Abstract
This article provides a comprehensive overview of the contribution of linguistic research on Portuguese as a heritage language in Germany to the general understanding of heritage language development. From 1955 to 1973, nearly 166,000 Portuguese migrants found work in Germany as so-called ‘guest workers’ (Gastarbeiter). Because the aim of many Portuguese migrant families was to return to Portugal, their children met relatively good conditions for the acquisition of their heritage language. Nonetheless, second-generation heritage speakers (HSs) show some linguistic particularities in comparison to monolingual Portuguese speakers in Portugal. Based on the results of previous research, we show that the following factors shape the linguistic knowledge of this group of bilinguals: (1) Restricted exposure to the heritage language may cause a delay in the development of certain linguistic structures, (2) deviations from the standard norm may be related to the lack of formal education and the primacy of the colloquial register and (3) heritage bilinguals may accelerate ongoing diachronic development. We argue that apparent effects of influence from the environmental language can often have alternative explanations.
Highlights
The aim of the present paper is to connect the dots of various research results on Portuguese as a heritage language (HL) in Germany and to derive from them more general insights into HL development
On the basis of an elicited production task centred on mood choice in complement clauses, this study aimed at analysing the effect of age and amount of input in the acquisition of this grammatical property
Strong epistemic verbs, which express knowledge, select the indicative, as shown in 1a, whereas weak epistemic verbs, which express a low degree of belief, select the subjunctive in the complement clause
Summary
The aim of the present paper is to connect the dots of various research results on Portuguese as a heritage language (HL) in Germany and to derive from them more general insights into HL development. Working as team or in collaboration with other colleagues, we have scrutinized this group of speakers from various angles, by looking at children and adults, using experimental methods and spontaneous speech corpora and investigating different grammatical domains and linguistic properties. At this point of our research, we have produced a sufficient amount of data that allows us to generalize our findings in order to contribute to a better understanding of HL development and bilingualism in general. We start with general background information about the Portuguese community in Germany
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