Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to draw attention to a syntactical phenomenon of the German language which differs from Afrikaans: the deferment of certain syntactical elements. The extent to which this delay creates problems for the Afrikaans-speaking student learning German is the central question investigated. Translations of the Bible, a few literary works, a number of German short stories and articles from illustrated magazines provided the basic texts. Examples are also taken from texts in English and Dutch and from 16th Century Bible translations. Other comparative material was obtained from sentence-construction exercises carried out by high-school pupils in parts of West Germany and Afrikaans-speaking students in German I and German II at three Afrikaans universities. Many examples were also drawn from compositions and other written and oral work by students. From the texts and the sentences constructed by German-speaking pupils it is clear that a large variety of elements frequently appear in the initial position of German main clauses. Many of these also appear directly after the finite verb in clauses containing an inversion or directly after the conjunction in subordinate clauses. In consequence the subject is often deferred to a position far removed from the initial position of a sentence. Here German differs considerably from both Afrikaans and English. Radical differences are noticable where pronouns precede the subject. This word order is often found in subordinate clauses, or in main clauses containing an inversion. The expletive es (Afrikaans daar/English there/Dutch er) operates in a similar fashion in causing deferment of the subject. German, however, offers more possibilities for delays of this kind than Afrikaans. Concerning the position of the verb there is a strong similarity between German and Afrikaans. In German, however, unlike Afrikaans, the principle of delay affects the order of all the various components of the verb. The only exception appears in constructions like "... dass er hat kommen wollen" where the auxiliary verb is placed before the remaining verb elements. The positioning of prepositional groups after the verb in subordinate clauses and after the infinitive or past participle in main clauses, so common in Afrikaans, is normally not accepted as correct in German. In German the particle nicht appears either at the end of the sentence it negates or as late as possible. It is also often placed before the subject, the object or before the adverbial modifiers, and then only these elements are negated and not the message of the whole sentence. Here, once again, it was obvious that German differs considerably from modern Afrikaans usage. The deferment of the noun caused by complex attributive constructions is a further characteristic of modern German that has no corresponding manifestation in Afrikaans. This study proved that Afrikaans mother-tongue students of German often misconstrue such phrases. Afrikaans-speaking students rarely take the principle of deferment into account when they themselves construct German sentences. Mother-tongue interference is thus evident and is the cause of a large number of mistakes on the one hand and over-simplified and restricted sentence-patterns on the other hand. This problem can only be resolved if teachers take note of its complexity and adapt their teaching methods accordingly.
