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

该项目调查了第一次接触波兰语和德语的年龄对波兰-德语双语儿童两种语言的语法熟练程度的影响。双语儿童分为三个不同的群体：同时双语儿童和早期连续双语儿童与不同的年龄开始接触第二语言（3-4岁和6-7岁）。这些双语人群的数据将与年龄匹配的单语德国和波兰儿童的数据进行比较。我们的第一个目标是确定相似性和差异的特点，这些收购类型在语言发展的高级阶段（5年后，暴露于L2），以确定发病年龄的作用，长期实现双语者在他们的语言。因此，我们的项目解决了目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，空参数，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成绩的其他语言和非语言条件的作用。由于数据将收集两种语言和两个国家（德国和波兰），我们的项目结合双语第一，早期第二和遗产语言习得的研究。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（少数民族/多数民族语言）或声望，这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，它采取的方向，它是有益的还是有助于磨损和/或不完全获得所涉及的语言之一。在这里，诸如所调查的群体和语言是否在数据中CLI的出现频率方面存在差异以及哪些选定的语言特性更容易受到CLI的影响等问题将发挥关键作用。数据包括自由言论，句子重复，被迫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.