1,721,053 research outputs found
Icelandic plus English: language differentiation and functional categories in a successively bilingual child
Full text linkThis thesis investigates the formal and functional properties of the linguistic knowledge of a young bilingual child 'Katla' who successively acquires Icelandic (L1, from birth) and English (L2, from age 1:3). I present new longitudinal natural speech data which I collected in both Icelandic and English from Katla at regular intervals. Audio-recordings were made roughly three times per month at age 1 ;0-4;7 and transcribed in adapted CHILDES/CHAT format. Using a generative framework, I analyse Katla's data qualitatively and quantitatively, focusing on her morphology and syntax during the period 1;6-3;6: determiners and word order in nominals, copula constructions, progressive constructions, imperatives, negation, verb placement, verb inflections, auxiliaries, and periphrastic do. Katla's development is compared with monolingual English-speaking and Icelandic-speaking children, and, where applicable, with other bilinguals. Particular attention is paid to early grammar differentiation and cross- language influence, and to the relationship between child language and input (construction types and frequencies). The empirical results are evaluated in the light of current theories of language acquisition and generative approaches to syntax. Katla's first multi-word combinations (1;6) show productive use of functional morphology (determiners, copulas). Early on, there is evidence of movement into the DP, IP and CP domains, indicating continuity of these functional categories. Moreover, translational equivalents, language-specific functional morphemes and language-specific word orders in Katla's Icelandic and English bear evidence of early language differentiation in successive child bilingualism. The longitudinal development of morpho-syntax largely progresses along separate lines for Katla's two languages; there is no cross- language influence as regards head parameter and movement parameter settings. Some construction transfer occurs where L1 and L2 linear orders are similar. Ensuing implications for transfer and (de)learnability are addressed
Turkish heritage families in Sweden : language practices and family language policy
No full textThis paper explores family language policy in Turkish-speaking families in Sweden. Questionnaires were administered to the parents of 105 Turkish/Swedish children (age 4 − 7), targeting family language practices (including parent–parent, parent–child, child–parent, child-and-sibling conversation and language-fostering activities such as joint book reading, storytelling and mother tongue tuition), and parental language beliefs and attitudes. Despite much diversity in family types concerning parents’ education, country of birth, native language and ethnic affiliation (e.g. Kurdish), common traits emerge: There is a strong focus on the transmission of Turkish in the home, in the face of early and extensive Swedish pre-school attendance. Parents mostly speak Turkish with the child. However, Sweden-born parents report higher uses of Swedish in the home, and sibling interaction also drives a shift towards Swedish. Parental education appears to affect Turkish joint reading activities. Most parents consider proficiency in Turkish and Swedish as equally important for their children. Parents who rank Turkish higher do not necessarily show more maintenance efforts, pointing to some inconsistency between attitudes and practices. Overall, the family language practices observed indicate strong bilingual ideologies and strong language maintenance ideologies, in line with Swedish official state-level language policy, which supports bilingualism and minority language maintenance
Turkish Mother Tongue Instruction in Sweden
No full textHome language education has a long tradition in Sweden and includes the teaching of Turkish to children who grow up bilingually with Swedish as their societal language and Turkish as their home and heritage language. The present paper characterises Turkish mother tongue instruction (MTI) and discusses its current status in the light of Swedish language policy, as it is reflected in official documents (legislation, policy papers and curricula) vis-a-vis its practical implementation by the municipalities. The paper also presents findings from a research project on Turkish-speaking preschool and primary school children and their families, concerning MTI attendance and attitudes towards Turkish, as well as on the experiences of Turkish MTI teachrs in a Swedish setting
Bilingual development of Turkish-speaking children in Sweden
No full textThe BiLI-TAS research project explores the Turkish and Swedish language development of 102 bilingual children aged 4-7, growing up in Sweden. Findings are reported for vocabulary, inflectional morphology and subordination, and are related to existing studies of Turkish-speaking children with other language combinations. Higher Turkish vocabulary scores at age 4-5 give way to steeper vocabulary growth in the majority language Swedish. Narratives indicate mastery of Turkish inflection, but lower accuracy in Swedish, with overextended nonfinite past participle suffixation to mark finite past tense. Swedish subordinate clauses are well mastered and increase with age. Despite identical elicitation tasks, relative clauses are less frequent in Turkish, suggesting language-specific discourse functions. Adverbial subordination in Turkish is early, frequent and varied. Novel blends of a subordinate and a coordinate construction with clause-initial cünkü occur, not previously described in the literature.</p
From V2 to V2: Swedish learners of German
No full textGermanic verb second (V2) is often said to be difficult for L2ers irrespective of their L1. Recent work on Swedish/German (e.g. vulnerable C-domain (Platzack 2001), processability (Håkansson, Pienemann & Sayehli 2001)) claims that speakers of a V2-language learning another V2-language start with a non-V2 interlanguage grammar, i.e. they don’t transfer V2, but follow a universal developmental path of verb placement. The author contests this claim, presenting quantified new oral production data from 6 post-puberty L1 Swedish ab-initio learners (4 & 9 months of exposure to classroom German). She documents extremely early productive use of non-subject-initial V2 declarative clauses after only 4 months, at a time when the informants’ interlanguage syntax elsewhere is nontargetlike (e.g. head-initial VPs (VO)), cf. Bohnacker 2005. She also documents a categorical difference between informants depending on whether they have prior knowledge of L2 English. Swedish informants acquiring German as their first L2 produce 100% targetlike V2, but informants with substantial previous exposure to English only produce 45% targetlike V2 in their L3 German, also allowing nontargetlike V3 (Adv-SVX). This suggests that there is no universal developmental route to L2/L3 German verb placement, that learners make use of their V2-L1 syntax (Swedish), and that knowledge of a non-V2 language (English) can make it initially more difficult to acquire another V2 language (German). The findings are interpreted as strong empirical support for transfer approaches to the nonnative acquisition of syntax (e.g. Schwartz & Sprouse 1994, 1996)
The clause-initial position in L2 Swedish declaratives : word order variation and discourse pragmatics
No full textIn a recent study of the clause-initial position in verb-second declaratives (the prefield), Bohnacker & Rosén (2008) found significant differences between native Swedish and German concerning the frequencies with which constituents occurred in the prefield, as well as qualitative differences concerning the mapping of information structure and linear word order: Swedish exhibited a stronger tendency than German to place new information, the so-called rheme, later in the clause. Swedish-speaking learners of German transferred these patterns from their L1 to German. Their sentences were syntactically well-formed but had Swedish-style prefield frequencies and a strong pattern of Rheme Later, which native Germans perceive as unidiomatic, as an acceptability judgment and a rewrite-L2texts task showed. The present study extends Bohnacker & Rosén's work in three ways. Learners of the reverse language combination (L1 German, L2 Swedish) are investigated to see whether similar phenomena also manifest themselves there. Secondly, written and oral data from highly advanced learners are examined to see whether the learners’ persistent problems can be overcome by extensive immersion (3, 6 and 9 years of L2 exposure). Thirdly, besides investigating theme–rheme (old vs. new information), some consideration is given to another information-structural level, background vs. focus. The learners are found to overuse the prefield at first, with non-Swedish, German-style frequency patterns (e.g. low proportions of clause-initial expletives and high proportions of clause-initial rhematic elements). This is interpreted as evidence for L1 transfer of information-structural or discourse-pragmatic preferences. After 6 and 9 years, a substantial increase in clause-initial expletive subjects, clefts and lightweight given elements is indicative of development towards the target. The findings are related to current generative theorizing on the syntax-pragmatics interface, where it is often maintained that the integration of multiple types of information is one of the hardest areas for L2 learners to master
Imperatives in bilingual child Icelandic-English
No full textThe syntax of imperatives makes an interesting test case when investigating word order, verb raising and cliticisation across languages and their acquisition. This paper looks at language differentiation, i.e. language-specific parameter setting, in the imperative constructions of a bilingual child, "Katla", acquiring a verb-raising language, Icelandic, as well as English, not a verb-raising language
Nonnative acquisition of Verb Second : On the empirical underpinnings of universal L2 claims
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