Polish-German Child Bilingualism: The Role of Age of Onset for Long-Term Achievement

该项目调查了首次接触波兰语和德语的年龄对波兰语和德语双语儿童语法熟练程度的影响。分成三组不同的双语儿童：同时双语儿童和早期连续双语儿童，他们接触第二语言的起始年龄不同(3-4岁和6-7岁)。来自这些双语人群的数据将与年龄匹配的单语德语和波兰儿童的数据进行比较。我们的第一个目标是找出这些习得类型在语言发展的高级阶段(在接触第二语言5年后)的异同，以确定开始年龄对双语者长期取得两种语言成就的作用。因此，我们的项目解决了当前关于语言习得敏感期的理论争论。更具体地说，通过详细研究不同的语法属性(限定词、空论元、动词位置)，该项目侧重于年龄效应在不同语言领域的选择性。第二个目标是确定影响达到程度的其他语言和非语言条件的作用。由于将收集两种语言和两个国家(德国和波兰)的数据，我们的项目结合了关于双语第一、早期第二语言习得和传统语言习得的研究。因此，我们将能够解决一些影响双语习得的社会因素，例如语言地位(少数/多数语言)或声望，这些因素可以塑造双语习得的非语言条件。第三，该项目还旨在确定跨语言影响(CLI)发生的条件，它的方向，它是否有益于或有助于磨损和/或不完全习得所涉及的一种语言。在这里，被调查的群体和语言在数据中出现CLI的频率是否不同，以及选定的语言属性中哪些更容易受到CLI的影响等问题将发挥关键作用。数据包括言论自由、句子重复、强制选择任务和语法判断。

The project investigates the effect of age at first exposure to Polish and German on the grammatical proficiency of Polish-German bilingual children in both of their languages. Three different groups of bilingual children are distinguished: simultaneous bilingual children and early successive bilingual children with differing age of onsets of their exposure to the second language (age 3-4 and 6-7). Data from these bilingual populations will be compared to data from age-matched monolingual German and Polish children. Our first goal is to identify similarities and differences characterizing these acquisitional types at an advanced stage of language development (after 5 years of exposure to the L2) in order to determine the role of age of onset for long-term-achievement of bilinguals in both of their languages. Thus, our project addresses the current theoretical debate about sensitive periods in language acquisition. More specifically, by looking at different grammatical properties in detail (determiners, null arguments, verb placement) the project focuses on the selectivity of age effects with regard to different linguistic domains. A second aim is to determine the role of other linguistic and non-linguistic conditions that impact on the degree of attainment. Since data will be gathered for both languages and in both countries (Germany and Poland), our project combines research on bilingual first, early second and heritage language acquisition. Thus, we will be able to address some social factors influencing bilingual acquisition, e.g. language status (minority/majority language) or prestige, which can shape the non-linguistic conditions for bilingual language acquisition. Third, the project also aims at identifying the conditions under which cross-linguistic influence (CLI) takes place, which direction it takes, whether it is beneficial or contributes to attrition and/or incomplete acquisition of one of the involved languages. Here, questions like whether the investigated groups and languages differ with regard to the frequency of occurrence of CLI in the data and which of the selected linguistic properties are more vulnerable to CLI will play a crucial role. Data include free speech, sentence repetition, forced choice-tasks and grammaticality judgments.