Auch and noch in Child and Adult German (Studies on Language Acquisition [SOLA] Book 23)

__"Auch" and "noch" in Child and Adult German__ is an empirical study of the early acquisition of "auch" (also) and "noch" (also/still) in German, and the adult use of these additive particles in spoken language. It centres around the question of how children acquire these particles, but it also investigates the way in which adults use these particles in order to determine what children actually have to learn and what the input they get is like. Previous studies on focus particles in adult German mainly focused on the semantic and syntactic properties of primarily constructed examples. Based on several corpora of spoken German, this is the first comprehensive study of natural language data that systematically analyses the intonation of focus particle utterances as well as their semantic, syntactic and information structural properties. The study of the child data, an extensive longitudinal corpus of one German child, was carried out against the background of the adult data. It offers a thorough characterisation of the acquisition of the two additive particles that also takes into account results from previous studies on the acquisition of focus particles, mainly on their comprehension. In addition to studying the acquisition of these particles, the author also introduces an analysis of focus particles that emphasises the differences between stressed and unstressed particles, which makes this book not only interesting to researchers in language acquisition and psycholinguistics, but also to those interested in phonology/prosody, semantics, syntax and information structure. Chapter 1. Introduction 1.1. Focus particles in German – a first analysis 1.2. Acquiring focus particles 1.3. Some differences between auch and noch in adult German 1.4. Constructed examples vs. natural discourse 1.5. Rationale of this study 1.6. Organisation of this book Chapter 2. Focus particles – A review of the literature 2.1. Introduction 2.2. The meaning of auch and noch 2.3. The syntax of auch and noch 2.4. The prosody of focus particle utterances 2.5. Information structure, focus and the domain of application 2.6. Conclusion Chapter 3. Auch and noch in spoken German – Aim, data and method of the study 3.1. The aim of the study 3.2. The data 3.3. The method Chapter 4. Results 4.1. Quantitative results 4.2. Qualitative results Chapter 5. Conclusions and discussion 5.1. Usage patterns of auch and noch 5.2. The importance of contextual information 5.3. Intonation of auch- and noch-utterances 5.4. The meaning of auch and noch 5.5. The syntax of auch and noch 5.6. The analysi of focus particles Chapter 6. A fresh look at focus particles 6.1. Previous attempts 6.2. The analysis of AUCH 6.3. The analysis of auch 6.4. Auch and noch and the new analysis 6.5. Summary Chapter 7. Child language – Aim, data and method 7.1. Introduction 7.2. The data 7.3. Analysing child language Chapter 8. Child language results 8.1. Quantitative results 8.2. Qualitative results Chapter 9. The acquisition of Auch and Noch 9.1. A first comparison 9.2. The Acquisition of the two particles 9.3. Consequences for the acquisition of the two particles 9.4. The development of Auch and Noch 9.5. Summary Chapter 10. General conclusions and discussion 10.1. The empirical study of adult spoken German 10.2. A new analysis of AUCH and auch 10.3. The two particles in child language 10.4. Learning to use Auch and Noch 10.5. Future research Appendices Notes References Subject index Author index

"Auch" and "noch" in Child and Adult German is an empirical study of the early acquisition of "auch" (also) and "noch" (also/still) in German, and the adult use of these additive particles in spoken language. It centres around the question of how children acquire these particles, but it also investigates the way in which adults use these particles in order to determine what children actually have to learn and what the input they get is like. Previous studies on focus particles in adult German mainly focused on the semantic and syntactic properties of primarily constructed examples. Based on several corpora of spoken German, this is the first comprehensive study of natural language data that systematically analyses the intonation of focus particle utterances as well as their semantic, syntactic and information structural properties. The study of the child data, an extensive longitudinal corpus of one German child, was carried out against the background of the adult data. It offers a thorough characterisation of the acquisition of the two additive particles that also takes into account results from previous studies on the acquisition of focus particles, mainly on their comprehension. In addition to studying the acquisition of these particles, the author also introduces an analysis of focus particles that emphasises the differences between stressed and unstressed particles, which makes this book not only interesting to researchers in language acquisition and psycholinguistics, but also to those interested in phonology/prosody, semantics, syntax and information structure.

Auch and noch in Child and Adult German is an empirical study on the early acquisition of auch (also) and noch (also/still) in German, and the adult use of these particles in spoken language. The study is based on an extensive longitudinal corpus of child language and several corpora of adult spoken German. It is the first study to analyse the intonation properties of these particles systematically, but it also looks at their semantic, syntactic and information structural properties. It not only establishes how children acquire the two particles, but it also develops an analysis of auch and noch that emphasises the difference between stressed and unstressed particles.