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Prof Dr Theodoros Marinis (University of Konstanz) & Duygu Özge (Middle East Technical University): How do bilingual children acquire complex syntax in their heritage vs. the majority language: Turkish-English speaking children in the UK

The Multilingual Mind: lecture series on multilingualism across disciplines

3.11.2020

Tuesday, 17.00 - 18.30 (CET/UTC+01)

Zoom room: zoom.us/j/94531600895

Abstract

There is growing research on the acquisition of heritage (minority) languages but the vast majority of studies has focused on the heritage language without comparing it to the majority language. In this talk we will present data from a study investigating how bilingual Turkish-English children growing up in the UK acquire relative clauses (RCs) in both Turkish and English and how the pattern of acquisition compares to monolingual children growing up in Turkey and in the UK. RCs are syntactically complex structures that develop relatively late and show cross-linguistic differences between Turkish and English in terms of word order and morpho-syntax. As a result, they offer an opportunity to investigate whether or not they will be missing or not fully acquired in the heritage language as well as whether there will be effects of cross-linguistic influence from the stronger/majority language (English) to the weaker/heritage language (Turkish) or vice versa.