Foreign language acquisition in heritage speakers : the acquisition of articles in L3-English by German-Turkish bilinguals

Abstract

L3 acquisition has been a topic of increasing interest throughout the past decade. Nevertheless, linguistically-oriented work has so far paid little attention to the acquisition of foreign languages by second generation minority (or heritage) speakers, who have acquired two languages in early childhood. Our paper investigates article acquisition by German-Turkish speakers, who have grown up in Germany. Specifically, we address the question whether these speakers’ L3 English shows cross-linguistic influence (CLI) from Turkish (their chronological L1) or German (their chronological L2). Results indicate the absence of negative CLI from Turkish and positive CLI from German, their L2. The study can be seen as supporting the view that typological proximity is crucial for CLI, while also allowing for the conclusion that language dominance plays a role.