INTRODUCCIÒN

Orthographic node-switches were subdivided into L1 rule, capital letter, L1 way, one word, apostrophe and others.

The subcategory L1 rule includes errors based on German orthographic rules (see Grosjean 1982: 306–311). Examples of errors in the FL that reflect German orthographic rules include secondery (Gio FLF: adjusting the spelling to the pronunciation) or ment instead of meant (Owlet FLF).

Note that because there have been two rounds of official orthographic reform in Germany in recent years (1996 and 2006), many students have had to adjust the rules stored in the orthographic structure once or even twice. The initial goals of the first round of reforms were to simplify the rule system, to bring spelling in line with pronunciation, to eliminate contradictions, and to ‘legalise’ orthographic customs that were not in conformance with the rules but were nevertheless used by the majority of people (Klappert 2007: 317). However, since two of Germany’s federal states – Bavaria and North

Rhine-Westphalia – did not accept these new rules in 1996, a second attempt involving various compromises was made in 2006. One consequence of this process is that in some cases, the orthographic rules are not strictly defined and writers themselves have the freedom to decide how to spell certain words. Because of this, there is a general feeling among students and others that German orthography is quite loose at the moment – which in fact is not the case (see Jacobs 2007: 43/44). Another negative influence on students’ spelling proficiency is that training in the new rules was never made compulsory for grade-school teachers. As a result, many teachers have not yet mastered the new orthography themselves and teach incorrect rules or overgeneralise the new rules (Ickler 2006: 25).

For these reasons it was not possible to determine whether all of the participants in the test really knew the L1 orthographic rules by heart, or that they were able to apply these rules correctly (see the results in Chapter 6.1).

Capital letter is – in a way – a further subcategory of the subcategory L1 rule.

However, since capitalisation is a very German phenomenon, meaning that the transfer of capitalisation into writing in English is an obvious signal of the influence of the L1 on the FL, and since this error subtype occurred rather frequently, it was recorded separately. As described above, all substantives in German must be written with a capital letter. Babs’

spelling of the English words Notebook or Email with initial capital letters is an example of this subtype of orthographic node-switch. It should be noted that these errors were often associated with words having the same phonological structures and the same or similar orthographic structures in German, or words whose German counterparts are simply adaptations of English words (although in German, the orthographic structure of email is E-Mail). In such instances, the blocking of the interface to the German orthography is less powerful (Grosjean 2008: 45). Since the writers are accustomed to seeing these words written with initial capital letters, it is likely also more difficult to find and correct these node-switches in revision.

Errors due to overgeneralisation of the L1 German rule stipulating ‘no capitals at the beginnings of words that are not substantives (unless they stand at the beginning of a sentence)’ are also included in this subcategory. For example, Krebs (FLN) wrote mexican instead of Mexican, which for a German native speaker is logical because Mexican is an adjective and must therefore be written with a lower case initial letter, according to German orthographic rules. Another example is the personal pronoun i instead of I (also Krebs).

The subcategory L1 way includes words that are very similar in the L1 and the FL, but are written differently – often because of the different orthographic representations of phonological elements. An example of a node-switch in this category is Owlet’s writing of garanties instead of guarantees (FLF), an error that mirrors the orthography of the German word garantieren.

Another subtype of an orthographic node-switch which appeared rather frequently in the participants’ texts is the one word error, which describes FL compounds written according to the way their German counterpart is written. In German, compounds are often written as one word, and in some cases as two (or more) words linked with dashes, but only rarely as two words. An example of an error of this subcategory is Krebs’ writing termpaper instead of term paper.

The subcategory apostrophe gathers all orthographic node-switches which are rooted in the German orthographic rules regarding the apostrophe. These rules are several, but in this work, the one governing the use of the possessive suffix s is of importance. The suffix itself is the same in German and English, but in English the suffix is separated from the word by an apostrophe, while in German it is not: Mamas Frittenbude vs. Mummy’s Chippie. Nevertheless, in Germany one often finds the apostrophe in front of the possessive suffix – for example in the names of restaurants, on websites and in advertisements – which shows the influence of FL English on L1 German in everyday writing (Kovács 2008: 90). At university, however, this orthographic element is crucial for separating the orthographic ‘sheep’ from the orthographic ‘goats’. Many lecturers mark these errors rather strictly, and because of this, the rule ‘no apostrophe in front of the possessive s’ has been implanted deep in many students’ minds. Since the participants in this study were asked to write an academic essay requiring high-standard language, this L1 German rule had the effect of quite frequently overruling the FL English rule regarding the possessive s. That is, the frequency of this error subtype (for example, Sarah’s writing of peoples attitude instead of people’s attitude) not only shows the L1 linguistic influence in general, but the influence of L1 academic genre standards in particular.

Other subtypes of orthographic node-switches did not occur in any great numbers, and were therefore subsumed into the subcategory others. Others also includes the instances in which the writers wrote down a word that is not semantically but rather orthographically related to the intended word, for example Sarah’s typing (and correcting) of bad instead of bed (SE).