Developing Grammars

I Variation in Language and Its Description.- 1 Fluctuating Linguistic Structures.- 2 Dimensions of Language Variability.- 2.1 Problems of Description vs Problems of Evaluation.- 2.2 Setting Up a Variety Space.- 2.2.1 The Dimension of Time.- 2.2.2 The Dimension of Place.- 2.2.3 The Dimension of the Speech Situation.- 2.2.4 The Dimension of Social Stratification.- 2.3 Developing an Overall Grammar.- 2.4 Restricting the Overall Grammar to Single Varieties.- 2.5 Summary.- 3 Probabilistic Grammars.- 3.1 Probabilistic Weightings.- 3.2 Context-Free Grammars.- 3.2.1 Preparatory Remarks.- 3.2.2 Probabilistic Context-Free Grammars, Suppes Type.- 3.2.3 Probabilistic Context-Free Grammars, Salomaa Type.- 3.2.4 Probabilistic Context-Free Grammars with Derivation Weighting (dw Grammars).- 3.3 Context-Sensitive Grammars.- 3.4 Transformational Grammars.- 4 The Empirical Study of Language Variation.- 4.1 Selection of Variety Space.- 4.2 Selection of Utterance Type.- 4.3 Data Collection.- 4.4 Corpus Analysis.- 4.5 Elaboration of an Overall Grammar.- 4.6 Rule Weighting.- II Developing Grammars in the Acquisition of German in Social Context.- 5 Foreign Language Acquisition in Social Context and Its Role for Foreign Language Teaching.- 5.1 LAS in FLAT Research: The State of the Art.- 5.2 The Process of LA and Its Description: Some Remarks on the State of the Art.- 5.2.1 The Exclusion of LAS.- 5.2.2 Efficiency and Inefficiency of Teaching Methods.- 5.2.3 Measuring Language Abilities.- 5.3 The Process of LA and Its Description II: The Heidelberg Approach.- 5.4 Intervening in the Process of LA.- 5.5 Description of Target Variety.- 6 Outline of the Project.- 6.1 Extralinguistic Factors on LAS by Foreign Workers.- 6.1.1 Bias Factors.- 6.1.2 Environmental Factors.- 6.2 Data Collection.- 6.2.1 The Role of Participant Observation and Interview.- 6.2.2 The Sample.- 6.3 The Interview.- 6.4 Transcription.- 6.5 The Dialect Speakers.- 6.6 Some Text Samples.- 7 The Acquisition of German Syntax.- 7.1 The Development of Syntactic Constituents.- 7.1.1 Materials and Methods.- The Overall Grammar.- The Corpus Analysis.- Ordering the Speakers.- 7.1.2 Results.- Preliminary Remarks.- Proposition.- Verbal Group.- Nominal Complex.- Adverbial Complex.- Subordinate Clauses.- 7.1.3 Text Samples for Groups I-IV.- 7.1.4 Summary.- 7.2 The Order of Syntactic Constituents in the Sentences.- 7.2.2 The Importance of Word Order in the Learning of German Syntax.- 7.2.2 Fields Studied and Processes of Description.- 7.2.3 Linguistic Conditions of the Interpretation of Quantitative Results.- 7.2.4 Results.- Position of the Finite Verb in the Main Clause.- The Place of the Grammatical Part of the Predicate (Impersonal Forms of the Verb) and/or the Separable Particle in the Main Clause.- The Position of the Verb in Subordinate Clauses.- 7.3 Complete Results for 48 Learners and a Group of Heidelberg Dialect Speakers.- 8 Determining Factors in the Foreign Language Acquisition of Foreign Workers.- 8.1 Selection of Factors.- 8.2 Implementation.- 8.3 Results.- 8.3.1 Contact with Germans in Leisure Time.- 8.3.2 Age.- 8.3.3 Contact with Germans at Working Place.- 8.3.4 Formal Professional Qualification.- 8.3.5 Attendance at School.- 8.3.6 Duration of Stay.- 8.3.7 Sex.- 8.3.8 Origin.- 8.3.9 Abode.- 8.4 Summary.- 8.5 Tables.- References.