This paper investigates the intonation of L3 French, produced by six bilingual learners (ages: 15–17) who speak Turkish as a heritage language (HL) along with German and six same-aged monolingual German learners. We examined of a corpus of read speech in two respects: first, we determined the number of accentual phrases (APs) and, second, we extracted F0 values for each segment, normalized them, and calculated the deviations from the average values produced by three native controls (age: 21–23). Although the bilinguals were expected to outperform the monolinguals due to certain similarities between the intonational systems of French and Turkish, their mean deviation from the native contours was only slightly smaller than that of the monolinguals (difference not significant). To determine how strongly the bilinguals’ Turkish intonation was influenced by German and whether it could serve as a basis for positive transfer whatsoever, we compared their production in Turkish with data recorded from three monolingual Turkish L1 speakers (ages: 21–32) and five German learners of L2 Turkish (ages: 22–43). Results show that the bilinguals’ Turkish intonation does not deviate substantially from the monolinguals’ one, in contrast to the contours produced by the L2 learners. This suggests that metalinguistic and prosodic awareness should be fostered in heritage bilinguals to make them benefit from their full linguistic repertoire.

This paper investigates the acquisition of focus-induced word order variation by German learners of L3 Spanish, thereby comparing monolingual learners and multilinguals who speak Italian or European Portuguese (EP) as a heritage language in addition to their dominant language. Special attention is given to the position of focused subjects ([F S]) in non-complex declaratives. In accordance with Rothman’s (2010, 2011) Typological Primacy Model (TPM), we hypothesize that the multilingual learners behave more target-like than the monolinguals given that Italian and EP are typologically closer to Spanish than German and pattern with the target language with respect to the post-verbal position of [F S] in sentences lacking an overt object determiner phrase (DP). Based on elicited production data and a grammaticality judgment task, it is shown that the multilingual learners have only a slight advantage over the monolinguals, depending on their metalinguistic knowledge. This suggests that the predictions made by the TPM do not necessarily hold for the special case of foreign language learning by heritage speakers.

We investigated prosodic variability attributable to age in Standard Bulgarian. In readings of The North Wind and the Sun, recorded by two groups of six female speakers aged between 19-23 and 79-88 years, we found significant differences in pitch span, minimum F0, syllable, intonation phrase and pause duration. The older speakers made more pauses, which were also of longer duration. They also realized longer syllables and intonation phrases than young speakers. Both groups used the same inventory of pitch accents and boundary tones, but there were significant differences in the frequency counts of some of the tones: young speakers used pre-nuclear rises with a post-tonic high target, while older speakers preferred rises with a high target within the stressed syllable; the nuclear pitch accent used most frequently by the young speakers was L*, whereas the one preferred by the elderly speakers was L+H*; younger speakers used more phrase accents (especially H-), while older speakers preferred boundary tones (H-% and L-%) and "level" (H-L% and HL-) pitch curves. Our findings suggest that the study of tonal repertoires and frequencies of use could offer interesting insights into age-related differences between speakers.

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The contributions assembled in this volume are devoted to Trudel Meisenburg and address central aspects of her research: language contact, variation and change. The individual papers testify the growing interest in complex heterogeneous and hybrid language constellations and show the explanatory power of linguistic theories which account for contact-induced variability in empirical data. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes sind Trudel Meisenburg gewidmet und gruppieren sich um die zentralen Themen ihrer Forschung: Sprachkontakt, Variation und Wandel. Die Beiträge bezeugen das neue Interesse für komplexe heterogene und hybride sprachliche Situationen und zeigen die Leistungsfähigkeit einer für kontaktbedingte Variabilität offenen linguistischen Theoriebildung auf.