The effects of heritage language experience on lexical and morphosyntactic outcomes

Abstract

In heritage language (HL) bilingualism, recent work has focused on understanding the dynamic effects that different input types can have on heritage language development and outcomes (e.g., Bayram et al., 2017; Kupisch & Rothman, 2018; Polinsky, 2018; Putnam & Sanchez, 2013; Karayayla & Schmid, 2019). The underlying question is to what extent one’s individual experiences with the HL modulate HL development and its outcomes. Following this line of research, we provide evidence from two datasets of Turkish as a HL in Germany that attempts to identify the relative ability of various aspects of language experience (parental background, language use at home, time spent in the HL country, age of exposure to the societal majority language, and quality of HL use) to predict lexical and morphosyntactic performance in Turkish. The results for the first HS group (adolescents) indicate that ‘parental language background’ was the strongest predictor of both lexical diversity and morphosyntactic complexity; for the second HS group (adults), “Turkish use in the home” and “Current Turkish use” were the strongest predictors. We interpret these results as evidence for the variable role played by different types of input in shaping HL outcomes, highlighting the need for more systematic approaches to measuring (and predicting) the effects of input across different areas of language.