The Nottingham German for Chemists course

1. The Nottingham German forChemists course Textual investigation and LSP in the early days of corpus linguisticsChris Butler, Universities of Swansea, Huddersfield and Leeds

2. Background • Reading courses in German for chemistry students run at University of Nottingham for many years. • Dissatisfaction with traditional translation approach led to development of course based in the language laboratory for the 1968-69 academic year (see Grauberg 1971). • Full-time research project 1971-73, funded by Office for Scientific and Technical Information, Research Officer Chris Butler.

3. Overviews of the new course • See Grauberg (1981), Butler (1974).

4. Aim of the course • To enable second year undergraduate chemistry students, with no previous knowledge of German, to read chemistry papers in German for comprehension and, limitedly, for translation.

5. The course • 10 1-hour sessions in language laboratory under supervision of German-speaking lecturer. • Approx. 20 hours of written consolidation work. • Collaborative project: Language Centre and Dept of Chemistry, University of Nottingham.

6. Justification for language lab • Recording of German text by native speaker helps understanding. • Style more personal and direct than in written course. • Each unit programmed with up to 70 questions and answers, leading to active student participation and immediate feedback. • Student works in privacy at own pace, but has access to lecturer. • Written exercises reinforce each lesson.

7. Material used in lab sessions • Taped lesson programmed with questions. • Booklets with model sentences used in lesson, lesson summary, vocabulary lists, reference tables.

8. Linguistic basis • Time span too short to allow extensive vocabulary learning. • So training in use of specialised dictionary given. • Course based on grammar, to prevent students ignoring syntax and trying to make sense of passage by just putting lexical items together.

9. Meaning as ultimate goal • Despite using grammar as basis, course constantly stresses induction of meaning. • Students need to use their chemical knowledge in combination with linguistic skills, in order to decode meaning.

10. What features should be taught? • Existing literature on characteristics of German chemical writing either on broad topics or concerned with individual grammatical features e.g. prepositional phrases. • Project therefore included primary research on grammar of German chemical texts. • Results used in second draft of course.

11. Corpora used • 94,000 word corpus containing 69 systematically selected papers from a range of fields in chemistry, used for computerised word count, to support grammatical analysis (e.g. frequencies of prepositions) and for examples. • Initial manual grammatical analysis of 600 clauses from recent organic chemistry papers (for results see Butler 1973a). • Later study on a larger sample (Butler 1975).

12. The major grammatical study

13. Selection of material • 1035 clauses from 28 papers covering all major areas of pure chemistry, taken from the 94,000 word corpus used for word lists. • Proportions from sub-areas determined by proportions of work published, as indicated by abstracting journal Current Contents. • Complete sections or at least paragraphs. • Amounts from theoretical and experimental sections proportional to total lengths of these sections in the paper. • No bias towards beginning, middle or end of sections.

14. Analytical scheme • 4 measures of syntactic complexity: • Number of clauses per sentence. • Extent of subordination. • Number and nature of primary syntactic constitutents of clause. • Internal complexity in structure of primary clause elements.

15. Clause elements • Subject • Accusative object • Dative object • Genitive object • Prepositional object • Subjective complement • Objective complement • Adverbials

16. Complex modification in primary constituents • Defined as modification of noun by prenominal adjectival phrase, postnominal genitive phrase or postnominal prepositional phrase.

17. Examples of complex modification • die aus Chloroform erhaltenen Kristalle the out of chloroform obtained crystals ‘the crystals obtained from chloroform’ • nach Abdampfen desÄthers ‘after evaporation of the ether’ • Kristalle von 6-(2-carboxy-äthoxy)-2, 3-dihydro-benzofuran ‘crystals of 6-(2-carboxy-ethoxy)-2, 3-dihydro-benzofuran’

18. Clauses per sentence • 87.7% of sentences consist of only 1 or 2 clauses (cf. 92% in draft materials). • Only 2.8% of sentences contain more than 3 clauses.

19. Subordination • 25.4% of the clauses were subordinate (1 for every 3 main clauses) – 18.6% in course material.

20. Clause structural types • 22 structural types in total, 8 accounted for 94% of clauses, just 3 for 66%. • Subject counted as constant feature, since always expressed or (in 11.5% of clauses) clearly understood.

21. Major structural types • The 8 major types (irrespective of element ordering) in descending order of frequency: • S + V + Adverbial (39.7%, 29.3% in draft course) • S + V + SubjComp + Adverbial (15.2%, 7.5%)) • S + V + Acc object + Adverbial (11.5%, 16.1%) • S + V + Acc object (8.1%, 15.4%) • S + V + SubComp (6.4%, 16.4%) • S + V + Prep object + Adverbial (6.1%, 3.2%) • S + V + Prep object (4.0%, 8.2%) • S + V (3.3%, 1.8%)

22. Complex modification

23. Pedagogical implications • Main problem for students will be internal complexity of clause constituents, agreeing with previous work on condensation and prepositional phrase usage in scientific German. • Some quantitative adjustments to draft course materials needed, in terms of sentence patterns and incidence of complex modification, which needs to be increased. • Taken into account in final version of course.

24. Helping students with syntactic structure: the bracketing technique

25. A procedure for syntactic analysis • Bracketing technique devised to help students identify major constituents and elements in complex modification (see Butler 1973b). • Largely mechanical, but not entirely.

26. Example for illustration • Aus dieser Lösung wird Zinn mit H2S out of this solution is tin with H2S ausgefällt und das Filtrat rasch eingeengt. precipitated and the filtrate quickly concentrated ‘Tin is precipitated out of this solution with H2S and the filtrate quickly concentrated.’

27. Stage 1: division into clauses • Vertical bars inserted at clause boundaries. • Clues to boundaries: punctuation (but alert students to other uses of commas), conjunction beginning new clause, terminal position of past participles, separable prefixes. • Aus dieser Lösung wird Zinn mit H2S ausgefällt | und das Filtrat rasch eingeengt.

28. Stage 2: verbal unit • Identify and underline complete verbal unit, including any separated past participles, separable prefixes. • Clues: second position in clause, verbal morphology, meaning. • Aus dieser Lösung wird Zinn mit H2S ausgefällt | und das Filtrat rasch eingeengt.

29. Stage 3: prepositional phrases • Identify all prepositions, with the help of (i) a list of the most common prepositions in German chemical writing, with meanings and examples, (ii) a specialised dictionary. • Enclose in square brackets the stretch of language from the preposition to the next noun (identified through its capital letter): • [Aus dieser Lösung] wird Zinn [mit H2S] ausgefällt | und das Filtrat rasch eingeengt.

30. Stage 4: remaining noun phrases • Identify any nouns and pronouns (including relatives/ demonstratives) not already in square brackets. • Enclose them in round brackets, together with any articles, adjectives or expressions of quantity which precede the noun. • [Aus dieser Lösung] wird (Zinn) [mit H2S] ausgefällt | und (das Filtrat) rasch eingeengt.

31. Stage 5: interpretation • If bracketing has been done correctly, subject and object (if present) should be in round brackets. • Student taught that subject normally occurs near beginning of clause, or, if the clause begins with non-subject constituent, immediately after the verb. • Object often the only other nominal phrase in round brackets. • In our example, (Zinn) and (das Filtrat) are subjects of their clauses.

32. Genitive phrases • Genitive phrases can also appear in round brackets: • (Die Fettsäuren) erhält (man) [durch the fatty acids obtains one by Oxydation] (der entsprechenden Alkohole). oxidation of the corresponding alcohols. ‘The fatty acids are obtained by oxidation of the corresponding alcohols.’

33. Time expression expressed as NPs • Certain time expressions, expressed as NPs, will also appear in round brackets: • (Die Mischung) wurde (3 Stunden) [auf dem the mixture was 3 hours on the Dampfbad] erhitzt. steam bath heated. ‘The mixture was heated for 3 hours on the steam bath.’

34. Functions of square-bracketed groups • Square-bracketed groups of words give more information about either • a noun that they follow, or • the process expressed by the verb (as in auf dem Dampfbad earlier). • Example of amplification of noun: [Nach 18 Stunden] erhält (man) (Kristalle) [von After 18 hours obtains one crystals of N-3-Aminouracil]. N-3-Aminouracil ‘After 18 hours crystals of N-3-aminouracil are obtained.’

35. Coordination • Two nouns joined by a conjunction or in a list with commas are usually put in the same set of brackets. • But it is important to check the meanings to see if this is sensible.

36. Extended prenominal adjectival phrases: (1) • Zu einer über Natriumamalgam gerührten to a over sodium amalgam stirred Lösung von 1,7 g Verbindung A in 250 ml solution of 1.7 g compound A in 250 ml Äthanol wurden innerhalb von 40 Min 50 ml ethanol were within 40 min 50 ml Eisessig zugetropft. glacial acetic acid dripped in ‘To a solution of 1.7 g compound A in 250 ml ethanol 50 ml glacial acetic acid was added dropwise over a period of 40 minutes.’

37. Extended prenominal adjectival phrases (2) • Underline verbal elements. • Put all series of ‘preposition (+/- article, +/- adjectve) + noun’ into square brackets: • Zu einer [über Natriumamalgam] gerührten Lösung [von 1,7 g Verbindung A] [in 250 ml Äthanol] wurden [innerhalb von 40 Min] 50 ml Eisessig zugetropft. • To find the noun associated with zu einer, move along to first unbracketed noun, and enclose sequence from preposition to noun in square brackets.

38. Extended prenominal adjectival phrases (3) • Completely bracketed version: • [Zu einer [über Natriumamalgam] gerührten Lösung] [von 1,7 g Verbindung A] [in 250 ml Äthanol] wurden [innerhalb von 40 Min] (50 ml Eisessig) zugetropft.

39. An excerpt from the course

40. Now listen to Example 5: Die vereinigten Lösungen werden mit Na2CO3 neutral gewaschen.  Gewaschen is the past participle of the strong verb waschen, to wash . You will see that the prefix ge - is present, as for weak verbs, but that the ending is not -t , but -en . The ge- prefix tells you that you are probably dealing with a past participle, and the -en ending tells you the verb is strong. The list of strong verbs, Table 8, then enables you to find the infinitive and also its meaning. What does the combination of werden and a past participle imply? (10 secs). That we are dealing with a passive construction. Now underline the verb and put in the brackets.

41. Is werden singular or plural? (5 secs). Plural, so werden gewaschen means are washed . Say in German what are being washed (10 secs). Die vereinigten Lösungen, the combinedsolutions. And now say in English what they are being washed with (7 secs). Sodium carbonate. Now, using both the bracketing and your chemical knowledge, decide exactly where the word neutral fits into the sentence, and then translate Example 5 (10 secs). The combined solutions are washed neutral with Na2CO3 . Or: The combined solutions are washed with Na2CO3 until neutral. If you said “washed with neutral Na2CO3 ,” you aren't thinking about the chemistry enough.

42. The final course and its evaluation

43. The final course • The final course was the result of two revisions based on an error analysis of student scripts, questionnaires after each lesson, and longitudinal studies of selected students.

44. Evaluation • The course was validated by • Nottingham University itself • two other universities • 30 staff members of a leading chemical firm.

45. Distribution • The course was sold by the University of Nottingham to about 70 educational institutions, including several branches of the Goethe Institute, and also to commercial firms.

46. References

47. Butler, Christopher S. 1973a. A review of some recent work on the description of technical registers in German. In R. R. K. Hartmann (ed.) German Linguistics: Papers from the BAAL Seminar at Nottingham, March 1972 (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik), 186-227. • Butler, Christopher S. 1973b. A technique for sentence structure analysis as an aid to comprehension and translation of German chemistry texts. ITL Review 21, 11-19. • Butler, Christopher S. 1974. German for Chemists. In Teaching Languages to Adults for Special Purposes (CILT Reports and Papers 11), 50-53. Available online at http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED100172.pdf

48. Butler, Christopher S. 1975. Syntactic analysis of German chemical texts: on constructing a short course in German for chemists. IRAL, International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching XIII(4), 320-26. • Grauberg, Walter. 1971. A language laboratory course to teach German to chemists. In G. E. Perren (ed.) Science and Technology in a Second Language: Papers from a seminar held at the University of Birmingham from 27th to 29th March, 1971 (CILT Reports and Papers 7), 73-76. Available online at http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED063813.pdf • Grauberg, Walter. 1981. Reading courses in German for Special Purposes. ADFL (Association of Departments of Foreign Languages) Bulletin 13(2), 24-30.