Nederstigt's volume offers a detailed and comprehensive treatment of the usage and acquisition of two German focus particles, auch (roughly “also”) and noch (roughly “still”). In view of the ubiquity of auch and noch in adult language and their early emergence in first language (L1) development, Nederstigt's work is a substantial addition to the as-yet small body of existing research. This study is an impressively thorough and rigorous analysis of auch and noch in both adult and child speech that emphasizes the importance of investigating natural spoken discourse to gain maximally informative insights into patterns of usage and sequences of acquisition.
Two methodological issues in particular are of relevance to L1 and SLA researchers alike: First, any analysis that relies exclusively on constructed samples of language is ultimately insufficient. Second, any analysis that concentrates exclusively on a single linguistic domain is ultimately incomplete. Whereas previous research has largely been concerned with the syntactic properties of focus particles, Nederstigt's study confirms that language use and language learning are determined by a complex interplay of semantic, syntactic, prosodic, and discourse-related factors. Verbal and situational context influence communicative intent, and the author convincingly shows how a careful examination of spoken language in use provides highly revealing insights in this area.
Nederstigt does not shy away from tackling difficult data: The identification of adult usage patterns draws on four different corpora of spoken interactions, yielding a description of adult language that neatly sets out the target of acquisition for both L1 and second language (L2) learners. The analysis of the L1 development of auch and noch utilizes longitudinal data from a single monolingual child interacting with her mother in a variety of everyday situations. The author's careful methodological approach demonstrates how researchers interested in either L1 acquisition or SLA might overcome the perennial problem of applying analytic tools developed on the basis of descriptions of adult usage to learner language. The L1 child's system and the L2 learner's interlanguage display their own patterns and regularities, and Nederstigt conducts an analysis that respects these differences while producing results that allow for an informative comparison with her adult data.
Nederstigt comes to the interesting conclusion that there are more differences than similarities in the usage and development of German auch and noch. Not only do her findings warrant separate analyses of the two individual particles, but they also indicate that stressed and unstressed auch display distinct developmental patterns. Taken together with the finding that structural complexity seems to be a less important predictor for acquisitional order than discourse variables, Nederstigt's work is a powerful argument for considering language structures from a variety of perspectives rather than restricting a study to syntax alone, for instance.
The detailed presentation of both quantitative and qualitative results as well as plentiful examples from spoken corpora are revealing and apt, especially in view of the fine-grained nature of the analysis. Unfortunately, Nederstigt's excellent study is occasionally let down by weaknesses in presentation. Only the child language samples are presented in conjunction with both literal and idiomatic translations into English, whereas the sometimes awkward glosses of adult language samples are less helpful. Moreover, a high incidence of typographic errors, unconventional punctuation, and stylistic oddities at times make for a less-than-smooth reading experience.
For readers with an applied linguistics background who might not be fully familiar with phonological, semantic, and syntactic formalisms, detailed construct definitions together with a few illustrative examples as well as a more reliable index would have been useful. Unfortunately, some key terminology remains opaque for too long; certain technical notions do not appear in the index at all (e.g., scope, main structure utterance) or appear earlier in the text than the index suggests (e.g., topic).
Still, such presentational issues should not deter potential readers from tackling the monograph. In the wake of Nederstigt's analysis, SLA researchers might feel emboldened to study linguistic features that are generally underresearched: By adding a L2 perspective to an emerging L1 perspective, we might wish to contribute to the description and explanation of phenomena that are not yet well understood, instead of seeking out areas for our own investigations that are already fully described in L1. By the same token, Nederstigt's exemplary methodology might encourage us to aim more often for multiperspective analyses that give equal consideration to semantic, syntactic, phonological, and discursive factors. Most likely, no scholar will deny that language acquisition—L1 or L2—is highly context dependent, yet too few studies seem to acknowledge this in their methodological practices.
