Strategies in the recognition of Dutch words by Germans

Kurzfassung/Abstract

As closely related West-Germanic languages, Dutch and German share a high number of words in their lexicons. Research has shown that a certain degree of mutual intelli-gibility exists between the two languages, which suggests that listeners are able to relate cognate words from the neighboring language to elements in their own lexicon, despite the pronunciation differences that exist between them. The paper studies the strategies that German listeners use to find German equivalents for spoken Dutch words. The strategies are studied based on the translations that participants of an experimental study provided for single spoken Dutch nouns. The study focuses on the role of word length and morphological form in the mapping process. Surprisingly, the success with which words were translated appeared to decrease with increasing word length. This might have to do with the fact that long words are often word for-mation products. As the word formation processes differ between the two languages, the mapping attempts result in a high number of mismatches, a high number of non-interpretable translations, and high variance in the number of suggested translations per word. One of the translation strategies used by the listeners is mapping the pro-nunciation of the stressed syllable of the Dutch stimulus to a German lexeme. Another strategy is keeping the morphological make-up of the stimulus word intact.