Kathrin Siebold (Universität Marburg)

Functional preferences in the L2 use of discourse markers

An adequate structuring of discourse is regarded as an essential component of communicative competence and is explicitly taken into account in current competence models and reference documents for foreign language teaching. In this context, an appropriate use of discourse markers (DM) plays an important role, insomuch as DM allow speakers to divide complex utterance units, provide interactive instructions for understanding speech and thus make an important contribution to the cooperative constitution of communication.
In the recent years, foreign language acquisition research has provided interesting results on the development of L2 use of DM. The focus of many studies lies on interference phenomena due to linguistic specificities of learner's languages and cultures of origin or on the range of DM forms and functions at different levels of competence (Jafrancesco 2015, Pascual Escagedo 2015, Thörle/Borreguero Zuloaga 2016).
Based on the case of German DM also, the present study analyses preferences for certain functions of DM and their frequent overuse. Departing from a linguistic description of the functional range of also in German, the use of also shown by learners of German as a foreign language on the levels B1, B2 and C1 is closely examined. It reveals different processes of overgeneralization due to semantic reduction and pragmatic polyfunctionality of also, which seem to be a main characteristic and principal acquisitional obstacle of many discourse markers.

Jafrancesco, E. (2015): L’acquisizione dei segnali discorsivi in Italiano L2. Italiano Lingua Due 1, 1–39.
Pascual Escagedo, C. (2015): Análisis de las funciones de los marcadores discursivos en las conversaciones de estudiantes italianos de E/LE. Lingue e linguaggi 13, 119-161.
Thörle, B. / Borreguero Zuloaga, M. (2016) (Hrsg.): Discourse Markers in Second Language Acquisition / Les marqueurs discursifs dans l’acquisition d’une langue étrangère. Studies on Italian and French as L2 / Études en italien et en français langues étrangères. Special issue of Language, Interaction and Acquisition 7:1.