Grammar and variation in the classroom: a roadmap for a qualified solution to grammatical cases of doubt in contemporary German

Abstract

The paper draws a roadmap for teachers, language practitioners and editors looking for a qualified solution to grammatical cases of doubt in contemporary German and provides practical examples by drawing upon the German reference corpus. Dealing with language variation as a language problem, the paper combines the structural, sociolinguistic and cognitive perspectives.

Keywords

• variation
• standard variety
• norm
• social actors
• grammaticality judgments
• grammatical cases of doubt
• teaching German grammar