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Article published In:
Constructions and Frames
Vol. 16:1 (2024) ► pp.64–99

Dutch compound constructions in additional language acquisition

A diasystematic-constructionist approach

ORCID logo | Université de Liège
ORCID logo | F.R.S.-FNRS | Université catholique de Louvain
Studies have demonstrated that Dutch has a much stronger tendency towards compounding than French (e.g., Du. badkamer vs Fr. salle de bains ‘bathroom’) when adopting a restrictive approach of compounding in which the presence of prepositions and/or internal inflection in multi-word expressions is considered evidence for their syntactic formation. The example above illustrates that Dutch compounding differs from French in another important aspect: while Germanic compounding is by definition right-headed, French has a general tendency towards left-hand headed compounds and phrases. In this study, we investigate the impact of these typological differences on the acquisition of Dutch nominal compounds by French-speaking learners in the context of multilingual Belgium. We provide an in-depth corpus analysis of the acquisition of Dutch compounds at different levels of abstraction (schematic and substantive compound constructions). Moreover, we investigate the impact of additional target-language input through CLIL programs (Content and Language Integrated Learning) on the acquisition of Dutch compounds by French-speaking learners of Dutch. The results are described and interpreted from the perspective of Diasystematic Construction Grammar (DCxG), which conceptualizes the linguistic competence of multilingual speakers as one integrated network of constructions, containing language-specific idioconstructions and shared diaconstructions.
Keywords: compounding, French, Dutch, Diasystematic Construction Grammar (DCxG), Additional Language Acquisition (ALA), Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), Learner Corpus Research (LCR)
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Additional language acquisition and CLIL: A brief state of the art
    • 2.1Recent insights into additional language acquisition
    • 2.2Acquisition of word formation
    • 2.3Content and Language Integrated Learning
  • 3.Diasystematic Construction Grammar
    • 3.1General principles
    • 3.2Additional language acquisition from a DCxG perspective
    • 3.3Acquisition of Dutch nominal compound constructions from a DCxG perspective
  • 4.Aims of the study and research hypotheses
  • 5.Corpus data and methods
    • 5.1Data collection and corpus sample
    • 5.2Data annotation and analysis
      • 5.2.1Formal properties
      • 5.2.2Semantic properties
      • 5.2.3Accuracy
  • 6.A multilevel constructional corpus analysis
    • 6.1Schematic level
      • 6.1.1Formal properties
      • 6.1.2Semantic properties
    • 6.2Substantive level
      • 6.2.1Frequency and productivity
      • 6.2.2Accuracy
  • 7.Discussion of the results
  • 8.Conclusion and outlook
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 April 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cf.22023.hen
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