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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1362

Part of Session 179: Mutual intelligibility of closely related languages in a multilingual Europe (Other abstracts in this session)

Germanic sound correspondences in didactic presentation and in reality

Authors: Möller, Robert
Submitted by: Möller, Robert (Université de Liège, Belgium)

If learning to read Germanic languages without really learning those languages (EuroComGerm, see Hufeisen & Marx 2007) or even being able to read Romance languages immediately (EuroComRom, see Klein & Stegmann 2000) is possible, this is primarily due to the amount of common vocabulary in languages belonging to the same family. In view of orthographic differences within these families and as sound change has lead to important differences between cognate words, the EuroCom manuals present sound (and grapheme) correspondences in a rather extensive way (cf. Klein & Stegmann 2000:61-97; Lutjeharms & Möller 2007). In EuroComGerm a strictly synchronic presentation has been tested, avoiding references to historical systems or to sound laws and their specific conditions and presenting sound (and grapheme) correspondences from the perspective of a reader who has to match an unknown word from another Germanic language with a German one. As some practical studies have cast doubt on the usefulness / effectiveness of such sound and grapheme lists (cf. Berthele et al. 2011), further research has to look out for more efficient methods.

The paper deals with two aspects that seem important in this context. One is the quantitative relevance of different (types of ) Germanic sound (and grapheme) correspondences. Based on a computer-aided evaluation of dictionaries, this was investigated for Dutch-German and Swedish-German. The other aspect are the different degrees of difficulty that different (types of) sound (and grapheme) correspondences pose in the decoding process.

Taking up on the results of a previous study (Möller 2011), a test on cognate recognition was carried out online. This allowed for gathering sufficient data – while at the same time giving a feedback to the subjects, in order to deal with the methodical problem that in cognate recognition often different solutions are plausible (which makes it problematic to use the amount of correct answers as indicator of the transparency of a given cognate relationship). The subjects' answers and the respective reaction times as well as the subjects' comments to their answers seem to shed more light on the difficulties to identify different (types of) sound correspondences and on conditions influencing them (e.g. position, combination of differences etc.).

References:

Berthele, Raphael, Peter Colliander, Janet Duke, Britta Hufeisen, Madeline Lutjeharms, Nicole Marx, Robert Möller & Ludger Zeevaert (2011): Zu den Grenzen des EuroCom-Konzeptes für EuroComGerm – Zwischenfazit. In: Ingeborg Ohnheiser, Wolfgang Pöckl & Peter Sandrini (eds.), Translation – Sprachvariation – Mehrsprachigkeit. Frankfurt: Lang.

Hufeisen, Britta & Nicole Marx (eds.) (2007): EuroComGerm – Die sieben Siebe: Germanische Sprachen lesen lernen. (EuroComGerm 1). Aachen: Shaker.

Klein, Horst G. & Tilbert D. Stegmann (2000): EuroComRom - Die sieben Siebe: Romanische Sprachen sofort lesen können (Editiones EuroCom 1) (3rd edn.). Aachen: Shaker.

Lutjeharms, Madeline & Robert Möller (2007): Sieb 3: Laut- und Graphementsprechungen. In: Hufeisen & Marx (eds.) (2007): 87-144.

Möller, Robert (2011):  Wann sind Kognaten erkennbar? Ähnlichkeit und synchrone Transparenz in der germanischen Interkomprehension. In: Linguistik online 46, 79-101.