Comparing the Outcomes of Early and Late Acquisition of European Portuguese: An Analysis of Morpho-syntactic and Phonetic Performance

Cristina Flores,Esther Rinke,Anabela Rato

doi:10.46538/hlj.14.2.2

Cristina Flores, Esther Rinke + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.46538/hlj.14.2.2

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Abstract

The present paper compares the linguistic competence of German-Portuguese bilinguals with upper-intermediate German L2 learners (L2ers) of EP (European Portuguese) and with monolingual Portuguese speakers. The bilingual speakers are heritage speakers (HSs), who were raised bilingually with EP as the minority language and German as the majority language. The aim of our comparison is to verify in which way different input sources and maturational effects shape the speakers’ linguistic knowledge. The findings of two studies, one focused on the morpho-syntactic knowledge of clitics and the other on global accent, corroborate the assumption that L2ers and HSs behave differently, despite superficial similarities observed in the morpho-syntactic study. In contrast to that of the L2ers’, the accent of the HSs is perceived as being native-like, whereas their morpho-syntactic competence is mainly shaped by their dominant exposure to colloquial Portuguese and reduced contact with formal registers.

Highlights

According to a large body of studies on simultaneous bilingual language acquisition, children who are exposed to two or more languages from birth acquire these languages qualitatively in a similar way to monolingual children
Our results indicate that the similarities between L2ers and heritage speakers” (HSs) are only superficial and that the differences reflect fundamental characteristics that set both types of speakers apart
The results of both experiments reveal that HSs and L2ers of European Portuguese differ with respect to language properties that are acquired implicitly through extensive contact with the spoken language in early childhood, which is the case of pronunciation

Summary

Introduction

According to a large body of studies on simultaneous bilingual language acquisition (see, e.g., the overview in De Houwer, 1995), children who are exposed to two or more languages from birth acquire these languages qualitatively in a similar way to monolingual children. Many studies on the linguistic competence of second-generation immigrant adults, so called “heritage speakers” (HSs) who have acquired a minority language in the context of a dominant environmental language, claim that they typically show competence differences in their home language when compared to age-matched monolinguals, they have learned this language from an early age (see Montrul, 2016, for a recent discussion). A way of determining the effects of influential factors on bilingual language development involves comparing early bilinguals with bilingual populations that differ with respect to some variables. This is the case of late L2ers who diverge from HSs in terms of age of onset of language acquisition (AoA) and type and quantity of language exposure. Several studies on HSs have compared these speakers with late L2ers in different linguistic domains (Au, Knightly, Jun, & Oh, 2002; Au, Knightly, Ju, Oh, & Romo, 2008; Cuza, & Frank, 2015; Keating, VanPatten, & Jegersky,2011; Knightly, Jun, Oh, & Au, 2003; Kupisch, 2012; Montrul, 2010, 2011; Montrul, Foote, & Perpiñán, 2008; O’Grady, Lee, & Choo, 2001; Santos & Flores, 2016)

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