chance sehen, die uns diese Technik bietet. „I understand the fears that are present with this topic, because it is very new and relatively unexplored, but one has to, above all, see the benefits that this technology offers.‟

[a2013_03] In der Universität und in der Arbeitsplätzen werden das Internet wesentlich für die Übermittlung sein. Es wird besser für die Kindern sein, wenn sie über das Internet lernen, wenn sie jünger sind, weil es einfacher sein wird. „In universities and in the workplace the internet will be crucial for transmissions. It will be better for the children, if they learn about the internet when they are young, because it will be easier.‟

[keds_006] Dies mag daran liegen, dass ihre Eltern bereitwillig ein solches Gerät finanizieren, weil sie wissen, dass die Arbeitswelt ohne Computer nicht mehr denkbar ist und sie ihre Söhne und Töchter optimal auf die Zukunft vorbereiten wollen. „This may be due to the fact that parents readily finance such a device, because they know that a workplace without computers is now unimaginable and that they want to prepare their sons and daughters as well as possible for the future.‟

in der Gegenwart ankündigen.“ (… the assumption of a future event is expressed by WERDEN + infinitive, while the present tense usually refers to future events that have a close link to the present.)

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[c1049_04] Die Mehrheit der Bevölkerung können zwischen Realität und Fiktion unterscheiden. Die gewalttätigen Szenen werden fast keine Auswirkung haben und es macht man nicht agressiver. „The majority of people can distinguish between reality and fiction. The violent scenes will have almost no effect and it doesn‟t make one more aggressive.‟

[keds_006] Manche besorgten Erwachsenen gehen davon aus, dass das Spielen am Computer den Spieler direkt beeinflusst, also sein Handeln in der realen Welt bestimmt […] Jürgen Fritz legt jedoch in seinem Artikel „Fördern Computerspiele die Gewaltbereitschaft?“ dar, dass brutale Spiele die Aggressionsbereitschaft kaum beeinflussen. „Some concerned adults assume that playing on the computer directly influences the player, so that it determines his actions in the real world […] Jürgen Fritz, however, argues in his article “Do computer games encourage a disposition for violence?”, that violent games hardly influence the propensity for aggression at all.‟

These examples should also make it clear that we are not dealing with errors here, but

rather with an issue at the intersection between pragmatics and grammar. There are

instances in the learners‟ texts where WERDEN is involved in actual grammatical errors,

for example:

[a2025_01] Der erste sehr gross Pop Band der 20. Jahrhundert war die Beatles. Die Mädchen *werden wild auf der Beatles sein. (target: Die Mädchen waren wild auf die Beatles.) „The first really big pop band of the 20th century were the beatles. The girls *will be crazy for the beatles.‟

But these cases are rare. In the majority of cases, the use of WERDEN rather gives the

impression of redundancy, which is both a rather subjective and less quantifiable notion,

as it involves concepts like personal preference and writing style. One factor that

contributes to this impression is the fact that there are more instances of WERDEN as

modal verb/future tense marker in combination with WERDEN or SEIN as the infinite

verb in the learner groups compared to native speakers:

[a1004_02] Es wird ein schwieriger Kampf sein. „It will be a difficult struggle.‟

[b1005_06] Es wird sehr schwierig sein, genug Information nur mit geschlossene Fragen herauszufinden. „It will be very difficult to find out enough information just with closed questions.‟

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[c1047_01] Es bleibt zu sehen, ob die Todesstrafe bald häufiger als Urteil verkündigt werden wird. „It remains to be seen, whether capital punishment will soon be passed as a sentence more often.‟

English WILL cannot function as a main verb, the infinitve BE is therefore mandatory.

German WERDEN, however, can function as a main verb. In the above sentences this

would be perfectly correct without altering the meaning, which is why the combinations

with the infinitives of WERDEN or SEIN appear redundant.

Another factor is the use of WERDEN for signposting purposes in order to announce

the way a learner intends to structure the essay. These are more prominent in longer

texts and therefore appear a lot in the Year B texts (see Footnote 68 in 4.2.1), although

this type of explicit text structuring is generally employed a lot more by all learner groups

compared to the native speaker group:

[b1031_01] In diesem Essay werde ich die Rolle der Allierten nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg im Wiederaufbau der deutschen Presse untersuchen. Dann werde ich über den Einfluss sprechen, dass die Allierten auf die moderne deutsche presse gehabt haben. „In this essay I will investigate the role of the allied forces in rebuilding the German press after the second world war. Then I will talk about the influence that the allied forces have had on the German press.‟

Yet another factor is that learners sometimes use WERDEN in a subordinate clause

where the main verb already denotes a volitional act or intention (which gives the link to

present time that in German often triggers the use of the present tense):

[c2040_01] Der Präsident des NRW-Verfassungsschutzes möchtet ein neues Gesetz einführen, dies wird die NPD in Deutschland verbieten. „The president of the NRW office for the protection of the constitution wants to introduce a new law that will ban the NPD in Germany.

[b1014_06] ..., weil ich habe beabsichtigte, dass ich mit Leute sprechen werden, die ich nicht gut kenne. „…, because I intended, that I will speak with people that I don‟t know very well.‟

In example [b1014_06], the surrounding context is even a past one, in which case

WÜRDE would be more consistent than WERDEN (as WOULD would be in the English

sentence).

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Finally, sometimes learners‟ statements sound quite forceful through the use of

WERDEN, because they are made within a wider hypothetical context (subjunctive on

the surrounding verbs):

[c2040_05] Es gibt auch Forschung, die sagt, dass durch Euthanasie zu viele Leute in Europa sterben werden. Letzendlich ist es klar , dass die Einführung eines Gesetzes für Euthanasie schwere folgen für Europa mitbringen würde. „There are also studies that say that through euthanasia too many people will die in Europe. At the end of the day it is clear, that the introduction of a law for euthanasia would bring with it severe consequences for Europe.‟

[c1046_01] Wenn wir verstehen könnten, wiso Leute Morde begehen, könnten wir das Problem an der Basis handhaben. Wenige Leute wollen Straftaten machen - sie sind auf verschiedene Weisen dazu gezwungen. Sie sind auch Opfer und brauchen Hilfe. Langfristig wird es wenigere Kriminellen geben. „If we could understand why people commit murder, we could address the problem at its basis. Few people want to commit crimes – they are being forced in different ways. They are also victims and need help. In the long run there will be fewer criminals.‟

One could therefore argue that the use of the subjunctive form WÜRDE or KÖNNTE

might be more appropriate as it would be consistent with the hypothetical context that the

learners set up. It has to be stressed, however, that this is an issue of writing style and

any comment on the appropriateness of these stylistic choices is, of course, a matter of

subjective preference. There is no way of knowing whether the learners for some reason

failed to follow through with the subjunctive forms throughout the section or whether they

consciously chose WERDEN in order to add force to their argument. It will, however, be

shown in the section on subjunctives (5.4) that the learners generally have difficulties

distinguishing the different morphological forms of WERDEN, i.e. preterite (wurde),

Konjunktiv I (werde) and Konjunktiv II (würde), which would underpin the suggestion that

we are, in fact, dealing with morphological errors here. It can also be asserted that native

speakers tend to use WERDEN less often within hypothetical arguments and rather use

subjunctive forms throughout.

When looking at the development of the use of WERDEN throughout the learner

groups, it has to be noted that all of these „deviations‟ are present in all learner year

groups. A further indicator of this „non-progression‟ is the fact that the differences in

frequencies of the modal verb WERDEN between the three learner groups are not

statistically significant, i.e. there is no significant reduction in the overuse of this verb

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towards a native speaker level. It can be concluded that, with regard to WERDEN as a

modal verb, the learners seem to be influenced by their L1, not so much on a lexical

level, but rather on a higher order, conceptual level which appears to be quite resistant to

change as the students advance.

5.1.1.7 MÖGEN (assumption of possibility)

As mentioned in section 5.1.1.5 MÖGEN can be used in certain contexts as an

alternative to KÖNNEN to express a possible assumption, but its use is typically

restricted to concessive contexts103 (cf. Diewald 2004: 243). All in all, epistemic MÖGEN

is only attempted 5 times in the learner groups, but none of these are in concessive

contexts. This does not mean that they are incorrect, but to the native speaker these

sentences sound infelicitous, exactly because MÖGEN evokes expectations of a

concessive context:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

MÖGEN (per 10,000 words) 0.2 0.3 0.2 1.3

MÖGEN (raw figures) 1 2 2 11

concessive contexts 0 0 0 9

TABLE 22: EPISTEMIC MÖGEN IN CONCESSIVE CONTEXTS

There are two felicitous instances where the learners use MÖGEN in semi-fixed

constructions:

[a2018_03] Viele haben auch Angst vor den verlängerten Öffnungszeiten. Es mag sein, dass es zur mehr Gewalt führen würden. „Many people are also afraid of longer opening hours. It may be that this would lead to more violence.‟

[c1046_05] Übrigens ist die Situation gar nicht so schlecht, wie als beim ersten Blick erscheinen mag. „By the way, the situation is not nearly as bad as it may seem at first sight.‟

In the other three instances, MÖGEN is either redundant altogether [b1034_01] or the

context would make KÖNNEN more appropriate [b1011_05; c2036_03]. In these

instances, L1 transfer might have played a role:

103

An analysis in the LIMAS corpus showed that in 100 out of 128 instances (78%) of epistemic MÖGEN occurred in an explicitly concessive context.

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[b1034_01] Ich *mochte (target: Ø) zu Anfang denke, wie konnte man die oben gestellte Frage beantworten ? „In the beginning I *might think, how could you answer the above question?‟

[b1011_05] Auf der anderen Seit mag (better: kann) ein Mensch Schul haben und so sie müssen jede job machen, um Geld zu bekommen. „On the other hand a person may have debts and so they have to do any job in order to get money.‟

[c2036_03] Die ständige Bombardierung mit Bildern und Musik mögen (better: kann) unerfreulich sein und könnte Ältere möglicherweise leicht stören, auch wenn die Worte eine mächtige Botschaft übermitteln. „The constant bombardment with pictures and music may be unpleasant and could perhaps disturb older people, even if the words convey a powerful message.‟

5.1.1.8 SOLLTE (tentative conclusion)

Epistemic SOLLTE is not used at all in Year A and only once in Year B. In Year C,

however, we encounter 8 cases, 7 of which are correct (0.8 per 10,000 words). This is

proportionally still only about half the amount of occurrences as in the native speaker

corpus (14 instances; 1.7 per 10,000 words), but those learners who attempt it generally

show that they have grasped the use of epistemic SOLLTE, e.g.:

[c2038_01] Schon mit der Erfahrung von BSE sollte man gelernt haben, dass Menschen in solchen grundlegenden Bereichen der Natur sich nicht einmischen sollen. „From the experience with BSE we should have learnt that people ought not to interfere with such fundamental areas of biology.‟

There are, however, some instances where learners fail to realise that only the

subjunctive form SOLLTE is available epistemically and use SOLLEN instead:

[c2042_02] Wenn wir Studiengebühren haben, konnten Studenten je nach Einkommen zahlen […] Wir *sollen (target: sollten) auch nur hoch motiviert Studenten haben, die ihren akademischer Grad benutzen wollen. „If we had tuition fees, students could pay according to their income […] We *shall also have only highly motivated students who want to use their academic degree.‟

While these errors are not frequent in the epistemic category (as overall frequencies are

so low), we will see that this inability to discriminate between SOLLEN and SOLLTE

creates a bigger problem for the non-epistemic modal verb uses.

145

To summarise the category of epistemic modal verbs, we can conclude that there is a

marked difference between those modal verbs where transfer of cognate modal verbs in

German and English is positive and those where this is not the case. The modal verbs

where there are no form/meaning equivalents in German and English (MÜSSTE,

DÜRFTE, evidential WOLLEN and SOLLEN) are hardly used at all and although some of

them start being used in the higher year groups they cannot be considered part of the

learners‟ established system of modality. In the group of modal verb meanings that have

form/meaning equivalents in German and English, we have seen that there is a

difference between those verbs that are equivalent in form/meaning and have high

mutual correspondence scores – MÜSSEN, KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE, WERDEN – and those

that are theoretically equivalent but have low mutual correspondence scores – MÖGEN

and SOLLTE. The modal verbs in the former group are well established (or in the case of

MÜSSEN, become established in the course of Year A) in the learners‟ productive

knowledge and form part of the standard repertoire, while the ones in the latter group are

used much more sporadically and cannot be considered well established. We need to

keep these findings in mind when looking at the results for modal adverbials, as this will

reveal some interesting correspondences. Another factor that was discovered as

influencing the learners‟ modal system is the ability (or rather inability) to distinguish

indicative and subjunctive forms, which in turn has bearings on the use of certain modal

verb meanings.

5.1.2 Non-epistemic modal verbs

5.1.2.1 Overview

For the analysis of non-epistemic modal verbs, a similar approach is employed as for the

epistemic modal verbs. This means, we will first of all look at the corresponding

summarised table of equivalences in the German and English modal verb system:

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NON-EPISTEMIC USES OF MODAL VERBS

NECESSITY

Verpflichtung

MÜSSEN MUST duty, compulsion

BRAUCHEN NEED/HAVE (GOT) TO (SHALL

104) SOLLEN

instruction, obligation, expectation

Vorschlag

SOLLTE SHOULD

suggestion MÜSSTE

OUGHT TO

SUPPOSED TO

Wille WOLLEN

WANT TO intention, plan, volition,

willingness INTEND TO

WISH

abgeschwächter Wille (Wunsch)

MÖCHTE WOULD/SHOULD

LIKE TO attenuated volition (wish)

Zuneigung MÖGEN LIKE affection, liking

POSSIBILITY

Möglichkeit (Umstände) KÖNNEN KÖNNTE

CAN possibility (circumstance)

COULD

Fähigkeit KÖNNEN KÖNNTE

CAN COULD

possibility (abilities, attributes,

qualities, habits) BE ABLE TO

Erlaubnis

KÖNNEN CAN

permission DÜRFEN

MAY BE ALLOWED

TABLE 23: ENGLISH EQUIVALENTS TO GERMAN MODAL VERBS (NON-EPISTEMIC)

Table 23 indicates that for non-epistemic modality there are actually fewer one-to-one

form/meaning equivalents of German and English modal verbs. However, the ones that

do exist cover a large area of non-epistemic meanings: The basic expressions for non-

epistemic necessity (MUST), suggestion (SHOULD) and possibility (CAN/COULD) have

German cognates with the same meanings – MÜSSEN, SOLLTE, KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE.

The mutual correspondence values (see 4.2.4)for these pairings are as follows:

104

N.B. Nehls (1986) includes SHALL in his overview under the caveat that its use in this sense is very restricted and adds later that in most contexts SHALL and SOLLEN do not constitute meaning equivalents (Nehls 1986:52).

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translation bias

non-epistemic modal verb equivalents

MC German English

translations English German

translations

MÜSSEN MUST 75.9 72.6 85.5

KÖNNEN/ CAN/ KÖNNTE COULD

62.6 59.5 73.3

SOLLTE SHOULD 56.8 57.0 56.6

TABLE 24: MUTUAL CORRESPONDENCE VALUES (MC) FOR GERMAN AND ENGLISH NON-EPISTEMIC

MODAL VERB EQUIVALENTS

Table 24 shows that all three pairs of form/meaning equivalent modal verbs have high

mutual correspondence values, which means they are available as translational

equivalents in most contexts. Figure 8 below shows whether there is any interrelation

between the information in this table and actual frequency figures:

FIGURE 8: NON-EPISTEMIC MODAL VERB FREQUENCIES

Overall, the frequencies for non-epistemic modal verbs are much higher than for

epistemic ones. All non-epistemic modal verbs are present in all learner groups and,

generally, there seems to be a tendency for overuse of these verbs on the part of the

learners. This obviously means that even in Year A, the learners are beyond the stage of

0.0

5.0

10.0

15.0

20.0

25.0

30.0

35.0

40.0

45.0

50.0

freq. per

10,000 words

Year A

Year B

Year C

KEDS

MÜSSEN/MÜSSTE

KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE (c

ircum.)

KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE (a

bility)

SOLLTE

SOLLEN

WOLLEN

MÖCHTE

MÖGEN

DÜRFEN

KÖNNEN (perm

iss.)

=

148

acquiring modal verb means for non-epistemic modality, which is to be expected at this

level.

With regards to the German-English form/meaning equivalents, however, the picture

is not straightforward. Comparing the information in Table 23 to the usage patterns of

modal verbs by learners and native speakers reveals that there are hardly any

correspondences.

Out of the three equivalent modal verbs MÜSSEN is the only one that is consistently

(but only significantly in Year C) overused in all three learner groups as compared to the

native speaker group. SOLLTE is significantly overused in Year C, but actually

underused in Years A and B. KÖNNEN can be used in three different non-epistemic

contexts, all of which also allow CAN in English: KÖNNEN as circumstantial possibility is

overused in Year A, but underused in Years B and C, whereas KÖNNEN as ability is

overused in Years A and C, but underused in Year B. Finally, KÖNNEN as permission

occurs roughly equally to KEDS in Year A, but is overused in Years B and C.

But unlike the epistemic modal verbs, where non-equivalence corresponded with

underuse, most non-epistemic modal verbs are overused even if there is no cognate

English modal verb with an equivalent meaning. SOLLEN and especially WOLLEN are

consistently and heavily overused by learners, MÖCHTE and MÖGEN are overused in

Years A and B, while in Year C the frequency drops to roughly the same level as KEDS.

DÜRFEN, the alternative to KÖNNEN for expressing permission, is underused in Years

A and B, but overused in Year C. Again, it is necessary to look at the individual modal

verbs in more detail to understand how the learners use them differently to the native

speakers.

5.1.2.2 MÜSSEN (duty/compulsion) and MÜSSTE (suggestion)

The modal verb MÜSSEN in its non-epistemic meaning expresses necessity, obligation

or compulsion and is equivalent to English MUST and HAVE (GOT) TO105. MÜSSEN is

overused slightly in all learner groups, but there do not seem to be any difficulties for the

learners. The Konjunktiv II form MÜSSTE expresses a mitigated obligation, which gives

105

For English, linguists have not been able to reach agreement over the functional distinction between MUST, HAVE TO and HAVE GOT TO. The most generic description is summarised by Jarvis (1972:246): “If the speaker wishes to mark or emphasise that it is he, the speaker, who makes the proposition necessary, he uses must [..] In all other cases in the non-past must and have to are interchangeable.” In German, MÜSSEN is used for all of these cases, so the learners, in effect, have to apply fewer semantic distinctions than in English, which should make this modal verb unproblematic for the learners.

149

statements with MÜSSTE a notion of advice or suggestions. MÜSSTE is therefore very

close in meaning to SOLLTE and both are equivalent to English SHOULD (cf. Nehls

1986:58), as can be seen in this example:

[keds_045] Damit meine ich, dass einige Lehrer sensibler auf die Art eingehen sollten, mit der ihre Schüler an eine Aufgabe heran gehen und sie bei der Ausarbeitung beobachten und gegebenenfalls korrigieren sollten. Dem Anfertigen einer Arbeit müsste also mehr Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet werden, als dem bloßen Vortrag oder der abgegebenen Endform. „What I want to say is that some teachers should be more sensitive to the way their pupils address a task and they should observe them and if necessary correct them while they are carrying out the task. More focus should be on the process of working on a task rather then the final presentation or the end result that is handed in.‟

While MÜSSEN appears to be well established in the learner‟s repertoire already in

Year A (including its past tense form MUSSTE) and learners generally use it in the same

way as native speakers, MÜSSTE only really starts being used in Year C, as the

following table shows:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

MÜSSEN (MUSSTE) (raw figures) 123 (36) 173 (51) 344 (9) 220 (9)

MÜSSTE (raw figures) 0 2 25 30

MÜSSTE as % of all MÜSSEN 0.0 0.9 6.6 11.6

TABLE 25: NON-EPISTEMIC INDICATIVE MÜSSEN (MUSSTE) AND KONJUNKTIV II MÜSSTE

Several observations can be made from these figures. First of all, if we look at the figures

for the Konjunktiv II form MÜSSTE, it becomes very clear that there is a distinct

difference between Years A and B on the one hand and Year C on the other. It is only in

this final year that the students are able to semantically distinguish between MÜSSEN

and MÜSSTE and use the subjunctive form with some confidence, although still only

about half as often in contexts expressing non-epistemic necessity as the native

speakers (6.6% vs. 11.6% of all forms of MÜSSEN):

[c1048_01] Das heißt, so ein Verbot wäre nicht gegen der Bundesverfassung. Jedes Land müsste allerdings einen Gesetzesentwurf dafür verabschieden. Bisher haben zwei Länder solche Gesetze verabschieden; „This means that such a ban would not be against the federal constitution. Every federal state would, however, have to pass a separate law for that. So far, two federal states have passed such a law;‟

150

It has to be noted, however, that there is a qualitative difference between the learners‟

use of MÜSSTE and the native speakers. As pointed out before, in German MÜSSTE is

not only used in hypothetical or indirect speech contexts (e.g. conditional clauses), but

can be used alongside SOLLTE to express advice or recommendation and it is in this

function that MÜSSTE is used in 28 out of 30 instances in KEDS:

[keds_017] In diesem Fall nimmt man der Wirtschaft etwas ab , was eigentlich sie tragen müsste. „In this case, the economy is relieved of something that it should actually pay for.‟

[keds_32] Bei Auffälligkeiten bestimmter Hunde müsste konsequent vom Staat durchgegriffen werden - unabhängig von der Rasse des Hundes. Der Halter sollte zur Verantwortung gezogen werden. „If certain dogs behave in a particular way, the state should consistently take drastic measures – independent of the breed of dog. The owner should be held responsible.‟

In the Year C data, however, only 5 out of 25 instances of MÜSSTE are used in this

meaning, 4 of which by the same learner in the formulaic phrase Zusätzlich/Trotzdem

müsste man sich fragen… (On top of that/Nevertheless we would have to ask

ourselves…), which leaves only one other genuine use of MÜSSTE as advice or

suggestion:

[c2044_03] Hinzu kommt die Probleme Einführung der Hartz IV Arbeitsmarktreform und das Gefühl dass die Schere zwischen Arm und Reich immer stärker auseinander geht. Die Regierung müssten jetzt gemeinsam gegen den Nazis arbeiten, aber nicht mit einem Verbot , sondern … „On top of that there are the problems with the introduction of the Hartz IV reform of the job market and the feeling that the gap between rich and poor is getting wider and wider. The government should now work together against the Nazis, but not with a ban but…‟

In all other instances, MÜSSTE, is used in the meaning of obligation, but in a wider

hypothetical context. It therefore seems that the appearance of this particular modal verb

is closely linked to an overall improved grasp of the Konjunktiv II. The following example

shows how the student sets up and manages to maintain a hypothetical context by using

subjunctive forms on modal and other verbs in order to explore various possible

outcomes of changes to tuition fees in German universities:

[c2037_02] Wenn man später bezahlen könnte, würden die Studenten vielleicht unter Druck stehen, weil sie gute Noten und auch eine gute Stelle bekommen müssten, um die Studiengebühren zurückzuzahlen. Deshalb

151

findet man einen Teufelskreis. Wenn die Studenten selbst bezahlen müssten, würden sie lieber nicht in der Universität studieren. „If you could pay later, the students would perhaps be under pressure, because they would have to get good marks and a good job in order to pay back the tuition fees. We therefore find a vicious circle here. If the students had to pay for themselves, they would rather not study at the university.‟

In contrast to this, learners in Year A are often not able yet to use the subjunctive

appropriately in order to explore hypothetical arguments and rather use indicative forms

for both modal verbs and other verbs, as the following example shows:

[a2025_03] Es ist auch kein weg um Wahl zu winnen zum Beispiel, wenn die Steuern steigt. 24 Stunden Öffnungszeiten können die Betrunkenheit steigen und also gibt es mehr unsozial Benehmen. Die britische Kultur *musste (target: müsste) sich daran 24 Stunden trinken gewöhnen um der Gesetz zu funktionieren. Es kann auch mehr Vandalismus sein, weil es mehr Betrunkenheit ist und es gibt mehr Geld aus dem Steuerzahler genimmt. „It is also not the way to win elections, for example, if taxes are rising. 24-hour opening times can increase drunkenness and therefore there is more anti-social behaviour. The British culture *had to (target: would have to) get used to 24-hour drinking for the law to work. There can also be more vandalism, if there is more drunkenness and that takes more money away from the tax payer.‟

Note that the learner in this example might have attempted to use a subjunctive in “Die

britische Kultur musste sich daran…” but confuses the past tense form musste with the

correct form müsste. This confusion over morphological forms of modal verbs regularly

causes errors. MÜSSTE does occur in Year A and B, but in all but two instances in Year

B it is actually used incorrectly.

Equally, there are occasions where MÜSSEN (or MUSSTE) is used instead of

MÜSSTE in contexts where it is not just a matter of choice between stating a necessity

or a mitigated necessity, but where its use constitutes a grammatical error (see example

[a2025_03] above). Finally, the most frequent type of errors constitutes uses of a form of

*MUSSEN as in the following example:

[b1042_02] Die Firmen *mussen (target: müssen) mehr Flexibiliäat zu Arbeitnehmer anbieten oder viel mehr Frauen werden vielleicht ihre Arbeitsplätze einfach verlassen. „The companies *have to offer employees more flexibility or many more women will perhaps simply leave their jobs.‟

152

As with KÖNNEN above, one could argue that missing Umlauts could simply be a

mistake caused by inattentiveness (a „slip of the pen‟) in handwritten texts – which is

probably true for some of them. The fact that these errors occur also in typed texts,

however, points towards conceptual errors. It seems that the confusion over

morphological forms here is paired with and mutually dependent on the inability to

discriminate semantically between indicative MÜSSEN, past tense MUSSTE and

subjunctive MÜSSTE. We will see in the next sections that a similar problem can be

observed with the other modal verb that in its indicative form expresses non-epistemic

necessity and in its subjunctive form recommendation or suggestion – SOLLEN – as well

as the modal verb for non-epistemic possibility - KÖNNEN.

Finally, straightforward L1-interference can be observed in errors involving negation.

In English, negating the modal verb MUST leads to the negation of permission, as in:

(7) You must take your shoes off inside.

(8) You must not wear shoes inside.

In German, the negation of the modal verb MÜSSEN leads to the negation of obligation

(which can also be expressed by NICHT BRAUCHEN, see section 2.3.1.2.1), which in

English is expressed by NEED NOT:

(9) Du musst im Haus deine Schuhe ausziehen. „You must take your shoes off inside.‟

(10) Du musst im Haus keine Schuhe tragen. „You don‟t need to wear shoes inside.‟

In order to express negation of permission (prohibition), the modal verb DÜRFEN has to

be used:

(11) Du darfst im Haus keine Schuhe tragen. „You must not wear shoes inside.‟

Learners in all year groups use NICHT MÜSSEN instead of NICHT DÜRFEN in order

to express prohibitions in some cases, while using the correct form in others. But again

there is a marked difference between Year A and B on the one side and C on the other,

in that in Year C the proportion of correctly used NICHT DÜRFEN is much higher than in

the earlier year groups, although the error rate is still at 17.3%.

153

Year A Year B Year C

*NICHT MÜSSEN as prohibition errors (raw figures)

4 6 8

correctly used NICHT DÜRFEN for prohibition (raw figures)

6 6 38

errors in % 40.0 50.0 17.3

TABLE 26: NON-EPISTEMIC NICHT MÜSSEN AS PROHIBITION

The alternative to negated NICHT MÜSSEN as negated obligation – NICHT

BRAUCHEN – occurs four times in KEDS. It is only attempted seven times in total in all

three learner groups ( Year A: 3; Year B: 1; Year C: 3). Out of these, five instances are

correct [a2026_01], two instances are erroneously used in positive statements

[a2020_03]:

[a2026_01] Wir brauchen nicht andere Sprachen zu lernen wir haben Englisch. „We don‟t need to learn other languages, we have English.‟

[a2020_03] Warum *braucht (target: muss) jeder eine Hochschulausbildung haben?106 „Why does everybody have to have a university degree?‟

5.1.2.3 SOLLEN (instruction/obligation) and SOLLTE (suggestion/advice)

The second modal verb in the category „non-epistemic necessity‟ is SOLLEN. In terms of

bindingness or strength of obligation, it is on a par with MÜSSEN, but SOLLEN indicates

that there is an external authoritative source that directs the obligation imposed on the

subject. The Konjunktiv II form SOLLTE, on the other hand, indicates a suggestion or

recommendation. In the learner data, SOLLEN – although strictly speaking the non-

equivalent – is overused in all groups, while SOLLTE (which is equivalent to English

SHOULD) is only overused in Year C.

As suggested before, the reason for this pattern seems to be a serious confusion of

forms on the part of the learners. In all three learner groups SOLLEN is used extensively

for suggestions, where SOLLTE is correct as the examples below demonstrate:

106

The difficulty here is that BRAUCHEN as a main verb with an accusative complement is a common phrase in German. BRAUCHEN as a semi-modal verb (governing an infinitive) is only used in negative utterances.

154

Year A Year B Year C

*SOLLEN used as suggestion (target: SOLLTE) (raw figures) 54 28 108

all SOLLEN (raw figures) 68 65 232

errors in % 79.4 43.1 46.6

TABLE 27: ERRORS NON-EPISTEMIC SOLLEN AS SUGGESTION

[a2026_02] Sie *sollen (target: sollten) nicht zu viel trinken, hauptsächlich für ihre Gesund aber auch wenn sie oft mit anderer Leute kämpfen, *sollen (target: sollten) sie nicht trinken. „They *shall107 not drink too much, mainly for their health but also if they often fight with other people they *shall not drink.

[b1034_01] Zum Schluss bin ich der Meinung, dass es harte gesetzte geben *soll (target: sollte), weil die Presse in ein sehr mächtiges Position ist. „Finally, I think that there *shall be tough laws, because the press is in a very powerful position.‟

[c1046_02] Das Tragen eines Kopftuches ist eine Ausübung, was niemandem schadet. Wir *sollen (target: sollten) diese Frauen in Ruhe lassen. „Wearing a headscarf is an act that doesn‟t hurt anyone. We *shall leave these women in peace.‟

So, although the learners seem to improve after Year A in their ability to use the right

form SOLLTE for suggestions, the error rate even in Year C is still almost 47%.

Curiously, the difference between SOLLEN and SOLLTE is, in principle, the same as for

English SHALL and SHOULD. This, however, does not seem to be salient enough for

the learners to incorporate this distinction between indicative and Konjunktiv II into their

L2 modal system. An added complication is probably that the preterite form of SOLLEN

matches that of the Konjunktiv II – SOLLTE108.

As the error rate is so high in this category, in order to see overuse/underuse patterns

as compared to the native speaker group it is useful in this instance to consider error-

corrected frequency figures for SOLLEN and SOLLTE:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

SOLLEN (per 10,000 words) 2.8 (14.7) 5.6 (9.9) 14.2 (26.5) 5.4

SOLLTE (per 10,000 words) 24.1 (12.6) 10.0 (5.8) 37.3 (25.0) 15.1

107

As mentioned before (see footnote 104), SOLLEN is often better translated as IS TO or BE SUPPOSED TO, because SHALL in the sense of an obligation is nowadays usually restricted to legal contexts. It is used merely to demonstrate that the use of SOLLEN here is incorrect.

108 Interestingly, there are no instances of *SÖLLTE in the learner data, this means that learners do not

overgeneralise from MÜSSEN/MÜSSTE and KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE, but the fact that MÜSSEN and KÖNNEN change their vowel in the preterite, but not in the subjunctive and SOLLEN retains the vowel probably contributes to the confusion over morphological forms with these verbs.

155

TABLE 28: ERROR-CORRECTED FREQUENCIES OF NON-EPISTEMIC SOLLEN AND SOLLTE (ORIGINAL

FREQUENCIES IN BRACKETS)

From the error corrected figures we can see that what seemed to be an overuse of the

modal verb SOLLEN in all three learner year groups actually turns out to be an overuse

just in Year C. SOLLTE originally appeared overused only in Year C, but the corrected

figures indicate a significant overuse also in Year A. In order to understand where the

different usage patterns stem from, a closer look at the concordances should reveal

whether there are specific uses or contexts that the learners favour.

For SOLLEN it can be established that there is, again, a qualitative difference, namely

with respect to sentence type, between Years A and B on the one hand, and Year C and

KEDS on the other. In Year C as well as in KEDS, roughly 40% of the instances of

SOLLEN occur in direct or indirect questions, which are often employed as text

structuring devices, either to reiterate the essay question (e.g. at the beginning of the

text or towards the end for the introduction of the conclusion) or as rhetorical questions

(e.g. to introduce a new aspect or angle into the discussion):

[keds_011] Eine wichtige Frage bei der Legalisierung ist, wie der legale Handel geregelt werden soll. Dabei ist unter anderem zu beachten, wie man Jugendliche möglichst effektiv vom Cannabiskonsum ausschließen kann [...] Es muß auch darauf geachtet werden, daß keine zusätzlichen Anbieter von harten Drogen geschaffen werden. „An important question when discussing the legalisation is how dealing is to be regulated. Amongst other things we have to consider how young people can be excluded effectively from taking cannabis […] We also have to make sure that no additional dealers of hard drugs are created.‟

[c2038_03] Im Text wird es erklärt, dass die rechtsextreme NPD mehre Stimmen bekommt. Politiker streiten aber miteinander darüber, warum die Partei wachst und was man dagegen machen kann. Soll man eine solche Partei verbieten? „The text explains that the right-wing NPD is getting more votes. Politicians argue why the party is growing and what can be done against it. Should a party like this be banned?‟

In Years A and B, this kind of use of SOLLEN hardly occurs at all:

156

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

SOLLEN in questions (raw figures) 2 1 30 17

all SOLLEN109

(raw figures) 13 38 126 44

SOLLEN in questions as % 14.3 2.6 37.8 38.6

TABLE 29: NON-EPISTEMIC SOLLEN IN QUESTIONS

In this respect the learners in Year C, despite overusing the modal verb, employ

SOLLEN in a native speaker-like way with regard to the specific text type of

argumentative essays.

Another point that shows the development of the learners‟ use of modal verbs in the

wider context of writing for a particular text type is the distribution of grammatical subject

types. This is particularly relevant for utterances involving SOLLTE, as with this modal

verb the writer gives their assessment of how the controversy or problem that is at the

centre of an argumentative essay should be solved or, crucially, who should take up

action to solve it – the subject of an active sentence. The following chart displays the

distribution of different types of grammatical subjects and passive constructions as

percentages of the overall number of instances of SOLLTE in the respective learner year

groups and native speaker group:

FIGURE 9: TYPES OF GRAMMATICAL SUBJECT/PASSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS WITH NON-EPISTEMIC SOLLTE

109

Error-corrected figures are used in this table.

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

"wir"

animate agent subject

inanimate subject/"es"

"man"

passive

157

Figure 9 indicates that there is a marked difference in the way that the responsibility for

action in order to resolve a problem is assigned by the native speakers and the learners

in the different year groups. The first three categories from the bottom (passive, “man”,

inanimate subject/“es”) indicate that the writer expresses a general suggestion that the

proposition carried forward in the utterance be implemented, but avoids assigning the

responsibility to any particular person or group that could act as an implementing agent.

These are passive sentences (where, typically, the agent remains unnamed), sentences

with generic “man” (one) and sentences that have an inanimate subject or dummy-

subject constructions with “es” (it):

[keds_039] Deshalb sollte bei der Erziehung in der Schule angesetzt werden. Der Religionsunterricht sollte noch ethischer ausgelegt werden... ‟A start should therefore be made with school education. Religious education should be even more oriented towards ethics…‟

[keds_46] Experten halten einen derartigen Schritt schon lange für notwendig und schlagen als neues aktives Wahlalter 16 Jahre vor, das passive sollte man von 21 auf 18 Jahre senken. ‟Experts have been considering such a step as necessary for a long time and suggest 16 as the new active voting age, and one should reduce the passive voting age from 21 to 18 years.‟

[keds_43] Dennoch sollte es jedem Schüler generell offen stehen, neben der Schule zu jobben. ‟It should nevertheless be down to the pupil to decide whether they want to have an after-school job.‟

The graphs in Figure 9 show that in the native speaker data, well over 60% of

SOLLTE is used in these types of sentences that leave the implementing agent

unspecified. In the learner data, there is a distinct difference between Year A on the one

hand and Years B and C on the other. In Year A, barely 20% of instances of SOLLTE

are used with unspecified agents. In Years B and C, this figure reaches just over 40% -

still only roughly two-thirds of the native speaker figures. We can also see that passive

constructions feature little in Years A and B, whereas in Year C the figures match those

of the native speakers. Constructions with “man” are underused in all learner groups.

This means that in the majority of cases in the learner data, SOLLTE is used with

specified agents as subjects that are identified as the person or group that is to take the

proposed action (including the subsection of “wir” (we) as subject):

[a2006_03] Vor Kindern das Internet nutzen erlauben sollen, sollten Eltern Regeln festlegen, Anleitung und zeitliche Begrenzungen geben und elterlicher Regler benutzen.

158

‟Before children are allowed to use the internet, parents should lay down rules, give advice and time restrictions and use parental control.‟

[b1017_06] Ebenso gibt es eine Diskussion ob Politiker eine Maut in Berlin einführen sollte, um die Zahl der Fahrzeuge in der Inner-Stadt zu reduzieren. ‟There is also a discussion whether politicians should introduce a congestion charge in Berlin in order to reduce the number of vehicles in the inner city.‟

[c2029_02] Die Regierung sollte irgendwie eine Lösung finden, um Studienplätze für alle Studenten zu finanzieren. ‟The government should somehow find a solution to finance university places for all students.‟

So, while the native speakers prefer to phrase recommendations and suggestions

with SOLLTE in a way that the responsible agent remains unspecified, the learners often

explicitly specify this agent, although it can be seen that there is a marked development

within the year groups, e.g. in that the use of “man” constructions rises considerably in

Year B and passive constructions become more widely employed in Year C.

5.1.2.4 KÖNNEN and KÖNNTE (possibility and ability)

Non-epistemic KÖNNEN is by far the most frequent modal verb in all the subcorpora. As

with epistemic KÖNNEN, it is also quite unproblematic for the learners. Nehls (1986:106)

points out that “the German modal verb KÖNNEN shares nearly all its usage variations

(including the tendency to be ambiguous110) with English CAN.”111 The modal verb

KÖNNEN therefore poses few conceptual difficulties for learners, as KÖNNEN can be

used in (nearly) all contexts in which English CAN is used and vice versa. Unlike with

modal verbs like MÜSSEN and SOLLEN, with KÖNNEN, the Konjunktiv II form KÖNNTE

is also generally equivalent to the English subjunctive form COULD – another factor that

reduces problems with this modal verb.

Three functions are distinguished in the annotation of non-epistmic KÖNNEN:

Possibility due to external circumstances (example [c2037_04]), possibility due to

personal abilities (example [c2031_02]) and permission. The first two are very close to

each other in meaning (and sometimes not clearly distinguishable from the context) and

110

This is evident in the fact that in terms of frequencies the annotation category “undecided” (between epistemic and non-epistemic modality) is only relevant for KÖNNEN.

111 “… das deutsche Modalverb KÖNNEN nahezu alle Verwendungsweisen mit dem englischen CAN gemeinsam hat (inklusive der Tendenz zur Ambiguität)“.

159

set apart from KÖNNEN as permission. We shall look at these two categories together

first:

[c2037_04] Im Internet kann man die Themen leicht sehen und man kann auch die relevanten Artikel wählen, anstatt der ganzen Zeitung lesen. ‟On the internet you can easily see the topics and you can chose the relevant articles rather than reading the whole paper.‟

[c2031_02] Wenn Leute gut ausgebildet sind, können sie ihre Jobs besser ausführen, und deshalb wird die Wirtschaft von diesen Akademikern geholfen. „If people are trained well, they can fulfil their jobs better and the economy therefore benefits from these academics.‟

Distributions of indicative KÖNNEN versus Konjunktiv II KÖNNTE are about the same in

all three learner subcorpora and in KEDS, i.e. learners use the Konjunktiv II form in

roughly the same proportion as native speakers:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

indictive KÖNNEN (as % of all KÖNNEN) 92.1 85.6 87.6 88.2

Konjunktiv II KÖNNTE (as % of all KÖNNEN) 7.9 14.4 12.4 11.8

TABLE 30: PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF INDICATIVE AND KONJUNKTIV II FORMS OF KÖNNEN

The learner data shows some slight over- and underuse of these two meaning variants in

the different learner groups (cf. Figure 8), but generally KÖNNEN and KÖNNTE are both

well established in the learners‟ modal repertoire and the learners use this modal verb in

the same way as native speakers. The only problem that arises with KÖNNTE is the

same that we have seen with MÜSSTE and SOLLTE, namely the inability to distinguish

indicative preterite and subjunctive forms, evident in errors where learners use KONNTE

instead of KÖNNTE and vice versa. While these errors do not seem to be frequent if

compared to the overall frequency of the modal verb KÖNNEN, if compared to the

frequency counts for just the instances of KÖNNTE and KONNTE, we can see that this

confusion causes a substantial amount of errors when either of these two forms is

attempted. This error rate also remains stable across the three learner groups, so there

does not seem to be an improvement in the learners‟ ability to distinguish the two:

160

Year A Year B Year C

preterite KONNTE (raw figures) 18 53 16

Konjunktiv II KÖNNTE (raw figures) 24 41 48

KÖNNTE instead of KONNTE and vice versa 9 21 14

errors as % of all KONNTE + KÖNNTE 21.4 22.3 21.9

TABLE 31: ERROR RATE FOR NON-EPISTEMIC KÖNNTE/KONNTE

It has been pointed out before that out of all the modal verbs KÖNNEN is the one that

shows the greatest tendency for indeterminacy between epistemic and non-epistemic

meaning, especially in passive or impersonal “man/es” constructions or with certain main

verbs (e.g. mental and speech act verbs). This is why the annotation category „U‟

(unclear) is only really relevant in terms of frequencies for this modal verb. The

respective frequency counts for learner and native speaker groups are shown in Figure

10:

FIGURE 10: FREQUENCIES OF INDETERMINATE KÖNNEN (ANNOTATION CATEGORY “U”)

In these cases, different factors come together that pull in opposite directions in the

decision between epistemic and non-epistemic modality, or rather there are no clear

indicators present that favour one over the other reading. Passive and impersonal

(man/es) constructions avoid naming an explicit human agent, the verb sagen (say), for

example, is a performative verb but not a prototypical action verb (both factors that would

0.0

5.0

10.0

15.0

20.0

25.0

YEAR A YEAR B YEAR C KEDS

freq. per

10,000 words

161

disfavour a non-epistemic reading), but there are also no factors that would favour an

epistemic reading. Examples from the corpus are:

[c2031_05] Es gibt immer die Gefahr, dass Euthanasie kann missgeraucht werden. „There is always the danger that euthanasia can be misused.‟

[c1054_03] Andereseits kann man sagen, dass die Einführung von Benimm-Kursen an Schulen sinnvoll ist. „On the other hand one can say that the introduction of courses in good behaviour in schools is useful.‟

[a1018_03] Die Lernprogramme können auch Kinder mit Lernprobleme helfen. „The e-learning programs can also help children with learning difficulties.‟

[keds_059] Kreuzen sich diese Tiere mit wildlebenden Verwandten, so werden die manipulierten Gene weitergegeben, was fatale Folgen auf diese Spezies und damit auf das gesamte Ökosystem haben kann. „If these animals breed with their wild relatives, then the genetically engineered genes get passed on which can have fatal consequences for this species and therefore for the whole eco-system.‟

The reason why the frequency figures are much higher for Years A and C is that in

these two groups, the learners use those constructions more than the native speakers

that render the resulting utterances indeterminate (usually as mergers, see 2.3.1.1).

These are, in particular, combinations of man with mental and speech act verbs (see

example [c1054_03] above)112. This coincides with a general and proportionally constant

overuse of the verb sagen (say) in all learner groups (Year A: 10.6; Year B: 11.4; Year C:

10.3; KEDS: 4.0), so it seems that the high proportion of indeterminate uses of KÖNNEN

stems in part from the repetitive use of a limited range of vocabulary items in certain

formulaic patterns.

Apart from expressing possibility, KÖNNEN can also be used as an alternative to

DÜRFEN in the meaning of „having permission‟. As the relationship between these two is

revealing, I will deal with both of them together in the next section.

5.1.2.5 DÜRFEN and KÖNNEN (permission)

KÖNNEN has the English form/meaning equivalent CAN for expressing permission and

learners use it in this meaning:

112

And the verb helfen (help) (example [a1018_03] above), which is in parts topic related.

162

[b1003_06] Sie finden es besonders überraschenden, dass britische Studenten ihre Professoren mit dem Vornamen ansprechen können. „They find it particularly surprising that British students can address their professors by their first name.‟

[a2009_03] Das aktuellen Gesetz verlangt, dass Kneipen an 11.30 schliessen müssen, aber mit dem neuen Gesetz können sie für so lange wie sie wollen offen bleiben. „The current law demands that pubs close at 11.30 but with the new law they can stay open for as long as they want.‟

DÜRFEN has no English modal verb equivalent113. However, even Year A learners

have already integrated DÜRFEN into their modal system and actually use it more often

to express permission than KÖNNEN – a trend that is also visible in Year C and matches

the native speaker behaviour:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

DÜRFEN (raw figures) 12 15 74 46

DÜRFEN (per 10,000 words) 2.6 2.3 8.4 5.6

KÖNNEN as permission (raw figures) 5 25 24 10

KÖNNEN as permission (per 10,000 words)

1.1 3.8 2.7 1.2

TABLE 32: DÜRFEN AND KÖNNEN AS PERMISSION

Another aspect where the learners show similar usage patterns to the native speakers

is negation, effectively turning permission into prohibition, as in the following example:

[c1047_02] Sachlich angesehen, dürfen Lehrerinnen theoretisch keinen persönlichen oder religiösen Einfluss auf die Schüler ausüben, denn ... ‟Objectively, teachers are not allowed to exert any kind of personal or religious influence on the pupils, because …„

For all other modal verbs negation occurs in only very small proportions of the overall

use, but Table 33 shows that in most of the subcorpora (including the native speakers‟)

DÜRFEN occurs more in negated contexts than in affirmative ones.

113

N.B. The modal verb MAY is available for expressing permission, but it is not a form/meaning equivalent of DÜRFEN. It is also mainly restricted to formal situations and furthermore to questions rather than affirmative statements. These restrictions do not apply to DÜRFEN.

163

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

DÜRFEN (raw figures) 12 15 74 46

negated DÜRFEN (raw figures) 6 6 46 29

negated DÜRFEN as % of all DÜRFEN 50.0 40.0 51.4 63.0

TABLE 33: NEGATED DÜRFEN

We have seen in section 5.1.2.2 that there is difficulty involved with negated

permission due to the L1 interference of MUST NOT, which leads to the erroneous use

of *NICHT MÜSSEN rather than NICHT DÜRFEN. These instances, in a pragmatic

sense, are clearly intended to denote prohibition (but expressed in the wrong linguistic

form). So, if we add them to the frequency for NICHT DÜRFEN, we can see that the

proportions of negative contexts for permissions (i.e. prohibitions) is actually very similar

for learners and native speakers and stable across the learner year groups:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

DÜRFEN + *NICHT MÜSSEN (raw figures) 18 21 82 46

negated DÜRFEN + *NICHT MÜSSEN (raw figures) 12 12 46 29

negated DÜRFEN as % of all DÜRFEN 66.7 57.1 56.1 63.0

TABLE 34: NEGATED DÜRFEN INCLUDING *NICHT MÜSSEN

We can establish, then, that in a pragmatic sense the learners even in Year A have

incorporated the L2-specific DÜRFEN into their interlanguage modality system in a

native speaker like way. Learners in all years do have difficulties with the linguistic forms

for prohibition (i.e. NICHT DÜRFEN), but proportionally, they show the same tendency to

use DÜRFEN in negative contexts as the native speakers.

Yet another similarity between learners and native speakers is found when looking at

the collocating main verbs. The one verb that co-occurs more than any other with

DÜRFEN is vergessen (forget) in constructions like Wir dürfen nicht vergessen, dass…

or Man darf nicht vergessen, dass… (We/One must not forget that…) and this holds for

learners and native speakers alike (Year A: 7; Year B: 1; Year C: 11 instances), although

native speakers show more vocabulary variation than the learners as they also use

phrases like wir dürfen nicht außer Acht lassen or wir dürfen nicht vernachlässigen,

which express similar meanings as vergessen (KEDS: 8 instances).

164

[a2022_01] Auch , man darf nicht vergessen dass, der Einfluss nicht immer schlecht ist, zum Beispiel der Stars wie Princess Diana und von Comic Relief. ‟One must also not forget that this influence isn‟t always bad, for example that of stars like Princess Diana or of Comic Relief.‟

[c2024_04] Wir dürfen auch nicht vergessern, dass das Kaufen der Ostprodukte nicht die einzige Trend ist, die jetzt wieder populär wird. ‟We must also not forget that buying “Eastern” products is not the only trend that is becoming popular again now.‟

[keds_016] Doch bei all diesen Vorteilen und Chancen einer Fernreise in Dritte-Welt-Länder darf man nicht vergessen, dass es auch Probleme und Gefahren gibt. ‟But with all these advantages and opportunities of foreign travels into third-world-countries one must not forget that there are also problems and dangers.‟

Here, the learners have evidently acquired a typical phrase that native speakers use in

their argumentative writing in German. Also, a cross-check with the English native

speaker corpus LOCNESS reveals that the corresponding English phrases MUST NOT +

forget, although possible, is not used at all in the argumentative essays in that corpus114.

We are therefore not dealing with a case of L1 transfer, but rather with an „L2-internal‟

acquisition.

5.1.2.6 WOLLEN (volition)

WOLLEN is another L2-specific modal verb that is part of the learners‟ mastered

repertoire. It is consistently overused by a large margin in all learner groups compared to

the native speakers, but the reason for this is not, as we might expect, interferences with

the English modal verb WILL. Apart from only a handful of errors spread over the three

learner subcorpora, WOLLEN is always used correctly in its function of expressing the

subject‟s volition, intention or willingness.

[a2017_01] Wir wollen alle die Figur unserer Libelingsstar haben oder hübsch wie die berühmte Modelle sein. „We all want to have the figure of our favourite star or be beautiful like the famous models.‟

[keds_051] Sie wollen perfekt sein, allen Ansprüchen der Gesellschaft gerecht werden und durch ihre künstliche Schönheit in allen Lebensphasen brillieren.

114

A search in the British National Corpus revealed 53 instances of “must not forget”, which equates to a mere 0.54 instances per 1,000,000 words. The similar phrase “should not forget” returned 43 instances in the BNC and 1 in LOCNESS.

165

„They want to be perfect, meet all of society‟s expectations and shine in all phases of their lives through artificial beauty.‟

The only difference to the native speaker group that could be detected was that in

Year B there is a high number of 1st person singular subject sentences (ich) with

WOLLEN. This is largely due to one particular assignment (the intercultural project) in

this year group where students write about personal experiences (see Footnote 68 in

4.2.1). Other than that, the learners‟ use of WOLLEN does not differ qualitatively from

that of the native speakers – however, the quantitative differences are statistically highly

significant.

5.1.2.7 MÖCHTE (attenuated volition) and MÖGEN (affection/liking)

It is interesting to note that the overuse of WOLLEN does not coincide with an underuse

of MÖCHTE, which is the alternative (and generally considered a more tentative or

polite) form of expressing one‟s wish or intention. Rather the opposite is the case:

MÖCHTE is also overused in Years A and B; in Year C it is used with almost exactly the

same frequency as in KEDS. So, learners do not simply prefer to use WOLLEN in

volitional contexts whereas native speakers prefer MÖCHTE, but they tend to express

their own or other people‟s intentions or volition in their essays more often overall.

Looking at the data, it becomes obvious that MÖCHTE is also often used with a 1st

person singular subject and most of these instances are used for signposting purposes,

telling the reader how the text is structured:

[a2025_01] Abschließend möchte ich sagen, dass der Einfluss der Stars auf die Jugend ist zu groß geworden weil, ... „Finally, I would like to say that the influence of stars on the youth of today has become to big because …‟

[b1006_06] Zum Schluss kommen, möchte ich die Hauptpunkte wiederholen. „To come to a conclusion, I would like to reiterate the main points.‟

The following table shows the number of instances of 1st person singular subject and the

number and proportion of signposting utterances:

166

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

MÖCHTE (raw figures) 34 60 30 32

1st person (raw figures) 11 18 4 19

signposting (raw figures) 7 15 4 14

signposting as % of all MÖCHTE 20.6 25.0 13.3 43.8

TABLE 35: MÖCHTE IN 1ST

PERSON SIGNPOSTING UTTERANCES

The table reveals two interesting aspects. First of all, we can see that the use of

MÖCHTE as a text structuring device might explain partly why this modal verb is

overused in Years A and B but not in Year C, as in the latter group MÖCHTE is not used

much at all in this function. This in turn means, however, that with regard to signposting

Years A and B actually use MÖCHTE more like the native speakers, although in terms of

overall frequency of the modal verb alone, the Year C learner group seemed closer to

the native speakers. Even so, the native speakers actually use MÖCHTE in this function

roughly twice as much as the learners in Years A and B. On top of this, there is a

qualitative difference in the signposting phrases between the learners and the native

speakers insofar as the native speakers use a much broader range of different infinitives

and phrases with MÖCHTE than the learners. The latter repeatedly use different

combinations of the following phrase:

“Zum Schluss/Abschließend möchte ich sagen/betonen/behaupten…” (To conclude, I

would like to say/stress/claim…), whereas the former use a whole variety of

constructions, such as:

“Zum Schluss möchte ich auf … eingehen” (To conclude I would like to address …)

“Zusammenfassend möchte ich sagen …” (In summary I would like to say …)

“Im Folgenden möchte ich … erläutern” (In the following I would like to explain …)

“An dieser Stelle möchte ich einige Zahlen … aufzählen” (At this point I would like to cite

some figures …)

“Am Beispiel … möchte ich … begründen” (Using … as an example I would like to

account for …) etc.

The remainder of instances of MÖCHTE (with 3rd person subjects) in the learner data

does not differ qualitatively from that of the native speakers, but the number is

considerably higher.

With the indicative form MÖGEN, the overall frequency picture is similar to MÖCHTE

– overuse in Years A (16 instances; 3.5 per 10,000 words) and B (20; 3.0) and almost

167

equal use to native speakers in Year C (6; 0.7). As there are only two instances in KEDS

(0.2 per 10,000 words), it is not possible to determine qualitative differences in the use of

MÖGEN between learners and native speakers. All that can be done is describe the

contexts in which the learners use the modal verb and infer that the difference to native

speakers lies in the fact that they do not use MÖGEN in these functions in their own

writing. First of all, we can establish that all uses of MÖGEN in the learner data (and,

incidentally, in the native speaker data) express liking/affection or (negated) dislike, but

never the more literary meaning of indicating that the subject is free to implement a

proposition should they wish to do so:

[a2025_03] Die Jugendlichen und Studenten mögen die Idee, dass mann für vier und zwanzig Stunden Alkohol trinken kann. „Young people and students like the idea of being able to drink twenty-four hours.‟

[b1018_05] Sie trinkt Alkohol nicht gern, weil sie mag nicht den Geschmack. „She doesn‟t like drinking alcohol, because she doesn‟t like the taste.‟

As stated before, MÖGEN is not greatly overused in Year C, so we will turn our

attention to Years A and B. In Year B the explanation for the overuse is relatively simple

as it is, again, largely due to the particular assignment of the intercultural project. In this,

the learners are required to ask international students about their experiences studying

in a foreign country. It is therefore not surprising that there are many instances in these

texts (see example [b1018_05] above) where students report what these students have

said that they like or dislike about life at a British university (14 out of 23 instances =

61%). The other instances are similar to those in Year A; they describe in often relatively

short, simple sentences what the person or group of persons that is currently being

discussed likes or does not like:

[a1023_04] Jetzt mögen immer mehr Mädchen Computers auch. „Now, more and more girls also like computers.‟

[a2014_01] Die Jugend *magen (target: mag) die Stars sehr gern. „Young people like the stars very much.‟

[a1011_03] Es gibt eine Gruppe, die nicht die aktuelle Lage mögen. „There is a group that doesn‟t like the current situation.‟

This way of using MÖGEN captures the main function of this modal verb in the learner

data, but we can see that its frequency continuously declines from Year A to Year C,

where it sinks to an almost native speaker-like level. Again, we will see parallels to this

168

trend in the analysis of modal adverbials expressing the same meaning in the next

section (Section 5.2.3). The reason for this overuse can only be speculated about.

Figures from the LOCNESS corpus indicate that there might be L1 influence at work, as

similar expressions of liking or dislike are more prominent in the native English essay

writing: “like” occurs 41 times in this function, which makes 2.0 instances per 10,000

words as compared to only 0.2 instances of MÖGEN in this function in KEDS.

This concludes the analysis of non-epistemic modal verbs. In this category, we have

seen that the learners are generally able to use all different modal verb meanings,

regardless of whether they have English form/meaning equivalents or not. In this

respect, it could be argued that all of these meanings are part of the learners‟ standard

repertoire of modal means. At closer inspection, however, it has become obvious that

there are often finer differences in the types of constructions and contexts in which

learners and native speakers employ the respective modal verbs. On the one hand, this

shows that the learners‟ modal interlanguage system is often not as native speaker-like

as it might seem at first glance. One of the issues that play a significant role here is – as

we have already seen for epistemic modal verbs – the ability, or rather inability, to

distinguish and appropriately deal with subjunctive verb forms; other factors are

collocation and colligation patterns. On the other hand, it is often exactly in those points,

where the learner‟s interlanguage system differs from the native speakers‟, that we are

able to see a marked progression towards an approximation of the native speaker‟s

modal system from the lesser to the more advanced learner year groups.

5.2 PERIPHRASTIC MODAL EXPRESSIONS

5.2.1 Overview

Overall, 2180 periphrastic modal expressions (modal adverbials, quasi-modal verbs and

modal lexical verbs) were annotated in CLEG and 924 in KEDS. The distribution of

periphrastic modal expressions (PMEs) across the three learner year groups is shown in

Table 36, along with proportional frequency figures:

Periphrastic modal expressions Year A Year B Year C KEDS

raw figures of PMEs 426 691 1063 924

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per 10,000 words 92.3*** 104.9 122.2 112.6

TABLE 36: OVERALL FREQUENCIES OF PERIPHRASTIC MODAL EXPRESSIONS IN LEARNER AND NATIVE

SPEAKER CORPORA (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

Only in Year A is the underuse of periphrastic modal expressions statistically highly

significant compared to the native speaker corpus KEDS. The slight underuse in Year B

and overuse in Year C compared to KEDS are not statistically significant. It has been

shown in the previous section that modal verbs are overused in all three learner groups

compared to the native speakers. This means that only in Year A is the significant

overuse of modal verbs counterbalanced by a significant underuse of periphrastic modal

expressions. The following chart displays the comparison between modal verbs and

PMEs more clearly:

FIGURE 11: COMPARISON OF MODAL VERBS AND PERIPHRASTIC MODAL EXPRESSIONS (PMES)

Figure 11 shows that there is a global tendency by the learners to overuse modality

markers, as the underuse of PMEs in Years A and B is much smaller than the overuse of

modal verbs (and in Year C PMEs are overused anyway). This global overuse of modal

expressions is statistically highly significant for Years A and C. The figures do not show a

significant overuse in Year B. As all the other variables are the same for this group as

the other two groups, this has to be attributed to the slightly different make-up of texts in

0.0

50.0

100.0

150.0

200.0

250.0

300.0

350.0

400.0

450.0

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

freq. per

10,000 words

PMEs

modal verbs

170

this year group (see Footnote 68). This is a further indication of just how text-type

sensitive the use of modal expressions is.

The overuse of modal expressions in argumentative texts also shows if we compare

epistemic and non-epistemic markers (modal verbs and PMEs together) across the year

groups and KEDS (Figure 12 below). We can clearly see that, overall, both epistemic

and non-epistemic modal expressions are generally overused by the learners115.

FIGURE 12: OVERALL FREQUENCIES OF EPISTEMIC AND NON-EPISTEMIC MODAL EXPRESSIONS

However, only a much more detailed analysis will reveal what the relationships really

are between patterns of modal verb use and periphrastic modal expressions.

We have seen in the theoretical outline (2.3.2 and 2.3.3) that, unlike the small set of

modal verbs, the group of periphrastic modal expressions comprises a large open set of

items of varying word class and syntactic makeup. Whereas for the modal verbs it was

important to distinguish which of their many different functions the learners used, there

are different aspects that are relevant for the periphrastic modal expressions. First of all,

as the set of investigated items is so large, a point to explore is how many of these items

115

Modal infinitives and Konjunktiv II are not included in these figures as they will only be discussed later on. Their inclusion would, however, not affect the overall observation.

0.0

50.0

100.0

150.0

200.0

250.0

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

freq. per

10,000 words

epistemic modality

non-epistemic modality

171

are actually used by the learners and native speakers. As laid out in the methodology

section (4.3.1), the list of annotated periphrastic modal expressions contains 227

items116. Table 37 provides an overview of the lexical diversity for PMEs by giving the

number of different types that are used in each of the subcorpora, together with a type-

token ratio117 for this group of expressions:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

number of PME types 58 96 106 142

raw figures of PMEs (freq. per 10,000 words in brackets)

426 (92.3) 691 (104.9) 1063 (121.3) 924 (112.6)

type/token ratio for PMEs 13.6 13.9 10.0 15.4

TABLE 37: LEXICAL DIVERSITY OF PERIPHRASTIC MODAL EXPRESSIONS

We can see that the steady increase in the proportional frequencies of PME use is

matched by a steady upward progression in the number of different PME types that

occur in the learner subcorpora from Year A to Year C. This means, unsurprisingly yet

reassuringly, that the learners during their study acquire a broader range of vocabulary

to choose from in order to express modal meanings. Even in Year C, however, the

number of PME types only reaches about three-quarters of that of the native speaker

group, despite an overuse of PMEs in Year C compared to KEDS118. Curiously, the

type/token ratio for Years A and B is not too dissimilar to the native speakers‟, whereas it

is considerably lower for Year C. This means that in Years A and B, students use a more

limited range of periphrastic modal expressions while at the same time not using them as

often as native speakers, too. In Year C, the learners also make use of a smaller range

of items than the native speakers, but they use this smaller set more often than the

native speakers, i.e. there is more repetition of PMEs in Year C.

The same distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic expressions has been

made as with the modal verbs. Within this dichotomy, the periphrastic modal expressions

have been assigned to the same semantic categories as the modal verbs, with the

additional categories of assertive and negative modal expressions (see 2.3.2.2 and

116

Productive morphemes like *bar and *weise count as one item, although they, of course, produce several different types.

117 N.B. for technical reasons it was not possible to calculate standardised type/token ratios that account for differences in text lengths in the three sub-corpora.

118 In the general native speaker corpus LIMAS 356 different PME types were counted, indicating that the range of productively used PMEs is still relatively low for the novice writers in KEDS as compared to professional writers.

172

4.3.2). Figure 13 displays how epistemic and non-epistemic PMEs are distributed over

the four subcorpora:

FIGURE 13: EPISTEMIC VS. NON-EPISTEMIC PMES

From this figure we can determine that, in terms of proportions of distribution, the

learners and native speakers display similar behaviour: epistemic PMEs make up the far

bigger share of all PMEs, non-epistemic expressions are used less. (This counteracts

exactly the behaviour with modal verbs, where non-epistemic modal verbs are more

frequent than epistemic ones and it corroborates the statement that, in German, PMEs

play a more prevalent role in epistemic modality than modal verbs.) In Years A and B,

the epistemic/non-epistemic ratio is higher compared to that of Year C and the native

speaker group: Year A: 84% epistemic; Year B: 80%; Year C: 73%; KEDS: 72%. This

comes about because of an underuse of non-epistemic PMEs in these two year groups

compared to the native speakers. In Year C, the epistemic/non-epistemic PME ratio is

almost identical to that of KEDS as both epistemic and non-epistemic PMEs are slightly

overused. At this level, the behaviour of learners and native speakers appears to be

relatively similar. A more in-depth analysis, however, will reveal significant differences.

How these differences are manifest in the various semantic categories across the three

learner groups will be discussed in the following sections.

0.0

10.0

20.0

30.0

40.0

50.0

60.0

70.0

80.0

90.0

100.0

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

freq. per

10,000 words

epistemic PMEs

non-epistemic PMEs

173

5.2.2 Epistemic periphrastic modal expressions

5.2.2.1 Assertive periphrastic modal expressions

Assertive expressions are the first group of PMEs that will be explored in detail. As

discussed in section 2.3.2.2, these are expressions that either emphasise the assertion

of a statement, add some evaluative dimension to the assertion or focus the assertion on

inter-subjective evidence. There are six categories in this group:

Purely assertive, evaluative assertive (EA)-positive, EA-reservedly positive, EA-

negative, EA-other dimensions, evidence-focused assertive. Figure 14 provides an

overview of their distributions across the learner and native speaker corpora:

FIGURE 14: FREQUENCIES OF ASSERTIVE PMES

We can see that purely in terms of frequencies the respective learner groups employ

assertive PMEs, with a few exceptions, in a similar fashion to the native speakers. A

closer look at the individual items will reveal if this is also the case for the other relevant

aspects that have been identified.

0.0

2.0

4.0

6.0

8.0

10.0

12.0

14.0

16.0

18.0

freq. per

10,000 words

Year A

Year B

Year C

KEDS

purely assertiveEA-positiveEA-reservedly

positive

EA-negativeEA-other

dimensions

evidence-

focused

assertive

174

The following purely assertive PMEs occur in the subcorpora119:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

wirklich 11

(2.4) wirklich

15 (2.3)

wirklich 82

(9.4) wirklich

35 (4.3)

tatsächlich 2

(0.4) tatsächlich

2 (0.3)

tatsächlich 22

(2.5) tatsächlich

6 (0.7)

gewiss 1

(0.1)

TOTAL 13

(2.8) TOTAL

17** (2.6)

TOTAL 105*** (12.0)

TOTAL 41

(5.0)

TABLE 38: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PURELY ASSERTIVE PMES (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

While, proportionally, the frequencies for Years A and B are only slightly below that of

KEDS, there is a highly significant overuse of purely assertive PMEs in Year C.

Wirklich is the adverbial that is used most often by both learners and native speakers. All

learner groups use wirklich mostly in appropriate contexts. The only qualitative difference

that could be discovered was that in KEDS, ca. 30% of instances of wirklich occur in

direct or indirect questions, a tendency that is also present to the same extent in Year C,

but less in Years A (20%) and B (13%):

[c2031_01] Wissen Sie wirklich, wie Ihr Frühstück auf Ihren Teller kommt? „Do you really know where your breakfast comes from?‟

[c1049_04] Obwohl diese Filme gewalttätige Szene enthalten, ist es fraglich, ob sie wirklich für die Tragödien verantwortlich sind. „Although these films contain scenes of violence it is doubtful that they really are to blame for the tragedies.‟

As for tatsächlich, the concordances reveal that all four instances in Years A and B

are actually not quite used appropriately. The learners used them in the meaning of in

fact which is used in „corrective‟ contexts, i.e. to say that the common believe is X, while

– in fact – the truth is Y, e.g.:

[a1005_02] obwohl Autobahnen berühmt für keine Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung sind, obwohl tatsächlich es gibt jetzt begrenzungen an viele Stellen. „although motorways are famous for no speed limit, although in fact there are now limits in many places.‟

119

For a list of all items that were annotated in the different PME categories see Appendix A.

175

In German, this is usually expressed by eigentlich or in Wirklichkeit, as the speaker

relativises the validity of the preceding proposition (cf. Dalmas 1999). In Year C,

however, the learners use tatsächlich in the same way as the native speakers.

[c2043_01] Ein Punkt, der ganz berechtigt ist, ist ob solche frühe Diagnose von Krankheiten tatsächlich hilfreich sind. „One valid point is whether this early diagnosis of diseases is actually helpful.‟

[keds_059] Und die Gentechnik bietet ein unerschöpfliches Arsenal, biologische Waffen noch effektiver zu machen [...] was nach billigstem Science Fiction klingt , ist tatsächlich schon Realität. „And genetic engineering offers an unlimited arsenal of means to make biological weapons even more effective […] what sounds like trashiest science fiction is actually already reality.‟

Positive evaluative-assertive PMEs (EA-positive) only occur in very small numbers

which are distributed across the subcorpora as follows:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

zum Glück 2

(0.4) glücklicherweise

4 (0.6)

glücklicherweise 3

(0.3) glücklicherweise

1 (0.1)

glücklicherweise 1

(0.2)

*dankbar (target: Gott sei dank)

1 (0.2)

zum Glück 1

(0.1)

Gott sei dank 1

(0.1)

TOTAL 3

(0.7) TOTAL

5 (0.8)

TOTAL 5

(0.6) TOTAL

1 (0.1)

TABLE 39: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF POSITIVE EVALUATIVE-ASSERTIVE PMES

The frequency figures in this group are too low for significance testing but they indicate

that native speakers seem to avoid positive evaluative-assertive PMEs in argumentative

writing while learners are not so reluctant to incorporate them. A reason for this might be

that these PMEs signal subjective speaker involvement, which might be considered

unhelpful in the supposedly rational (objective) reasoning in argumentative writing.

However, in the next category we can see that native speakers do use evaluative

PMEs, but they prefer the more reservedly positive ones:

176

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

zumindest 2

(0.4) zumindest

4 (0.6)

immerhin 4

(0.5) zumindest

22 (2.7)

wenigstens 1

(0.2) wenigstens

1 (0.1)

wenigstens 5

(0.6)

immerhin 4

(0.5)

TOTAL 3*** (0.7)

TOTAL 4*** (0.6)

TOTAL 5*** (0.6)

TOTAL 31

(3.8)

TABLE 40: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF RESERVEDLY POSITIVE

EVALUATIVE-ASSERTIVE PMES (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

Curiously, these PMEs are underused by the all learner groups, which is manifest in both

frequencies (statistically significant for all groups) and lexical richness. On top of this,

there are qualitative differences. From the concordances it can be seen that the native

speakers use zumindest and wenigstens to add a reservedly positive evaluation in

constrictive, qualificatory contexts:

[keds_018] Insofern können Frauen auch selbst entscheiden, ob sie die Chance der Gleichberechtigung beim Bund annehmen oder nicht. Aber sie haben nun wenigstens ein Recht darauf. „In this sense the women can decide for themselves whether they take up the chance of equal opportunities in the Armed Forces or not. But at least they now have the right to do so.‟

[keds_058] Auch Erbkrankheiten könnten mit Hilfe der Gentechnik geheilt, oder zumindest die Veranlagung sehr früh erkannt werden. „Hereditary diseases could also be cured with the help of genetic engineering, or at least the predisposition could be detected very early on.‟

In Year A, all three instances of wenigstens and zumindest are used incorrectly in the

quantifying sense of at least (target: mindestens), in Year B three out of four are used in

this sense:

[b1011_06] Jede hat viele Freunden, die sich mit ihnen* zumindest (target: mindestens) dreimal pro Woche treffen. „All of them have many friends who meet with them at least three times a week.‟

This leaves only one correct instance of wenigstens in Year C and one of zumindest in

Year B:

177

[b1025_05] Jedoch, fast alle Deutschen trennen zumindest Papier und Glas, entweder in speziellen Mülleimern oder ... „But almost all German at least separate paper and glass, either in special bins or …‟

The category of negative evaluative-assertive PMEs is almost exclusively made up of

instances of leider (unfortunately) in the corpus data and the relative frequencies are

virtually equal in all learner and native speaker subcorpora (no statistically significant

differences):

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

leider 13

(2.8) leider

15 (2.3)

leider 23

(2.6) leider

21 (2.6)

traurigerweise 1

(0.2)

TOTAL 13

(2.8) TOTAL

16 (2.4)

TOTAL 23

(2.6) TOTAL

21 (2.6)

TABLE 41: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF NEGATIVE EVALUATIVE-ASSERTIVE PMES

The learners use leider in the same way as the native speakers, including a certain

propensity to use it sentence-initial, thus giving it a thematised, focused position. This is

proportionally much higher for Years A and B but drops to the same level as the native

speakers in Year C:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

sentence-initial leider (raw figures) 9 8 9 8

as % of all instances of leider 69.2 53.3 39.1 38.1

TABLE 42: SENTENCE-INITIAL LEIDER

The last category in the group of evaluative-assertive PMEs consists of idiosyncratic

items (typically only occurring once each) that express evaluation with reference to a

particular dimension (other than positive/negative). The following items were found in the

corpora:

178

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

verständlicherweise üblicherweise ökonomischerweise brisanterweise

paradoxerweise freundlicherweise berechtigterweise paradoxerweise

*falschlicherweise typischerweise interessanterweise unvernünftigerweise

unnötigerweise

unvermeidlicherweise

TABLE 43: EVALUATIVE-ASSERTIVE PMES ALONG OTHER DIMENSIONS

It is interesting to note that, in this category, Year C actually surpasses the native

speakers in terms of lexical diversity, demonstrating the learners‟ understanding of the

morphological process for forming these adverbs and their lexical creativity.

Finally, the last category in this first group of assertive PMEs comprises evidence-

focused PMEs. This means that these PMEs aim to imply a subject-external assertion of

a given utterance that is based on some kind of objective evidence (although the exact

nature of this evidence remains, in most cases, unspecified). It is therefore not surprising

that, in the argumentative texts that are being investigated here, this is the biggest

category within the group of assertive PMEs, both in terms of frequencies and lexical

diversity (the frequency differences for learners and native speakers are all not

statistically significant):

179

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

natürlich 27

(5.9) natürlich

35 (5.3)

Tatsache 35

(4.0) natürlich

45 (5.5)

Tatsache 16

(3.5) Tatsache

17 (2.6)

natürlich 31

(3.5) Tatsache

28 (3.4)

nicht leugnen

5 (1.1)

nicht leugnen 10

(1.5) nicht leugnen

27 (3.1)

offensichtlich 9

(1.1)

es steht fest

4 (0.9)

offensichtlich 9 (1.4)

ohne/kein/ außer Zweifel

16 (1.8)

ohnehin 9 (1.1)

ohne/kein Zweifel

3 (0.7)

ohne/kein/ außer Zweifel

8 (1.2)

es steht fest 10

(1.1) sowieso

7 (0.9)

offensicht-lich

1 (0.2)

offenkundig 6

(0.9) offensichtlich

10 (1.1)

bekanntlich 6

(0.7)

bewiesen 1

(0.2) zweifellos

4 (0.6)

selbstver-ständlich

5 (0.6)

zweifellos 4

(0.5)

bewiesen

2 (0.3)

sowieso 4

(0.5) bewiesen

3 (0.4)

in jedem Fall 2

(0.3) bekanntlich

2 (0.2)

selbstverständ-lich

3 (0.4)

sowieso 2

(0.3) zweifellos

2 (0.2)

zwangsläufig 2

(0.2)

bekanntlich 1

(0.2) ohnehin

1 (0.1)

erwiesener-maßen

2 (0.2)

selbstver- ständlich

1 (0.2)

unbestreit- bar

1 (0.1)

zweifelsohne 2

(0.2)

es steht fest 1

(0.2) unstreitbar

1 (0.1)

nicht leugnen 2

(0.2)

zwangsläufig 1

(0.2) unwiderleg-bar

1 (0.1)

es steht fest 2

(0.2)

zweifelsohne 1

(0.2) ohne Zweifel

1 (0.1)

eh 1

(0.1)

bekannter- maßen

1 (0.1)

in jedem Fall 1

(0.1)

auf alle Fälle 1

(0.1)

nachweislich 1

(0.1)

unbestreitbar 1

(0.1)

TOTAL 57

(12.4) TOTAL

100 (15.2)

TOTAL 146

(16.7) TOTAL

131 (16.0)

180

TABLE 44: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF EVIDENCE-FOCUSED

ASSERTIVE PMES

In this category, the native speakers clearly demonstrate the broadest lexical range,

although Year B learners already show a much broader range than Year A learners. The

top five items in each subcorpus make up the majority of occurrences in all subcorpora

(Year A: 96%; Year B: 80%; Year C: 81%; KEDS: 74%). Comparing these five items in

each subcorpus we can see that the first two are the same for all learner groups and the

native speakers, namely natürlich (of course) and expressions involving the noun

Tatsache (fact).

The concordances reveal that the adverb natürlich is used by all learner groups in the

same way as by the native speakers. It is already a firmly acquired item in Year A to

express the notion of emphasising the validity of an utterance by portraying it as a known

fact that will earn agreement from the reader („of course‟). Due to its function as a

sentence adverb, there is a great deal of freedom with respect to the position of natürlich

in the sentence and the learners make use of this as much as the native speakers,

varying between sentence-initial and sentence-internal positions:

[a2012_04] Natürlich wollten die Mehrzahl der Ausländer nicht zurück gehen, weil jetzt hatten sie Familie und Freunde in Deutschland. „Of course the majority of foreigners did not want to go back, because now they had their family and friends in Germany.‟

[b1018_04] Unter den verschiedenen Leuten, die bei globalen Firmen arbeiten, wird es heutzutage natürlich akzeptiert, dass arbeiten wichtiger als leben ist. „Amongst the different people that work with global companies it is nowadays of course accepted that work is more important than free time.‟

[c2029_02] Dieses System ist natürlich besser für Steuerzahler, weil sie nicht für die Studenten verantwortlich fühlen. „This system is of course better for the tax payer, because they do not feel responsible for the students.‟

For constructions with the noun Tatsache, the patterns that can be observed are more

different for learners and native speakers. The colligational sequence that occurs most

often is Tatsache directly followed by a subordinate dass-clause (that-clause), specifying

exactly what this „fact‟ is, for example:

[b1006_05] Die Tatsache, dass jeder Arbeiter sich auf das Ende des Tages freut, ist weiteren Beweis für die negative Einstellung zur Arbeit. „The fact that every worker looks forward to the end of the day is another piece of evidence for the negative attitude towards work.‟

181

This is the case for both learners and native speakers, although it is more pronounced

for the learners in Years A and C:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

sequence: …Tatsache, dass… 13 10 32 18

as % of all instances of Tatsache 81.3 58.8 91.4 64.3

TABLE 45: COLLIGATIONAL SEQUENCE …TATSACHE, DASS…

However, a look at the further extension of this sequence reveals that in Year C, it has

developed into an almost fixed phrase: Es ist eine Tatsache, dass… (It is a fact that…):

[c1049_04] Es ist eine Tatsache, dass die Graphiken in Computerspielen immer mehr wie die Realität aussehen... „It is a fact that the graphics in computer games look more and more like reality …‟

[c1054_02] Es ist weiter eine Tatsache, dass das Kopftuch manchmal mehr als nur ein religiöses Symbol sein könnte. „It is also a fact, that the head scarf could sometimes be more than just a religious symbol.‟

This type of phrase occurs 14 times in Year C (44% of instances of the sequence

…Tatsache, dass…), but not at all in KEDS – and, curiously, also not in Years A and B.

In KEDS, the sequence …Tatsache, dass… is in most instances (61%) syntactically

integrated into the sentence as a prepositional phrase, e.g.

“…auf Grund der Tatsache, dass…” (…due to the fact that…)

“Die Begründung ... liegt in der Tatsache, dass...“ (The reason ... lies in the fact that...)

“Er argumentiert mit der Tatsache, dass…” (He argues with the fact that…)

“Die Diskrepanz … wird durch die Tatsache, dass… noch verstärkt.” (The discrepancy is

further acerbated by the fact that…)

In the other instances, the sequence typically occupies the subject position of a main

clause that often entails further embedded clauses, e.g.

“Die Tatsache, dass es Widerstand gab, wirft die Frage auf: …” (The fact that resistance

did exist raises the question: …)

“Aber die Tatsache, dass…, läßt hoffen, dass...” (But the fact that … gives rise to the

hope that…)120

120

This type of construction also occurs in Year C, but only in ca. 25% of …Tatsache, dass… occurrences as opposed to 44% in KEDS.

182

This means that the presented „fact‟ is not the only information conveyed in the

utterance, but rather is supplied as additional information on top of the surrounding

content of the sentence, which is conveyed through the predicate and other

complements of the main clause or subordinate clauses. The Year C sequence Es ist

eine Tatsache, dass… constitutes a matrix clause in itself (with the semantically empty

dummy-subject + copula verb construction es ist…), which does not allow for further

information to be conveyed in the same clause. This means that, in this syntactically

extrapolated construction, the assertion that the presented proposition is a fact is much

more thematised or foregrounded than in the more syntactically integrated constructions

of the native speakers.

Interestingly, learners in Years A and B predominantly employ assertions with the

noun Tatsache in the less formulaic way similar to the native speakers, i.e. syntactically

integrated and not thematised as either a prepositional phrase or the subject of the

sentence, e.g.:

[a1010_04] Ein Erziehungs Experte sagt, dass deutsche Schule Computers nicht so viel benutzen, trotz der Tatsache, dass Experte auch einig sind, dass Computers Kinder mit Lernproblemen helfen würden. „One education expert says that German schools do not use computers that much despite the fact that experts also agree that computers would help children with learning difficulties.‟

[b1038_01] Die Tatsache, dass Leute illegale Zeitungen lasen, beweist, dass die Pressefreiheit nicht nur für die Journalisten wichtig ist, aber auch für die Leserschaft der Presse. „The fact that people read illegal papers proves that freedom of press is not just important to journalists but also to the readers of the press.‟

The tendency by learners in Year C to repeatedly use formulaic sequences is also

evident when looking at the other top five items in this category. For ease of reference,

the top section of Table 44 is repeated here:

183

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

natürlich 27

(5.9) natürlich

35 (5.3)

Tatsache 35

(4.0) natürlich

45 (5.5)

Tatsache 16

(3.5) Tatsache

17 (2.6)

natürlich 31

(3.5) Tatsache

28 (3.4)

nicht leugnen 5

(1.1) nicht leugnen

10 (1.5)

nicht leugnen 27

(3.1) offensichtlich

9 (1.1)

es steht fest 4

(0.9) offensichtlich

9 (1.4)

ohne/kein/außer Zweifel

16 (1.8)

ohnehin 9

(1.1)

ohne/kein Zweifel

3 (0.7)

ohne/kein/außer Zweifel

8 (1.2)

es steht fest 10

(1.1) sowieso

7 (0.9)

TABLE 46: TOP FIVE EVIDENCE-FOCUSED ASSERTIVE PMES

We can see that, with the exception of offensichtlich (obviously) in Year B, after natürlich

and Tatsache the same items appear in all three learner groups in only slightly different

order and these items are all different from the ones that are ranked third to fifth highest

in the native speaker corpus. If we look more closely at the individual occurrences, it

becomes obvious that the three items nicht leugnen (cannot deny), es steht fest (it is

certain that) and ohne/kein/außer Zweifel (without a doubt) all lend themseves to the kind

of formulaic sequences that we have seen being used in Year C with the noun Tatsache,

and it is again in this advanced year group that the patterns seem to become fossilised.

The verb nicht leugnen occurs in all learner groups in the following sequences (all

meaning roughly it cannot be denied that…):

“Es ist nicht zu leugnen, dass…”

“Es lässt sich nicht leugnen, dass...“

“Man kann nicht leugnen, dass…”

“Niemand kann leugnen, dass…”

In Years A and B the frequency of this item is so low that the different sequences only

occur a few times each, thus giving the impression of a good variation of expressions. In

Year C, however, the strikingly predominant sequence is es ist nicht zu leugnen, which

actually makes up 21 of the 27 instances of nicht leugnen (78%). This marks a

considerable overuse compared to the mere two instances of nicht leugen in KEDS.

[c1057_03] Es ist nicht zu leugnen, dass Studiengebühren gegen arme Familie diskriminieren, ... ‟It cannot be denied that tuition fees discriminate against poor families…‟

A similar picture presents itself with ohne/kein/außer Zweifel. The sequences that are

used are:

184

“Es steht außer Zweifel, dass...“

“Es gibt keinen Zweifel, dass…”

“Ohne Zweifel…”

Again, the frequencies of these items are quite low overall for Years A and B with all

variations being used in roughly equal proportions. In Year C, however, the relative

overuse of expressions with Zweifel is juxtaposed by the dominance of just one phrase:

ohne Zweifel… (12 out of 14 instances, 86%). This expression is only used once in

KEDS.

[c2036_03] Ohne Zweifel leben wir in einer Welt, in der man nicht weit schauen muss, um eine Werbung zu sehen. ‟Without a doubt do we live in a world where you don‟t have to look far to see an advertisement.‟

Finally, es steht fest is also a fixed expression that the learners seem to have picked

up readily, especially in Year C, while not being used much by the native speakers (two

instances in KEDS). In addition, all instances of es steht fest in the learner data are

sentence-initial and used in exactly the same way, while in the native speaker data we

encounter two variations of this phrase:

“Somit steht fest, dass…”

“Fest steht jedenfalls, dass…”

[c1056_05] Es steht fest, dass Deutschland eine hochqualifizierte Arbeitskraft bietet. ‟It is certain that German offers a highly qualified work force.‟

In summary, we can say that in Years A and B the repertoire of items is relatively

small compared to Year C and KEDS. On top of this, the learners in these year groups

also use these items infrequently compared to the advanced learners and native

speakers; they do, however, use a broad variation of expressions and seem to be

syntactically more creative with them. In Year C, although a larger number of different

types can be found, the learners considerably overuse a small selection of items in a

very formulaic and fossilised way that does not reflect the native speakers‟ use. We have

also determined a propensity on the side of the learners, but most predominantly in Year

C, for positioning all of these items at the beginning of the sentence, thus giving the

evidence-focused assertive PMEs a prominent place within the information structure of

the utterance. The fact that this tendency for sentence-initial formulaic sequences only

185

becomes so overwhelming in Year C leads us to believe that we are not dealing with an

L1-transfer problem, but rather an L2-internal development in the learners‟ writing style

that diverges quite clearly from that of the native speakers. It will also be shown that

similar tendencies exist for PMEs in other categories.

5.2.2.2 Modally qualifying periphrastic expressions

Modally qualifying PMEs are those that have been matched up with the different

categories of modal verb meanings (see 2.3.2.2 and 4.3.2).

The following chart provides an overview of the distribution of these items across the

learner and native speaker groups:

FIGURE 15: FREQUENCIES OF MODALLY QUALIFYING PERIPHRASTIC EXPRESSIONS

As always, the overview chart gives a first impression of over- and underuse patterns.

From Figure 15 we can see that the PMEs in the most assertive category „compelling

conclusion‟ (the same category that the modal verb MÜSSEN belongs to) are

underused, while PMEs in the categories „subjective assumption‟ (modal verb DÜRFTE)

and „possibility‟ (modal verb KÖNNEN), which denote a lower degree of certainty, tend to

be overused. A more qualitative look into the individual categories will reveal any learner

specific patterns.

0.0

5.0

10.0

15.0

20.0

25.0

30.0

35.0

freq. per

10,000 words

Year A

Year B

Year C

KEDS

compelling

conclusion

tentative conclusionsubjective

assumption

possibilityevidentials

186

The following PMEs that have been associated with the category „compelling

conclusion‟ are found in the subcorpora:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

überzeugt 8

(1.7) überzeugt

6 (0.9)

bestimmt 16

(1.8) sicherlich

28 (3.4)

bestimmt 3

(0.7) sicher

4 (0.6)

überzeugt 11

(1.3) sicher

21 (2.6)

sicherlich 2

(0.4) sicherlich

2 (0.3)

sicher 9

(1.0) mit Sicherheit

10 (1.2)

sicherlich 6

(1.8) überzeugt/ Überzeugung

8 (1.0)

mit Sicherheit 2

(1.1) bestimmt

5 (0.6)

TOTAL 12*** (2.8)

TOTAL 12*** (1.8)

TOTAL 44*** (5.0)

TOTAL 72

(8.8)

TABLE 47: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PMES DENOTING A

COMPELLING CONCLUSION (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

Overall, the underuse of this category of items is statistically highly significant for all

learner groups compared to KEDS. Within the category, there are also qualitative

differences. The expression ich bin überzeugt (I am convinced) figures prominently in all

learner groups compared to a relatively small number in KEDS. There are, in fact, only

three occurrences of this phrase in KEDS, the rest are variations with the noun

Überzeugung, e.g. Ich bin der Überzeugung (I am of the conviction). In all learner groups

the basic sequence is often expanded into the following:

“Ich bin davon überzeugt, dass...” (I am convinced of it that…),

which is occasionally further modified with fest or persönlich:

“Ich bin fest davon überzeugt, dass...” (I am absolutely convinced that…)

“Ich bin persönlich davon überzeugt, dass...” (I personally am convinced that...)

Both of these additional modifications also occur in KEDS. The proportion of this

sequence in sentence-initial position is ca. 50% for each learner group and 33% for

KEDS, showing a similar pattern to the formulaic phrases discovered in the previous

section.

Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the learners in Years A and B clearly prefer

the clausal expression that signals the source of the epistemic necessity as speaker-

internal (first-person subject) over the adverbials sicherlich/sicher/mit

Sicherheit/bestimmt (certainly, surely), which are unmarked with respect to speaker-

187

involvement. Although more of these PMEs are used in Year C, the proportion of

statements of personal conviction is still much higher than in the native speaker group

(Year C: 33% vs. KEDS: 12.5%).

A similar observation can be made when looking at the next two categories –

„subjective assumption‟ and „tentative conclusion‟, respectively. As explained in section

4.3.2, the items in these two categories carry a similar degree of certainty, but differ in

terms of the source of epistemic authority. It is characteristic of the items in the category

„subjective assumption‟ that they explicitly identify the source of the epistemic authority

as subject-internal (as the modal verb DÜRFTE also implies the direction of the subject),

e.g. meiner Meinung nach (in my opinion). The ones in the category „tentative

conclusion‟ are neutral with respect to the authoritative source, e.g. wahrscheinlich

(probably).

Interestingly, in a direct comparison of the frequencies for these two categories (see

Figure 16), we can see that learners in Years A and B distinctly prefer the items that

explicitly express speaker-involvement („subjective assumption‟) over the neutral ones

(„tentative conclusion‟), whereas the two categories are more balanced in Year C and

KEDS (where items denoting impersonal tentative conclusions are actually preferred).

188

FIGURE 16: FREQUENCIES OF PME CATEGORIES „SUBJECTIVE ASSUMPTION‟ VERSUS „TENTATIVE

CONCLUSION‟

Moreover, there is not only an overuse of items in the category „subjective

assumption‟ compared to the category „tentative conclusion‟ in Years A and B, but also a

statistically highly significant overuse of these items compared to the native speaker

group. We will look into this category in more detail first. The following items occur in the

data:

0.0

5.0

10.0

15.0

20.0

25.0

30.0

35.0

40.0

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

freq. per 10,000 words

subjective assumption

tentative conclusion

189

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

meine Meinung

121

68 (14.7)

ich denke 61

(9.3) meine Meinung

46 (5.3)

meine Meinung 31

(3.8)

ich glaube 52

(11.3) ich glaube

55 (8.4)

ich glaube 27

(3.1) ich denke

14 (1.7)

ich denke 36

(7.8) meine Meinung

42 (6.4)

ich denke 17

(1.9) ich glaube

10 (1.2)

meine Ansicht

1 (0.2)

meine Ansicht 4

(0.6) meine Ansicht

1 (0.1)

meine Ansicht 6

(0.7)

meine Auffassung

1 (0.2)

meine Erfahrung

1 (0.2)

meine Auffassung

5 (0.6)

TOTAL 158*** (34.2)

TOTAL 162*** (24.6)

TOTAL 91

(10.4) TOTAL

66 (8.0)

TABLE 48: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PMES DENOTING

SUBJECTIVE ASSUMPTIONS (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

Table 48 shows that there is virtually no difference in terms of lexical diversity between

the native speakers and all of the learner groups (although in KEDS the individual

occurrences are spread slightly more evenly across the different items). Also in terms of

the order of items there is great similarity between all subcorpora. We shall look at the

most frequent items in more detail. These are ich denke (I think), ich glaube (I believe)

and meiner Meinung nach/ich bin der Meinung (in my opinion).

We have already seen in the group of assertive PMEs that the learners show a

distinct tendency for using a limited set of expressions in a formulaic way. This can also

be observed with the items under scrutiny here. The expressions ich denke, ich glaube

and ich bin der Meinung can all be followed by a subordinate dass-clause and this is how

it is mostly used by the learners, but not by the native speakers, who prefer the

connection without dass:

[b1002_05] Deshalb denke ich dass die Institution von Ehe wenige wichtig für die Gesellschaft ist aber für viele Leute ist die Idee eine Ehe auf Lebenszeit sehr wichtig... ‟Therefore I think that marriage as an institution is less important for society as a whole but for may people the idea of marriage for life is very important…‟

[keds005] Ich denke, an den aufgeführten Argumenten kann man die positive Seite dieses Projekts sehen.

121

This encompasses all expressions that include the noun Meinung (opinion) and either a first person subject or a first person possessive pronoun, i.e. „ich bin der Meinung‟, „meiner Meinung nach‟, „ich vertrete die Meinung‟, „meine Meinung ist‟ etc. The same goes for expressions with Ansicht, Auffassung (opinion) and Erfahrung (experience).

190

‟I think from the arguments listed above the positive side of this project are visible.‟

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

sequence: ich denke, dass… 28 56 12 5

as % of all instances of ich denke 77.8 91.8 70.6 35.7

sequence: ich glaube, dass… 40 44 21 2

as % of all instances of ich glaube 76.9 80.0 77.8 20.0

sequence: ich bin der Meinung, dass…

29 10 14 7

as % of all instances of ich bin der Meinung

100.0 76.9 82.3 100.0

total sequences: ...denke/glaube/Meinung, dass

97 110 47 14

total as % of all instances 82.9 85.3 77.0 45.1

TABLE 49: COLLIGATIONAL SEQUENCES ICH DENKE, DASS…/ICH GLAUBE, DASS.../ICH BIN DER

MEINUNG, DASS…

On top of this, the learners exhibit a distinct tendency to position these expressions

prominently at the beginning of the sentence (ca. two-thirds of all instances), which,

again, is not shared to that extent by the native speakers:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

sentence-initial ich glaube/ich denke/meine Meinung

104 103 55 24

as % of all instances of ich glaube/ich denke/meine Meinung

66.7 65.6 61.1 43.6

TABLE 50: SENTENCE INITIAL ICH DENKE/ICH GLAUBE/MEINE MEINUNG

Drawing these pieces of information together, it can be established that the learners

show a preference for expressing assumptions that explicitly identify the speaker as the

epistemic source122by using sentence-initial formulaic phrases followed by dass-clauses

where this a grammatical option. In other words, compared to the native speakers,

learners typically overuse the following sequences:

[a2017_03] Ich denke, dass es zu viel Werbung gibt aber wenn die Jugend... ‟I think that there is too much advertising but if young people…‟

122

This is further underlined by the fact that some of these expressions are even further modified by adverbs like persönlich (perosonally) and selbst (myself) as in: „Ich persönlich/selbst glaube…‟ (I personally/myself think…)

191

[b1034_01] Ich glaube, dass Situationen wie dieser selten sind, aber... ‟I believe that situations like these are rare, but…‟

[c1055_04] Ich bin der Meinung, dass Gewalt in den Medien eine große Rolle spielt. ‟I am of the opinion that violence in the media plays a significant role.‟

[c2036_01] Meiner Meinung nach ist die Einführung von Studiengebühren prinzipiell sinnvoll, ... ‟In my opinion, the introduction of tuition fees is, in principle, a sensible thing, …‟

The native speakers, on the other hand, make more use of the full breadth of

available expressions (while at the same time using these items less altogether123) and

employ them in a more varied way, alternating between sentence-initial and sentence-

internal positions (for clausal and prepositional expressions) and connecting clauses with

and without the conjunction dass (that), e.g.:

[keds_048] Dieses vom Autor ebenfalls nicht weiter kommentierte Argument ist meiner Ansicht nach zutreffend. „This argument – which is also not further commented on by the author – is, in my opinion, correct.

[keds_035] Das bestehende Risiko kann, denke ich, noch weiter abgesenkt werden, wenn diese Wissenschaftler nicht Hals über Kopf anfangen würden am Menschen zu experimentieren. „The existing risk can, I think, be even further reduced if scientist would not be in a mad rush to start experimenting on human beings.‟

[keds_037] Ich denke, wenn man nur einige Regeln des sanften Tourismus einhält ist ein Urlaub für beide Seiten - Urlauber und Einwohner – vorteilhaft. „I think if only some rules of sustainable tourism are observed then a holiday is beneficial for both sides – holiday-makers and natives.‟

Another interesting fact becomes apparent if we look back at the results for modal

verbs, namely that the overuse of periphrastic modal expressions in this category goes

hand in hand with the underuse of the corresponding modal verb DÜRFTE (which is one

of the modal verbs that do not have a form/meaning equivalent in English). In section

5.1.1.2 it was established that this modal verb was not part of the learners‟ acquired

repertoire of modal means. We could speculate that the fact that there is a variety of

periphrastic modal expressions for this particular modal meaning might be a factor in the

non-acquisition of this modal verb as the semantic gap is easily filled with adverbial,

verbal or nominal phrases.

123

They do, however, use them considerably more than expert writers, as the count of these items in LIMAS reveals a negligible frequency of just 0.6 per 10,000 words. We will discuss the implications of this result in Chapter 6.

192

The same goes for the category „tentative conclusion‟. It was shown in 5.1.1.3 that the

corresponding epistemic modal verb meanings SOLLTE and MÜSSTE have not been

acquired by learners even in Year C. PMEs that express similar meanings, on the other

hand, are used frequently by the learners. The data gives the following detailed picture:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

scheinen 13

(2.8) scheinen

50 (7.6)

scheinen 48

(5.5) wohl

46 (5.6)

normalerweise 12

(2.6) normalerweise

21 (3.2)

wahrscheinlich 17

(1.9) scheinen

11 (1.3)

wahrscheinlich 6

(1.3) wahrscheinlich

18 (2.7)

normalerweise 16

(1.8) wahrscheinlich

11 (1.3)

wohl 1

(0.2) vermutlich

3 (0.5)

wohl 12

(1.4) scheinbar

7 (0.9)

annehmen 2

(0.3) offenbar

8 (0.9)

anscheinend 7

(0.9)

scheinbar 1

(0.2) höchst-wahrscheinlich

4 (0.5)

offenbar 6

(0.7)

offenbar 1

(0.2) scheinbar

2 (0.2)

normalerweise 3

(0.4)

anscheinend 1

(0.2) anscheinend

1 (0.1)

ist anzunehmen 1

(0.1)

annehmen 1

(0.1) schätzungsweise

1 (0.1)

TOTAL 32** (6.9)

TOTAL 97

(14.7) TOTAL

109 (12.4)

TOTAL 94

(11.5)

TABLE 51: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PMES DENOTING

TENTATIVE CONCLUSIONS (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

As with other categories that comprise a wide variety of items we can see a marked

increase in the number of different types of items that occur between Year A and Year B.

This broadening in lexical variety from Year A to Year B also coincides with an

increasing frequency overall for this category, essentially turning the significant underuse

in Year A into overuse in Year B.

In this category the first item alone makes up more than 40% of all occurrences, going

up to as much as 52% in Year B (Year A: 40.6%; Year B: 52%; Year C: 44%; KEDS:

49%). Curiously, this first item is the same in all learner groups, scheinen (seem), but a

different one for KEDS: wohl (probably). Scheinen is ranked second highest in KEDS,

but with a much lower frequency than in the learner groups. And once again, there are

193

distinct qualitative differences in the colligational patterns of this verb between the

learners and native speakers.

In the learner data, the prominent sequence is with the dummy-subject es (it):

[a1018_02] Es scheint, dass das sogenannte Denglish für die jungere Generationen internationaler und einfacher zu benutzen ist. ‟It seems that so-called Denglish is more international and easier to use for the younger generation.‟

[c1046_01] Es scheint als ob, Täter die Strafen nicht mehr fürchten. ‟It seems as though delinquents are not afraid of punishment anymore.‟

This sequence constitutes up to 92% of the occurrences of the verb scheinen in the

learner data, but fewer than 10% in KEDS. It is positioned sentence-initial in 50% of

cases in all three learner groups:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

sequence: es scheint 12 32 33 1

as % of all instances of scheinen 92.3 64.0 68.8 9.1

sentence-initial es scheint 6 16 16 1

as % of all instances of es scheint 50.0 50.0 48.5 100.0

TABLE 52: COLLIGATIONAL SEQUENCE ES SCHEINT

Furthermore, in the learner data this sequence is often extended by the 1st person

personal pronoun in the dative case mir to the phrase Es scheint mir…, where the

dummy-subject can also be deleted: Mir scheint…. These sequences are prominent in

Years A and B, less in Year C and do not occur in KEDS.

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

sequence: mir scheint/es scheint mir 7 10 4 0

as % of all instances of scheinen 53.8 20.0 8.3 0.0

TABLE 53: COLLIGATIONAL SEQUENCE MIR SCHEINT/ES SCHEINT MIR

In Year A, this sequence is often even further extended into Mir scheint es so, dass… (5

instances), which does not occur in the native speaker data. From Year B, this is

replaced by the more appropriate Es scheint, als ob… (6 instances; Year C: 9; KEDS: 1).

The two modal adverbs that are ranked second and third in all learner groups are

normalerweise (usually) and wahrscheinlich (probably), respectively. The latter is also

ranked third in KEDS, the former, however, only occurs three times (rank 7). For both

194

adverbs, no unusual patterns could be detected. There are occasional word order errors

with normalerweise in Year A despite the relative freedom in sentence position, but these

have practically disappeared by Year B.

[a2013_03] Es ist ein groß Problem für die Eltern, weil *normalerweise man achtzehn sein muss, um pornografische Material zu kaufen, ... (target: ... weil man normalerweise achtzehn sein muss...) „It is a big problem for the parents, because usually you have to be eighteen to be able to buy pornographic material …‟

Wahrscheinlich does not seem to pose a problem where word order is concerned. Also

in terms of meaning, the learners – with a few exceptions – generally employ both items

in appropriate contexts, e.g:

[b1022_07] Die Propaganda, die am häufigsten benutzt wird ist Werbung, obwohl sie normalerweise nicht als Propaganda genannt werden. ‟The type of propaganda that is used the most is advertising, although it is usually not called propaganda.‟

[b1009_05] Wahrscheinlich arbeiten wir deshalb so viel, weil unsere Freizeit so viel kostet; ‟We probably work so much, because our leisure time is so expensive;‟

The top item in the native speaker data – wohl – does not feature much at all in Years

A and B. This is an adverb that has been acquired by some learners in Year C, although

its frequency is much lower than in KEDS. In addition, 7 out of the 12 instances of wohl

in Year C stem from the same author. Despite its correct use in these instances, it is

clearly only the preference of one individual learner for this item that pushes it up to

fourth rank in Year C, and it cannot be considered part of the generally acquired

repertoire of PMEs.

The next category – PMEs denoting the assumption of a possibility (where the

corresponding modal verbs are KÖNNEN and MÖGEN) – is a category that is

characterised by an increasing overuse on the side of the learners from Year A to Year

C:

195

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

vielleicht 35

(7.6) vielleicht

84 (12.8)

vielleicht 134

(15.3) vielleicht

48 (5.8)

möglich/ Möglichkeit

11 (2.4)

möglich/ Möglichkeit

15 (2.3)

möglich/ Möglichkeit

22 (2.5)

denkbar 10

(1.2)

denkbar 1

(0.2) möglicher- weise

4 (0.6)

möglicher- weise

6 (0.7)

möglicher- weise

9 (1.1)

möglicher- weise

1 (0.2)

denkbar 1

(0.2) eventuell

2 (0.2)

möglich/ Möglichkeit

7 (0.9)

Chance 1

(0.2) Chance

1 (0.2)

unter Umständen

1 (0.1)

eventuell 7

(0.9)

eventuell 1

(0.2)

vorstellbar

1 (0.1)

unter Umständen

1 (0.2)

unter Umständen

1 (0.1)

TOTAL 48

(10.4) TOTAL

107*** (16.2)

TOTAL 165*** (18.8)

TOTAL 83

(10.1)

TABLE 54: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PMES DENOTING

ASSUMPTIONS OF POSSIBILITY (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

As with the last category, we can see that one item dominates in terms of frequency.

Unlike in the previous category, however, here this is the same one in all learner and

native speaker corpora, namely the adverb vielleicht (perhaps). It is already a firm part of

the learners‟ repertoire in Year A and, proportionally, it is not overused much in this

group compared to KEDS. The item starts being overused in Year B and reaches a level

in Year C that is almost three times as high as the native speakers. In terms of both

meaning and sentence positioning no diverging patterns could be detected between

learners and native speakers, i.e. the learners use vielleicht in the same way as the

native speakers, they simply use it much more often124.

[c1046_04] Es ist für Journalisten vielleicht schwer, die Konsequenzen ihrer Berichterstattung abzuschätzen. „It is perhaps difficult for journalists to assess the consequences of their reports.‟

[b1031_02] Immer mehr Väter wollen einen großen Einfluß in dem Leben ihrer Kinder und vielleicht ist die Situation nicht so hoffnungslos für Frauen als in der Vergangenheit.

124

A search in the general German language corpus LIMAS reveals that vielleicht (perhaps) only occurs with 2.8 instances per 10,000 words, which means that this item is also used more in the specific text type of KEDS. Furthermore, a search of the English equivalent „perhaps‟ in LOCNESS comes up with a frequency of 3.4 per 10,000 words; the overuse on the part of the learners can therefore not be explained by a more frequent use of the equivalent L1 item.

196

„More and more fathers want to have a big influence on the lives of their children and perhaps the situation is not as hopeless for women as in the past.‟

One differentiating factor between learner and native speaker use of vielleicht that could

be discovered was the propensity for it to co-occur with modal verbs and the subjunctive

mood in the learner data more than in KEDS.

The second most frequent item in the learner data is patterns with the adjective

möglich (possible) and the noun Möglichkeit (possibility), respectively. They are

distributed as follows:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

adjective: möglich 9 10 9 2

noun: Möglichkeit 2 5 13 5

TABLE 55: DISTRIBUTION OF ADJECTIVE MÖGLICH AND NOUN MÖGLICHKEIT

As in previous categories, we find the familiar sequence with the dummy-subject es as

the prevailing pattern in the learner groups. For the adjective this results in the sequence

es ist möglich… (it is possible…) and for the noun in the sequence es gibt die

Möglichkeit… (There is the possibility…):

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

sequence: es ist möglich 8 7125

7 2

sequence: es gibt die Möglichkeit 1 1 5 0

TABLE 56: COLLIGATIONAL SEQUENCES ES IST MÖGLICH/ES GIBT DIE MÖGLICHKEIT

This sequence is furthermore mostly followed by a subordinate dass-clause, so that the

following patterns emerge:

[c1054_04] Wenn sie eine Sendung mit Gewalt sehen denn ist es möglich, dass sie von dieser Gewalt beeinflusst werden. „When they watch a programme with violence then it is possible that they are influenced by this violence.‟

[c2039_03] In der Tat gibt es immer die Möglichkeit, dass die deutsche Geschichte sich widerholen könnte. „There is, indeed, always the possibility that the German history could

125

This includes two variations, namely “Es sollte möglich sein...“ (It should be possible...) and “Es wäre möglich“ (It would be possible).

197

repeat itself.‟

The category that represents expressions for evidential meanings (modal verbs

SOLLEN and WOLLEN) does not feature frequently in either learner or native speaker

subcorpora.

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

angeblich 2

(0.3) angeblich

13 (1.5)

angeblich 6

(0.7)

gerüchteweise 1

(0.1)

TOTAL 0 TOTAL 2

(0.3) TOTAL

13 (1.5)

TOTAL 7

(0.9)

TABLE 57: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PMES DENOTING

EVIDENTIAL MEANING (SOLLEN/WOLLEN)

From these figures, it seems like the adverb angeblich (allegedly) has been acquired by

learners in Year C. A closer look at the concordances reveals, however, that the 13

occurrences there originate from only 5 different authors (one learner using angeblich 5

times in a single text) and, furthermore, that 5 out of these 13 instances are actually

incorrect uses. This means, essentially, that only two learners have acquired the adverb

correctly, the other three learners have not grasped the exact meaning of it yet, as the

following sentences exemplify:

[c1050_02] Einige Leute aber glauben, dass es wirklich die Verantwortung der Eltern ist und deshalb würden Lehrer den Beruf als „Eltern-Ersatz“ haben. Sie haben Angst, dass in der Zukunft die Sanktionsmöglichkeiten immer schlimmer *angeblich werden. „But some people believe that it is really the responsibility of the parent and therefore teachers would have the job of “parent replacement”. They are afraid that in the future the disciplinary options will *allegedly become worse and worse.‟

[c1047_02] Laut dem Artikel muss gefragt werden, warum andere Religionen, zum Beispiel Christentum *angeblich bevorzugt werden. „According to the article it must be asked why other religions, e.g. Christianity, are *allegedly being privileged.‟

5.2.2.3 Negative periphrastic modal expressions

The final group of PMEs to be investigated in this section on epistemic expressions are

the two categories to do with negativity: PMEs that achieve a hedging of negations and

198

those that intensify negations. As the following chart shows, both of these categories are

(mostly significantly) underused by learners in all three year groups, despite increasing

frequencies from Year A through to Year C:

FIGURE 17: FREQUENCIES OF PMES AFFECTING NEGATION

In the first of these categories (hedging negations) the low frequencies in the learner

data stems entirely from the considerable underuse of one item: kaum (hardly):

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

unwahrschein-lich

1 (0.2)

kaum 3

(0.5) kaum

5 (0.6)

kaum 42

(5.1)

unwahrschein-lich

1 (0.2)

unwahrschein-lich

4 (0.5)

unwahrschein-lich

3 (0.4)

Zweifel 3

(0.3) fast

2 (0.2)

scheinbar 1

(0.1)

TOTAL 1*** (0.2)

TOTAL 4*** (0.6)

TOTAL 12*** (1.5)

TOTAL 48

(5.8)

TABLE 58: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PMES ACHIEVING A

HEDGING OF NEGATIONS (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

0.0

1.0

2.0

3.0

4.0

5.0

6.0

7.0

8.0

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

freq. per

10,000 words

hedging negation

intensifying negation

199

Whereas the learners hardly make use of it, the native speakers employ this item

frequently in order to attenuate a statement:

[keds024] Seine statistischen Beispiele zeigen auch , dass Gewalt alltäglich ist und kaum noch als außergewöhnlich angesehen wird. ‟His statistical examples also show that violence is commonplace and is hardly seen as extra-ordinary anymore.‟

The underuse of this „negative‟ hedging category matches the underuse of the category

that contains items that result in positive hedged propositions (see 5.2.2.1 above). These

two categories seem to indicate that learners avoid items that result in a toning down of

either a categorical assertion or negation.

The items in the second category in this group achieve the opposite, namely produce

an intensifying effect on the negation.

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

nie 13

(2.8) nie

16 (2.4)

nie 23

(2.6) nie

24 (2.9)

überhaupt nicht

3 (0.5)

gar nicht 10

(1.1) gar nicht

16 (1.9)

auf keinen Fall

2 (0.3)

auf keinen Fall 6

(0.7) auf keinen Fall

6 (0.7)

niemals

1 (0.2)

überhaupt nicht 4

(0.5) überhaupt nicht

5 (0.6)

niemals

2 (0.2)

niemals 4

(0.5)

keineswegs

4 (0.5)

ausgeschlossen

2 (0.2)

TOTAL 13*** (2.8)

TOTAL 22*** (3.3)

TOTAL 45

(5.2) TOTAL

63 (7.5)

TABLE 59: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PMES ACHIEVING AN

INTENSIFICATION OF NEGATIONS (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

We can see in this category how the learners‟ active vocabulary use gradually expands

from Year A to Year C, incorporating more and more items until the list resembles that of

the native speakers. Once they are acquired, the learners do not seem to have any

difficulties with these items and no learner-specific patterns could be found.

200

[a2021_02] 'Fremdsprache' Filme sind oft bei Kritikern erfolgreich, aber nie unter der englischsprechenden Bevölkerung. ‟‟Foreign language films‟ are often successful with critics, but never with the English-speaking public.‟

[c1047_01] Auf keinen Fall kann einen Mord mit einem anderen Mord rechtfertigt werden, denn der Scharfrichter wäre genauso schuldig wie der Mörder selbst. ‟Under no circumstances can one murder be justified by another murder, because the executioner would be as guilty as the murderer himself.‟

It is worth noting, however, that the significant underuse of intensifying negative PMEs in

Years A and B is congruent to a significant underuse of purely assertive PMEs, which

achieve an intensifying effect on positive assertions.

5.2.3 Non-epistemic periphrastic modal expressions

From the overview chart (Figure 13; p. 172) we have seen that non-epistemic PMEs are

much less frequent than epistemic ones. As mentioned before, this corresponds with

high frequencies of non-epistemic modal verbs. The following chart gives an overview of

non-epistemic PMEs:

201

FIGURE 18: FREQUENCIES OF NON-EPISTEMIC PMES

For epistemic modality we have seen that there seems to be some interrelation between

the non-acquisition of certain modal verbs and high frequencies of the corresponding

PMEs. Where non-epistemic modality is concerned, no such interrelations can be found

as all modal verb meanings have been confidently acquired before Year A126. It does

appear, however, that there is a tendency for learners to underuse those PME categories

where the corresponding modal verb has an English form/meaning equivalent: MÜSSEN

(duty/compulsion), KÖNNEN (possibility/ability) and SOLLEN/SOLLTE127 (instruction and

suggestion/advice), while PMEs that correspond to modal verbs without English

form/meaning equivalents tend to be overused: WOLLEN (volition), MÖCHTE

(attenuated volition), MÖGEN (affection/liking) and DÜRFEN (permission). This effect is

most pronounced in Year A, but still visible in Years B and C. One explanation for this

could be that the learners do not see the need for alternative modal expressions as they

126

This is with the exception of the subjunctive modal verb forms (especially the difference between SOLLEN and SOLLTE). The learners, however, do not seem to perceive this as a problem and certainly do not avoid these verbs.

127 Strictly speaking, SOLLEN does not have an English form/meaning equivalent, but it is included here as we have seen that the learners often are not able to differentiate between the meaning of SOLLEN and SOLLTE.

0.0

2.0

4.0

6.0

8.0

10.0

12.0

14.0

16.0

18.0

freq. per

10,000 words

Year A

Year B

Year C

KEDS

duty

compulsion

possibilityabilitysuggestion

advice

instructionvolitionattenuated

volition

affection

liking

permission

202

feel confident in the use of the modal verbs for these particular non-epistemic meanings.

Conversely, where the learners are used to expressing certain notions by PMEs in their

L1 rather than by modal verbs, they tend to follow this pattern in the L2 and overuse

PMEs, despite having acquired the L2 specific modal verb meanings. The following

sections will explore how individual items are used within the different categories. For the

sake of completeness each category and all items will be displayed, but as there are

several categories with very low frequencies, only the bigger categories will be discussed

in more detail.

The first category includes PMEs that express non-epistemic necessity, i.e. duty or

compulsion (corresponding to the modal verb MÜSSEN):

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

notwendig/ Notwendigkeit

4 (0.9)

notwendig/ Notwendigkeit

9 (1.4)

nötig 12

(1.4) nötig

12 (1.5)

erforderlich 2

(0.4) nötig

4 (0.6)

notwendig/ Notwendigkeit

9 (1.0)

notwendig/ Notwendigkeit

10 (1.2)

nichts anderes übrig

1 (0.2)

gezwungen 3

(0.5) verpflichtet

5 (0.6)

erforderlich 4

(0.5)

nicht nötig 1

(0.2) erforderlich

2 (0.3)

gezwungen 5

(0.6) gezwungen

2 (0.2)

unerlässlich

1 (0.2)

erforderlich 2

(0.2) verpflichtet

2 (0.2)

unvermeidlich

1 (0.2)

keine Wahl 2

(0.2) unerlässlich

1 (0.1)

verpflichtet

1 (0.2)

unvermeidlich 2

(0.2) unumgänglich

1 (0.1)

keine Wahl

1 (0.2)

TOTAL 8*

(1.7) TOTAL

22 (3.3)

TOTAL 37

(4.2) TOTAL

32 (3.9)

TABLE 60: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PMES DENOTING DUTY OR

COMPULSION (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

We can see that already in Year B the learners have broadened their vocabulary range

in this category to native speaker standard. Another noteworthy point here is that the

frequencies are spread more evenly across the different items than in many of the

epistemic categories, and a look at the concordances confirms that it is not just one or

two individual learners who use a greater variety of items but that the use is distributed

203

more widely across learners. On top of this, no distinct patterns, sequences or

collocations could be found, although items like notwendig and nötig (necessary) would

lend themselves to the same kind of sequences that we have seen with möglich in

epistemic modality, i.e. Es ist notwendig/nötig... (It is necessary…). However, the

learners in all year groups employ these items in a range of different sentence

constructions.

[a2001_03] Wenn sie älter sind und wollen gute Arbeiten, werden Benutzung von dem Internet und moderne Technologie notwendig sein. „When they are older and want a good job using the internet and modern technology will be necessary.‟

[b1003_05] Die Franzosen vertreten für die 35 Stunden Woche, sie bestehen, dass es keine Notwendigkeit gibt zu arbeiten mehr. „The French defend the 35-hour working week, they insist that there is no necessity to work more.‟

[c2039_01] Außerdem sind sie verpflichtet den Arbeitgeber und Versicherer es zu sagen. „Furthermore they are required to inform their insurance company about it.‟

PMEs that denote instructions/obligations (modal verb SOLLEN) or

suggenstions/advice (modal verb SOLLTE) hardly occur at all in any of the subcorpora:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

verlangt 1

(0.2) verlangt

2 (0.3)

verlangt 2

(0.2) verlangt

5 (0.6)

geboten 1

(0.1)

TOTAL 1

(0.2) TOTAL

2 (0.3)

TOTAL 2

(0.2) TOTAL

6 (0.7)

TABLE 61: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PMES DENOTING

INSTRUCTIONS/OBLIGATIONS

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

wäre gut 1

(0.2) wäre nicht richtig

1 (0.1)

wäre angebracht 1

wäre ratsam 1

TOTAL 1

(0.2) TOTAL TOTAL

1 (0.1)

TOTAL 2

(0.2)

TABLE 62: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PMES DENOTING

SUGGESTIONS/ADVICE

204

The same is true for PMEs denoting volition:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

vorhaben 2

(0.4) Plan

2 (0.3)

Wille 2

(0.2) vorhaben

2 (0.2)

beabsichtigen 1

(0.2 keine Lust

2 (0.3)

beabsichtigen 1

(0.1) auf…aus sein

1 (0.1)

beabsichtigen 1

(0.2) vorhaben

1 (0.1)

Wille 1

(0.1)

Wille 1

(0.2)

TOTAL 1

(0.2) TOTAL

2 (0.3)

TOTAL 2

(0.2) TOTAL

6 (0.7)

TABLE 63: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PMES DENOTING VOLITION

In the few instances that the learners use any of the items from these last three

categories, they generally do not have any problems with their semantic meaning or

grammatical requirements.

The next category that is worth looking into in more detail is PMEs denoting

attenuated volition or wishes (modal verb MÖCHTE):

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

hoffen 7

(1.5) hoffentlich

17 (2.6)

hoffen 31

(3.5) Hoffnung

6 (0.7)

hoffentlich 5

(1.1) hoffen

15 (2.3)

hoffentlich 12

(1.4) hoffen

4 (0.5)

wünschen 2

(0.4) Wunsch

5 (0.8)

Wunsch 9

(1.0) wünschen

4 (0.5)

würden lieber 1

(0.2) würde lieber

5 (0.6)

Wunsch 3

(0.4)

hätten gern 1

(0.2) wünschen

3 (0.3)

keine Lust 2

(0.2)

TOTAL 14

(3.0) TOTAL

39*** (5.9)

TOTAL 62*** (7.1)

TOTAL 17

(2.1)

TABLE 64: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PMES DENOTING

ATTENUATED VOLITION/WISHES (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

205

In the learner data, the verb hoffen (hope) and the adverb hoffentlich (hopefully) are the

two most frequent items. Interestingly, hoffentlich does not occur at all in the native

speaker data. This can possibly be explained with a greater tendency of the native

speakers to avoid items that inherently express speaker involvement, which was already

shown for the epistemic PMEs (cf. 5.2.2.2). This also explains to some extent the high

frequency of hoffentlich in Year B, as this group contains a portion of texts (year abroad

projects) where the task requires the students to reflect upon their own hopes, fears and

wishes for their imminent year in Germany. On top of that the verb hoffen is exclusively

used with first person in Year B, which again can be assigned to the nature of that

particular task (26 out of overall 32 instances – 81% – of hoffen and hoffentlich in Year B

occur in the year abroad projects).

In Year C, however, the extreme prominence of the verb hoffen is due to the overuse

of a different pattern: Es bleibt zu hoffen, dass… (It remains to be hoped that…):

[c2045_06] Es bleibt zu hoffen, dass die Grauzone der aktiven Sterbehilfe aufgeklärt wird. „It remains to be hoped that the grey area surrounding euthanasia is going to be clarified.‟

[c1058_04] Es bleibt zu hoffen, dass mehr Leute zur Vernunft kommen und den Vorschlag unterstützten werden. „It remains to be hoped that more people see sense and support the suggestion.‟

This sequence occurs exclusively in this year group, where it makes up 24 of the 31

instances of hoffen (77%). Out of these, 21 are placed in a thematising sentence-initial

position, typically towards the end of the text. This indicates that the learners in Year C

strive towards more neutral expressions with respect to speaker involvement, but then

tend to use this same sequence over and over again. Incidentally, this category in this

year group is the only one where the PME frequency is higher than the corresponding

modal verb category in the learner data.

For KEDS the only category where PMEs are more frequent than modal verbs is the

one denoting general affection or liking (MÖGEN).

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

lieben 3

(0.7) lieben

4 (0.6)

lieben 4

(0.4) neigen zu

6 (0.7)

gern 2

(0.4) nicht leiden können

2 (0.3)

gern haben 1

(0.1) gern

1 (0.1)

206

nicht Lust 1

(0.2) gern

1 (0.2)

neigen zu 1

(0.1) ablehnen

1 (0.1)

ablehnen 1

(0.2) neigen zu

1 (0.2)

nicht leiden können

1 (0.1)

hassen 1

(0.2)

TOTAL 7

(1.5) TOTAL

9 (1.4)

TOTAL 6

(0.7) TOTAL

9 (1.1)

TABLE 65: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PMES DENOTING

GENERAL AFFECTION OR LIKING

As the overall frequencies for this category of PMEs is very low for learners and

native speakers, we shall not discuss it in great detail. One point that is interesting to

note, however, is that the top item in all learner groups – the verb lieben (love) – does

not occur at all in KEDS. Here, the verb neigen zu (be prone to do sth./to tend toward

sth.) is the most frequent item. The difference between these two verbs is that lieben is

primed for positive contexts, i.e. what is „being loved‟ is usually something pleasant,

whereas neigen zu is primed for undesirable behaviour. So, the learners use the PMEs

in this category to describe circumstances that they view as positive (examples from the

corpora are: German films, Germany, vegetables, work, time with the family, football

etc.):

[b1006_05] Es gibt auch viele Leute, die ihren Arbeiten lieben. Sie wecken jeden Morgen auf und denken, dass sie sehr glücklicher ihrer Arbeit zu haben sind. „There are also many people who love their work. They wake up every morning and think that they are very lucky to have their work.‟

[a2008_03] Ich liebe besonders deutschen Filmen weil sie immer verrückt sind. „I particularly love German films because they are always crazy.‟

The native speakers, on the other hand, tend to use neigen zu and associate negative,

undesirable behaviour with it128 (examples from KEDS are: selfishness, aggression,

violence, lynch law):

[keds_006] Allerdings kann ein solches Computerspiel Anleitung zum Schlagen sein, wenn der Jugendliche sowieso schon dazu neigt, Gewalt anzuwenden. „Such a computer game can, however, be a guide on how to beat people, if the young person is prone to violent behaviour anyway.‟

128

In the two instances that occur in the learner data, the one in Year B does not follow this priming, the one in Year C does.

207

[keds_038] Dies zeigte sich bei den verschiedenen „Kinderschänderprozessen“ der letzten Zeit, bei denen die Öffentlichkeit zu einer Lynchjustiz der Angeklagten neigte, noch bevor deren Schuld festgestellt wurde. „This became apparent in the various recent “child abuse cases”, where the public tended towards lynch law for the accused before their guilt was even established.‟

In the corresponding modal verb category MÖGEN (Section 5.1.2.7) it could be

established that the native speakers tend to refrain from the kinds of statements that

express positive likings of the subjects and the data from the PMEs seems to support

this trend. The learners, particularly in Years A and B, overuse the modal verb as well as

the corresponding PMEs to describe exactly those circumstances.

The next two categories to be discussed are concerned with PMEs denoting

possibility – either in terms of circumstances that allow for the proposed action to take

place or in terms of personal abilities (modal verb KÖNNEN). The former one is by far

the more frequent category although the lexical range is more limited. It only comprises

the adjective möglich (possible) and the nouns Möglichkeit (possibility) and Chance

(opportunity). On top of this, however, adjectives derived in a productive morphological

process from a verb stem plus suffix –bar also belong to this category (cf. Table 67). As

these items often only occur once but occasionally occur more often, the following table

indicates the number of unique types of –bar-adjectives in each subcorpus as well as

their overall frequency.

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

(un)möglich/Möglichkeit

23 (5.0)

(un)möglich/ Möglichkeit

41 (6.2)

(un)möglich/ Möglichkeit

78 (8.9)

(un)möglich/ Möglichkeit

99 (12.1)

Chance 3

(0.7) *bar (9 types)

9 (1.4)

*bar (15 types) 21

(2.4) *bar (28 types)

42 (5.1)

Chance 14

(1.6) Chance

5 (0.6)

TOTAL 26*** (5.6)

TOTAL 50*** (7.6)

TOTAL 113** (12.8)

TOTAL 146

(17.8)

TABLE 66: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PMES DENOTING

POSSIBILITY DUE TO CIRCUMSTANCES (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

The table shows that there is a steady increase in the number of –bar-adjectives that

occur in the learner data – from 0 in Year A to 15 in Year C, although even this figure is

208

only about half of that in KEDS. The following list gives the different types that are found

in each subcorpus:

Year B Year C KEDS

anstellbar bemerkbar abbaubar

bemerkbar beweisbar absehbar

*erhältbar (target: erhältlich) erkennbar anwendbar

unannehmbar erreichbar beeinflussbar

unberechenbar finanzierbar befahrbar

ungenießbar heilbar begründbar

vermeidbar unberechenbar behandelbar

voraussagbar unbezahlbar brauchbar

vorhersehbar unerreichbar durchschaubar

unheilbar durchsetzbar

unvorstellbar einhaltbar

vereinbar erkennbar

verfügbar erreichbar

vergleichbar finanzierbar

*verstandbar (target: verständlich)

haltbar

kontrollierbar

nachvollziehbar

realisierbar

rückgängigmachbar

übersehbar

unbesiegbar

unpassierbar

unvorhersehbar

verfügbar

vergleichbar

vermeidbar

vertretbar

voraussehbar

TABLE 67: TYPES OF –BAR-ADJECTIVES IN THE PME CATEGORY „POSSIBITLITY DUE TO

CIRCUMSTANCES‟ (ADJECTIVES THAT OCCUR IN CLEG AND KEDS IN BOLD)

The list shows that many of the items, although they are not new word creations

altogether, are arrived at by way of some creative derivational process, which is

apparent in the two errors that occur in the learner data where this process unfortunately

produces a non-target like form.

209

With regard to the most frequent item in this category (möglich/Möglichkeit), it is, once

again, the familiar pattern with the dummy-subject es that prevails in combination with

the adjective (un)möglich:

[a2003_01] Es ist auch möglich im Internet Musik zu herunterladen und das ist illegal und manchmal kennen Kinder das nicht, ... „It is also possible to download music from the internet and that is illegal and sometimes children don‟t know that, …‟

[b1031_01] Jetzt ist es möglich eine weite Reihe von Zeitungen zu kaufen. „It is now possible to buy a wide range of newspapers.‟

[c1054_04] Also ist es fast unmöglich diese Gewalt zu vermeiden. „So it is almost impossible to avoid this kind of violence.‟

This colligational pattern makes up a stable proportion of around 50% of occurrences of

this adjective in the learner data, but only a much smaller proportion in KEDS:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

sequence: es ist (un)möglich... 10 14 23 9

as % of all instances of (un)möglich 52.6 43.8 48.9 18.3

TABLE 68: COLLIGATIONAL SEQUENCE ES IST (UN)MÖGLICH…

A further noteworthy point is that we can see clearly how the colligation pattern here

resolves the seeming ambiguity between epistemic and non-epistemic uses of the

adjective möglich. Epistemic möglich colligates with a subordinate dass-clause while

non-epistemic möglich colligates with an infinitive clause (with infinitive marker zu). The

same distinction is true for the English adjective „possible‟. It is therefore not surprising

that the learners do not have any problems with these two constructions.

As for the noun Möglichkeit, there are three verb collocates that occur in differing

proportions in the learner groups compared to KEDS. In KEDS the most frequent one is

haben (have) (11 out of 49 instances), as in

[keds_30] Durch das Internet hat jeder die Möglichkeit sich und seine Gefühle und Gedanken der ganzen Welt zu offenbaren. „With the internet everybody has the opportunity to lay open their feelings and thoughts for the whole world to read.‟

210

In the learner data there is a shift from Year A, where the most frequent verb collocate is

geben in the sequence es gibt die Möglichkeit...129 (3 out of 4 instances) to Years B and

C, where the most frequent verb collocate is haben (4 out of 9 and 11 out of 31

instances, respectively) as in the native speaker data:

[a2017_02] Trotz der Nachteile gibt es viele Vorteile und auch heutzutage gibt es eine Möglichkeit die Benutzung des Internet zu kontrollieren. „Despite the disadvantages there are many advantages and nowadays there is a possibility of controlling the use of the internet.‟

[b1017_05] Und doch, mussen wir darauf hinweisen, dass wir die möglichkeit neue Leute kennen zu lernen und andere Erfahrungen zu sammeln haben, wenn man eine Stelle hat. „And still we have to point out that we have the opportunity to meet new people and have different experiences if you have a job.‟

[c2044_04] Während "Goodbye Lenin" die Unterschiede zwischen Ost und West deutlich darstellte, hat die Medien auch die Möglichkeit diese Unterschiede zu minimieren. „While “Goodbye Lenin” clearly portrayed the differences between East and West, the media also has the opportunity to minimise these differences.‟

In comparison to the corresponding modal verb KÖNNEN, it is noted that PMEs in this

category are significantly underused by all learner groups, while the modal verb is

overused in Year A and significantly underused in Years B and C. So, apart from Year A

there do not seem to be any compensatory factors at work between modal verb and

PME use, i.e. no overuse of modal verbs at the expense of PMEs or vice versa.

The other category that corresponds to uses of the modal verb KÖNNEN – denoting

possibility due to personal abilities – is also underused consistently by the learners:

129

Incidentally resulting in the same sequence as for epistemic modality.

211

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

Fähigkeit 2

(0.4) fähig/ Fähigkeit

2 (0.3)

fähig/Fähigkeit 6

(0.7) in der Lage

17 (2.1)

Erfahrung 1

(0.2) in der Lage

5 (0.6)

fähig/Fähigkeit 8

(1.0)

Kenntnis 1

(0.2)

unmöglich/ keine Möglichkeit

4 (0.5)

Erfahrung 1

(0.1)

nicht beherrschen

1 (0.1)

nicht möglich 1

(0.1)

TOTAL 2*** (0.4)

TOTAL 4*** (0.6)

TOTAL 17

(1.8) TOTAL

27 (3.3)

TABLE 69: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PMES DENOTING

POSSIBILITY DUE TO PERSONAL ABILITIES (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

In addition to that, at least one of the two instances in Year A is actually incorrect –

the noun Fähigkeit (ability) is used in a context where only Möglichkeit (possibility) is

correct, as what is being described is a possibility due to school regulations, not the

personal ability of the pupil:

[a2011_03] Obwohl es die *Fähigkeit (target: Möglichkeit), von eine Hauptschule oder Realschule bis einem Gymnasium zu wechseln gibt, ist es nicht so allgemein. „Although there is the *ability (target: possibility) to change from Hauptschule to Realschule or even Gymnasium it is not that common.‟

Other than that, no diverging patterns could be detected in the learner data. In Years B

and C the expressions are all used in appropriate contexts.

Finally, the last category to be discussed relates to PMEs that denote permission

(modal verbs DÜRFEN and KÖNNEN). Here we can see underuse in Years A and B and

a significant overuse in Year C compared to KEDS:

212

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

erlaubt/ Erlaubnis

6 (1.3)

erlaubt 4

(0.6) verboten

31 (3.5)

verboten 13

(1.6)

verboten 1

(0.2) verboten

4 (0.6)

erlaubt/ Erlaubnis

23 (2.6)

erlaubt 5

(0.6)

gestattet 2

(0.2)

TOTAL 7

(1.5) TOTAL

8 (1.2)

TOTAL 54*** (6.2)

TOTAL 20

(2.4)

TABLE 70: RAW FREQUENCIES (FREQ. PER 10,000 WORDS IN BRACKETS) OF PMES DENOTING

PERMISSION (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

This is the only category where – due to the participle verboten (prohibited) – the

negative version of the category (NICHT DÜRFEN) is more frequent than the positive.

No learner specific patterns could be detected with this participle. However, when

looking at the participle with opposite meaning – erlaubt (allowed) – we see that the

learners in all year groups struggle with the grammatical structure that this participle

requires. In the English construction „X is allowed to do Y‟, the person being permitted to

do something is the grammatical subject of the sentence. In the German equivalent,

however, this has to be in the dative case (with the subject position either filled with the

dummy-subject es (12) or omitted (13)):

(12) Es ist ihm erlaubt, seine eigenen Pläne zu verfolgen. It is him.DAT allowed his own plans to pursue „He is allowed to pursue his own plans.‟

(13) Ihm ist erlaubt, seine eigenen Pläne zu verfolgen. him.DAT is allowed his own plans to pursue „He is allowed to pursue his own plans.‟

In the learner data, none of the overall 15 attempts at this structure (Year A: 5; Year B: 3;

Year C: 7) are correct. In all cases, the learners transfer the English structure as the

following examples demonstrate:

[a2020_02] Ich glaube, *Kinder *sollten (target: Kindern sollte) erlaubt werden, das Internet zu benutzen,... „I think children should be allowed to use the internet,…‟

[c1059_01] Der Artikel fragt , ob *sie (target: ihnen) erlaubt werden *sollen (target: soll), seine Rache zu bekommen. „The article asks whether they should be allowed to get their revenge.‟

213

It is furthermore worth noting that there is a marked overuse of this modal meaning as

a whole in Year C, i.e. modal verbs (DÜRFEN and KÖNNEN) as well as corresponding

PMEs are significantly overused only in this year group. The PME overuse might be

partly influenced by specific topics in the learner data and the way these topics are

phrased. Out of the 54 instances 22 (40%) pertain to the topic of medically assisted

suicide where the exact essay question was: “Sollte aktive Sterbehilfe in Deutschland

gesetzlich erlaubt werden?” (Should medically assisted suicide be legalised in

Germany?). As the lexical modal expression erlaubt already occurs in the question, it is

not surprising that the learners pick up this item and use it more often in their writing on

this specific topic.

This concludes the presentation of periphrastic modal expressions. The analysis of

this large and divergent group of items has brought to light that the learners continually

expand their vocabulary range from one year to the next. Interestingly, in many

categories, epistemic and non-epistemic, a smaller repertoire of items that the learners

are able to use productively (i.e. in Year A) also corresponds to a smaller number of

occurrences of these items overall, whereas an overuse of PME occurrences is typically

found in Year C, where the vocabulary range is broadest. This means that lower

proficiency learners have a more limited range of items and at the same time use these

items less frequently, while higher proficiency learners with a broader range of items also

proportionally use these items much more frequently. One notable exception is the

category that, amongst others, includes the propositional attitude verbs glauben and

denken, where the extreme overuse in Year A gradually decreases almost to native

speaker level in Year C.

Furthermore, it has become clearly evident that the learners tend to use many of the

investigated items repetitively in the same collocational and colligational sequences.

Through the year-by-year comparison it is possible to trace the development of these

items into rigidly set and formulaic phrases that dominate almost all of the meaning

categories in Year C.

5.3 MODAL INFINITIVES

Modal infinitive constructions (HABEN ZU and SEIN ZU) are the smallest group of modal

expressions in both CLEG and KEDS. Table 71 gives an overview of the frequencies:

214

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

raw freq.

per 10,000 words

raw freq. per

10,000 words

raw freq. per

10,000 words

raw freq. per

10,000 words

SEIN ZU 8 1.7 11 1.7 50 5.7 60 7.3

HABEN ZU 0 0.0 8 1.2 1 0.1 14 1.7

TOTAL 8 1.7*** 19 2.9*** 51 5.8* 74 9.0

TABLE 71: OVERALL FREQUENCIES OF MODAL INFINITIVE CONSTRUCTINS IN LEARNER AND NATIVE

SPEAKER CORPORA (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

The frequency figures reveal that all learner groups significantly underuse modal

infinitives compared to the native speaker group.

5.3.1 SEIN ZU

SEIN ZU is the more frequent modal infinitive in both learner and native speaker data.

Both learners and native speakers follow the general observation that SEIN ZU is mostly

used in the meaning of possibility (in competition with the modal verb KÖNNEN). The

native speakers use it in the meaning of necessity (equivalent to MÜSSEN) more often

than any of the learner groups. Other meanings (advice and permission) do occur, but

very infrequently as the following table shows:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

possibility 6 9 48 37

necessity 1 0 1 10

advice 1 0 1 1

permission 0 2 0 2

ambiguous 0 0 0 10

TOTAL 8 11 50 60

TABLE 72: RAW FIGURES OF SEIN ZU ACROSS SEMANTIC MEANING CATEGORIES

Table 72 reveals that in CLEG, all occurrences of SEIN ZU can unambiguously be

assigned to one of the semantic meaning categories.

[c1056_01] Befürworter der Todesstrafe argumentieren, die Todesstrafe diene dem Heilungsprozess der Angehörigen der Opfer. Aber ist das zu rechtfertigen? ‟Supporters of the death penalty argue that the death penalty serves the healing process of the victim‟s family. But can that be justified?‟

215

[c2044_02] In einem System wo Gebühren später wieder bezahlt müssen spielt der "Sozialstatus" des Students eine geringere Rolle als ein System wo alle Gebühren sofort am Anfang des Studiumjahres zu entrichten sind. ‟In a system where fees have to be paid back later the student‟s “social status” plays a smaller role than in a system where all fees have to be paid at once at the beginning of a study year.‟

Example [c1056_01] unambiguously denotes possibility, while [c2044_02]

unambiguously denotes necessity. In the native speaker data, however, we encounter

examples that display exactly the kind of ambiguity between the different modal

meanings that is uniquely characteristic of modal infinitives:

[keds_024] Die Haltlosigkeit in der Gesellschaft , [...], ist laut Ulrich Beck auf die zunehmend kaputten Familienverhältnisse [...] zurückzuführen. ‟According to Ulrich Beck, the instability in today‟s society can/must be attributed to the increasing number of broken homes.‟

[keds_062] Prof. Dr. Petris Idee, die Kinder in den Demokratisierungsprozess einzubeziehen, ist grundlegend zu unterstützen. ‟Prof. Dr. Petri‟s idea of involving children in the democratisation process must/can/should fundamentally be supported.‟

In example [keds_024] the ambiguity is between possibility and necessity, in [keds_062]

even a three-way ambiguity between possibility, necessity and advice is present. The 10

instances of ambiguity in KEDS are equivalent to 16% of the overall frequency of SEIN

ZU – the same percentage as those instances that can be unambiguously assigned to

the meaning of necessity.

On top of this, two further differences between learners and native speakers can be

observed. First of all, the majority of sentence structures in which the SEIN ZU

constructions are found in the learner data are of the familiar semi-fixed es ist … format.

The two phrases that occur most frequently (usually sentence-initial) are Es ist nicht zu

leugnen, dass… (It cannot be denied that…) and Es ist leicht zu ersehen, dass... (It is

easy to see that…). These phrases are very rare in KEDS:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

sequence: es ist (ADJ) zu V, dass... 3 6 32 2

as % of all instances of SEIN ZU 37.5 54.4 64.0 3.3

TABLE 73: COLLIGATIONAL SEQUENCES ES IST (ADJ) ZU V, DASS…

The fact that most of the occurrences of SEIN ZU are „tied up‟ in these semi-fixed

phrases also means that the distribution of types of verbs that the construction is used

216

with in learner and native speaker corpora is different. In the learner data, especially in

Year C, the majority of infinitives are verbs that express subjective attitude (e.g. leugnen

- deny, glauben - believe) and verbs of sensory perception (e.g. (er)sehen – see ). In

KEDS, however, the biggest group of verbs is mental/speech act verbs (e.g.

unterscheiden - distinguish; bedenken - consider) and physical action verbs (e.g.

bestrafen - punish; unterbinden - stop/prevent). The following table provides a summary:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

attitude verbs 3 7 22 3

sensory perception 0 0 13 10

mental/speech act 0 3 8 32

physical action 5 1 6 14

TABLE 74: RAW FREQUENCIES OF INFINITIVE VERB TYPES IN SEIN ZU CONSTRUCTIONS

The second difference between learners and native speakers is that learners overuse

SEIN ZU constructions that are modified further by an adjective. These adjectives

indicate that the action captured in the verb phrase is either easy or difficult to achieve,

i.e. the occurring adjectives are leicht/einfach/klar (easy, clear) and schwer (difficult,

hard) as in the following examples:

[a1019_03] Ein Erstjahr Student erklärt, dass ein Lernprogramm sehr einfach zu benutzen ist. ‟A first-year student explains that an e-learning program is very easy to use.‟

[c2045_06] Es ist schwer zu sagen, ob jemand eine solche Krankheit überleben wird ‟It is hard to say whether someone will survive such an illness.‟

Table 75 gives the frequencies of these modal infinitive constructions that are further

modified by an „easy/difficult‟ adjective:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

modification by ADJ: einfach 3 1 16 2

modification by ADJ: schwer 0 2 4 1

TOTAL 3 3 20 3

as % of all instances of SEIN ZU 37.5 27.3 40.0 5.0

TABLE 75: RAW FREQUENCIES OF COLLIGATIONAL SEQUENCE SEIN ADJ ZU INF

217

Looking at the English translation we can infer that the high frequency of the German

SEIN ADJ(difficulty) ZU INF sequences is due to transfer from the common English

colligational sequence BE ADJ(difficulty) to INF130.

5.3.2 HABEN ZU

HABEN ZU is used almost as much as SEIN ZU in Year B, but otherwise this

construction does not figure much in the learner data. Although it is also not used often

in KEDS, the learner data still shows an underuse of this construction (cf. Table 71

above). From a contrastive point of view this is surprising insofar as the English

equivalent structure (have to) is much more common than the German counterpart (and

in certain contexts compulsory as the replacement for the incomplete paradigm of the

modal verb MUST, e.g. in past tense). A count in the English argumentative essay

corpus LOCNESS results in 232 instances of have to, which equals 7.2 instances per

10,000 words. This is roughly seven times more than the highest frequency for German

HABEN ZU (1.2 in Year B) in CLEG, but also over four times more than the frequency of

HABEN ZU in KEDS. A possible explanation would be that the learners are aware that

English have to has a much wider application range and therefore avoid the German

construction, as they do not „trust‟ its transferability even in the cases where it would be

possible. The low frequency of this item in the German language should also contribute

to the low salience for the learners. Another plausible explanation could be that in the

teaching material learners are introduced to the modal verb MÜSSEN as the prototypical

translation of English have to, as in German the modal verb is the prototypical means of

expressing necessity whereas in English the use of the modal verb MUST is more

restricted (see 2.3.4).

In terms of ambiguity the same observation as with SEIN ZU can be made, namely

that all instances in CLEG are unambiguous and all bar one are used for the more

common meaning of necessity, rather than possibility, as the following example

demonstrates:

[b1004_04] Frauen leben zunehmend, um zu arbeiten, weil sie vielleicht fühlen, dass sie etwas zu beweisen haben. ‟Women increasingly live for their work, maybe because they feel that they

130

A search of this pattern in the BNC with the adjectives „difficult, hard, easy, clear‟ returns 7981 hits (81.2 per million words).

218

have something to prove.‟

In KEDS, 13 out of 14 instances of HABEN ZU are used in the sense of necessity, only

one example of possibility occurs; there are also no examples for ambiguous HABEN ZU

constructions.

In summary, we have seen that both SEIN ZU and HABEN ZU constructions are

underused by the learners. We have, however, also seen qualitative differences, which

can be partly assigned to an excessive use of semi-fixed es ist … zu phrases and partly

to a suggested transfer of English semi-fixed phrases of the it is easy to see kind.

HABEN ZU constructions, on the other hand, are by and large avoided by the learners

possibly because of concern of negative transfer.

5.4 SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD (KONJUNKTIV)

5.4.1 Overview

Overall, 917 subjunctive forms were detected and annotated in CLEG, 358 in KEDS.

These figures include subjunctives of lexical verbs and the auxiliary verbs haben, sein

and werden131, but exclude subjunctive forms of modal verbs. As subjunctives of modal

verbs (especially Konjunktiv II forms) were already discussed in conjunction with the

modal verbs above (see Chapter 5.1), they will only be discussed peripherally in this

section (e.g. in the section on conditional clauses below). For the sake of completeness,

however, they are included in all further counts of subjunctive forms. Table 76 and Table

77 below give an overview of the distribution of Konjunktiv I and Konjunktiv II forms in

the different subcorpora:

131

Due to the fact that werden can function as main verb, auxiliary verb and a semi-modal verb as well as providing the analytical subjunctive form (würde + bare infinitive), this verb is counted together with lexical verbs and AUX verbs rather than modal verbs.

219

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

raw freq.

per 10,000 words

raw freq.

per 10,000 words

raw freq.

per 10,000 words

raw freq.

per 10,000 words

KON I lexical/AUX verbs

20 4.3** 81 12.3* 77 8.8 69 7.5

KON I modal verbs

4 0.9 16 2.4* 18 2.1* 8 1.0

TOTAL 24 5.2** 97 14.7** 95 10.8 77 8.5

TABLE 76: OVERALL FREQUENCIES OF KONJUNKTIV I FORMS IN LEARNER AND NATIVE SPEAKER

CORPORA (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

raw freq.

per 10,000 words

raw freq.

per 10,000 words

raw freq.

per 10,000 words

raw freq.

per 10,000 words

KON II lexical/AUX verbs

112 24.3*** 173 26.3** 471 53.8*** 290 31.5

KON II modal verbs

127 27.5 128 19.4*** 517 59.0*** 266 32.4

TOTAL 239 51.8*** 301 45.7*** 989 112.8*** 556 63.9

TABLE 77: OVERALL FREQUENCIES OF KONJUNKTIV II FORMS IN LEARNER AND NATIVE SPEAKER

CORPORA (* = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.05; ** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.01; *** = SIGNIFICANT AT P<0.001)

We can see that Konjunktiv I with lexical or auxiliary verb is underused significantly in

Year A compared to the native speaker data, but overused in Year B. Year C sees a

highly significant overuse of Konjunktiv II forms, whilst there is significant underuse in

Years A and B. A detailed look into the different categories should reveal a clearer

picture of, and give clues to, possible reasons for these patterns. Before going into these

details, however, it is necessary to turn our attention to some errors with the Konjunktiv.

Short of manually looking at every individual verb form in its context (ca. 24,000 in

CLEG), it is impossible to determine errors where an indicative verb form is used in a

context where a Konjunktiv form is compulsory. Also, as the Konjunktiv is only

compulsory in a very limited set of circumstances (mainly retrospective counterfactual

conditionals), in most circumstances it is a matter of stylistic choice whether to use a

Konjunktiv or not (cf. 2.3.5.2). Owing to the much smaller numbers and the fact that

Konjunktiv forms were manually annotated, it is, however, possible to determine those

220

errors where a Konjunktiv form is used instead of an indicative form. The following table

gives a count of this error type (including errors on modal verbs):

Year A Year B Year C

raw freq. % of all KON I/II

raw freq. % of all KON I/II

raw freq. % of all KON I/II

KON I instead of indicative 14 58.3 27 27.8 28 29.5

KON II instead of indicative 21 8.8 51 16.9 42 4.3

TABLE 78: ERROR FREQUENCIES: KONJUNKTIV INSTEAD OF INDICATIVE VERB FORMS

As the table shows, the error rate is highest for Konjunktiv I forms in Year A (58.3%). Out

of the 14 errors here, 8 are down to confusions involving werde (Konjunktiv I of

WERDEN). This is used, in equal proportions, instead of the preterite indicative form

wurde or the indicative modality/future tense marker wird, as in the following examples:

[a2025_04] Aber vor den zweiten halb der zwanziger Jahrhundert Deutschland *werde (target: wurde) sehr Nationalistisch und es hat viele undemokratische Regierungen. „But before the second half of the 20th century German became very nationalistic and it has many undemocratic governments.‟

[a1015_02] Diese Deutsche glauben, dass ihre Sprache nicht überschattet sein sollte. Aber *werde (target: wird) es schwer sein, die Benutzung von Englisch unter Jugendlichen an zu halten, weil es als "kool" schätzt ist. „These Germans believe that their language should not be overshadowed. But it will be difficult to stop young people using English, because it is considered “cool”‟.

This type of error also makes up the biggest group of errors in Konjunktiv I in Years B

and C. Taking into account that a considerable proportion of Konjunktiv I occurrences

are erroneous, this means that genuine Konjunktiv I forms in Year A are even more

significantly underused132, while the overuse in Year B becomes non-significant133.

As the main domain of the Konjunktiv I is indicating indirectness (e.g. in indirect

speech) rather than modality, and since this is the only function in which the Konjunktiv I

was found to be used in the learner data, it will not be pursued any further here. Instead

the focus of the investigation will be on the Konjunktiv II.

Errors with the Konjunktiv II, where an indicative form would be appropriate, do not

feature as frequently in the learner corpora. Surprisingly, the highest error rate with

132

LL-value: 27.06 (significant at p<0.001); LL-value before deducting errors: 6.99 (significant at p<0.01). 133

LL-value: 0.57 (not significant); LL-value before deducting errors: 8.81 (significant at p<0.01).

221

Konjunktiv II occurs in Year B. 50% of these errors are uses of the Konjunktiv II of the

modal verb KÖNNTE, instead of either the indicative present tense form KÖNNEN or the

indicative preterite form KONNTE, e.g.:

[b1043_02] Die meisten Studenten, die ich interviewiert haben, hatten ziemlich ähnlich vorgefasste Meinungen über den Lebensstil der Engländer bevor sie nach Lancaster gekommen sind, damit sie hier studieren und wohnen *könnten (target: können). „Most of the students who I interviewed hat similar preconceptions about the way English people live before they came to Lancaster so they could live an study here.‟

[b1031_01] In jeder Besatungzone war die Regierung verantwortlich für diese Zeitungen. Aus diesem Grund *könnten (target: konnten) sie veröffentlichen, was sie wollten. „In every occupied zone the government was responsible for these newspapers. For this reason they could publish whatever they wanted.‟

While the example above is quite clearly a case of morphological confusion (not

helped by the fact that the English form COULD is ambivalent between past and

subjunctive form), in many cases it is hard to determine whether these errors are due to

morphological confusion or due to semantic problems, i.e. determining when a

subjunctive form is semantically appropriate, as in the following example:

[c2032_06] Manche Länder erlauben schon die Sterbehilfe. Manche noch nicht . Das heißt, Sterbende in der Schweiz oder Belgien *könnte (target: können) die Sterbehilfe bekommen aber nicht die Sterbenden in anderen Ländern wie England. „Some countries allow medically assisted suicide. Some do not yet. This means that dying patients in Switzerland or Belgium *could (target: can) receive euthanasia but not the dying patients in other countries like England.‟

As with the Konjunktiv I, another common error type with Konjunktiv II involves the

morphology of WERDEN, where learners confuse wurde and würde, e.g.:

[a1014_03] Die deutschen Ausbildungsbehörden verlangen nach eine Kampagne , dass Deutsch als ein Shulfach fördern *wurde (target: würde). „The German education authorities call for a campaign that would promote German in schools.‟

[c2029_05] Aktive Sterbehilfe ist wie eine Einstellung zum Leben gesehen, und wenn viele Patienten darüber sprechen , haben sehr viele diese Menschen Angst , dass sie getötet werden *wurden (target: würden). „Active euthanasia is seen as an attitude to life and when many patients talk about it they are afraid that they might be put to death.‟

222

5.4.2 Lexical distribution of Konjunktiv II

Table 79 displays the distribution of Konjunktiv II forms across lexical verbs, auxiliary

verbs134 (hätte, wäre), würde and modal verbs.

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

raw freq.

per 10,000 words

raw freq.

per 10,000 words

raw freq.

per 10,000 words

raw freq.

per 10,000 words

modal verbs 127 27.5 128 19.4 517 59.0 266 32.4

würde 71 15.4 105 15.9 144 16.4 143 17.4

AUX verbs 38 8.2 58 8.8 297 33.9 121 14.7

lexical verbs 3 0.7 10 1.5 30 3.4 26 3.2

TOTAL 239 51.8 301 45.7 988 112.8 556 67.7

TABLE 79: DISTRIBUTION OF KONJUNKTIV II FORMS ACROSS VERB CATEGORIES

We can see that in all learner groups as well as in the native speaker group lexical verbs,

as expected, are least common in the Konjunktiv II, with modal verbs being the most

common group. A look at the percentages that each of these types of verbs make up out

of the overall Konjunktiv II frequencies (Table 80 below) reveals that the native speakers

use the biggest proportion of lexical verbs in the Konjunktiv II compared to the learner

groups. The proportion of würde-Konjunktiv is highest in Years A and B; in Year C it is

considerably lower than in KEDS, with bigger proportions taken up by AUX and modal

verbs.

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

modal verbs 53.1% 42.5% 52.3% 47.8%

würde 29.7% 34.9% 14.6% 25.7%

AUX verbs 15.9% 19.3% 30.1% 21.8%

lexical verbs 1.3% 3.3% 3.0% 4.7%

TOTAL 100% 100% 100% 100%

TABLE 80: KONJUNKTIV II VERB CATEGORIES AS PERCENTAGES OF OVERALL KONJUNKTIV II FREQUENCIES

The proportions of Konjunktiv II in the different verb categories in KEDS conforms

largely with an older corpus investigation by Jäger (1971), who used the Mannheimer

134

The label “auxiliary verb” is used here for all uses of hätte and wäre, regardless of whether they are actually used as auxiliary verbs or main verbs.

223

Korpus135 to determine that, across all text types in that corpus, 8% of all Konjunktiv II

forms were lexical verbs, 25% würde and 66% AUX verbs and modal verbs. The slightly

lower figure for lexical verbs in KEDS can either be attributed to a general decline in

synthetic Konjunktivs in contemporary German (cf. Fabricius-Hansen 1997:17) or to the

writing style of pupils, which might not be considered as accomplished as some of the

professionally written texts in the Mannheimer Korpus. In the learner data, it is evident

that there is a progression from Year A to Year B in terms of lexical verb Konjunktiv II

forms, although proportionally it stagnates at a level that is below the native speaker

group. The following lexical verbs in the Konjunktiv II occur in the individual sub-corpora:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

gäbe 2 gäbe 1 anschaute 1 anböte 1

*gabe 1 bekäme 2 benähme 1

käme 1 erreichte 1 bestünde 1

kotzte 1 gäbe 15 bliebe 1

*taugten 1 ginge 2 ergäbe 1

*tränkten 1 handelte 1 gäbe 4

träumte 1 hieße 1 ginge 1

*verständen 1 klonte 1 hieße 1

wüsste 2 läge 1 käme 4

litte 1 läge 2

sähe 1 ließe 4

stünde 1 redete 1

verstände 1 schaffte 1

wüsste 1 stünde 1

unterschiede 1

wüsste 1

TOTAL 2 TOTAL 10 TOTAL 30 TOTAL 26

TABLE 81: KONJUNKTIV II LEXICAL VERB TYPES AND RAW FREQUECY FIGURES (* = ERRORS; VERBS

THAT OCCUR IN CLEG AND KEDS IN BOLD)

This table indicates that there is a gradual increase in the range of lexical verbs that are

used in their Konjunktiv II form from Year A to Year C. This progression can be summed

up as follows: In Year A, Konjunktiv II with lexical verbs is largely avoided; in Year B,

more lexical verbs in Konjunktiv II occur, but with that comes also a considerable amount

of errors (40%); in Year C, the learners are using a range of verbs close to that of the

native speakers and manage to avoid errors completely. We now turn our attention from

135

Ca. 2.2 Million words from texts originating 1950-1967. Text types: fiction, scientific and popular scientific articles, light fiction, newspaper and magazine articles.

224

the lexical choices of Konjunktiv II forms to the types of contexts in which the Konjunktiv

II is used.

5.4.3 Context types of Konjunktiv II

The following overview chart gives a summary of the different types of modality contexts

that the Konjunktiv II is used for in the learner and native speaker data:

FIGURE 19: FREQUENCIES OF KONJUNKTIV II CONTEXT TYPES

Figure 19 shows that the distribution of Konjunktiv II context types is similar for learners

and native speakers, i.e. Konjunktiv II occurs most frequently in sentences that are

involved in non-factual argumentation, then in conditional clauses, then in indirect

speech contexts (cf. 2.3.5.3). Modality contexts where Konjunktiv II is used as a marker

of politeness are rare. Other Konjunktiv II contexts, such as counterfactual comparative

clauses, purpose clauses, counterfactual relative clauses and counterfactual consecutive

clauses only occur very sporadically both in the leaner and native speaker data. We can

see, however, that there is an underuse of Konjunktiv II non-factual argumentation

0.0

10.0

20.0

30.0

40.0

50.0

60.0

70.0

80.0

freq. per

10,000 words

Year A

Year B

Year C

KEDS

non-factual

argumentation

conditionalsindirect speechpolitenessothers errors (indicative

required)

225

contexts in Years A and B compared to KEDS, while this type is overused in Year C (all

three are statistically highly significant at p<0.001). Conditionals with Konjunktiv II are

overused significantly in Year C; the overuse in Years A and B are not statistically

significant compared to KEDS.

If we look, however, at the percentage distribution of types of overall Konjunktiv II

frequencies (Figure 20), it becomes clear, that in the learner corpora roughly twice as

many of all Konjunktiv II forms occur in conditional clauses than in KEDS (Year A:

20.5%; Year B: 20.9%; Year C: 26.6%; KEDS: 11.3%). At the same time, the proportion

of non-factual argumentation is considerably smaller for all learner subcorpora compared

to KEDS (Year A: 56.1%; Year B: 45.5%; Year C: 62.1%; KEDS: 77.5%):

FIGURE 20: DISTRIBUTION OF KONJUNKTIV II ACROSS CONTEXT TYPES AS PERCENTAGES OF OVERALL

KONJUNKTIV II FREQUENCIES

In order to get to the bottom of this discrepancy of Konjunktiv II uses in conditional

clauses, we shall look at these in more detail.

0.0

10.0

20.0

30.0

40.0

50.0

60.0

70.0

80.0

% of all KII uses

Year A

Year B

Year C

KEDS

non-factual

argumentation

conditionalsindirect speechpolitenessothers errors

(indicative

required)

226

5.4.4 Konjunktiv II in conditional clauses

Overall, 944 sentences containing conditionals were detected and analysed in CLEG,

281 in KEDS. These distribute over the different subcorpora as follows:

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

conditionals (raw frequencies) 203 226 515 281

overall number of sentences 2839 3792 4814 4249

conditionals as % of overall sentences

7.2 6.0 10.7 6.6

TABLE 82: OVERALL FREQUENCIES OF CONDITIONALS

Table 82 shows that, while the proportion of conditional clauses is similar to KEDS for

Years A and B, there is a marked overuse of conditional clauses overall in Year C. We

know from Figure 20 that Konjunktiv II is overused in conditional clauses in all year

groups, so if we look at the proportional distribution of different types of conditional

clause patterns (Figure 21) it is not surprising that the ones containing Konjunktiv II are

overused by the learners:

FIGURE 21: CONDITIONAL CLAUSE PATTERNS AS % OF OVERALL FREQUENCIES OF CONDITIONALS

The categories are encoded as follows: P and A refer to protasis (if-clause) and apodosis

(main clause containing the consequence of P) respectively. (I) indicates indicative mood

(any tense) in the designated clause, (KII) indicates Konjunktiv II in that clause. The

0.0

10.0

20.0

30.0

40.0

50.0

60.0

70.0

80.0

90.0

% of all

conditionals

Year A

Year B

Year C

KEDS

P(I)-A(I)P(KII)-A(KII)P(I)-A(KII)P(KII)-A(I)other

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labelling is regardless of which clause occurs first in the actual sentence. The four main

categories are therefore:

P(I) – A(I):

[a2016_03] Das Internet ist nützlich , wenn es in der richtigen Art benutzt wird aber es soll das einzige Hobby für Kinder nicht sein. „The internet is useful if it is used in the right way but it should not be the only hobby for children.‟

P(KII) – A(KII):

[c1058_02] Wenn Benimm-Kursen eingefüht würden, gäbe es nicht so viel Zeit auf den Stundenplan für akademische Klassen wie Fremdsprachen oder Wissenschaft. „If good manners courses were introduced, there wouldn’t be much space in the timetable for academic classes like foreign languages or science.‟

P(I) – A(KII):

[keds_011] Auch wenn der Staat auf eine spezielle Besteuerung in der Art der Tabak- und der Alkoholsteuern verzichtet, würde der Handel in jedem Fall von der Umsatzsteuer erfaßt. „Even if the government refrains from imposing a special kind of tax like the one on tobacco or alcohol, the trade would in any case be liable to VAT.‟

P(KII) – A(I):

[c2044_01] Wenn eine Krankheit früher diagnostiziert werden könnte, gibt es für den Patient weniger Belastung. „If an illness could be diagnosed earlier, there is less strain for the patient.‟

Figure 21 shows that by far the majority of conditionals in all subcorpora is of the type

P(I) – A(I)136, containing indicatives in both main and if-clause (or, in Nehls‟ (1978)

terminology, „direct prospective predicative‟ conditionals, see 2.3.5.3). These are not our

main concern here, as our interest lies mainly with the types containing Konjunktiv II. It

is, however, noteworthy that there are some signs of L1-influence in this type of

conditional. In English, the default sequence of tenses is P(present tense) – A(will), e.g.:

136

Year A: 77.8%; Year B: 74.3%; Year C: 62.1%; KEDS: 84.0%

228

(14) If you park your care here, you will get a ticket.

In German, on the other hand, the sequence is P(present tense) – A(present tense or

WERDEN), with the present tense in the apodosis being the much more common option

than WERDEN, e.g.:

(15) Wenn du dein Auto hier parkst, bekommst du einen Strafzettel.

In KEDS, the proportion of WERDEN in the apodosis out of all direct prospective

predicative conditionals is 5.5%. A look at the learner data reveals that learners do

overuse WERDEN in apodosis clauses compared to KEDS, thus following the default

English pattern rather than the German one. This overuse, however, is not so great as to

warrant assigning the overuse to the transfer of this conditional clause pattern: Year A:

8.2%; Year B: 8.9%; Year C: 7.5%. Considering that a general L1-influenced overuse of

the verb WERDEN was already established in the modal verb section (cf. 5.1.1.6), we

are probably seeing the effects of this here rather than an overuse induced specifically

by this particular conditional clause pattern.

Going back to the overuse of Konjunktiv II in conditionals, Figure 21 shows a

considerable overuse of two patterns containing Konjunktiv II: P(KII) – A(KII)137 and

P(I) – A(KII)138. The conditional pattern containing only indicatives (P(I) – A(I)) is slightly

underused by the learners compared to the native speaker group; this seems to suggest

that the learners have more of a tendency to explicitly mark modality/non-factuality in

conditional clauses by using Konjunktiv II forms than the native speakers (although, as

discussed in 2.3.5.3.a, indicative in conditional clauses does not necessarily indicate

factuality). We will now look into these patterns that contain Konjunktiv II.

In German, the pattern P(KII) – A(KII) is used for indirect prospective predicative

conditionals (16) or non-factual prospective conditionals (17):

137

Year A: 13.8%; Year B: 15.0%; Year C: 19.2%; KEDS: 5.3% 138

Year A: 7.4%; Year B: 9.3%; Year C: 16.3%; KEDS: 7.1%

229

(16) Wenn er seine Hausaufgaben gewissenhaft machen würde, würde er bessere Noten bekommen. „If he did his homework more thoroughly, he would get better marks.‟

(17) Wenn morgen Wahlen wären, würde die SPD verlieren. „If elections were held tomorrow, the SPD would lose.‟

The second pattern, P(I) – A(KII) can be said to be a mixture between direct and indirect

prospective predicative conditionals (18):

(18) Wenn er ein Auto stiehlt, würde er ins Gefängnis gehen. „If he stole a car, he would go to prison.‟

If we look at the translations of the last three examples we can see that the English

pattern for all of these is a variation of the German P(I) – A(KII) pattern139.

The difference from the German pattern is, however, that there is a tense-shift to past

tense140 in English, whereas in the German pattern with indicative, i.e. the mixed

direct/indirect pattern (18), there is no tense-shift in the protasis, i.e. the wenn-clause

contains an indicative present tense form (a past tense form would indicate posteriority,

which is neither intended in example (18) nor in the following corpus example illustrating

the mixed direct/indirect pattern):

[keds_046] Außerdem läge ein Verstoß gegen den Grundsatz der Verhältnismäßigkeit vor, wenn Hunde der K1 trotz bestandenem Wesenstest zum Tragen eines Maulkorbs verpflichtet sind. „It would furthermore amount to a violation of the principle of proportionality if dogs of the category K1 were obligated to wear a muzzle even after passing a character test.‟

Secondly, this pattern cannot be used for non-factual prospective conditionals, as for

these a Konjunktiv II form is required in both protasis and apodosis, e.g:

[keds_044] Was würde geschehen, wenn es plötzlich keine Noten mehr geben würde? „What would happen, if marks were suddenly not used anymore?‟

Looking at the error rates for these two types in the learner data, we can see that both of

these patterns cause considerable problems especially for the less advanced learners:

139

A translation involving the English subjunctive in the protasis is conceivable in these contexts („If he were to do his homework more thoroughly…‟ – „If elections were to be held tomorrow…‟ – „If he were to steal a car…‟). The use of the subjunctive in conditional clauses is, however, very rare in present day English (cf. Erdmann 1981:115) and is mainly restricted to historically fossilised formulaic phrases, e.g „If I were you…‟.

140 According to Nehls (1978:52) this tense-shift acts as a tense-metaphor (where “remote” tense, i.e. past tense, equates to “remote” factuality, i.e. non-factuality) within the otherwise present tense context.

230

Year A Year B Year C

frequency pattern P(I) – A(KII) 15 21 84

errors 5 7 17

errors as % of all P(I) – A(KII) 33.3 33.3 20.2

TABLE 83: ERROR RATE FOR CONDITIONAL CLAUSE PATTERN P(I) – A(KII)

Year A Year B Year C

frequency pattern P(KII) – A(KII) 28 34 99

errors 15 16 19

errors as % of all P(KII) – A(KII) 53.6 47.1 19.2

TABLE 84: ERROR RATE FOR CONDITIONAL CLAUSE PATTERN P(KII) – A(KII)

From the cross-linguistic differences in the conditional patterns that have just been

discussed, one might expect errors mainly in the form of indicative past tense forms in

the protasis (if-clause) instead of either indicative present tense or Konjunktiv II. A closer

look at the individual errors, however, reveals a different reality.

All errors in the P(I) – A(KII) patterns in all three learner groups occur in the apodosis

clause, i.e. on the Konjunktiv II form. These errors consist almost exclusively of errors on

modal verbs, specifically KONNTE instead of KÖNNTE , SOLLEN instead of SOLLTE

and the past tense form of WERDEN (wurde) instead of würde (Year A: 100%; Year B:

100%; Year C: 88%). We have already seen that the distinction between the preterite

and subjunctive forms of modal verbs (cf. Table 18, p.135), the semantic distinction

between SOLLEN and SOLLTE (cf. Table 27, p.154) and the morphology of WERDEN

(cf. 5.1.1.6 and 5.4.1) are common problems for the learners. This suggests that the

problem here could be, at least in parts, not specifically to do with the conditional clauses

themselves, but rather a more general difficulty with various morphological verb forms

and their semantic differences. This observation runs contrary to Kufner‟s (1962:77)

statement that “most of the difficulties which our English-speaking students encounter

are of a semantic nature, i.e. they have more trouble determining when and why to use a

subjunctive than how to use it.”

The picture is slightly different in the second pattern, P(KII) – A(KII). Modal verbs do

not feature frequently in the error counts here. The wurde/würde distinction is only a

major problem in Year A (38% of errors). Instead the errors are of a much more varied

231

kind: learners, especially in Years A and B, use indicative forms – both present and

preterite – of auxiliary verbs, modal verbs and main verbs. The following examples serve

to show this diversity:

[a2020_02] Wenn es keine Kontrolle des Internets *gab (target: gäbe), dann würden Eltern viele Probleme haben, ... „If control over the internet didn‟t exist, parents would have many problems…‟

[a2018_04] Meinung nach wäre es besser wenn alle Leute besser integriert *sind (target: wären). „In my opinion it would be better if all people were better integrated.‟

[b1006_05] Wenn wir die Lotterie gewinnen würden, könnten wir mit keiner Arbeit überleben, oder wenn wir eine reiche Familie hätten, *brauchen (target: bräuchten) wir kein mehr Geld. „If we won the lottery, we could survive without work, or if we had a rich family, we wouldn‟t need any more money.‟

[c2033_02] Wenn wir keine Demokratie *haben (target: hätten), würden wir die meisten unserer Sozialrecht verlieren. „If we didn‟t have a democracy, we would lose most of our social rights.‟

Another point worth noting is that in Year C, a third of the errors (6 out of 19; 32%) are

actually Konjunktiv II forms where indicative forms are required. This type of error does

not occur in Years A and B.

[c2045_01] Es bleibt zu hoffen, dass die Gentechnik nicht außer Kontrolle entgleiten *würde (target: wird), wenn sie nicht gestoppt werden *würde (target: wird). „It remains to be hoped that genetic engineering won‟t get out of control if it isn‟t stopped.‟

[c1051_05] Trotzdem ist es deutlich, das es nicht möglich wäre, Kosten für Studenten zu reduzieren, und gleichzeitig Facilitäten zu verbessern. Wenn man Universitätqualifikationen kriegen will, *müsste (target: muss) man leider bezahlen. „It is nevertheless obvious that it wouldn‟t be possible to reduce costs for students and improve facilities at the same time. If you want to get university qualifications, unfortunately you have to pay.‟

In this conditional pattern, more errors occur in the protasis (if-clause) clause than in the

apodosis clause, as the following table demonstrates:

232

Year A Year B Year C

errors in protasis clause 16 12 14

errors in apodosis clause 6 6 10

TABLE 85: ERRORS IN CONDITIONAL CLAUSE PATTERN P(KII) – A(KII)

Together with the types of errors that occur in the P(KII) – A (KII) pattern the figures from

Table 85 might be taken as evidence that learners do have difficulties with the fact that,

in German non-factual conditional clauses, both the protasis and the apodosis clause

require a Konjunktiv II form. This is most probably in addition to grappling with the

morphology of the Konjunktiv II itself. In this case, the corpus data cannot provide further

clues as to which of the underlying causes for problems is more prevalent (morphology

or semantics). Other means of gathering information on this issue, e.g. elicitation or

think-aloud tests, might yield more definitive information.

In the last section, we have mainly concentrated on errors rather than on positive

performance, as this has proven to give some indication of the difficulties involved in the

acquisition and correct application of the Konjunktiv. It should have become clear that

these arise due to the very diverse morphological structure of the German Konjunktiv

system as well as some grammatical/semantic aspects of when to use a Konjunktiv –

both aspects where English differs radically from German. This should not, however,

deflect from the fact that learners – even in Year A – have already started to acquire and

understand the German subjunctive system and in many cases achieve correct and

appropriate uses of the Konjunktiv in hypothetical argumentation, conditionals, indirect

speech and other, more marginalised, contexts. To conclude this chapter, we shall

therefore display some examples of this:

[a2008_02] Spätere Öffnung Zeiten würde bedeuten, dass Leute, die spät (wie zum Beispiel Krankenschwestern, Doktoren, Rausschmeißer) arbeiten, ein Getränk nach der Arbeit mit ihren Freunden genießen könnten. „Extended opening hours would mean that people who work late (such as, for instance, nurses, doctors, bouncers) could enjoy a drink after work with their friends.‟

[c2039_05] Niemand hat das Recht Gott zu spielen. Die Sterbehilfe wäre gegen alle Religionen, die behaupten, dass nur Gott das Recht das Leben und das Tod zu kontrollieren hat. „Nobody has the right to play God. Assisted suicide would go against all religions that claim that only God has the right to decide over life and death.‟

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[a2009_03] Zunächst ist Tony Blair fast daran überzeugt, dass die verlängerten Öffnungszeiten besser für England wäre. „First of all, Tony Blair is absolutely convinced that extended opening hours would be better for England.‟

[b1037_01] Tatsächlich der Artikel sagt, in den USA hätten 60% der Karrierefrauen ihre Jobs verlässen, und in Großbritannien könnte es höher sein. „In fact the article says that in the US 60% of career women had left their jobs and in Great Britain it could be more.‟

[c1056_06] Es scheint als ob, die Möglichkeit nach dem Studium zu zahlen die beste Lösung wäre. „It seems as if the possibility of paying after your course of studies would be the best solution.‟

[b1032_02] Zum Abschluss würde ich sagen , dass das Leben der modernen Frau schieriger geworden ist , aber Frauen haben für Gleichberechtigung gekämpft, und es ist was sie wollen. „In conclusion I would say that the life of modern women has become more difficult, but women have fought for equality and it is what they want.‟

This last part completes the analysis of modality in my learner corpus. The following

chapter is dedicated to evaluating the observations that have been made about various

groups of modal expressions within the context of previous research on modality and

current second language acquisition theories.

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6. Summary and Discussion

In the previous chapter, the results of the explorative learner corpus investigation were

presented according to the four groups of linguistic means that had been identified as

expressions of modality in the theoretical outline. This chapter consists of, first of all, a

summary of the key results, where links between the different modal means are also

established and, secondly, a discussion of these key findings in light of existing research

on learner modality and second language acquisition theories. One of the main points

that arises out of this discussion is that the linguistic and acquisitional theories that have

to be considered in order to explain the different patterns and phenomena of learner

modality are as diverse as the modal expressions themselves. Cross-linguistic influences

will be shown to be an important explanatory factor as well as intralingual developmental

factors and teaching materials.

6.1 SUMMARY OF RESULTS

As in the results chapter, there are two overarching themes in this summary that

determine the focus of all the different findings. These pertain to results that characterise

similarities and differences between learners and native speakers on the one hand and

between learners at different stages of proficiency on the other. As these two aspects

are often interlinked, in most cases no single factor but an accumulative effect of several

factors provides the key for explaining certain learner specific features. These features

manifest themselves in the following key findings:

1. General overuse of modal expressions:

Learners in all year groups considerably overuse modal verbs. Periphrastic modal

expressions are slightly underused by learners in the lower proficiency groups, but

overused in the advanced group. If all the different modal expressions are

considered together, learners exhibit a tendency to overuse modal expressions, i.e.

they tend to explicitly express modality more than native speakers. This applies in

particular to the most advanced learners, where the propensity to be explicit is also

visible in the overuse of the Konjunktiv II.

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2. Ranking of modal verbs:

The frequency ranking of modal verbs for all learner groups together is virtually the

same as in the comparable native speaker corpus (KEDS) and the general native

speaker corpus (LIMAS), but split into year groups there are differences:

Lower proficiency groups (Years A and B):

KÖNNEN – MÜSSEN – WOLLEN – SOLLEN – MÖGEN – DÜRFEN

Advanced proficiency group (Year C):

KÖNNEN – SOLLEN – MÜSSEN – WOLLEN – DÜRFEN – MÖGEN

KEDS: KÖNNEN – MÜSSEN – SOLLEN – WOLLEN – DÜRFEN – MÖGEN

3. Form/meaning equivalents in the learners‟ native and target language:

Epistemic modal verbs with form/meaning equivalents in the target language and

high mutual translatability (MÜSSEN, KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE, WERDEN) have been

acquired by learners in all year groups and tend to be overused.

Modal verbs without form/meaning equivalents (evidential SOLLEN and WOLLEN,

MÜSSTE, DÜRFTE) or low translatability (MÖGEN and SOLLTE) have not been

acquired even in the most advanced year group. Only SOLLTE shows some signs

of being acquired in this group.

There is no correspondence between form/meaning equivalents and over-

/underuse patterns in non-epistemic modality. Non-equivalent modal verbs are not

avoided; indeed, most non-epistemic modal verbs are overused by the learners,

but correspondence patterns between modal verbs and periphrastic modal

expressions are similar to those for epistemic modality (see next point).

4. Correspondences between usage patterns of modal verbs and periphrastic

modal expressions:

Periphrastic modal expressions are overused to compensate for the semantic gap

left by the not yet acquired epistemic modal verbs MÜSSTE, SOLLTE, DÜRFTE

and MÖGEN in order to express mitigated certainty or possibility. Generally, both

learners and native speakers prefer to use periphrastic modal expressions for

epistemic modality over modal verbs.

Although there is no corresponding pattern of modal verb underuse, analogous to

the relationship between epistemic modal verbs and PMEs, learners tend to

underuse non-epistemic PMEs where the corresponding modal verb has an L1

form/meaning equivalent (MÜSSEN, SOLLEN/SOLLTE, KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE) and

overuse PMEs where a form/meaning equivalent does not exist for the

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corresponding modal verb (WOLLEN, MÖCHTE, MÖGEN, DÜRFEN). This is

irrespective of whether the corresponding modal verb is overused or underused.

Generally, both learners and native speakers prefer to use modal verbs for non-

epistemic modality over PMEs.

5. Difficulties with morphological and semantic distinction of indicative and

Konjunktiv II modal verb forms:

Learners in all year groups exhibit grave difficulties with the Konjunktiv II forms of

modal verbs (MÜSSTE, SOLLTE, KÖNNTE, DÜRFTE). These difficulties pertain

both to the morphological forms of these verbs and their semantic distinction from

the indicative verb forms.

6. Personalised expressions:

Personalised expressions explicitly indicate writer involvement in an assessment of

propositional validity. Learners show a distinct tendency for overusing personalised

expressions compared to native speakers. This preference is strongest in the lower

year groups and diminishes with growing proficiency.

7. Range of modal expressions and formulaic sequences:

In the use of periphrastic modal expressions, learners continuously expand their

vocabulary range from lower to more advanced proficiency groups, although even

the most advanced of learners only reach a lexical range that is lower than that of

the native speakers (ca. 75% of different types compared to the native speakers).

The growing vocabulary range also corresponds with a higher frequency of PMEs

overall. The same developmental pattern can be observed with the Konjunktiv II.

Learners develop distinct formulaic sequences in the course of their progression.

In the two lower year groups they often appear to be constructed analytically from

lexical items that the learners have encountered. In the most advanced year group

there is overwhelming evidence of fossilised formulaic sequences, which are

greatly overused by the learners compared to the native speakers. These differ

from the formulaic sequences of native speakers in a number of ways.

The rare occurrences of modal infinitives are also restricted to formulaic

sequences, which do not seem to be analysed for their grammatical content. This

means that, although some learners do use these structures, they do not seem to

have any explicit meta-linguistic knowledge of the category „modal infinitives‟.

8. Konjunktiv II as indicator of learner proficiency:

Usage patterns of the Konjunktiv II can serve as indicators of learner proficiency as

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its use is limited both in terms of frequency and lexical diversity in the first two

years and only expands to its full use in the final year. However, even in that final

year, learners exhibit a marked tendency to apply the Konjunktiv II in „set/learned‟

contexts, predominantly conditional clauses.

6.2 DISCUSSION

6.2.1 Overuse of modal expressions

Learners in all year groups in CLEG significantly overuse modal verbs compared to

native speakers in the comparable corpus KEDS. But this native speaker group also

overuses modal verbs compared to the general native speaker corpus LIMAS. On the

one hand this can be ascribed to the central role of modality in argumentative writing,

which other studies on modality have also pointed out (cf. e.g. Ehlich and Rehbein 1972;

Redder 2001; Aijmer 2002) and which underlines how text-type sensitive and dependent

modality is (cf. also Dagneaux 1995).

On the other hand, a more learner-centred explanation is possible. Hunston (2002)

conducted a learner corpus study on the spoken language of Norwegian teenagers‟ L2

English and also found that the learners overuse modal verbs compared to the spoken

discourse of teenage native speakers. Aijmer (2002) found in her study on learner

English that advanced learners with various L1s (Swedish, German, French) all overuse

modal verbs in their argumentative writing. The same holds for L1-Cantonese learners of

English (Hyland and Milton 1997). This indicates that the overuse of modal verbs is a

general feature of learner language, which is not dependent on the learners‟ L1. Aijmer

(2002:73) points out that high frequencies of certain modal verbs are characteristic for

native speaker spoken discourse141 (cf. also Biber 2006) and that the tendency for

learners of English to include speech-like features in their written work has been attested

in a number of studies on various aspects of language (e.g. DeCock 2000; Meunier

2000; Lorenz 1999; Granger and Rayson 1998; Altenberg and Tapper 1998). One of

these aspects is highly recurrent word combinations (HRWC). DeCock (2000:58) is able

141

A frequency comparison for modal verbs in the spoken and written German resulted in a similar observation for German. In the DWDS corpus (Deutsches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache des 20. Jahrhunderts) all modal verbs occur in significantly higher frequencies in spoken language than in written language. (For a description of the DWDS corpora see e.g. Geyken 2009).

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to show that the difference between spontaneous speech and formal writing is less

marked in learner corpora than in native speaker corpora with regard to the use of

HRWCs, such as it is true that or I would say that, for example. This is manifest both in

the unusually high frequency of recurrent sequences in learner writing and in the fact that

specific usage patterns for longer HRWCs are similar for native speaker speech and

learner speech AND writing, but distinctly different for native speaker writing.

It has to be noted here, that the distinction between „spoken‟ versus „written‟ language

is not as straightforward as the simple reference to the medium of production suggests

(cf. e.g. Wilson 2009). It has been shown that a number of situational factors, such as

level of formality and overall purpose of the text (e.g. to inform, entertain or convince) are

more accurate for predicting the occurrence of certain linguistic features than the

distinction between speech and writing (cf. e.g. Biber 1988; Nakamura 1993; Takahashi

2006). The current discussion is centred on the specific discourse type of argumentative

writing within the instructional setting of a school or university. This requires a relatively

formal presentation of arguments that prove to the teacher that a student can formulate

their opinion in a refined and balanced way. The expected level of formality is therefore

higher than many of the discourse types that the students engage in during spontaneous

spoken conversations. It is with respect to this difference that the term speech-

like/spoken register is used in this discussion as a short-hand for the more intricate

differentiations involved.

The frequency figures for modal verbs in the present study indicates that features of

the same tendency for spoken register can be found in L1 English learners of German.

We will see in the course of the further discussion that there is plenty more evidence for

this trend in various other modal aspects. This suggests that this feature of learner

language is not just L1, but also L2-independent.

In the lower proficiency year groups A and B, the overuse of modal verbs is, to some

extent, counterweighted by an underuse of other modal means (periphrastic modal

expressions, modal infinitives and Konjunktiv II). In the most advanced year group C,

however, Konjunktiv II forms and periphrastic modal expressions are also significantly

overused. This corroborates the findings of Hyland and Milton (1997), who report an

overuse of modal adverbials in learner writing, although their cross-sectional study only

pertains to epistemic modality. They show that advanced L2 English writers use more

epistemic devices overall than lower proficiency learners. Both Hyland and Milton and

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the present study come to the conclusion that, while both lower and higher proficiency

groups rely heavily on certain modal verbs, it is the increased frequency of periphrastic

modal expressions, especially for epistemic modality, that characterises the most

advanced proficiency group. For learner German, we have additionally identified the

increased use of Konjunktiv II forms as contributing to the overuse of modal expressions

(this will be discussed in more detail in 6.2.8).

In summary, if all the different modal expressions are considered together, learners

exhibit a tendency to overuse modal expressions. This has been shown to tie in with a

more speech-like register, rich in modal verbs and periphrastic modal expressions. It

could, however, also be indicative of another general trend. The overuse of modal

expressions means that learners explicitly express modality more than native speakers.

This propensity for explicitness has also been suggested in other research as a potential

characterising feature of learner language. Lorenz (1999), for instance, investigates

adjective intensification in L1-German learners‟ writing in English. He concludes that

“learners are more anxious to make an impression than native speakers […] they employ

every means at their disposal […] the subjective effect is one of overstatement […] of

„too much communicative effort‟” (Lorenz 1999:199f) and “information overcharge” (ibid:

206). My data seems to corroborate these impressions. As soon as the learners have

certain means to express modality at their disposal, they employ them as much as

possible – to the point of „overcharge‟. This shows in the increased rate of periphrastic

modal expressions in the advanced year group, but also in the significant overuse of

Konjunktiv II forms in this group. This means that, unlike Lorenz (1999), we see the

tendency to employ explicit markers of modality not only in lexical, but also in

grammatical structures – another reason to assume a general feature of learner

language rather than a phenomenon tied in to one particular linguistic phenomenon.

It seems that, once the learners are confident that they have mastered this particular

category, they will endeavour to prove their proficiency by incorporating more and more

of these items into their writing. The fact that all the texts that have gone into the corpus

are part of the students‟ assessed coursework (where sometimes explicit „bonus marks‟

are awarded if a learner uses certain structures) surely is an influencing factor for the

learners‟ eagerness to make an impression.

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6.2.2 Ranking of modal verbs

The previous section discussed, amongst other things, that the results of this study

clearly corroborate previous claims that modal verb frequencies are generally highly text-

type dependent. In this section, the focus is less on absolute frequencies, but rather on

the relative frequencies and rank order of modal verbs in the different corpora. The

comparison between the comparable native speaker corpus KEDS and the general

native speaker corpus LIMAS has uncovered no text-type specific difference, i.e. the

rank order of modal verbs in KEDS and LIMAS is, by and large, identical142:

KÖNNEN – MÜSSEN – SOLLEN – WOLLEN – MÖGEN – DÜRFEN

This is also identical to the overall rank order for the whole of the learner corpus

CLEG. If, however, the learner corpus is split into the different year groups, differences

can be observed. In the lower proficiency groups (Years A and B) the order is as follows:

KÖNNEN – MÜSSEN – WOLLEN – SOLLEN – MÖGEN – DÜRFEN

In the advanced proficiency group (Year C) the order is:

KÖNNEN – SOLLEN – MÜSSEN – WOLLEN – DÜRFEN – MÖGEN

The most striking difference is the prominence of WOLLEN over SOLLEN in the lower

groups. This prominence of WOLLEN is reminiscent of the order in Dittmar et al.‟s

studies (Dittmar 1979; Dittmar and Terborg 1991; Dittmar and Ahrenholz 1995) on the

emergence of modal verbs in natural settings, although the learners in Years A and B

are clearly more advanced than the subjects in their studies (see 3.1). Their findings

show that, despite some differences depending on the learners‟ L1, it is the modal verbs

WOLLEN, MÜSSEN and KÖNNEN which are acquired first, while SOLLEN, MÖGEN

and DÜRFEN are acquired much later. Dittmar (1979) identifies meaning extensions and

communicative needs as factors influencing this acquisitional order. With regard to the

instructed learners in the present study, the teaching material could also play a part.

Corpus evidence can, again, provide another possible factor for consideration. It has

been noted earlier that learners often exhibit a tendency to take on a more speech-like

register when writing in a foreign language. A comparison between spoken and written

corpus data from the DWDS corpus retrieving the relative frequencies of WOLLEN and

SOLLEN uncovered that WOLLEN is roughly twice as frequent as SOLLEN in the

142

In LIMAS, the last two, lowest frequency items MÖGEN and DÜRFEN are reversed.

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spoken parts of the corpora. In written parts, the reverse is the case with SOLLEN being

twice as frequent as WOLLEN. This ratio is confirmed in the LIMAS corpus, the KEDS

corpus and also the advanced learner group subcorpus Year C. In the lower proficiency

groups, however, WOLLEN occurs up to one-and-a-half times as frequently as SOLLEN,

effectively making the relative frequencies and rankings of modal verbs more akin to

those of the spoken data. The prominence of WOLLEN in the CLEG data could therefore

yet again be ascribed to the more speech-like writing style of the lower proficiency year

groups, which, in turn, can be taken as a sign of the learners not mastering the L2 genre

conventions of argumentative writing, whilst the more advanced learners manage to

approximate more closely the appropriate register in this respect.

6.2.3 Form/meaning equivalents in learners‟ native and target language

Epistemic modal verbs with form/meaning equivalents in the target language and high

mutual correspondence values (MÜSSEN, KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE, WERDEN) have been

acquired by learners in all year groups and tend to be overused. Epistemic modal verbs

without form/meaning equivalents (evidential SOLLEN and WOLLEN, MÜSSTE,

DÜRFTE) or low mutual correspondence value (MÖGEN and SOLLTE) have not been

acquired even in the most advanced year group. Only SOLLTE shows some signs of

being acquired in this group. These findings support Lindemann‟s (1992) notion of a

„standard repertoire‟ (see 3.2) – consisting mainly of those modal verb meanings where

lexical transfer from the close cognates in the L1 is positive – and Giacalone Ramat‟s

(1999:390) statement that “the learner seems to look first for form/function units which

have a counterpart in the first language.” Other modal verb meanings are only acquired

at a later stage and with considerable difficulty, which is also in line with Lindemann‟s

(1992:144) analysis that transfer from the L1 is a key factor in modal verb acquisition.

Our study equally demonstrates that L1-influence certainly plays a decisive role in the

acquisition and use of modal verbs. In its most „visible‟ form, it occurs in the form of

negative transfer errors. The prominence of NICHT MÜSSEN instead of NICHT

DÜRFEN in order to express the notion of prohibition, especially in the lower proficiency

groups, is one case in point (see 5.1.2.2). The use of WERDEN in general event and

habitual contexts is another (see 5.1.1.6). In Jarvis and Pavlenko‟s (2008:75) definition,

these are cases of semantic transfer, as they involve “the use of an authentic target word

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with a meaning that reflects influence from the semantic range of a corresponding word

in another language”. In English, the semantic range of the modal verb MUST, for

example, entails the notion of prohibition if the modal verb is negated and the learners

transfer this range into the target language143.

In the context of the language classroom such negative transfer is, of course,

classified and penalised as an error, but in the context of a description of learner

interlanguage, as is attempted here, these instances of transfer are valuable. They

indicate that learners utilise their knowledge of the L1 in order to produce and test

hypotheses about the L2. This is, of course, not a new idea, as the notion of transfer has

been the subject of second language acquisition research for many years.

However, the corpus data we have available now allows insights into transfer

phenomena that go beyond the observation of errors and include the analysis of patterns

of under- and overrepresentation, which in turn can shed new light on various factors

influencing transfer (cf. e.g. Jarvis and Pavlenko 2008:49). The close typological

proximity of German and English in general, and in the modal verb system in particular,

virtually invites the learner to transfer. For large parts of modal verb meanings the use of

form/meaning equivalents or close cognates (i.e. L1-transfer leads to a positive outcome

and thus facilitates learning). As these form/meaning equivalents also cover the most

prolific and frequent categories of epistemic and non-epistemic modality144, the learner

experiences a great number of receptive and productive instances, where a hypothesis

about the semantic and pragmatic characteristics of a German modal verb that is based

on the characteristics of the English cognate modal verb is confirmed. These modal

verbs therefore fulfil three crucial factors that Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008:177ff) identify

as interacting strongly with transfer: cross-linguistic similarity, frequency and

prototypicality.

Evidence from cognitive linguistics confirms that “L1 and L2 cognates have

exceptionally strong formal links in the bilingual mental lexicon, so that translation can

take place directly at the lexeme level without calling up the associated conceptual

representations” (Jarvis and Pavlenko 2008:85). In Jiang‟s (2002) model, form-meaning

mapping forms the essential part of vocabulary acquisition for L2 words with existing L1

143

Similarly, negative semantic transfer can be observed for some periphrastic modal expressions, e.g. the use of wenigstens in the sense of mindestens, where the English expression at least covers the semantic range of both German espressions (see 6.2.2.1).

144 These are: epistemic certainty (MÜSSEN, WERDEN) and possibility (KÖNNEN) and non-epistemic necessity (MÜSSEN), advice (SOLLTE) and possibility (KÖNNEN).

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translations and concepts. He suggests that in the early stage of vocabulary acquisition,

L2 words are initially mapped to L1 translations, not to meaning directly:

“Each time an L2 word is encountered, its L1 translation is activated to provide

lemma information (i.e. meaning and syntax) […] With increased experience in L2,

which means increased coactivation of L2 words and their L1 lemma information, a

strong link is established between L2 words and the lemma component of their L1

translations. That is, L2 words are no longer mapped to L1 translations but to L1

meaning directly.” (Jiang 2002:619)

Jiang goes on to suggest that, once L1 semantic information has been copied into the L2

lexical entry, it becomes part of the lexical knowledge represented in L2 entries and it is

then very hard for new meanings to replace or add to the existing ones. The L1 semantic

information in the L2 lexical entry continues to mediate L2 word use even with continued

exposure to the L2. “As a result, even highly proficient L2 users will use L2 words on the

basis of the semantic specifications of their L1 translations” (Jiang 2002:619). The theory

that, once L1 semantic information has infiltrated the L2 lexical entry, it is hard to replace

or amend is supported by cognitive research that provides explanations for why

similarities and differences in L1 and L2 can influence acquisition. Ellis (2008) is able to

show that two relevant factors (proven to influence language learning) are proactive

inhibition and blocking. Proactive inhibition states that prior learning (e.g. the semantic

content of a word in the L1) inhibits new learning (e.g. the semantic content of a word in

the L2). Blocking means that once a certain cue is associated with a certain outcome

(e.g. a certain word with a certain semantic meaning), then the later association of

another cue with the same outcome is blocked due to the prior learning of the first cue

(and leads to automatically learned inattention).

All of these factors should contribute to the learners perceiving extensive similarities

in the modal systems of their native language and the target language145, and it is exactly

this deficiency in marked contrasts that, in turn, leads to overextensions of similarities.

This process is enforced even further by some learner textbooks and grammars (e.g.

Zeitgeist and Brennpunkt), which promote the impression of one-to-one equivalence

between many German and English modal verbs and therefore encourage transfer

without enough emphasis on the differences.

145

Although I agree with Lindemann (1992:146) that it is doubtful that learners possess declarative knowledge of the L1 that matches a linguistic description of the modal system as a whole.

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At the same time, structures that are perceived by the L2 user as marked, i.e. as L2

specific or atypical, are less likely to transfer (cf. Jarvis and Pavlenko 2008:187). This

can be seen in the modal verbs without L1/L2 equivalents or low mutual correspondence

values. The use of modal verbs in order to express evidentials, for example, is a non-

prototypical use (although not exclusive to the German language). Here, the cross-

linguistic difference and markedness of these structures is paired with low frequencies in

the native speaker data. All of these factors discourage transfer and, in the case of my

learner data, lead to the avoidance or non-acquisition of these particular modal verb

meanings.

So far, we have seen that semantic transfer can explain certain error patterns and

avoidance. In order to explain the overuse of certain modal verbs, however, a different

type of cross-linguistic influence has to be considered: conceptual transfer. In line with

theories on linguistic relativity146 (i.e. the influence of language on thought) conceptual

transfer can be defined as those cases of linguistic relativity involving comprehension or

production in a second language (Odlin 2005:5). Unlike linguistic transfer (i.e. the

transfer of linguistic forms and structures), which entails e.g. semantic transfer as

described above, conceptual transfer relates to the transfer of the mental concepts that

underlie those forms and structures and consequently the “ways in which conceptual

representations are structured and mapped to language” (Jarvis and Pavlenko

2008:112).

According to Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008:113) children develop these conceptual

representations during the process of cognitive maturation. Conceptual development is

an experience-based developmental process that results in two types of conceptual

representations – those that are language independent and those that are language-

mediated. We are mainly interested in the latter category here, as this affects cross-

linguistic influence. Language-mediated concepts develop in the process of language

socialisation where word learning and category acquisition influence each other over an

extended period of time. Once children have internalised basic conceptual distinctions

characteristic of their first language, these language-mediated concepts then also guide

their attention to and selection of referential reality for subsequent memorisation and

description.

146

For a detailed summary of the ideas involved in the theory of linguistic relativity see e.g. Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008) and Odlin (2005).

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As the focus in this study is on the perspective of cross-linguistic influence, we are

therefore concerned here with the effects that the language-mediated concepts of one

language have on the verbalisation of thoughts in another – conceptual transfer. It is this

type of transfer that can explain the extensive overuse of the modal verb WERDEN in

the learner data. The analysis established that it is WERDEN with future-time reference

that is the biggest contributor to the overuse by learners in all year groups. This can be

accounted for by the ways in which the concepts of present-time and futurity are

encoded in the learners‟ L1 and L2. In English, the simple present tense is unmarked

only for present-time events. It can be used for future events, but its use in this function

is highly restricted to future events that are perceived as absolutely certain, it is marked

and infrequent. In order to express future events, WILL and GOING TO are by far the

most widely applicable, frequent and prototypical forms. The present progressive is also

available where the future event results from a present plan or arrangement.

On the whole, any notion of futurity in English, be it immediate or not, has to be

expressed by some explicit marker and the learners seem to transfer the way the

concept of futurity is verbalised in their L1 to the L2 target language. However, all of the

different forms to express present and future time in English stand vis-à-vis just two

forms in German: the simple present and WERDEN. The difference is that, in German,

the present tense is available as a frequent and unmarked form for future events that

have some link to the present or where the utterance already contains some other

futurity marker (e.g. an adverbial). In English, these contexts require some form of future

marking. As WERDEN is the only available option in German, English learners of

German therefore feel compelled to use this form in contexts where German native

speakers often use the present tense. The overuse of WERDEN is therefore not simply

due to a semantic transfer of English WILL, but rather due to the fact that, in English, the

concept of futurity is much closer linked with explicit linguistic markers of future tense

than in German and it is this „need‟ for explicitness that is transferred.

The fact that there is no visible change in the learners‟ use of WERDEN with

increasing proficiency could also be taken as corroborating evidence that conceptual

representations are involved. Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008:171f) ascertain that the

internalisation of new concepts and restructuring of already acquired concepts are

lengthy processes dependent on many variables, which makes conceptual

representations far more resistant to change than links on a semantic level.

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One particular finding in previous modality research might suggest an additional

reason for the overuse. Two studies on English as L2 with typologically very different L1s

(Cantonese and Swedish) both discovered that learners of English as well as novice

writers of English overuse WILL as their top favourite marker of epistemic assertion

compared to expert English L1 writers (Hyland and Milton 1997; Aijmer 2002). Neither of

these studies differentiates between WILL with present-time and future-time reference.

The learners in the CLEG corpus can be classed as novice writers in their L1 (see 4.2.2),

so that the conceptual transfer which leads to the overuse of WERDEN might be

reinforced by lexical transfer from WILL to WERDEN as a characteristic of novice writing.

It has to be stressed here that the observations and conclusions presented here as

evidence for conceptual transfer are only possible as a result of the type of quantitative

analyses that the corpus data allows for. As the subtle differences between the learners‟

and native speakers‟ use of this particular modal verb do not result in overt errors, it is

the diverging patterns of frequency that indicate „non-nativeness‟ and therefore lead to

further investigation. A qualitative study, such as Lindemann‟s (1996), does not permit

these kinds of discoveries.

Whilst we have seen strong links between form/meaning equivalents and usage or

avoidance patterns with the epistemic modal verbs, no such correspondences could be

observed for the non-epistemic modal verbs. Indeed, most non-epistemic modal verbs

are overused by the learners, regardless of form/meaning equivalents. This obviously

does not mean that L1-influence is not at work here, too. As with epistemic modal verbs,

the most frequent non-epistemic modal verbs (MÜSSEN, KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE, SOLLTE)

correspond largely in meaning and use to their English counterparts and cover a wide

range of modal meanings. The learners, again, experience a vast amount of instances

where L1-transfer serves them well and there are no reasons why transfer should not

occur here. On top of this, teaching and learning materials (such as the aforementioned

textbooks Brennpunkt and Zeitgeist) also often promote easy one-to-one relationships

for the other non-epistemic modal verb meanings, e.g. DÜRFEN = be allowed to,

WOLLEN = want etc. All of this facilitates the acquisition and successful application of

non-epistemic modal verbs by learners even at an early stage.

The reasons for the consistent overuse of non-epistemic modal verbs, however, have

to be sought elsewhere. Factors such as a more speech-like register in learner language

or the tendency for explicitness, which have been discussed in the previous section,

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seem to be the most plausible e.g. for explaining the consistent overuse of MÜSSEN to

express non-epistemic necessity and WOLLEN, MÖCHTE, MÖGEN to express volition

and liking/affection.

6.2.4 Correspondences between usage patterns of modal verbs and periphrastic modal expressions

In the previous section, we discussed how form/meaning equivalents influence the use of

epistemic modal verbs, but not those of non-epistemic modal verbs. One observation

that applies to both epistemic and non-epistemic modality alike is correspondences

between the usage patterns of modal verbs and those of their corresponding periphrastic

modal expressions.

The non-acquisition of certain epistemic modal verbs (MÜSSTE, SOLLTE, DÜRFTE,

MÖGEN) leaves semantic gaps for which the learners compensate with the overuse of

periphrastic modal expressions in order to express the intended meanings of mitigated

certainty (e.g. ich denke, meiner Meinung nach etc.) or possibility (e.g. vielleicht, es ist

möglich etc.).

Although there is no corresponding pattern of modal verb underuse in the non-

epistemic categories, the learners still tend to underuse non-epistemic periphrastic

modal expressions where the corresponding modal verb has an L1 form/meaning

equivalent (MÜSSEN, SOLLEN/SOLLTE, KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE). This means that they

tend to use periphrastic modal expressions denoting a duty or obligation, such as es ist

notwendig less than the native speakers, as the modal verb MÜSSEN supplies the same

meaning and is at the same time the form/meaning equivalent to English MUST. At the

same time, the learners tend to overuse periphrastic modal expressions for those

meanings where no corresponding form/meaning equivalent exists for the modal verb

(WOLLEN, MÖCHTE, MÖGEN, DÜRFEN). This means that, for instance, expressions of

wishes such as hoffen are overused by the learners, irrespective of a simultaneous

overuse of the modal verb WOLLEN.

This suggests that, even where there is no semantic gap in learners‟ knowledge, they

tend to employ the type of modal means that would be used in their native language

rather than in the L2. The concepts of volition, liking and permission are expressed by

periphrastic modal expressions in English, therefore learners also often express these

meanings by periphrastic modal expressions when writing in German. This indicates a

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type of transfer that Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008:88) have termed „word choice transfer‟,

as it relates to the “preferential selection of certain words over others in contexts where

there exist multiple alternatives”. This type of transfer also pertains to other linguistic

structures or grammatical categories, for example the choice of an adverbial over a

modal verb. Several studies have confirmed that the choice of a specific L2 word,

structure or grammatical category in a specific context is often motivated by a

corresponding L1 preference (e.g. Jarvis and Odlin 2000; Jarvis 2000; Pavlenko and

Driangina 2007).

But, at the same time, the learners also follow an L2-specific trend that has been

noted in the literature (see 2.1.3) and is also attested in my native speaker corpus data,

namely that, in German, periphrastic modal expressions are preferred for epistemic

modality both in spoken and written discourse, while for non-epistemic modality, modal

verbs are the preferred option. The prominence of periphrastic modal expressions over

modal verbs in the learners‟ German production clearly contradicts the tendency in their

native language, where epistemic modality is prototypically and most frequently

expressed by modal verbs (cf. e.g. Aijmer 2002: 66)147.

Hyland and Milton (1997) argue that the reason why periphrastic modal expressions,

especially adverbs, are so popular with learners is that they are easy for novice writers to

manipulate: they are less syntactically integrated into the clause structure than modal

verbs and more mobile in terms of sentence position. Whilst this argument is certainly

also applicable to German, there are additional factors to be considered, in particular for

the epistemic category. The prominence of periphrastic modal expressions in epistemic

meanings means that they are therefore much more salient for the learners than

epistemic modal verbs, as the learners encounter periphrastic modal expressions in

epistemic functions frequently in the target language. (We adopt here Bardovi-Harlig‟s

(1987:387) definition of salience as “availability of data”.) As epistemic meanings of

modal verbs are infrequent (both in terms of absolute frequency and relative to the non-

epistemic meanings), and as there is often a possibility of ambiguity between epistemic

and non-epistemic modal verbs, it seems fair to assume that it is difficult for the learners

to pick up these particular meanings and extract the correct grammatical and pragmatic

use of these modal verbs from the very limited input.

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This tendency is also followed by L2 learners of English, who overall use epistemic modal verbs more frequently than modal adjectives or adverbs (cf. e.g. Hyland and Milton 1997; Gabrielatos and McEnery 2005).

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The argument that salience and „easiness‟ play a role in the preference for epistemic

periphrastic modal expressions by learners of German is supported by the fact that

classroom learners follow the same path as learners in natural acquisition settings here:

Propositional attitude verbs and modal adverbs precede modal verbs in epistemic

contexts in the acquisitional order irrespective of the target language (Giacalone Ramat

1999; Dittmar and Ahrenholz 1995; see 3.1). This is further supported by the fact that the

learners in my study prefer modal verbs over periphrastic modal expressions for the

expression of non-epistemic modality, just as the natural acquisition learners.

Yet another noteworthy aspect arises from the comparison between novice writers in

the learner corpus (CLEG) and comparable native speaker corpus (KEDS) and expert

native speaker writers in LIMAS. The modal adverbial vielleicht (perhaps) is highly

overused by learners of German compared to the similar native speaker group (in the

KEDS corpus). A comparison with a similar English native speaker corpus (LOCNESS)

ruled out L1-influence. In turn, vielleicht is also overused by the novice writers in the

comparable native speaker corpus KEDS in comparison to expert writers in the general

native speaker corpus LIMAS. This suggests that particular usage patterns of certain

modal expressions could also be a reflection of the difference between novice writers

and expert writers in general, irrespective of whether they write in their native or a foreign

language.

6.2.5 Difficulties with morphological and semantic distinction of indicative and Konjunktiv II modal verb forms

Learners in all year groups exhibit ongoing difficulties with the Konjunktiv II forms of

modal verbs (MÜSSTE, SOLLTE, KÖNNTE, DÜRFTE). These manifest themselves in

the avoidance148 of these modal verbs and in errors. The character of the errors is such

that the learners are unable to semantically distinguish between the different meanings

of the indicative and Konjunktiv II modal verb forms.

This happens in epistemic as well as non-epistemic modality. For example, learners in

Year A erroneously use MÜSSEN instead of MÜSSTE in order to express a tentative

epistemic conclusion. In Years B and C, MÜSSTE is also avoided, although there are no

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Augustin (2006:75) also found in her analysis of Russian learners of German that the subjects avoided modal verbs in their subjunctive form. She ascribes this to the fact that there are substantial differences in the formation and usage of Russian and German subjunctive forms.

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incorrect uses of MÜSSEN anymore. In non-epistemic modality, MÜSSTE is also

avoided until Year C where it is only used in hypothetical or conditional contexts, i.e.

contexts that require MÜSSEN in its Konjunktiv II form for grammatical reasons, rather

than in contexts that denote the semantic category of „advice/suggestion‟ (where its

meaning is synonymous to that of SOLLTE). Similarly, SOLLTE is avoided in Years A

and B in epistemic modality and the occurrence of several instances of SOLLEN instead

of SOLLTE in Year C points towards the same confusion as with epistemic MÜSSTE. A

closer look at SOLLEN in non-epistemic modality revealed that learners in all year

groups use SOLLEN instead of SOLLTE extensively to cover the semantic meaning of

„advice/suggestion‟, although SOLLEN actually denotes the category

„instruction/obligation‟, which is on a par with MÜSSEN in terms of modal force. Equally,

problems are noticable with KÖNNTE, although here errors are only visible in incorrect

uses of the preterite form KONNTE in contexts where KÖNNTE would be required and

vice versa.

These results have two implications. First of all, the reason why learners avoid these

modal verbs in their epistemic meanings might not just be to do with the non-existence of

L1 form/meaning equivalents (i.e. transfer issues) as discussed in 6.2.3, but also with the

difficulties that the semantic distinction between the Konjunktiv II and indicative forms

pose to the learners.

Secondly, the fact that learners have problems with the Konjunktiv II modal verb forms

in both epistemic and non-epistemic meanings indicates that the root of the semantic

problem is morphological. The morphological make-up of the German Konjunktiv II

modal verbs creates a two-fold problem for the learner. On the one hand, more

morphological forms have to be distinguished in German in comparison to English and

on the other hand, anecdotal evidence points to the fact that the learners‟ difficulties can

be traced to a general failure in phonological discrimination.

Where morphological distinctions are concerned, English modal verbs have only one

morphological indicative form and one form that can serve as the past tense indicative

form or as a form that is different from the modal meaning of the corresponding indicative

form149, i.e. CAN – COULD, WILL – WOULD, MAY – MIGHT, SHALL - SHOULD. There

is no corresponding form for MUST. In German, the preterite and Konjunktiv II modal

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Nehls (1986:158ff) gives a detailed account of the differences between the past tense and modal meanings of the modal verbs COULD, WOULD, MIGHT and SHOULD. He stresses that in most cases and especially in epistemic meanings, these forms do not denote past-time reference but a specific modal meaning with present-time reference.

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verb forms of KÖNNEN, MÜSSEN, MÖGEN and DÜRFEN are morphologically distinct,

while they are identical for SOLLEN and WOLLEN (see 2.3.1.1). Learners therefore have

to choose between different morphological forms for past-time reference and Konjunktiv

II modal meanings in the target language (but only for some of the modal verbs), where

these are all represented by the same morphological verb form in their L1.

This kind of difference between the L1 and the L2, where the native language has one

form and the target language has more than one (called „differentiation‟) has been

identified as one of the most difficult to grasp for the learners (Gass and Selinker

2008:100). The results from this study clearly indicate that this causes a major problem

in the acquisition of German modal verbs. As the learners are unsure about the different

morphological forms of past tense and Konjunktiv II in contrast to the indicative forms, it

is only a logical consequence that they also have difficulties in the semantic distinctions

between e.g. the indicative present tense form and the Konjunktiv II form. So, if learners

use SOLLEN instead of SOLLTE in contexts of „advice/suggestion‟, it is the underlying

failure to differentiate between the two forms and to then map the two distinct forms onto

different semantic meanings. It could be speculated that the learners might not even be

aware of the fact that these verb forms are Konjunktiv II forms of the modal verbs and

that they are connected by systematic grammatical regulations.

The way in which the different forms are often presented in textbooks and learner

grammars does its part to further obscure these distinctions and actually make it harder

for the learners to even notice them. In the reference grammar recommended to the

students (see Footnote 90), Hammer‟s German Grammar and Usage (Durrell 2002), for

example, the different uses of the Konjunktiv II modal verb DÜRFTE are subsumed

under the heading “DÜRFEN”, where the introductory text mentions that DÜRFTE is the

Konjunktiv II form, but in the subsequent examples, no clear indication of this is given.

Under the heading “KÖNNEN”, numerous examples of KÖNNTE are given, without even

mentioning that this is the Konjunktiv II form. No examples of or differentiations from the

preterite forms DURFTE or KONNTE are given.

Another factor that makes the differentiation between the various morphological forms

problematic for the learners is the fact that the phonological (and graphical, for that

matter) make-up of these forms also entails forms that exist in the learners‟ L2 but not in

their L1. Both umlauts that are involved in the modal verbs – ü and ö – are phonemes in

German: [y] and [œ]. Neither of these vowel sounds exists, let alone represents a

phoneme in English. The author knows from her own teaching experience that learners

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very often fail to perceive the difference between, particularly, [u] and [y]. This is easily

explicable as these sounds do not constitute different phonemes in English. Ellis

(2008:392) documents that “a sound difference that crosses the boundary between

phonemes in a language is more discriminable to speaker of that language than to

speakers of a language in which the sound difference does not cross a phonemic

boundary”. This means, that if the learners perceive no difference between the two

sounds, the two sounds cannot function as separate stimuli that trigger different

interpretation outcomes. The difference is simply not obvious enough for the learners, so

they do not experience separate stimuli when presented with the two sounds.

In turn, if the learners cannot differentiate phonologically between the two sounds that

are central to the morphological distinction, it is not surprising that they have great

difficulty in not only separating the different verb forms but subsequently also their

different meanings. In other words, the failure to notice the phonological differences

leads to failure to semantically differentiate and inhibits learning. This is captured in

Schmidt‟s (e.g. 1990) “noticing hypothesis” and in Gass‟ (1988) notions of “apperceived

input”, which both suggest, in essence, that in order to turn input [the L2 data available in

the learner‟s environment] into intake [the subset of the input that the learner

appropriates to build the interlanguage] and make it available for further processing,

relevant input features have to be noticed, meaning they have to be registered under

attention, or detected under awareness (cf. Schmidt 1995; Schmidt 2001). It is generally

recognised that this can only be achieved by focussing the learner‟s attention specifically

to these features and that problems can only be remedied by making them salient to the

learners with the help of selected input (see e.g. Sharwood Smith 1981; Terrel 1991;

Doughty and Williams 1998).

With a specific view to the present study, learners would benefit greatly from any

measures that helps improve their grasp of the particular phonological differences

between vowels and umlauted vowels and their impact on morphological forms as this

has consequences for a wide range of lexical and grammatical structures. My analysis

has shown that, on top of the problems with the modal verbs, it also affects the

production of the Konjunktiv II, where the distinction between WERDEN, WURDE and

WÜRDE is crucial. Even when it does not result in outright grammatical errors, the failure

to distinguish e.g. WERDEN and WÜRDE has bearings on the rhetorical impact of an

argument, when e.g. an utterance is marked as a confident assumption (WERDEN),

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where a more tentative, hypothetical note (WÜRDE) would be more appropriate,

especially if the surrounding context is all phrased using Konjunktiv II forms.

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6.2.6 Personalised expressions

Learners show a distinct preference for personalised expressions compared to native

speakers. Personalised expressions “explicitly involve the writer in the assessment of

propositional validity” (Hyland and Milton 1997:197), typically by use of a first person

pronoun e.g. in expressions such as ich denke (I think) or meiner Meinung nach (in my

opinion). “Impersonalised forms, on the other hand, avoid reference to the writer when

commenting on the truth of a claim and typically conceal the source of epistemic

judgements” (Hyland 1997:197). This is typically achieved by adverbs such as

wahrscheinlich (probably), impersonal pronouns, e.g. es ist möglich (it is possible) or

passive constructions.

The learners‟ preference for personalised expressions is most clearly manifest in the

highly significant overuse of the periphrastic modal expressions category „subjective

assumption‟ in the lower proficiency year groups (Years A and B). In particular, the items

ich denke, ich glaube and meiner Meinung nach/ich bin der Meinung feature prominently.

At the same time, the category that contains impersonalised expressions that denote

roughly the same degree of epistemic certainty – „tentative conclusions‟ – are underused

in Year A and not overused in Years B and C. And even in this category, the propensity

for personalised expressions shows. The most frequent item in all learner groups for this

category is scheinen (seem), which can be used for an impersonalised expression – es

scheint (it seems) – but it can also be turned into a personalised expression by inclusion

of a first person pronoun – mir scheint/es scheint mir (it seems to me). In Year A, the

learners use scheinen in a personalised form in 54% of cases, in Year B it is still 20%.

Scheinen is not the most frequent item in KEDS anyway (instead the native speakers

prefer the impersonal adverb wohl (probably)), and when it does occur, it is always in an

impersonalised form.

Other categories of modal verbs and periphrastic modal expressions provide further

evidence for the same trend for personalised expressions. In the category for compelling

conclusions, the item ich bin überzeugt (I am convinced) figures much more prominently

than in the native speaker group, although the category as a whole is significantly

underused by all learner groups.

Unlike native speakers, learners also do not refrain from using positive evaluative

expressions, such as zum Glück/glücklicherweise (luckily) or Gott sei Dank (thank God)

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or expressions of volition, such as ich hoffe (I hope) and hoffentlich (hopefully), all of

which indicate writer involvement.

Another aspect that is linked to personalised expression is the use of explicit agentive

subjects in non-epistemic modality. Although these are not necessarily first-person

subjects and therefore do not indicate the writer‟s own personal involvement, they

indicate that the writer assigns the „responsibility‟ for a certain modal meaning to a

specific animate agent. The analysis clearly shows this for the modal verb SOLLTE in

the meaning of „advice/suggestion‟. The native speakers prefer impersonal constructions

(passive voice, „man‟ (one) or dummy subject „es‟ (it)), which express a general

suggestion that the proposition be carried out, but refrain from assigning the

responsibility for this to any particular agent. The learners, on the other hand, prefer

SOLLTE with specified agentive subjects that explicitly identify the person or group that

is to take the proposed action.

Other categories where this tendency can be demonstrated are „liking/affection‟ and

„volition‟. In these two categories, it is the general overuse of these two categories that

indicates the greater propensity for learners to use specified agentive subjects. While the

native speakers tend to avoid utterances that express positive likings or volitions of

subjects, the learners overuse both modal verbs (MÖGEN, WOLLEN/MÖCHTE) and

corresponding periphrastic lexical expressions (e.g. lieben - love, hoffen - hope,

wünschen - wish) to do exactly that150. The overuse of agentive subjects is one finding

that has not been mentioned in the literature as a characteristic of learner language.

Further comparisons with other learner groups and with other languages could determine

whether this trend is universal.

It has to be added that the preference for personalised expressions and specified

active agents is strongest in the two lower proficiency groups and diminishes greatly in

the advanced group. In this year group, the personalised expression ich hoffe (I hope) is

replaced by the impersonalised expression es bleibt zu hoffen (it remains to be hoped).

Also depersonalised forms are used (where the view is attributed to another person, and

therefore responsibility is shifted), in order to escape the personalisation trap; but – much

the same as in English (Granger 1994 cited in Hyland and Milton 1997) – learners rely

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However, in the particular category of „liking‟ a possible L1-influence should not be discounted, as an investigation into the corpus of native speaker argumentative essays (LOCNESS) also revealed an overuse of the word „like‟ in the sense of the German modal verb MÖGEN compared to KEDS.

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heavily on sagen (e.g. viele Leute sagen – many people say), which is significantly

overused by all learners compared to native speakers151.

Personalised expressions could therefore be considered as an indicator of L2

proficiency, especially as this feature of learner language seems to be language-

independent. Several studies on learner English also demonstrated a significant overuse

of I think by learners of different L1 backgrounds (Granger 1998b; Ringbom 1998;

McCrostie 2008) as well as a general tendency of non-native speaker groups to overuse

features of writer visibility or involvement features (Hyland and Milton 1997; Petch-Tyson

1998; Aijmer 2002, Ädel 2008).

Again, this feature is associated more with spoken discourse than with written, so its

overuse by the learners, once again, points to a more speech-like register especially at a

lower proficiency stage. At the same time, the novice writers in my comparable corpus

KEDS also exhibit a tendency to overuse items like ich denke in comparison to the

expert writers in the general native speaker corpus LIMAS. While it can be considered an

indicator of L2 proficiency, it can therefore at the same time highlight “novice writers‟

uncertainty in how to use these items effectively in argumentation and their imperfect

grasp of appropriate register” (Hyland and Milton 1997:192).

6.2.7 Range of modal expressions and formulaic sequences

In the use of periphrastic modal expressions, learners continuously expand their

vocabulary range in all categories over the four years of study from lower to more

advanced proficiency groups. This is, of course, to be expected, as one of the indicators

of growing proficiency is an increased command of lexical items. But despite this

achievement even the most advanced learner group still exhibits a smaller range of

items than the comparable native speaker group. In Year C, the learners manage to use

about 75% of the different periphrastic modal expression types that occur in KEDS.

Moreover, a closer look at the frequency and distribution of individual items reveals

that many of them are only used sparsely by a handful of learners, with the majority of

tokens concentrated in a much smaller set of items than the native speakers. The same

development can be observed for the Konjunktiv II on lexical verbs. There is a steady

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Raw frequencies: Year A: 77, Year B: 233, Year C: 168; KEDS: 43; Frequencies per 10,000 words: Year A: 15.7***, Year B: 35.4***, Year C: 19.2***, KEDS: 5.2 (*** = significant at p<0.001 compared to KEDS).

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increase in the range of lexical verbs that are used in Konjunktiv II forms from Year A to

Year C, but the breadth of this range does not quite reach the native speakers‟ level

(88%) and is mainly restricted to a few items. The Konjunktiv II will be discussed in more

detail in the next section. What is of relevance in this section is that the increased (but

still comparatively small) range goes hand in hand with an increase in overall frequency

of both periphrastic modal expressions and Konjunktiv II forms, to the point where both

are overused in Year C compared to KEDS. This means that the learners, especially in

the highest proficiency group show a general propensity to overuse a smaller set of

items, i.e. they repeatedly use the same expressions.

Our analysis has shown that many of these expressions develop into fossilised

formulaic sequences during the course of the learners‟ progression. I adopt here Wray‟s

(2002:9) definition of the formulaic sequence as:

“a sequence, continuous or discontinuous, of words or other elements, which is, or

appears to be, prefabricated: that is, stored and retrieved whole from memory at

the time of use, rather than being subject to generation or analysis by the language

grammar.”

Their main function in general, i.e. for native speakers and learners alike, is identified as

serving “a single goal: the promotion of the speaker‟s interests” (Wray 2002:95). These

interests include, amongst others, having easy access to information and expressing

information fluently through the reduction of processing effort by using chunks that are

stored and retrieved whole; being listened to and taken seriously through easing the

processing effort for the listener; sounding idiomatic and being perceived as a full

member of whichever groups are deemed desirable.

Wray (2002) develops a model of formulaic sequences within the second language

acquisition process on the basis of a focused review of data provided by a multitude of

other studies. Within this review, she observes a clear distinction between „naturalistic‟

learners and (teenage and adult) classroom L2 learners. The latter is relevant for my

study and the following points characterise the nature and use of formulaic sequences

for classroom learners:

While formulas are seen as an „easy‟ way of meeting communicative needs (e.g.

greeting, apologising etc.), especially for beginning learners, the communicative

ambitions of advancing learners soon outstrip the limitations of fixed expressions and

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creativity becomes a more central issue. This produces the following observed

progression: Beginners in the earliest stages use a very limited set of formulaic

sequences extensively. In later stages, the successful learners will retain formulaic

sequences but also expand their creative use of language. For intermediate and

advanced learners, however, who have acquired a reasonable command of the L2

lexicon and grammar, their command of formulaic sequences appears to be lagging

behind their other abilities. Full presence of formulaic sequences is only observed in

learners who have achieved a near-native level. The difficulty for intermediate and even

advanced learners seems to be to strike the right balance between formulaicity and

creativity in their L2 output.

Several studies observe overuse AND underuse patterns of formulaic sequences as

well as too much creativity within them, i.e. learners make creative changes to

sequences that native speakers use as fixed expressions (e.g. Granger 1998b; DeCock

1998). This leads to the impression that even “advanced learners struggle to sound

idiomatic, even when they sound grammatical” (Wray 2002:191). But learners‟ formulaic

sequences also often contain errors. The question is, if they are stored and retrieved as

whole items, how can these errors occur? On the one hand, the data in the reviewed

studies shows memorised chunks that are reproduced whole in contexts where they are

incorrect. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that learners create their own

chunks based on their interlanguage rules. If their assumptions about these rules are

incorrect, the chunks that learners produce may contain errors that often fossilise into

persistently problematic patterns. But it is exactly this evidence, that learners create their

own sequences, which marks the difference between (classroom) second language

acquisition and first language acquisition in Wray‟s model (2002:210).

Wray postulates that, in first language acquisition, formulaic sequences are, indeed,

stored and retrieved whole. Analytical processes only set in if and as much as is

necessary. In instructed second language acquisition, on the other hand, learners do

apply analytical processes to the formulaic sequences they encounter. The reasons for

this lie in the very different learning conditions for child first language learners and

teenage/adult classroom second language learners and in their different intellectual

experiences (e.g. literacy) and cognitive maturation. This means “L2 learners will fall into

the process of analysis which provides a more manageable outcome and offers a

stronger sense of control over the language material” (Wray 2002:212). Classroom

teaching methods characteristically reinforce the analytical approach, e.g. through „focus

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on form‟ and reliance on written materials, which underlines the importance of small units

(individual words) over bigger sequences. Fundamentally, learners have difficulties with

formulaic sequences (whose purpose is, after all, to make language use easier),

because they have too much lexical and grammatical choice, as learners build up

sequences from words, while native speakers possess them as whole sequences and

break them down only if necessary.

Evidence for both aspects in Wray‟s account – the path of progression and the

analytic nature of formulaic sequences in L2 learners – can be found in the present

study.

When looking at the way certain items in the observed repertoire of periphrastic modal

expressions are encapsulated in formulaic sequences, we can see a distinct progression

from analytically produced chunks to fossilised sequences. The noun Tatsache (fact)

shall serve as an example here. In the lower proficiency years, the noun is typically

syntactically integrated into the sentence structure in a variety of ways that show analytic

processes in their production152, e.g. trotz der Tatsache (despite the fact); Die Tatsache,

dass…, beweist… (The fact that… proves…); Ein großes Problem liegt *mit der

Tatsache... (a big problem lies with the fact…). These are actually the kinds of structures

that native speakers also prefer. In the most advanced year group, however, the majority

of uses of Tatsache occurs within the fossilised formulaic sequence Es ist eine Tatsache,

dass… (It is a fact that…). While not grammatically wrong, it is clearly a structure that is

dispreferred by the native speakers.

There is an abundance of evidence in this advanced year group of similar fossilised

formulaic sequences, which are not only different from the native speakers‟ uses of the

respective modal expressions within them but also greatly overused by the learners.

Moreover, as noted above, they operate on a smaller range of lexical items than the

native speakers, with some „favourites‟, such as ich denke or meiner Meinung nach,

occurring in significantly higher frequencies. This finding is in line with Granger (1998),

who suggests that learners tend to settle on a small number of familiar and safe

sequences which become “islands of reliability” (Dechert 1983). Granger specifically

identifies the “learners‟ repertoires for introducing arguments and points of view” (which

modal expressions are a big part of) as “very restricted”, which is why learners “„cling on‟

to certain fixed phrases and expressions which they feel confident in using” (Granger

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Some of which involve L1 interference.

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1998:156). This is similar to Hasselgren‟s (1994) notion of „lexical teddy-bears‟. Native

speakers, on the other hand, use a greater variety of expressions and, with them,

produce a greater variety of chunks. Again, my results can be viewed as corroborating

evidence for a language independent feature of learner language.

Another striking aspect is the uniformity that the learners‟ sequences exhibit where

the various lexical items from the repertoire of modal expressions are concerned. The

formulaic sequences in my learner data typically display the following distinct

characteristics that set them apart from the native speaker sequences:

They are syntactically extrapolated into a matrix clause

They are sentence-initial, i.e. thematised and focused elements of the utterance

They are often of the type Es ist…, dass… ( e.g. Es ist möglich, dass...; Es ist

nicht zu leugnen, dass...; Es ist eine Tatsache, dass... etc.) or a variation with a

similar verb (e.g. Es gibt die Möglichkeit, dass...; Es gibt keinen Zweifel, dass...;

Es scheint, dass...; Es bleibt zu hoffen, dass... etc.)

Taking into account Wray‟s proposition that learners create their own chunks from

individual words rather than simply taking over prefabricated sequences they encounter

in the L2, it is not surprising that their formulaic sequences look different from the native

speakers‟. A reminder of previously established tendencies in learner language can

provide answers to the question of why they look the way they do. As noted before

(cf.6.2.4), periphrastic modal expressions are less syntactically integrated in the clause

(i.e. they lend themselves to extrapolation), which reduces the processing strain that an

integrated structure poses on the learner153. Extrapolating the formulaic sequence,

therefore, allows the learner to separate syntactically (and therefore possibly also

mentally) the indicator of modality from the proposition they wish to modify.

With regard to the sentence-initial position of the sequences, we can also point to the

separation of modality marker and proposition for an explanation. In addition to this, the

sentence structure follows the default pattern of information structure in both English and

German: “The structural differences between English and German are not so great as to

entail a fundamentally different way of structuring information […] in both languages the

given information should provide the point of departure of a message, and […] this

shared point of reference should be followed by what is „news‟ to the reader” (Lorenz

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cf. also the conclusions of Kärkäinnen (1992) (summarised in section 3.1) that syntactically integrated, non-routinised expressions of epistemic modality (such as modal verbs and adverbs) – which convey speaker attitudes implicitly – are more difficult to acquire than explicit, extra-clausal and routinised expressions, such as parentheticals.

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1999:211). The aim of argumentative texts is to convince the reader of the writer‟s way of

thinking. Therefore, presenting the part of an utterance that contains an indication of the

writer‟s opinion as the „shared point of reference‟ makes it easier for the reader to accept

and take over the writer‟s stance towards the proposition (Schmied 2001).

Another explanation could be that these sequences are attempts of the learners to

strive towards impersonalised expressions. We have seen in 0 that learners in the lower

proficiency groups tend towards personlised expressions and that it is only in the higher

proficiency group that learners manage to revoke this tendency as they gradually learn

that personalised expressions are less register and text-type appropriate (showing in a

significant reduction in the frequency of the „subjective assumptions‟ category, for

example). The impersonal construction with the dummy subject es offers a way out of

this which is not only convenient but also highly flexible with respect to the lexical content

it can be filled with. Again, research on learner of English confirms that this strategy

seems to be universal and not language specific. Schachter and Rutherford (1979) and

Han (2000) report that Chinese and Japanese learners of English exhibit a distinct

overuse of so called topicalisation constructions, such as there is and it is. They attribute

this to learners trying to follow the topic-complement template of their L1s, even though

their L1s do not have structures directly comparable to there is and it is (cf. Jarvis and

Pavlenko 2008:51). The evidence from my study indicates, however, that L1-influence

might be only a minor factor in this and that the more prominent factors are, actually, not

transfer related. Finally, as all of these explanations point towards learner- and

language-independent factors, they can also serve to explain why the same fossilised

patterns are produced by so many different learners.

There is one final aspect where the results of my study provide corroborating

evidence for Wray‟s model of formulaic sequences of language learners, and this

involves the modal infinitives. My analysis has shown that learners largely avoid modal

infinitives and do not seem to possess any meta-linguistic knowledge of the grammatical

category „modal infinitives‟154. Where they do occur, they are usually part of formulaic

sequences in the learner specific form that has been discussed in this section (e.g. Es ist

nicht zu leugnen…, Es ist leicht zu sehen… etc.). This presents us with the following

conundrum: If, as Wray proposes, learners construct their own formulaic sequences by

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Which shows e.g. in the failure of students to realise the potential for ambiguity in modal infinitives.

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involving analytical processes, how can they produce modal infinitive constructions when

they do not possess any meta-knowledge of their general grammatical structure. Or, if

the question is turned around, “why do adult learners fail to extract grammatical

information from formulaic sequences?” (Wray 2002:210). Again, Wray provides a

compelling explanation. She proposes that although some kind of analysis is happening

when learners encounter formulaic sequences, this analysis seems to be ignoring

grammatical information. Instead,

“the characteristic way for formulaic sequences to be handled by post-childhood

language learners is that they are broken down in order to access the lexical

constituents, which are then stored separately. […] how they were linked,

however, is not retained. […] This also means that when the learner wishes to

reconstruct the formulaic sequence it will be necessary to apply the interlanguage

grammar” (Wray 2002:210) [my emphasis].

This is how errors occur in formulaic sequences. With the sequences involving modal

infinitives, there are clear indications that the learners‟ interlanguage grammars rely

largely on cognate L1 structures which are transferred, rather than on rules for

constructing modal infinitives. This applies especially to the prominent sequences of the

type Es ist leicht/schwer zu + SENSORY PERCEPTION VERB…. The way native speakers

prefer to use modal infinitives, i.e. with mental/speech act verbs or physical action verbs,

is not realised by the learners.

Teaching materials provide another piece of evidence that learners analyse the

formulaic expressions they encounter for lexical constituents but not for their

grammatical construction. Writing critical commentaries and other argumentative texts

are recurring tasks that form part of the students‟ assessment in all three years of study.

How to write a good argumentative essay is therefore also a regularly recurring topic of

the language classes and the students received appropriate „Redemittel‟ (useful

phrases) and exercises to improve their repertoire of phrases as part of these classes (in

the absence of a set textbook, these were provided in the form of handouts put together

from various resources by the teacher; for examples see Appendix D, Part I). From these

handouts, we can see that they contain the type of formulaic sequences that are deemed

useful for learners to facilitate introducing arguments and counter-arguments and make

clear the writer‟s position towards a proposition – in other words formulaic sequences

that denote epistemic modality. These sequences, however, are not the ones that

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learners actually use. As we can see, and as predicted by Wray‟s model, the learners

extract from them some lexical components, but they do not store the grammatical

structure of these formulas: they construct their own sequences using their interlanguage

grammars. In the lower proficiency years, this sometimes results in errors, e.g. in

sequences like *in meiner Meinung (L1-transfer of in my opinion). In the advanced group,

where these errors are largely avoided, it leads to fossilised sequences of the Es ist…

kind. While grammatically correct, their overabundant occurrence, together with their

specific structural properties, leave the reader with a distinct impression of „non-

nativeness‟.

This is, of course, exactly the opposite of the desired effect, namely to approximate a

text-type appropriate writing style, e.g. by avoiding personlised expressions, and

promote the quality of the text by including what the learners perceive as „useful‟

formulaic phrases. This is, after all, what they are told to do in their language classes,

especially in the current prevailing teaching practices which “positively reward such

memorised material” (Mitchell and Martin 1997:6). Additionally, we can see that some of

the Redemittel (useful phrases) that the students are given in the context of verbal

discussions (see Appendix D, Part II) find their way into the written texts in unusually

high frequencies – another pointer towards a speech-like register.

6.2.8 Konjunktiv II as indicator of learner proficiency

The usage patterns of the Konjunktiv II that have been uncovered in my analysis suggest

that the Konjunktiv II can serve as an indicator of learner proficiency, as a marked

progression can be observed both in terms of overall frequency of the Konjunktiv II and

in the diversity of lexical verbs used in the Konjunktiv II. We have seen in previous points

that some aspects of the learners‟ use of the Konjunktiv II fit in with general observations

of features of learner language. These relate to the tendency of learners to explicitly

mark modality (see 6.2.1), specific error patterns (see 6.2.5) and an expanding lexical

range (see 6.2.7). In this section, we will concentrate more specifically on how these

aspects affect the Konjunktiv II usage patterns and what implications this has for learner

proficiency.

Learners significantly underuse Konjunktiv II in the first two years (Year A and B). In

the advanced group (Year C) it is significantly overused compared to the native speaker

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group in KEDS. At the same time, errors involving the Konjunktiv II are greatly reduced in

Year C. This is mainly due to an improved grasp of the difference between the

morphology and meaning of indicative and Konjunktiv II modal verb forms, especially

KÖNNTE and WÜRDE, which is used to form the analytic Konjunktiv II (the most

common type of Konjunktiv II). Together with the underuse/overuse pattern between the

year groups, this indicates that the learners only start using the Konjunktiv II extensively,

once they feel confident that they have acquired the necessary morphological and

grammatical means. When this stage is reached, the learners seem keen to demonstrate

their abilities, which adds to the impression that learners have a propensity to explicitly

express modal meanings.

Another factor that makes the use of Konjunktiv II a useful indicator for learner

proficiency is the lexical development involved in this grammatical category. In the lower

proficiency groups (Years A and B) the use of Konjunktiv II is almost exclusively

restricted to modal verbs and the analytic WÜRDE-Konjunktiv (including the typical

errors with these). Konjunktiv II of auxiliary verbs (HABEN and SEIN) is rare, and lexical

verbs hardly occur at all in the Konjunktiv II. Despite being the smallest group, it is these

lexical verbs that are signifying growing proficiency most visibly. It has been discussed in

previous sections (see 6.2.1; 6.2.2; 6.2.4) that the use of certain modal items is more

indicative of spoken discourse than written. This can also be applied to Konjunktiv II

forms. In the theoretical outline of modal means (see 2.3.5.2). it was explained that the

use of synthetic Konjunktiv II forms in spoken language is usually restricted to a very

small set of very common verbs. These are kommen, gehen, wissen, geben, tun,

brauchen (come, go, know, give, do, need). In Year A, the only lexical verb in Konjunktiv

II form is geben, which occurs twice. In Year B, eight different lexical verbs are attempted

in the Konjunktiv II, but only five of these are successful (wissen, geben, kommen,

kotzen, träumen (know, give, come, puke, dream)). Apart from wissen, which occurs

twice, all of these only occur once in the corpus. We can see that, with only two

exceptions, all the lexical verbs that occur in the two lower proficiency groups are part of

the typical „spoken register‟ set. In Year C, learners expand their use of the Konjunktiv II

to fourteen different lexical verb types, which include several that are indicative of the

written register, e.g. liegen, heißen, verstehen, handeln (lie, mean, understand, act).

This, once more, shows a marked progression from the lower proficiency years (where a

writing style that is more akin to the spoken register has been noted also in other areas

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of modality) to the more advanced group, where the learners show improved mastering

of grammatical structures as one factor of a more accomplished writing style.

There is, however, one area where there is not much progression to be observed in

the advanced year group, and that is the contexts in which the Konjunktiv II is used.

Whilst the overall frequencies of Konjunktiv II use increase dramatically towards Year C,

the proportional distribution in terms of context types still shows that learners

predominantly employ Konjunktiv II forms in the contexts that are typically used to teach

the Konjunktiv II, i.e. conditional clauses. In these contexts, they actually use Konjunktiv

II forms considerably more than the native speakers do. This also corresponds to a lower

percentage of use in general non-factual argumentation, i.e. not involved in conditional

contexts, which is lower than KEDS for all year groups.

In summary, learners in the lower years generally underuse Konjunktiv II and when

they do use it, it is mainly employed in „set pieces‟, i.e. conditionals. They use Konjunktiv

II less in general non-factual argumentation. There is some indication that, in these

contexts, the learners compensate with modal verbs (e.g. KÖNNEN) and periphrastic

modal expressions. In the more advanced group the learners feel more confident in

using the Konjunktiv II and consequently overuse it to explicitly express modality,

especially in conditional clauses.

This general tendency by all learners to overuse Konjunktiv II in conditionals could

either be materials induced, as the most salient form the learners encounter the

Konjunktiv II is in conditional clauses. Indeed, in the school text books that the learners

reported to have used in their A-level courses, the Konjunktiv II is actually called “the

conditional” (Brennpunkt) or even “the conditional tense” (Zeitgeist). It seems plausible,

then, that the learners associate the Konjunktiv strongly just with conditional contexts,

but not with any of the other possible contexts and also that they are confused about

Konjunktiv verb forms, as the textbooks use different terminology to refer to

morphological form (“subjunctive”) and function (“conditional”). This slightly inaccurate

linguistic description (the Konjunktiv is not just used in conditionals) might overall

contribute to the difficulties that learners exhibit with Konjunktiv verb forms, also on

modal verbs.

Another possibility for the high proportion of Konjunktiv II in conditional clauses is L1-

influence. Conditionals with explicit modality marking are more common in English than

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in German, as the grammatical sequence of tense/mood and the indication of non-

factuality by means of a tense shift, is more prescriptive in English. In German, on the

other hand, hypothetical conditional clauses with indicative verb forms in both protasis

and apodosis are not just possible but also common, especially in spoken language. The

fact that these types of conditional clauses are underused by the learners, in conjunction

with the fact that errors with conditional clause patterns show influences of the L1

(learners have problems using Konjunktiv II in both apodosis and protasis in indirect

prospective or counter-factual conditional clauses) make a strong case for transfer here.

As it affects the way a certain grammatical structure is expressed in the syntax of the

target language, we could call the way learners employ conditional clauses an example

of syntactic transfer (see Jarvis and Pavlenko 2008:96f), although a point could also be

made for conceptual transfer as the „need‟ to express a hypothetical event as such (e.g.

by means of the Konjunktiv) could be interpreted as one that derives from the L1-

influenced conceptualisation of hypothetical events.

In summary, the analysis has shown that the Konjunktiv in German causes a

multitude of problems for learners that span across all areas of linguistic knowledge –

phonological, morphological, lexical, semantic and pragmatic. The very fact that it

challenges the learners on so many different levels marks it as a useful indicator of

proficiency. The pedagogical implications of these findings are not the subject of this

thesis, but Fabricius-Hansen (1997:32ff) provides detailed suggestions on how the

Konjunktiv could be taught in different stages to help learners cope with the multiple

demands that this structure poses.

6.3 CONCLUDING REMARKS

It should have become clear from the discussion in this chapter that there is no single

factor that influences the way learners utilise all the different modal means. In fact, even

within one type of modal means, e.g. modal verbs, there are several aspects that can

serve to explain the usage patterns of learners at different stages of proficiency.

Conversely, however, we have also found that many of these factors affect several types

of modal means in a similar way. This therefore suggest that they can be considered

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general features of L2 argumentative writing, such as the tendency to be explicit and to

exhibit a more speech-like writing style than native speakers.

This study has mainly focused on the ways that the expression of modality in learner

language at different stages of proficiency differs from that of native speakers. One

concluding remark has to be added that addresses a fundamental similarity between L2

German writers and their native speaker counterparts. Several other studies have

investigated the cultural dependency of the use of epistemic modality in students‟ L2

writing. Hinkel (1995) and Gabrielatos and McEnery (2005) report that Asian students

generally exhibit a higher degree of assertiveness (e.g. through a reduced amount of

hedging devices; cf. Flowerdew 2000) in their argumentative style than English native

speakers and attribute this to the differences in the domains of sociocultural constructs

and presupposed values that these students operate within. They suggest that the

reasons for the divergence in argumentative style may lie in the different “culturally

bound understandings of the nature of obligation and necessity and adherence to

sociocultural norms and codes” (Hinkel 1995:337). McEnery and Kifle (2002), however,

found that Eritrean secondary school students used more weak epistemic modals and

tentatively attributed this to the influence of instructional materials.

In the present study, no such differences in the degree to which utterances are

asserted or mitigated could be detected between the learners and the native speakers.

On the one hand, this is not surprising, since the cultural background between the

English and German contributors to the corpora can be assumed to be similar with

respect to presupposed values and sociocultural norms and codes. On the other hand, it

might serve to refute the common conception that German native speakers are more

direct, brash and forceful in their argumentation than English native speakers.

This concludes the discussion of how the learner behaviour with regard to modal

expressions can be explained in terms of current second language acquisition theories.

In the following conclusion a general summary of the work carried out for this thesis is

presented. Then, an outlook on further investigations in this area is given as well as

some suggestions of how the findings from this study could be applied in the language

classroom in order to help learners improve their acquisition of modal expressions.

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7. Conclusion

This study set out as an investigation of modality in learner language. A review of the

existing theoretical and empirical research on modality revealed that there is a

discrepancy between how modality is described in theoretical accounts and what is

investigated empirically. All different modal meanings can be expressed by a variety of

linguistic means; for the German language, these have been shown to include modal

verbs, a wide range of modal adverbials and lexical verbs, modal infinitives and the

Konjunktiv. The first aim set out in the introduction has therefore been achieved by

adopting a theoretical framework that allows for the inclusion of all types of modal

expressions.

The fact that modality can be expressed by more than just modal verbs is by no

means a new revelation, but for a long time much of the empirical research on modality

centred on modal verbs. It is only due to the advance of language-production focused

research, for instance within a corpus linguistic framework, that the importance and

interactions of all modal means have begun to be recognised and explored. It is, indeed,

the corpus linguistic approach that allows for the detection of the intricate usage patterns

of modal expressions in the first place. Only if all of these modal means are investigated

together, can we achieve a comprehensive picture of how the notion of modality is

conveyed in language.

This holds for native speaker language and learner language alike, so corpus

investigations can contribute new and insightful results to the study of second language

acquisition. Through frequency analyses we can, for example, establish whether one

type of modal expression is preferred over another in certain contexts. Investigations of

learner language have been shown to benefit greatly from this kind of approach,

especially if they are incorporated into a web of comparative analyses with native

speaker data of both the L1 and the L2, as well as other learner data. This is, essentially,

how the multiple-comparison approach applied in this study can provide insights into

learner language that other techniques cannot achieve. This substantiates the second

aim of the study, namely to demonstrate the usefulness and validity of a corpus

approach to the study of modality. This is not to say that other data gathering and

analysis procedures are less useful. Indeed, the kind of results that can be gleaned from

a learner corpus analysis cannot always provide conclusive proof of certain linguistic or

language acquisition theories. This is due to the fact that certain variables in the learner

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data cannot be controlled for in return for the larger amount of data that can be managed

with corpus techniques as opposed to, for example, detailed qualitative analysis of

individual learners‟ output.

What it certainly can do, however, is contribute the kind of quantitative evidence that

other techniques cannot produce and therefore open up new angles of looking at and

comparing language learners‟ productions, which might corroborate or challenge findings

arrived at through different research designs. Frequency counts are just one factor in

this; learner corpus research also enables the investigator to defocus errors as the main

characteristic of learner language and put in the foreground the much richer picture of

both successful and unsuccessful learner performance.

In the present investigation, the result of this procedure is a detailed and intricate

account of how learners of German deal with modal expressions, which was set out as

the third aim of this research project. This uncovered specific patterns of overuse and

avoidance, which is one aspect that characterises how the learners‟ use of modality is

different from native speaker language. The analysis revealed, for example, that there is

a general overrepresentation of modal expressions in the learner data, that learners

greatly overuse the modal verb WERDEN and that they overuse certain periphrastic

modal expressions in epistemic meanings at the expense of modal verbs. Especially this

last point could only be detected, because the investigation included different types of

modal expressions and sought to investigate the nature of the interplay between them.

Furthermore, it could be shown on the basis of the contrastive analysis part of the

multiple-comparison approach that overuse and avoidance patterns of epistemic modal

verbs are strongly linked to L1/L2 form meaning equivalents, such as MUST and

MÜSSEN.

Another kind of pattern that gradually presented itself through the data-driven

approach to the learner data is learner specific formulaic sequences. Again, it is due to

the inclusion of as wide a range of modal expressions as possible that it could be

established that learners rely, for instance, heavily on sentence-initial Es ist... sequences

for conveying all kinds of different modal meanings. On the basis of these results it was

further suggested that learners generally do not have analytical meta-knowledge of the

category of modal infinitives, as they employ these almost exclusively within the

established Es ist... sequences.

The inclusion of material from different proficiency stages also allowed for statements

about how less and more advanced L2 writers employ modal expressions, from which

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we can retrace developmental paths that the learners go through while advancing in

proficiency and pinpoint characteristics that distinguish advanced learners (e.g. the use

of the Konjunktiv). On the other hand, certain misuse patterns could be detected that

appear to be very resilient to progress even with the most advanced learner group, e.g.

the confusion between the modal verbs SOLLEN and SOLLTE.

On top of these findings that relate specifically to expressions of modality, evidence

could be gathered that underpins observations of general trends in learner language,

such as the tendency to be explicit and exhibit a less formal, more speech-like register in

the learners‟ writing. Taken together, all of these findings contribute to answering the first

two research questions of this study, namely how learners use modal expressions and

how this use differs at different stages of proficiency and from native speakers‟ use.

With regard to this last point of general features of learner language, the compilation

and analysis of a learner corpus for a language other than English has proven

particularly useful. The German learner corpus CLEG has provided evidence that can be

used to triangulate and thus corroborate findings of studies on L2 English that learners

exhibit certain general tendencies, for example the overuse of personalised expressions.

It could thus be established, that these trends are not just L1, but also L2-independent.

This is just one of the conclusions that could be drawn from the analysis in order to

answer the third research question on the possible reasons for the learners‟ linguistic

behaviour with regards to modal expressions. The discussion of the analysis results has

shown that many of them can be related to previous findings of learner language studies

as well as recent theories of second language acquisition. It has been shown that

several factors have to be considered as explanations for the learners‟ use of modal

expressions. L1-transfer, intra-lingual developmental factors and teaching materials all

play a role as they affect different types of modal expressions in different ways. On the

other hand, we have also seen that several of these factors can simultaneously affect the

same type of modal expressions. There are, however, also other aspects, such as

salience and morphological difficulties as well as general tendencies in learner language,

that influence the learners‟ specific usage of modality.

This study is certainly not without drawbacks and shortcomings. The fact that this

investigation was carried out within the confines of a PhD research project posed several

restrictions on the research design as well as the analysis. As the texts for the corpus

were collected and digitised by only one person, errors in the transcription of data are to

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be expected despite every effort to eliminate these by spot checks. The limitations of a

single researcher affect the annotation of the data in the same way. Annotation errors

were corrected as much as possible as they became apparent during the detailed

analysis of the data, but ambiguous or doubtful cases had to be resolved without the

possibility of conferring with a team of researchers. This, on the one hand, almost

certainly leads to some disputable annotation decisions, but on the other hand it might at

least be considered internally consistent.

One of the main criticism that could be levelled against the design of the corpus itself

is that the division into proficiency groups is based on the external criteria of the year of

study alone. Not least from my own teaching experience am I very aware that these year

groups are by no means as homogenous in terms of proficiency as it might appear. This

is particularly true for the distinction between the first and second year of study. It would

therefore be desirable to group the students according to different proficiency criteria

when looking at developments from lower to higher proficiency groups. One of the ways

this could be done is by having the students complete a self-assessment questionnaire

based on the „can do‟-statements of the Common European Framework of Reference for

Languages (CEFR)155. This process had been partially carried out, but could not be

incorporated into the present study. Rather than having the students complete the

questionnaire, it might also be beneficial to have their tutors do this for them. Another

way would be to include marks for the individual texts or at least degree classes for each

learner. In my case, this was not possible due to confidentiality issues.

In terms of the texts that are included in the corpus, it has been pointed out before

that the second year group,Year B, constitutes a slightly different text profile to the other

two year groups as it contains some texts that are not exclusively argumentative. As

modality has been shown to be highly text-type sensitive, it had to be taken into

consideration that some of the results were influenced by this deviation in Year B. This

also has implications for the dispersion of modal expressions across the corpus, which in

turn reduces the indicativeness of the significance testing, as discussed in 4.3.3. As

significance testing was only used as additional evidence and not as the basis for the

inclusion or exclusion of items for investigation, this problem, while recognised, is not of

155

Cf. Council of Europe (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; on the “can do”-statements see in particular: Jones, N and Hirtzel, M (2001) Appendix D: The ALTE „Can Do‟ Statements, in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Council of Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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major concern here. There are almost certainly more points of criticism that have not

been discussed here, but despite these shortcomings, many of which arise from practical

limitations, the design and execution of this study should have been rigorous enough to

produce valid and insightful results.

One of the main aims of this study was to widen the scope of the investigation to

modal expressions that had previously been neglected. While it can be ascertained that

the study incorporated a more comprehensive range of modal means than any other

study before, it is certainly not all-encompassing in every direction, which should provide

ample opportunity for further research.

It has to be acknowledeged that not every detail of every modal expression could be

examined in as much depth as it might deserve. Closer examinations within certain

modal meaning categories or certain groups of expressions might be worthwhile in order

to explore more thoroughly the pragmatic impact of the learners‟ use of modality. For

some of the findings it would also be fruitful to carry out investigations using different

methods of data gathering and analysis, e.g. elicitation tasks, in order to gain more

insights about the reasons why learners use certain modal expressions in the way they

do.

Another aspect that could not be discussed is, for example, how the different modal

means interact with each other in the same utterance. An investigation of

harmonic/disharmonic combinations in the learners‟ and native speakers‟ modal

expressions would undoubtedly contribute further to discovering learner specific traits

and features. For space reasons within the confines of this thesis, this issue could not be

pursued here, but would certainly provide a worthwhile follow-up investigation.

Furthermore, a factor that had to be neglected in the interpretation of the learner data

is “interlanguage transfer”, i.e. “the influence of one L2 (using the broad sense of this

term) over another” (Gass and Selinker 2008:152). For most of the contributors to the

CLEG corpus, German is not the first foreign language they are learning, but the second.

Most students started learning French before German. Additionally, many students take

up more than one language at university, mostly French and Spanish. As the design of

the learner corpus allows for factors like this to be taken into account, different

subcorpora could be compiled and compared according to other (previously acquired)

foreign languages. This could help answer questions with respect to possible differences

273

in the types of transfer that can be detected or to the application of interlanguage

knowledge of one foreign language in the use of another.

Finally, in addition to the two years‟ worth of learner data there is a further two years‟

available that has been collected during the writing of the thesis, but could not be

included in the present investigation. This means that, once this data is digitised, the

corpus contains truly longitudinal data from one complete cohort of students from their

first year through to their final year of studies. This should prove useful for more detailed

investigations into the writing development of individual learners. On top of this it could

help establish, through comparisons between the quasi-longitudinal and the truly

longitudinal data, whether extrapolations from quasi-longitudinal data regarding the

developmental paths of foreign language learners are justified.

To conclude, the presented study portrays a comprehensive picture of how learners of

German deal with expressions of modality as one aspect of language that is crucial to

the tasks they are required to perform in their university studies – argumentative writing.

It is beyond the scope of this thesis to draw pedagogical implications for the

improvement of learning, teaching and teaching materials. It is hoped, however, that the

results and discussions presented here may provide a useful basis for such enterprises.

Generally, a more direct and systemtic approach that incorporates more linguistic meta-

knowledge might be beneficial especially to British students, as they have often been

taught in a way that neglects the teaching of grammatical or semantic categories and

concepts. Rather than listing the modal verbs with their different meanings it might be

helpful to start with the semantic categories, e.g. possibility or necessity and then explore

the different means to express these. In this way, modal verbs can be introduced

alongside other modal means. In order to present the learners with a more accurate

representation of the distributions of different modal expressions, it might also be helpful

to use native speaker corpora in teaching, e.g. to discover the differences between

epistemic and non-epistemic uses of modal verbs and their semantic and grammatical

surroundings. With the periphrastic modal expressions, maybe one could even use the

learner corpus to show the differences in use and make evident to the learners the kinds

of formulaic patterns that they develop. This might encourage the students to refine their

use of modal expressions and encourage variability. Finally, much more attention should

be paid to phonological discrimination, again possibly in conjunction with more explicit

linguistic knowledge. Exercises that train the difference between umlaut and non-umlaut

274

vowels would help the students understand and handle the differences between

present, past and subjunctive modal verbs, but also with the whole category of the

German Konjunktiv, as the phonological and morphological distinctions go hand in hand

with actually understanding what the Konjunktiv does and how it is used.

275

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Appendix

APPENDIX A

EXAMPLES OF LEARNER TEXTS:

EXAMPLE OF A “KRITISCHE ZUSAMMENFASSUNG” (CRITICAL SUMMARY)

[a1023_04]

Kinder und Computers - es hängt von der Dosis

Obwohl fast alle deutsche Haushalten haben mindestens ein Computer, es könnte

beides Positive und Negative Folgen haben, besonders für Kinder. Sie können nicht nur

intelligenz fordern sondern auch zu steigende Bewegungsarmut führen.

Es gibt viele Lernprogramme für junge Kinder aber es gibt auch viele Sorge von

Kinderärzte, die diese ungesunde Kinder sehen müssen. Die Kinder sind immer mehr

übergewichtig, weil sie Stubenhocker sind. Aber die Meisten glauben, dass Computers

sehr gut für die Entwicklung dieser Kinder sind, wenn sie nicht zu viel zeit vor das

Computer verbringen.

Manche Leute sagen auch, dass eben nur einfachen Spiele Intelligenz fordern können.

Kinder in die Grundschule, die Computers benutzen können besser rechnen und haben

besser Feinmotorik, zeichnen wissenschaftliche Studien. Währscheinlich sind das

Fernsehen das Problem, nicht Computers.

Auf eine Seite möchten besondere junge Kinder etwas Aktiv zu machen nach ein paar

Minuten. Dann fahren sie rad zum Beispiel. Aber auf die andere Seite gibt es viele

Sorgen, dass Kinder nur in ihre Haus setzen, deshalb spielen sie nicht. Diesen können

zu eine schlechte Sprachenentwicklung führen, weil sie immer allein setzen. Es gibt

auch keine Familienessen mehr. Aber viele akzeptieren, dass Computers können, zum

Beispiel, die Fingerfertigkeit verbessern. Nochmal kann man etwas gegen diese

Meinungen sagen. Das Computer ist sehr nützlich für Kinder, weil ihre Freunden können

auch auf das Computer spielen und so weite. Jetzt mögen immer mehr Mädchen

Computers auch. Es könnte sein, dass das Problem hauptlich mit Jugendlichen ist, nicht

mit junge Kindern, obwohl sie nur für 45 minuten bis eine Stunde pro Tag vor dem

Computer setzen sollen. Die Schule in Deutschland betutzen Computer kaum in die

Unterrichten. Viele leute sagen, dass es würde sehr nützlich sein, Computers in die

Schule zu benutzen, besonders für Kinder mit Lernprobleme und der Legasthenie.

287

EXAMPLE OF A CRITICAL COMMENTARY (“KRITISCHER KOMMENTAR”)

[c2044_01]

Sollte der Einsatz von Gentechnik gestoppt werden?

Gentechnik ist seit Jahren ein kontroverses Thema. In vielen Ländern versuchen jetzt

Supermärkte weniger genetisch veränderte Nahrungsmitteln in ihren eigenen Produkten

zu verwenden, aber Gentechnik bedeutet nicht nur die Veränderung von

Nahrungsmitteln, sondern auch die Veränderung von Organismen und das Erbgut der

Menschen. Der Artikel berichtet über die Weiterentwicklungen der Gentechnik und die

Konsequenzen für das deutsches Volk.

Es ist nicht zu leugnen, dass der Einsatz von Gentechnik positive Wirkungen für

Medikamenten hat. Der Umstand, dass schon über 40 Medikamente aus gentechnischer

Produktion erhältlich sind, die nie früher hergestellt werden konnten, kann sicherlich nur

eine gute Sache sein. Genau so wichtig ist, dass wir jetzt verstehen wie die Gene

wirken, sowohol in Erb- und Volkskrankheiten wie in Viruserkrankungen wie Aids, das

allein letztes Jahr 3.1 Million Menschen weltweit getötet hat'. Deshalb sind mit Hilfe von

Gentechnik Heilmittel für solche, früher unheilbare, Erkrangungen sind jetzt „im Visier".

Hinzu kommt, dass es nicht nur Heilungschancen sind, sondern auch offensichtlich

diagnostischen Möglichkeiten. Wenn eine Krankheit früher diagnostiziert werden könnte,

gibt es für den Patient weniger Belastung. Sie können sich für Heilbehandlung besser

vorbereiten, und der ganze Prozess dauert dann hoffentlich nicht so lang, da der Virus

noch nicht in einem so weit fortgeschrittenen Stadium sein wird. Aber wenn wir die

diagnostischen Möglichkeiten genauer betrachten, sehen wir wohl auch Nachteile. Es

hat mit der Vertrauenswürdigkeit von Leuten zu tun, wie zum Beispiel Ärzten oder

Pharma-Firmen.

Trotz dieser Argumente, die wohl unter anderem für die Einführung der Gentechnik

ausschlaggebend waren, müssen wir auch die Risiken von Gentechnik hervorheben.

Felder mit gentechnisch veränderten Pflanzen werden immer noch zerstört. Warum

machen die Leute so etwas? Vielleicht passiert es, weil die Menschen, die in der Nähe

dieser veränderten Pflanze leben, kein Risiko für ihre Gesundheit eingehen wollen. Wir

wissen auch nicht viel über die Nebenwirkungen der Gentechnik, wenn wir zum Beispiel

Medikamente nehmen oder genetisch veränderte Lebensmittel essen. Es ist schwierig

die Langzeitwirkung zu untersuchen, da die Technik selbst ziemlich neu ist.

Deutschland hat allerdings Probleme mit gentechnishen Versuchen. Sie sind immer

noch mit der Nazi-Partei verbunden, besonders wenn es um den Bereich der

288

Verbesserung oder Änderung menschlichen Lebens geht. Viele Leute sind ums Leben

gekommen in Konzentrationslagern wie Dachau, als Folge der Behandlung durch Nazi-

Ärzte , die versuchten den "perfekten" Deutschen zu erschaffen. Versuchen sind aber

nötig, bevor wir Gentechnik Prozesse, die sich mit dem Erbgut des Menschens

beschäftigen, durchführen können. Solche Prozesse müssen mit der äußerste Präzision

durchgeführt werden und Versuche sollten langfristig gemacht werden, damit wir

Langzeitwirkung identifizieren können.

Wir müssen aber auch beachten, dass wenn den Umgang mit menschlichen Embryonen

für Versuche erforderlich ist, es mit sich nicht nur erhebliche Risiken bringt, sondern es

auch moralische Fragen aufwirft.

Letztendlich stellt sich die Frage: Wie weit dürfen wir gehen in der Gentechnologie? Ist

es richtig und zulässig, bestimmte Krankheiten mit Hilfe der Gentechnik zu bekommen?

Die meisten Leuten werden zustimmen. Ist es aber auch richtig, Menschen nach

Wünsch zu züchten, zum Beispiel das gesunde Wunschkind mit blauen Augen und

schwarzen Haaren? Wo sind die Grenze und wer soll sie festlegen?

Ich bin der Meinung, dass Gentechnik sich positiv auf der Gesellschaft auswirken kann.

Es könnte bestimmt viele Leute helfen und Erkrankungen schneller diagnostifizieren und

heilen. Wir können aber heute nicht absehen, welche Möglichkeiten die Gentechnik in

der Zukunft bieten wird. Deshalb haben viele Leute Angst vor der Entwicklung. Vor allem

müssen wir sicher gehen, dass alle Verfahren gründlich getestet werden, und dass wir

die Wirkung der Gentechnik kennen. Vielleicht wird sie dann akzeptabler.

289

EXAMPLE OF AN ESSAY

[b1004_04]

Leben wir um zu arbeiten oder arbeiten wir um zu leben?

Diese Frage ist schwierig zu beantworten, weil es darauf viele Sache ankommen, zB das

Alter der Person, was für einen Beruf die Person ausübt, ihr Geschlecht usw.

Es wird allgemein angenommen, dass wir arbeiten, um zu leben. Die Mehrheit der Leute

würde wahrscheinlich sagen, dass andere Sachen wichtiger als Arbeit für sie sind: Sie

geben Familiezeit und Freizeit mehr Wert al ihrer Karriere. Darum arbeiten diese Leute

nur, um ihre Betätigungen zu finanzieren, die sie in ihrer Freizeit machen. Sie würden

auch sagen, dass wir auf Arbeit verzichten können, während man ohne andere Sachen

im Leben nicht zurechtkommen würde.

Im Gegenteil, einige Leute würden ohne Arbeit nicht zurechtkommen! Einige Leute

arbeiten, um die fehlende Dinge in ihrem Leben zu ersetzen und andere Leute sagen,

dass sie ohne Arbeit keine Motivation hätten am Morgen aufzustehen.

Heutzutage verändern sich diese Meinungen. Viele Leute studieren jetzt für viele Jahren,

um eine Karriere, die sie genießen zu können zu bekommen und, weil sie so fleißig

arbeiten mussten, um Erfolg zu haben, müssen sie weiter fleißig sein, um erfolgreich zu

bleiben. Wenn man seinen Beruf genießt, kann man leben, um zu arbeiten, zB Medizin

und Rechtsanwälte. Frauen leben zunehmend, um zu arbeiten, weil sie vielleicht fühlen,

dass sie etwas zu beweisen haben. Ich bin der Meinung, dass viele Frauen zwischen 20

und 30 Jahren sagen würden, dass ihre Karriere ihre höchste Angelegenheit ist, obwohl

ich auch denke, dass sich dies für die Mehrheit ändern würde, wenn sie Anfang 30

wären, weil dann viele Frauen eine Familie wollen.

Zum Schluss würde ich sagen, dass es davon abhängt, ob man seinen Beruf genießt.

Wenn man sich freut zur Arbeit zu gehen, ist es möglich zu leben, um zu arbeiten.

Persönlich studiere ich an der Universität, um diese Möglichkeit zu bekommen. Wenn ich

endlich einen Beruf bekomme, dann könnte ich entscheiden, ob ich leben will, um zu

arbeiten, oder ob ich arbeiten will, um zu leben.

290

APPENDIX B

PERIPHRASTIC MODAL EXPRESSIONS

CoAn code

Category description Tag Items

assertive modal expressions

110 purely assertive gewiss, gewisslich, tatsächlich, wirklich 121 evaluative assertive –

positive begrüßenswerterweise,

dankenswerterweise, zum Glück, glücklicherweise, Gott sei Dank, gottlob, günstigerweise

122 evaluative assertive – reservedly positive

immerhin, wenigstens, zumindest

123 evaluative assertive – negative

bedauerlicherweise, leider, unglücklicherweise

124 evaluative assertive – other dimensions

*weise

130 evidence-focused assertive

auf alle Fälle, begreiflicherweise, bekanntermaßen, bekanntlich, bewiesen, bezeichnenderweise, charakteristischerweise, definitiv, eh, erklärlicherweise, erwiesenermaßen, feststehen, fraglos, hundertprozentig, in jedem Fall, logischerweise, leugnen, nachgewiesenermaßen, natürlich, nachweislich, offenkundig, offensichtlich, ohnedies, ohnehin, selbstredend, selbstverständlich, sowieso, Tatsache, unanfechtbar, unleugbar, unzweifelhaft, kein Zweifel, zweifellos, zweifelsohne,

modally qualifying expressions (epistemic)

210 compelling conclusion IS bestimmt, mit Sicherheit, sicher, sicherlich, überzeugt, Überzeugung

220 subjective assumption IV Ansicht, Auffassung, Erfahrung, Ermessen, ich denke, ich glaube, meiner Meinung nach

230 tentative conclusion ISA annehmen, anscheinend, allem Anschein nach, höchstwahrscheinlich, mutmaßlich, nach menschlichem Ermessen, normalerweise, offenbar, schätzungsweise, scheinen, ziemlich sicher, vermuten, vermutlich, aller Voraussicht nach, voraussichtlich, wahrscheinlich, aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach, größter Wahrscheinlichkeit an Sicherheit grenzender Wahrscheinlichkeit, wohl

240 (tentative) assumption of possibility

IA/IAV Aussicht, *bar, Chance, denkbar, eventuell, möglich, möglicherweise, Möglichkeit, Potential, so Gott will, unter Umständen, vielleicht, vorstellbar

291

250 evidentials IBA/IBS angeblich, gerüchteweise, wie verlautet

negative assertive modal expressions

310 reservedly negative beinahe, eher nicht, fast, kaum, scheinbar, schwerlich, in Zweifel, zweifelhaft

320 emphatically negative ausgeschlossen, aussichtslos, auf keinen Fall, gar nicht, keineswegs, mitnichten, nie, niemals, nirgendwo, nirgends, überhaupt nicht, unausführbar, undenkbar, unmöglich, Unmöglichkeit, unvorstellbar

modally qualifying expressions (deontic)

410/411 duty, compulsion RN/NegRN erforderlich, genötigt, nichts anderes übrig, nicht umhin kommen, notwendig, notwendigerweise, Notwendigkeit, nötig, unabwendbar, unausweichlich, unumgänglich, unumstößlich, unvermeidlich, keine Wahl, verpflichtet, zwingen

420/421 instruction/obligation RF/NegRF angeordnet, befohlen, geboten, gefordert, verfügt, veranlsasst

430/431 suggestion/advice RFV/NegRFV wäre angebracht/besser/ gut/ratsam/richtig

440/441 intention RW/NegRW anstreben, abgeneigt sein, aus sein auf, beabsichtigen, Entschluss, Intention, es leid sein, (keine) Lust, planen, Plan, es satt haben, Trieb, vorhaben, Wille, Wunsch, sich sträuben/zieren /widersetzen, verlangen

450/451 volition RWA/NegRWA hoffen, hoffentlich 460/461 attenuated volition RZ/NegRZ gern, geschmacklos, Hang, hassen,

lieben, (nicht) leiden, Neigung, Schwäche, unmöglich, unausstehlich, unangenehm

470/471 possibility due to circumstances

RMU/NegRMU möglich, Möglichkeit

480/48 possibility due to ability RMF/NegRMF Begabung, beherrschen, Einfluss, Eigenschaft, Erfahrung, Gabe, fähig, Fähigkeit, imstande, Kenntnis, in der Lage,vermögen, zustande bringen

490/491 permission RE/NegRE Befugnis, (nicht) erlaubt, Erlaubnis, (nicht) gestattet, verboten

292

APPENDIX C

DATA TABLES CORRESPONDING TO OVERVIEW CHARTS

Figure 6: Individual modal verb frequencies (per 10,000 words)

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

KÖNNEN 110.8 64.5 95.8 80.2

MÜSSEN 35.5 35.2 46.0 33.8

SOLLEN 27.3 16.5 53.8 23.1

WERDEN 38.4 34.2 32.5 10.0

WOLLEN 28.6 23.8 26.5 10.2

DÜRFEN 2.6 2.4 8.6 6.3

MÖGEN 11.1 12.4 4.3 5.5

Figure 7: Epistemic modal verb frequencies (per 10,000 words)

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

WERDEN 38.4 34.2 32.5 10.0

KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE 25.8 7.0 26.0 13.0

MÜSSEN 0.9 0.8 1.8 1.2

MÖGEN 0.2 0.3 0.2 1.3

SOLLTE 0.0 0.2 0.9 1.7

MÜSSTE 0.0 0.0 0.1 1.0

DÜRFTE 0.0 0.2 0.1 0.7

SOLLEN (evident.) 0.0 0.0 0.3 0.7

WOLLEN (evident.) 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1

293

Figure 8: Non-epistemic modal verb frequencies (per 10,000 words)

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

MÜSSEN/MÜSSTE 34.5 34.3 43.1 31.6

KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE (circum.) 45.3 32.6 25.5 40.8

KÖNNEN/KÖNNTE (ability) 20.2 10.6 18.7 15.0

SOLLTE 12.6 5.8 25.0 15.2

SOLLEN 14.7 9.9 26.5 5.4

WOLLEN 28.4 23.7 26.5 10.1

MÖCHTE 7.4 9.1 3.4 3.9

MÖGEN 3.5 3.0 0.7 0.2

DÜRFEN 2.6 2.3 8.4 5.6

KÖNNEN (permiss.) 1.1 3.8 2.7 1.2

Figure 14: Frequencies of assertive PMEs (per 10,000 words)

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

purely assertive 2.8 2.6 12.0 5.0

EA-positive 0.7 0.8 0.6 0.1

EA-reservedly positive 0.7 0.6 0.6 3.8

EA-negative 2.8 2.4 2.6 2.6

EA-other dimensions 0.7 0.5 0.6 0.4

evidence-focused assertive 12.4 15.2 17.6 16.0

294

Figure 15: Frequencies of modally qualifying periphrastic expressions (per 10,000 words)

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

compelling conclusion 2.8 1.8 5.0 8.8

tentative conclusion 6.9 14.7 12.4 11.5

subjective assumption 34.2 24.6 10.4 8.0

possibility 10.4 16.2 18.8 10.1

evidential 0.0 0.3 1.5 0.9

Figure 18: Frequencies of non-epistemic PMEs (per 10,000 words)

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

duty/compulsion 1.7 3.3 4.1 3.9

possibility 5.6 7.6 13.0 17.8

ability 0.4 0.6 1.8 3.3

suggestion/advice 0.2 0.0 0.1 0.2

instruction 0.2 0.3 0.2 0.7

volition 0.7 0.9 0.5 0.5

attenuated volition 3.0 5.9 6.8 2.1

affection/liking 1.5 1.4 0.7 1.1

permission 1.5 1.2 6.2 2.4

295

Figure 19: Frequencies of Konjunktiv II context types (per 10,000 words)

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

non-factual argumentation 29.0 20.8 70.1 52.5

conditionals 10.6 9.6 30.0 7.7

indirect speech 7.4 5.3 6.5 6.6

politeness 0.0 1.4 0.6 0.7

others 0.2 0.9 0.8 0.2

errors (indicative required) 4.6 7.7 4.8 0.0

Figure 16: Distribution of Konjunktiv II across context types as percentages of overall Konjunktiv II frequencies

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

non-factual argumentation 56.1 45.5 62.1 77.5

conditionals 20.5 20.9 26.6 11.3

indirect speech 14.2 11.6 5.8 9.7

politeness 0.0 3.0 0.5 1.1

others 0.4 2.0 0.7 0.4

errors (indicative required) 8.8 16.9 4.3 0.0

296

Figure 21: Conditional clause patterns as % of overall frequencies of conditionals

Year A Year B Year C KEDS

P(I) – A(I) 77.8 74.3 62.1 84.0

P(KII) – A(KII) 13.8 15.0 19.2 5.3

P(I) – A(KII) 7.4 9.3 16.3 7.1

P(KII) – A(I) 1.0 0.4 2.3 2.8

other 0.9 0.7 0.0 0.0

297

APPENDIX D

EXAMPLES OF HANDOUTS WITH “REDEMITTEL” (USEFUL PHRASES) AND EXERCISES IN

PREPARATION FOR WRITING ARGUMENTATIVE TEXTS.

Part I: Phrases and exercises used in preparation for written texts

298

299

Part II: Phrases and exercises used in preparation for verbal discussions