Differences in use without deficiencies in competence: passives in the Turkish and German of Turkish heritage speakers in Germany

Determining how and why adult outcomes of heritage speaker (HS) bilingualism differ from monolinguals is difficult because it requires the reconstruction of developmental paths from end-state data. In an effort to address this issue, we examine HSs of Turkish in Germany at an early age of developmen...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of bilingual education and bilingualism 2019-11, Vol.22 (8), p.919-939
Main Authors: Bayram, Fatih, Rothman, Jason, Iverson, Michael, Kupisch, Tanja, Miller, David, Puig-Mayenco, Eloi, Westergaard, Marit
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescents
Age Differences
Bilingualism
Children
Control Groups
Cultural Background
Foreign Countries
German
German language
Grammar
Heritage language
Heritage speaker bilingualism
Immigrants
Immigration
Language acquisition
Language Proficiency
Literacy
Native Language
Parent Child Relationship
Passive voice
passives
production
Second Language Learning
Task Analysis
Turkish
Turkish language
Verbs
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Summary:Determining how and why adult outcomes of heritage speaker (HS) bilingualism differ from monolinguals is difficult because it requires the reconstruction of developmental paths from end-state data. In an effort to address this issue, we examine HSs of Turkish in Germany at an early age of development (10-15 years old, n = 22), as well as age-matched monolingual controls in Turkey (n = 20) and Germany (n = 20), using a structured elicitation task for production of passives. The goal is to see whether HSs have the representation of passives in their mental grammars and to better understand the relative weight of factors (age at time of testing, immigration status of the Turkish parents (first or second generation), and literacy in the L1) that potentially contribute to the formation of HSs' grammatical competence. The results show that all HSs have the underlying representation for passives in both Turkish and German. There was a significant effect of only literacy; high level of L1 literacy has a positive effect on monolingual-like production as compared to those with no literacy. We discuss these results pertaining to explicating ultimate attainment outcomes in heritage language acquisition in relation to larger debates in the field.
ISSN:1367-0050
1747-7522
DOI:10.1080/13670050.2017.1324403