Chapter published in:
Studies in Turkish as a Heritage LanguageEdited by Fatih Bayram
[Studies in Bilingualism 60] 2020
► pp. 17–37
Turkish heritage speakers in Germany
Vocabulary knowledge in German and Turkish
Michael H. Daller | University of Reading
In the present chapter,
first, the migration background of Turkish
heritage speakers in Germany will be described.
Secondly, the available literature on Turkish
heritage speakers with a focus on vocabulary will
be discussed. Finally, the results of a recent
study on heritage speakers will be presented. The
present study supports the findings of previous
studies which aim to answer the question whether
there is a vocabulary gap in bilinguals, such that
bilinguals have smaller vocabularies than
monolinguals. A deficit or gap is attested for
bilinguals in a number of studies when they are
compared with monolingual control groups (for a
detailed overview see Thordardottir, 2011).
However, this gap seems to be an artefact of the
methodology since bilinguals use their two
languages in different domains (Grosjean, 1982,
2001, 2015) and almost never develop a
vocabulary in both of their languages that is
comparable to monolinguals. We therefore need to
include both languages in an investigation of a
potential bilingual vocabulary gap. However, even
when both languages are investigated, a deficit in
vocabulary knowledge, especially productive
vocabulary is attested in many studies (for a
detailed discussion see Daller & Ongun, 2017).
Because the literature presents somewhat
inconclusive results, in this study, we wanted to
test whether or not the productive vocabulary of a
bilingual individual group also shows a gap when
compared to monolingual controls. The present
study is based on picture descriptions of 23
heritage speakers and two control groups for
German (n = 18) and Turkish
(n = 30). We take both languages
into account to obtain a fine-grained picture of
the bilingual proficiency of the heritage speakers
in our sample. A vocabulary gap can be identified
for Turkish but not for German. When the
children’s total conceptual vocabulary (Pearson, Fernández,
& Oller, 1993) is considered, however,
there is no vocabulary gap for this group of
bilinguals.
Published online: 18 November 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.60.02dal
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.60.02dal
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Bundesregierung
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