Séminaire Langues d'Héritage - Joyce van Zwet

The role of input and cross-linguistic influence on early and late acquired morphosyntactic structures in Dutch as a heritage language.

Joyce van Zwet – Radboud University Centre for Language Studies – joyce.vanzwet [at] ru.nl ()style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"

This study aims to distinguish input quantity effects from cross-linguistic influence in child heritage speakers of Dutch to get a better understanding of the mechanisms that are at play in heritage language development. Child heritage speakers are a heterogeneous group both in terms of language abilities and language learning environments (Paradis, 2023). The characteristics of the environment in which children acquire their heritage language, i.e. under reduced input conditions and in the presence of a societal language (Daskalaki et al., 2020), might account for the variation in language abilities we encounter in these speakers.

Our – ongoing – research investigates input effects and cross-linguistic influence on early and late acquired structures in heritage Dutch. In the seminar, we will focus on word order in main clauses and relative clauses in bilingual Dutch-French children. Dutch has verb second word order in main clauses, meaning that the verb always takes the second position in the main clause (examples 1 and 2), and verb final word order in relative clauses, meaning that the verb always takes the final position in the relative clause (examples 3 and 4). We investigate if there is cross-linguistic influence on word order from French to Dutch and we explore the role of language input. In the talk, I will present an overview of the project, the design of the study and some preliminary results from our first round of data collection.

1. Morgen           ga        ik         naar school

Tomorrow       go        I          to school

2. Demain           je         vais     à l’école

Tomorrow       I          go        to school

3. Het meisje      dat       een appel         eet

The girl           who     an apple          eats

4. La fille            qui       mange une pomme

The girl           who     eats      an apple