This thesis investigates the changes in whether compound nouns were closed (written as one word), open (written as separate words) or hyphenated in Early New High German between 1550 and 1710. Due to the fact that there were no orthographic norms in the German of this time, graphematic phenomena in this period of the German language are very fruitful to examine. The study is based on a corpus of 249 sermons in 90 different postils. Since this thesis aims to show a diachronic development, the corpus texts originate from six time windows centred around the years 1550, 1570, 1600, 1620, 1660 and 1710. The results of the study show a general development from 1550, when around 80% of the occurrences of compound nouns were written as one word, to 1620, when this way of writing dominated almost entirely. In the texts from the last two time windows, the hyphenation spreads, and by 1710, nearly two thirds of the instances of compound nouns were written with a hyphen. The present study also shows that the geographical origin of a text is of lesser importance for the writing of compound nouns as one word, separate words or with a hyphen. However, the distinction between genuine compound nouns (a compound noun with the modifier in an unmarked case) and artificial ones (a compound noun with the modifier in an oblique case) seems to be of greater relevance. The artificial compound nouns are closed to a lesser extent in the period between 1550 and 1620 and hyphenated to a higher extent from 1660 onwards than the genuine compound nouns. In a second part of the study, the compound nouns of the different time windows are examined from a lexical point of view, showing that many compound noun lexemes were almost consistently written in the same way (either as one word, as separate words, or with a hyphen) in all occurrences within each time window.

Die Dissertation untersucht die Entwicklung der Rechtschreibfertigkeiten von Schülern mit Deutsch als Zweitsprache im Vergleich zu ihren Mitschülern mit Deutsch als Muttersprache in der Sekundarstufe I. Kern der Untersuchung bildet die Methode der Fehleranalyse. Mittels quer- und längsschnittlicher Analysen werden spezifische Vergleiche zwischen den Rechtschreibleistungen von 236 Schülern italienischer und deutscher Herkunft vorgenommen. Die Ergebnisse der Untersuchung präzisieren die empirisch bislang nur lückenhaft dokumentierten Rechtschreiberwerbsverläufe von ein- und zweisprachigen Schülern der Sekundarstufe I. Die Daten geben Auskunft über bestehende Leistungsrückstände der zweisprachigen Schüler und dokumentieren charakteristische Entwicklungsverläufe und Fehlerschwerpunkte. Für die Unterrichtspraxis geben die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse folglich konkrete Hinweise. Aufgezeigt werden nicht nur die Lerninhalte, für die vertiefende Instruktionen und Übungen im Unterricht der Sekundarstufe I nötig sind, sondern ebenfalls die Zeiträume, in denen sich die Schüler sichere Schreibfertigkeiten in den einzelnen orthographischen Problembereichen aneignen.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

No description available.

No description available.

The diploma thesis is focused on the problems and relationship of specific language impairment and learning disabilities, as developmental disorders affecting not only speech and language, but also other areas influencing the educational process and school success of pupils. The introductory chapters are devoted to the theoretical definition of individual disorders with a focus on their terminology, etiology, symptomatology, diagnostics and therapy. Attention is also focused on the reciprocal context of specific language impairment and difficulties in reading, writing and orthography. The thesis is a comparative case study whose aim is to describe and compare the symptoms of the abovementioned disorders in a selected group of pupils of younger school age as reflected in basic school skills - reading and writing. The purpose of the thesis is to point out their interdependence and similarity in the field of education, but also certain specifics of each of the disorders depending on the individual peculiarities of each pupil.

This dissertation reports research into the problem of how to teach mastery of the English writing system (MEWS) to students of English as a second language (ESL). The problem involves the relatedness of English orthography and phonology. The research had two purposes. First was development of classroom instructional materials for improving reading proficiency in ESL students by application of generative phonological principles. Second was use of the instructional materials in a pilot study of fifty-three ESL college freshmen. A major finding was that subjects' reading proficiency was far below that of native speakers at the college level. Another was that the subjects had more difficulty with English vowels than with consonants. The subjects' scores on nonsense-word tests correlated significantly with five other criteria, including measures of ability to use ESL. A uniform disparity between ESL-student and native-speaker scores on tests of nonsense words was identified. Native-speakers generally had perfect scores, and ESL students had low scores. A chief implication is the importance of understanding orthography in reading English. Recommendations are that ESL proficiency be determined by nonsense-word tests and that the MEWS program be used by students of English as a second dialect.

A lack of research in adult literacy for both native speakers and speakers of English as a second language led to the development of the Test of Affixes in Syntactic Structures (TASS) for use in a pilot study (Dogger, January 1978) in which knowledge of derivational morphology was tested to determine its possible relationship with reading for English as a second language students. Test construction was followed by a thorough verification procedure which is the purpose of this study. In September 1978 the following measures of test strength were established: construct validity, content validity, item difficulty, item discrimination, internal consistency, rational equivalence, and concurrent validity. The degree of relationship between reading proficiency, as demonstrated by subject performance on the Iowa Silent Reading Test, Level III (ISRT,III), and knowledge of derivational affixes, as demonstrated by subject performance on TASS, was also established. Results show that successful performance on the ISRT, III includes reading strategies beyond those required for successful performance on TASS. In other words, mastery of language structures as represented by English orthography is necessary but not sufficient for college-level reading proficiency.

Syftet med den här studien var att undersöka, beskriva och analysera variationer och samband gällande språkförståelse, avkodning och läsförståelse på svenska och engelska och utröna vilken betydelse dessa komponenter har för elever som lär sig engelska som främmande språk. Studien utgick från The Simple View of Readingsamt The Linguistic Coding Differences Hypothesis,vilka ligger till grund för beskrivning och tolkning av studiens empiri. I studien medverkade 24 elever i lässvårigheter och 30 typiska läsare. De gick i årskurs 4 i åtta skolor belägna i södra Sverige. Dessa elever genomförde sex deltest; tre på svenska och tre på engelska. Resultatet visadeatt elever i lässvårigheter presterade signifikant sämre än typiska läsare på samtliga test, utom det test som prövade språkförståelse på svenska. Studien visar att en individs avkodningsförmåga är avgörande för läsförståelsen i engelska som främmande språk. Detta gäller såväl typiska läsare som elever i lässvårigheter, vilket även tidigare forskning i andra länder visat. Studiens slutsats är att samtliga elever måste ges möjlighet att träna på och utveckla sin avkodningsförmåga på engelska för att uppnå god läsförståelse på engelska. / The purpose of this study was to investigate, describe and analyze variations and relationships regarding language comprehension, decoding and reading comprehension in Swedish and English and determine the importance of these components for students who learn English as a foreign language. The study was based on The Simple View of Readingand The Linguistic Coding Differences Hypothesis, which form the basis for the description and interpretation of the study's results. Twenty-four students in reading difficulties and thirty students with typical reading ability participated in the study. They were in the fourth grade and went to eight different schools located in the south of Sweden. These students conducted six tests; three in Swedish and three in English. The results showed that students in reading difficulties performed significantly worse than typical readers on all tests, except for the one that tested language comprehension in Swedish. The study shows that an individual's decoding ability is crucial for reading comprehension in English as a foreign language. This applies to both typical readers and students in reading difficulties, as also shown in previous research in other countries. The study's conclusion is that all students must be given the opportunity to practice and develop their decoding skills in English to achieve a good reading comprehension in English.