DaF-Übungsgrammatiken zwischen Sprachwissenschaft und Didaktik. Perspektiven auf die semanto-pragmatische Dimension der Grammatik

Didactic grammars of German as a foreign language are well established in the practice of language teaching, but have received little attention in linguistic literature. The present study investigates a representative selection of 24 didactic grammars for beginners and advanced learners in a linguistic perspective. The focus is not on the methods of language teaching, but on its contents: i.e. the scientific adequacy of the rules and explanations suggested by the grammars is thoroughly discussed. After some introductory reflections on the nature of grammar and its didactics, twelve phenomena are investigated that constitute difficulties for foreign learners or are of didactic relevance, mainly as far as text production and text comprehension are concerned. Central to the investigation are semantic and pragmatic aspects. The phenomena range from nominal to verbal categories, from word formation to word order, and from sentence construction to text construction. In detail are discussed: the gender of German nouns, the cases governed by prepositions, future tenses, past tenses, mood in reported speech, the opposition active/passive and several structural alternatives to passive, nominal compounds, constituent order in the middle field, combination of clauses and punctuation. The global evaluation of the 24 didactic grammars has led to the following results: 1) on the positive side: the majority of the phenomena under discussion has been taken into account and most of the suggested rules and explanations are adequate; 2) on the negative side: there is not always a thought-out progression from beginners to advanced learners and the grammatical description often lacks crucial insights from linguistic literature. Current didactic grammars of German as a foreign language still have ample possibilities for improvement. The two main desiderata for future didactic grammars are a solid scientific foundation and the promotion of an adequate understanding of grammatical structures, i.e. stimulating learners to a metalinguistic reflection.