Frank Domahs

Easy-to-read German (Leichte Sprache) is a linguistic variety used to improve the comprehensibility of texts for a target group with specific needs. Guidelines for the use of easy-to-read German advise, among other things, the avoidance of the genitive and recommend substituting it with a datival phrase with von. This is debatable for two reasons: First, this strategy cannot be applied to all types of the genitive constructions and, second, its usefulness has not been empirically substantiated. Previous empirical studies on this subject suffered from methodical flaws and a lack of statistical power. By applying a reading comprehension test, the present study seeks to find out whether the use of a von-phrase instead of the genitive really holds advantages for reading comprehension. Thirty-seven adults with intellectual disabilities were asked to read 32 focus sentences, 16 containing a possessive genitive and the other 16 containing an analogous von-phrase. Participants’ comprehension regarding ownership or belonging as indicated in the sentences was examined through single-choice questions. The analysis of the responses showed that there were no significant differences in the understanding of the genitive and the von-phrase. This was independent from the salience of morphological case marking and from the length of the sentence. Furthermore, there was no evidence for an influence of individual reading abilities for words and pseudowords or individual reading frequency. These results question the need of a general rule to avoid genitives in Easy-to-read German. mehr

Surface dysgraphia is a (symptom of a) neurological language disorder with a loss of lexicosemantic writing routines and preserved segmental Phoneme-to-Grapheme conversion (PGC). Surface dysgraphic subjects write words and non-words phonologically plausible but with orthographic errors concerning words with ambigue PGC. Such an isolated use of the PGC routine allows us to focus analysis on segmental processing in writing. H.S., a German patient suffering from primary progressive aphasia, showed typical surface dysgraphic errors in writing words to dictation. The analysis of his responses revealed the implicit knowledge of syllabic principles and their application in writing. He could phonologically differenciate native and non-native sounding items and showed context-sensitivity in PGC (as for initial /f/). Furthermore H.S. succesfully applied the syllabic rules for inserting the silent '·syllable initial h''. Moreover the patient payed attention to the graphemic "syllable weight'' in realising the lengthening-h - that is he "stretched" graphematically short syllables by inserting it and "compressed" long syllables by leaving it out. Doing so he paralleled the probability for the existence of the lengthening-h in German. But he even took notice of the graphemic syllable weight in realizing lt/ as - which the German writing system does not use analogously. Thus the segmental ''surface•· routine works in relative autonomy of lexical routines as it is supposed in the logogen-model of word processing (cf. Patterson, 1988). Phonemegrapheme-conversion applies various syllabic rules and principles. The model will have to be specified in this point. mehr