Word Order in Complex Verb Phrases in Heritage Polish Spoken in Germany

Bernhard Brehmer,Aldona Sopata

doi:10.3390/languages6020070

Abstract

This paper deals with word order in complex verb phrases consisting of auxiliaries and infinitive complements in heritage Polish. In Polish, infinitive complements normally follow auxiliaries, but discontinuous structures occur if required by the information structure. We investigate the occurrence and evaluation of adjacent and discontinuous word order patterns in relation to (a) the chronological age at testing and (b) the age of onset of the acquisition of the majority language, German. Therefore, we distinguish between simultaneous bilinguals (2L1, n = 61), early sequential bilinguals (cL2, n = 41) and an age-matched monolingual control group (ML, n = 50). The data consist of elicited oral narratives as well as acceptability judgments. We found that both 2L1 and cL2 bilinguals differ from the ML, but the difference depends on the age at testing and the type of data (oral production or evaluation). While 2L1 bilinguals show a u-curve development, which is shaped by the interplay of delayed acquisition in childhood and attrition in early adulthood, cL2 bilinguals started to prefer discontinuous structures rather early. Only in adulthood do both groups converge and exhibit an overuse and over-acceptance of discontinuous structures compared to the ML, which is due to cross-linguistic influence from German. However, language-internal factors (such as clause structure) also turned out to impact the distribution of adjacent and discontinuous structures in heritage (and monolingual) Polish.

Highlights

Polish belongs to the most widespread heritage languages in Germany
While there is no significant difference between monolingual children and adults, we observe a u-curve-shaped development considering the preference for discontinuous placement of auxiliaries and infinitive complements, both with regard to the overall occurrence of discontinuous structures and—even more salient—in contexts where the complex verb phrases contain an noun phrases (NPs)
Our study provided new insights into the dynamics of heritage language development by looking at a hitherto understudied language pair (Polish-German)

Summary

Introduction

Polish belongs to the most widespread heritage languages in Germany. there is a lack of statistical data on the exact number of Polish heritage speakers in Germany, official demographic surveys on the number of people with a “migration background” allow for a rough approximation. The percentage of parents who encourage their children to take (additional) classes in the heritage language seems to be lower than for other allochthonous minorities in Germany (Brehmer and Mehlhorn 2020, 401f., 417f.). This reluctance cannot be accounted for by a lack of possibilities to receive Polish language instruction; at least in bigger urban areas, Polish (heritage) language instruction is offered by a wide variety of institutions. They range from bilingual schools, state schools which offer classes in Polish as a foreign language to state and community schools, private organizations, the Catholic church (Polska Misja Katolicka “Polish Catholic Mission”) or Polish institutions where children from Polish-speaking families can attend courses in Polish language and on other aspects of Polish culture (Mehlhorn 2017; Brehmer and Mehlhorn 2018)

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion