Morphological awareness in German as a foreign language: the case of adjective + noun compounds

Abstract

Morphology often plays a tangential role in foreign language classes, and recent studies suggest that Morphological Awareness can be very helpful when it comes to learning a language. In this context, the purpose of this study is to examine the compounding skills of learners of German as a foreign language. Since noun compounds are a very productive phenomenon in German, adjective+noun compounds, which have not received a lot of attention so far, were used for this study. A compounding production task was issued to thirty-four participants who were native speakers of Spanish and/or Catalan and had an A2 to B1 level in German. Later, an error analysis was used in order to assess the data. Results indicated that the participants exhibited a high level of Morphological Awareness. They performed mostly well on the morphological part but had greater difficulties with semantic aspects.