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Studies in Turkish as a Heritage Language
Edited by Fatih Bayram
[Studies in Bilingualism 60] 2020
► pp. 63–84

Chapter 4
The effects of heritage language experience on lexical and morphosyntactic outcomes

| University of Konstanz
| UiT The Arctic University of Norway
| Indiana University Bloomington

In heritage language (HL) bilingualism, recent work has focused on understanding the dynamic effects that different input types can have on heritage language development and outcomes (e.g., Bayram et al., 2017; Kupisch & Rothman, 2018; Polinsky, 2018; Putnam & Sanchez, 2013; Karayayla & Schmid, 2019). The underlying question is to what extent one’s individual experiences with the HL modulate HL development and its outcomes. Following this line of research, we provide evidence from two datasets of Turkish as a HL in Germany that attempts to identify the relative ability of various aspects of language experience (parental background, language use at home, time spent in the HL country, age of exposure to the societal majority language, and quality of HL use) to predict lexical and morphosyntactic performance in Turkish. The results for the first HS group (adolescents) indicate that ‘parental language background’ was the strongest predictor of both lexical diversity and morphosyntactic complexity; for the second HS group (adults), “Turkish use in the home” and “Current Turkish use” were the strongest predictors. We interpret these results as evidence for the variable role played by different types of input in shaping HL outcomes, highlighting the need for more systematic approaches to measuring (and predicting) the effects of input across different areas of language.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.Empirical studies
    • 3.1Complexity measures
      • 3.1.1Lexical diversity
      • 3.1.2Grammatical complexity
    • 3.2Study 1: Adults HSs of Turkish in Hamburg
      • 3.2.1Results for study 1
    • 3.3Study 2: Adolescent HSs of Turkish in Munich
      • 3.3.1Results for Study 2
  • 4.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 November 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.60.04llo
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