3.2.1. Corpus probabilities vs. ratings
3.2.1. Corpus probabilities vs. ratings
Results
The following table compares the corpus probabilities with the average ratings in favour of the prepositional dative by pupils and students for each of the 15 items. The figures are provided in percent: ‘20%’ means that the naturalness of the prepositional dative was rated at, on average, 2 points. The items are numbered in ascending order from the lowest to the highest corpus probability for the prepositional dative.
Item |
Corpus probabilities |
Pupils' ratings |
Students' ratings |
1 |
0.14% |
36.00% |
27.60% |
2 |
0.93% |
20.20% |
12.40% |
3 |
2.05% |
27.90% |
36.20% |
4 |
3.27% |
29.00% |
40.00% |
5 |
3.27% |
38.10% |
46.50% |
6 |
10.64% |
44.00% |
51.60% |
7 |
15.16% |
32.80% |
30.30% |
8 |
20.88% |
53.30% |
61.10% |
9 |
52.87% |
53.60% |
53.50% |
10 |
62.73% |
74.20% |
66.10% |
11 |
86.16% |
39.80% |
51.60% |
12 |
87.68% |
29.50% |
34.20% |
13 |
93.55% |
64.00% |
63.80% |
14 |
99.97% |
92.30% |
98.90% |
15 |
99.99% |
65.50% |
82.40% |
Table 2: Corpus probabilities and ratings in favour of the prepositional dative
The following chart visualizes the results. The x-axis shows the items, whereas the y-axis displays the preference of the prepositional dative in percent. The black bars present the corpus probabilities. The red bars display the pupils’ average ratings, while the blue bars show the students’ average ratings.
Table 3: Corpus probabilities and ratings in favour of the prepositional dative
The overall average of the prepositional dative is 42.62% regarding the corpus probabilities, 46.68% regarding the pupils’ ratings and 50.41% regarding the students’ ratings. Although those figures are close, the ratings for individual items often differ strongly from the respective corpus probabilities. The difference between the average ratings by students and pupils constitutes, on average, only 7.35 percentage points. In contrast, pupils’ average ratings differ from the corpus probabilities on average by 27.56 percentage points and students’ average ratings by 25.99 percentage points. As the chart shows, the corpus model yields more extreme results than the pupils’ and students’ ratings. For the first five items, the corpus probability lies under 5% and for the last five items, over 85%, whereas only the ratings for item 14 by students and pupils fall into one of these ranges.
It is important to bear in mind that this study only considers average figures. However, the average rating in favour of the prepositional dative by each participant ranges from 24% to 64.7% regarding the pupils, and 28.7% to 73.3% as far as the students are concerned. Hence, individual preferences vary strongly.
Discussion
The similarity between pupils’ and students’ results plus their discrepancies from the corpus probabilities clearly indicate that the German native language is the decisive factor concerning the dative choice, whereas several additional years of education have no visible effect. No pattern can be detected in the relatively small differences between pupils’ and students’ ratings – probably, they are simply an effect of individual preferences. As the ratings by pupils and students are very similar, I will from now on unite them under the term ‘participants’ ratings’.
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