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The Acquisition of Rhetorical Questions in German : an investigation of monolingual and bilingual children and adults

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2024

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Geiß, Miriam

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Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG): KU 2439/5-1

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This thesis investigates the acquisition of rhetorical questions (RhQs) in German in three different populations: (i) monolingual German children, (ii) Italian-German primary school-aged children and (iii) Italian adult second language (L2) learners of German. RhQs, such as Who likes paying taxes?!, have the syntactic and semantic characteristics of a question, but, unlike canonical, information-seeking questions (ISQs), they are not used to request information from the interlocutor. Instead, the speaker expresses that the answer to the RhQ is obvious, alluding to the shared beliefs between speaker and addressee. Apart from contextual cues, in German, this pragmatic meaning can be signaled through prosody, for example, a particular intonational contour or a specific tone of voice and the use of pragmatic markers, for example, discourse particles (DiPs) such as denn (‘I wonder’) or schon (‘against expectation). These signals are not unique to RhQs but have been shown to convey the speaker’s epistemic attitude in general or allude to shared knowledge. Thus, understanding and producing RhQs involves the complex interplay of syntax, semantics, phonology, the lexicon and pragmatics. Phenomena at the interface between language internal and external components of grammar and general cognition have been shown to evolve rather late in language acquisition and to be especially challenging for both, early and late bilinguals. To date, research on the acquisition of RhQs in monolingual and bilingual individuals is rather scarce.

This thesis consists of three empirical investigations all investigating RhQ production and comprehension in different populations. In all three studies, the same two tasks were employed which allows for a direct comparison of the different populations. Different (extra-)linguistic factors were explored to account for the observed patterns in production and comprehension in the three groups. The participants of Study I are 80 monolingual German children (5.7 – 9.9 years) as well as 40 German adults, who were raised monolingually (i.e., no L2 before the age of 6). Study II investigates the acquisition of RhQs in 78 Italian-German bilingual children (6.1 – 10.0 years). These children are all living in Germany and acquire Italian naturalistically in the home as a heritage language and German either simultaneously or sequentially. Italian and German overlap and differ to a certain degree in the availability of cues to RhQs, offering the possibility to test for potential cross-linguistic influence (CLI). The bilingual children were tested in German, their majority language, and they were compared to adult bilinguals, who also acquired Italian as a heritage language and German as a majority language, and to German monolingual children. Study III is concerned with the acquisition of RhQs in a group of 40 Italian L2 learners of German (19 – 44 years). The L2 learners were all raised monolingually in Italy, acquired German after age 10 (Mean AoO = 21.62 years) and at the time of testing, they were all living for quite some time in Germany (on average 6.8 years). They were compared to adult L1 native speakers of German.

The results of this thesis show that both monolingual and bilingual children as young as age 6 acquired the concept of RhQs and they are able to use at least some of the relevant cues in production and comprehension, as were the L2 learners. This is not only relevant for the acquisition of RhQs but also for acquiring the ability to convey and comprehend attitude in speech more in general. This thesis provides valuable insights into the features of RhQ prosody in monolingual and bilingual children and adults and their use of pragmatic markers as additional cues and discusses the impact of different (extra-)linguistic factors. This paves the way for future research on the production and comprehension of utterances conveying an attitude in monolingual and bilingual speakers.

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Fachgebiet (DDC)
400 Sprachwissenschaft, Linguistik

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Linguistik, Phonologie, Phonetik, Pragmatik, Spracherwerb

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ISO 690GEISS, Miriam, 2024. The Acquisition of Rhetorical Questions in German : an investigation of monolingual and bilingual children and adults [Dissertation]. Konstanz: Universität Konstanz
BibTex
@phdthesis{Gei2024Acqui-70833,
  year={2024},
  title={The Acquisition of Rhetorical Questions in German : an investigation of monolingual and bilingual children and adults},
  author={Geiß, Miriam},
  address={Konstanz},
  school={Universität Konstanz}
}
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This thesis consists of three empirical investigations all investigating RhQ production and comprehension in different populations. In all three studies, the same two tasks were employed which allows for a direct comparison of the different populations. Different (extra-)linguistic factors were explored to account for the observed patterns in production and comprehension in the three groups. The participants of Study I are 80 monolingual German children (5.7 – 9.9 years) as well as 40 German adults, who were raised monolingually (i.e., no L2 before the age of 6). Study II investigates the acquisition of RhQs in 78 Italian-German bilingual children (6.1 – 10.0 years). These children are all living in Germany and acquire Italian naturalistically in the home as a heritage language and German either simultaneously or sequentially. Italian and German overlap and differ to a certain degree in the availability of cues to RhQs, offering the possibility to test for potential cross-linguistic influence (CLI). The bilingual children were tested in German, their majority language, and they were compared to adult bilinguals, who also acquired Italian as a heritage language and German as a majority language, and to German monolingual children. Study III is concerned with the acquisition of RhQs in a group of 40 Italian L2 learners of German (19 – 44 years). The L2 learners were all raised monolingually in Italy, acquired German after age 10 (Mean AoO = 21.62 years) and at the time of testing, they were all living for quite some time in Germany (on average 6.8 years). They were compared to adult L1 native speakers of German.

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Prüfungsdatum der Dissertation

April 14, 2024
Hochschulschriftenvermerk
Konstanz, Univ., Diss., 2024
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