Abstract
In light of previous research on early bilingualism, this study investigates whether 6–11-year-old child heritage speakers (HSs) of European Portuguese (EP), living in Germany, show patterns of lexical development similar to those of monolingual EP children, both in terms of vocabulary size and of lexical composition. Moreover, it assesses the role of factors related to the quantity and quality of the input in the HSs’ lexical development in EP. Twenty-three bilingual and 21 monolingual children were tested on a semi-spontaneous oral production task. The collected data were used to build a corpus composed of three subcorpora (nouns, verbs, adjectives), which served as a basis for between- and within-group comparisons. Information regarding the HSs’ language experience was collected by means of a parental questionnaire. Results revealed significant between-group differences concerning the total corpus and the subcorpora of nouns and verbs. Within-group comparisons showed that both groups produced significantly more nouns than verbs and more verbs than adjectives. Correlation analyses revealed that the HSs’ lexical knowledge is significantly correlated with the input and output quantity at home as well as with the number of EP-speaking parents. Parents emerge as the key players in the acquisition of EP as a heritage language.
Highlights
Over the last decades, a large body of empirical research has emerged within the field of early bilingual lexical acquisition, with a considerable amount of literature published on the bilingual development of heritage speakers (HSs) from different parts of the world.Heritage speakers are usually second- or third-generation migrants who grow up exposed both to the family language, the heritage language (HL), and to the majority societal language, either simultaneously or sequentially, during early childhood
Portuguese (EP), the present study aims at investigating whether 6- to 11-year-old Portuguese–German bilingual children present patterns of lexical development similar to those of their monolingual European Portuguese (EP)
The aim of this study is two-fold: first, we aim to verify, empirically, whether HSs of EP present the same patterns of productive lexical development as their monolingual EP counterparts, both in terms of vocabulary size and in terms of lexical composition; and second, we intend to identify the input factors which may predict the lexical development of the bilingual children
Summary
A large body of empirical research has emerged within the field of early bilingual lexical acquisition, with a considerable amount of literature published on the bilingual development of heritage speakers (HSs) from different parts of the world (see, for instance, [1,2,3]). Heritage speakers are usually second- or third-generation migrants who grow up exposed both to the family language, the heritage language (HL), and to the majority societal language, either simultaneously or sequentially, during early childhood. HSs are more intensively exposed to the HL in the first years of life. This pattern of language exposure quickly changes when these children start attending preschool institutions and, start receiving more systematic input in the majority language. Due to the great diversity of sociolinguistic contexts in which bilingual language acquisition takes place and to the individual variation observed
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