The Role of Input Factors in the Lexical Development of European Portuguese as a Heritage Language in Portuguese–German Bilingual Speakers

Abstract

In light of previous research on early bilingualism, this study investigates whether 6-11-year-old child heritage speakers (HSs) of European Portuguese (EP), living in Germany, show patterns of lexical development similar to those of monolingual EP children, both in terms of vocabulary size and of lexical composition. Moreover, it assesses the role of factors related to the quantity and quality of the input in the HSs' lexical development in EP. Twenty-three bilingual and 21 monolingual children were tested on a semi-spontaneous oral production task. The collected data were used to build a corpus composed of three subcorpora (nouns, verbs, adjectives), which served as a basis for between-and within-group comparisons. Information regarding the HSs' language experience was collected by means of a parental questionnaire. Results revealed significant between-group differences concerning the total corpus and the subcorpora of nouns and verbs. Within-group comparisons showed that both groups produced significantly more nouns than verbs and more verbs than adjectives. Correlation analyses revealed that the HSs' lexical knowledge is significantly correlated with the input and output quantity at home as well as with the number of EP-speaking parents. Parents emerge as the key players in the acquisition of EP as a heritage language.

A Four-Year Longitudinal Comparative Study on the Lexicon Development of Russian and Turkish Heritage Speakers in Germany

“…Accordingly, the strongest predictor for HL lexicon size is the amount of HL use at home (Klassert and Gagarina 2010;Leseman 2000), particularly the use within the nuclear family (Gagarina and Klassert 2018). Additionally, the number of parents speaking the HL influences language development, since lexicon size in children with two HL-speaking parents increases substantially more between the ages of two to four than the lexicon size of children in a one-parent-one-language setting (Correia and Flores 2017;Hoff et al 2014;Place and Hoff 2011). Moreover, the consistent use of the HL by siblings influences HL acquisition.…”

Portuguese as Heritage Language in Germany—A Linguistic Perspective

“…Evidence for the correlation between extra-linguistic variables related to amount of language exposure and differential development of different properties of a heritage language comes from several studies on European Portuguese (EP) as HL, for instance, research on lexical development (Correia and Flores 2017), on the acquisition of the subjunctive (Flores et al 2017a), on anaphora resolution ) and on pronunciation (Flores et al 2017b).…”

“…In a study involving 23 second-generation Portuguese-descendant children living in Germany, aged 6 to 11 years, Correia and Flores (2017) compared their patterns of lexical development with those of 21 monolingual EP children, both in terms of vocabulary size and of lexical diversity. In addition, the authors investigated the effects of extra-linguistic variables related to the quantity and quality of HL exposure on the bilingual children's lexical development in EP.…”

Perspetivas múltiplas sobre a competência bilingue de crianças lusodescendentes residentes na Suíça

“…Os questionários são um instrumento eficiente e muito utilizado para a obtenção de informações que permitem desenhar o perfil linguístico dos participantes, através da descrição do contexto sociolinguístico em que a criança adquire e usa as suas línguas (Codó, 2008;Correia & Flores, 2017). O questionário de perfil linguístico utilizado no presente estudo foi adaptado do questionário sociolinguístico parental para famílias emigrantes bilingues QuesFEB (Correia & Flores, 2021), contendo três secções.…”