Jeanine Treffers-Daller

Transfer of conceptualization patterns in bilinguals: The construal of motion events in Turkish and German

In the present article we provide evidence for the occurrence of transfer of conceptualization patterns in narratives of two German–Turkish bilingual groups. All bilingual participants grew up in Germany, but only one group is still resident in Germany (n = 49). The other, the returnees, moved back to Turkey after having lived in Germany for thirteen years (n = 35). The study is based on the theoretical framework for conceptual transfer outlined in Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008) and on the typology of satellite-framed and verb-framed languages developed by Talmy (1985, 1991, 2000a, b) and Slobin (1987, 1996, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006). In the present study we provide evidence for the hypothesis that language structure affects the organization of information structure at the level of the Conceptualizer, and show that bilingual speakers’ conceptualization of motion events is influenced by the dominant linguistic environment in both languages (German for the group in Germany and Turkish for the returnees). The returnees follow the Turkish blueprints for the conceptualization of motion, in both Turkish and German event construals, whereas the German-resident bilinguals follow the German blueprints, when speaking German as well as Turkish. We argue that most of the patterns found are the result of transfer of conceptualization patterns from the dominant language of the environment.

Operationalizing and measuring language dominance

The aim of this article is to show how measures of lexical richness (Guiraud, 1954; Malvern, Richards, Chipere, & Durán, 2004) can be used to operationalize and measure language dominance among bilinguals. A typology of bilinguals is proposed based on these measures of lexical richness, and the validity of the typology is then investigated in an empirical study among two groups of bilingual informants with different language dominance profiles (25 Dutch—French bilinguals from Brussels and 24 French—English bilinguals from Paris). The most important advantage of the proposed operationalization is that it allows researchers carry out precise measurements of bilingual ability in languages or language varieties for which no standardized tests exist and that these measures can be calculated on oral data that have been collected in an informal and unobtrusive way, in a naturalistic setting.

Code-switching and transfer: an exploration of similarities and differences

This chapter contributes to our understanding of the ways in which code-switching (the use of more than one language in discourse) differs from transfer (the influence of one language on another). There is considerable confusion about the terminology in the field of language contact, and the major contribution of this chapter is to critically evaluate recent findings from the field of language contact, second language acquisition and psycholinguistics in order to clarify the concepts that are used in each discipline. In addition, I investigate the similarities and differences between the phenomena under study and how each can be differentiated from convergence (the achievement of greater structural similarity in a given aspect of the grammar of two or more languages). In the conclusion I argue that intralingual processes such as analogical change in theories of language change or overgeneralization in L1 or L2 development as the counterpart of transfer among monolinguals.

Vocabulary Studies in First and Second Language Acquisition

This book presents recent original research on vocabulary that explores common themes and current issues in both first and second language over a wide range of ages and stages. A key feature is that, in every case, the issues have implications for educational practice and policy.

Language dominance in bilinguals: issues of measurement and operationalization

With contributions from leading scholars of bilingualism, Language Dominance in Bilinguals is the fi rst publication to survey different approaches to language dominance, along with suggested avenues for further research. It illustrates how a critical approach to the notion of language dominance, as well as its operationalization and measurement, can provide new insights into this burgeoning area of research. Drawing on adult and child data from a variety of language pairs, the chapters discuss how language dominance is to be conceptualized and distinguished from such related constructs as language profi ciency and language competence. This volume is the fi rst of its kind to present an overview of different approaches to language dominance from across the theoretical spectrum, as well as suggested avenues for further research. Accessibly written, Language Dominance in Bilinguals is a valuable new addition to the fi eld. Essential reading for students and scholars working in bilingualism, speech therapy and education.

(In)complete acquisition of Turkish among Turkish-German bilinguals in Germany and Turkey: an analysis of complex embeddings in narratives

Although most researchers recognise that the language repertoire of bilinguals can vary, few studies have tried to address variation in bilingual competence in any detail. This study aims to take a first step towards further understanding the way in which bilingual competencies can vary at the level of syntax by comparing the use of syntactic embeddings among three different groups of Turkish–German bilinguals. The approach of the present paper is new in that different groups of bilinguals are compared with each other, and not only with monolingual speakers, as is common in most studies in the field. The analysis focuses on differences in the use of embeddings in Turkish, which are generally considered to be one of the more complex aspects of Turkish grammar. The study shows that young Turkish–German bilingual adults who were born and raised in Germany use fewer, and less complex embeddings than Turkish–German bilingual returnees who had lived in Turkey for eight years at the time of recording. The present study provides new insights in the nature of bilingual competence, as well as a new perspective on syntactic change in immigrant Turkish as spoken in Europe.

Borrowing and Shift-Induced Interference: Contrasting Patterns in French-Germanic Contact in Brussels and Strasbourg.

Summary (The reader is referred to the previous issue of Bilingualism for the full text of the article.) The aim of the present article is, in the first place, to test hypotheses derived from the model for contact-induced language change as formulated in Thomason and Kaufman (1988 et seq.) (henceforth T&K). The framework can be shown to predict correctly the basic asymmetries of the contact patterns in Brussels and Strasbourg, and is thus an invaluable tool for describing these patterns. In the second place, the article aims at showing how an analysis of the similarities and the differences between two language-contact situations can contribute towards a further understanding of variability in this domain of research. More specifically, a comparison of the language-contact phenomena in Strasbourg and Brussels can shed light upon the debate around the nature of the constraints on contactinduced change. T&K (1988, p. 35) take a clear point of view in this discussion when they say ‘‘it is the sociolinguistic history of the speakers, and not the structure of their language, that is the primary determinant of the linguistic outcome of language contact’’. This article shows that despite the differences in the sociolinguistic situation of Brussels and Strasbourg, the overall contact patterns are very similar, both from a quantitative and from a qualitative point of view. Thus, the present article provides some evidence for the view that it is the structure of the languages involved rather than the sociolinguistic history of the speakers, which determines the outcome of language contact in the first place. Brussels and Strasbourg form a very interesting test case for T&K’s model, because the authors do not discuss these contact situations in their book at all. This makes it possible genuinely to test the predictions of the model against the data available from Brussels and Strasbourg. T&K’s model provides a framework within which the results of a large number of descriptive studies about language contact in Belgium and Alsace can be summarised and evaluated. To my knowledge no efforts have been made until now to compare the mutual influences in these areas, apart from the analyses presented in Treffers-Daller (1995). The article thus wants to contribute towards a more general perspective on language contact along the Romance‐Germanic language frontier, focusing on the contrastive effects of two types of linguistic influence which T&K have called ‘‘borrowing’’ and ‘‘shift-induced interference’’. ‘‘Borrowing’’ is defined as the ‘‘incorporation of foreign features into a group’s native language: the native language is maintained but is changed by the

French‐Dutch codeswitching in Brussels: Social factors explaining its disappearance

The focus of this paper is on intrasentential codeswitching among locally‐born inhabitants of Brussels. The older Brusselers have the reputation of switching frequently between the local varieties of Dutch and French, but the younger generations switch much less often. The disappearance of intrasentential codeswitching is shown to be related to knowledge of standard Belgian Dutch, that is the southern variant of standard Dutch, among other factors. Informants who have a good knowledge of standard Dutch (for example because they have attended Dutch‐speaking schools) switch less often than those who do not master this code very well. Apart from this, intrasentential codeswitching is probably no longer a generalised practice in Brussels because ‘the codes involved symbolise social groups in conflict/competition with each other’, as Myers‐Scotton (1991) formulated it.

Vocabulary size revisited: the link between vocabulary size and academic achievement

Abstract Many researchers have tried to assess the number of words adults know. A general conclusion which emerges from such studies is that vocabularies of English monolingual adults are very large with considerable variation. This variation is important given that the vocabulary size of schoolchildren in the early years of school is thought to materially affect subsequent educational attainment. The data is difficult to interpret, however, because of the different methodologies which researchers use. The study in this paper uses the frequency-based vocabulary size test from Goulden et al (1990) and investigates the vocabulary knowledge of undergraduates in three British universities. The results suggest that monolingual speaker vocabulary sizes may be much smaller than is generally thought with far less variation than is usually reported. An average figure of about 10,000 English word families emerges for entrants to university. This figure suggests that many students must struggle with the comprehension of university level texts.

L1 Transfer in the Acquisition of Manner and Path in Spanish by Native Speakers of English

In this article the authors argue that L1 transfer from English is not only important in the early stages of L2 acquisition of Spanish, but remains influential in later stages if there is not enough positive evidence for the learners to progress in their development (Lefebvre, White, & Jourdan, 2006). The findings are based on analyses of path and manner of movement in stories told by British students of Spanish (N = 68) of three different proficiency levels. Verbs that conflate motion and path, on the one hand, are mastered early, possibly because the existence of Latinate path verbs, such as enter and ascend in English, facilitate their early acquisition by British learners of Spanish. Contrary to the findings of Cadierno (2004) and Cadierno and Ruiz (2006), the encoding of manner, in particular in boundary crossing contexts, seems to pose enormous difficulties, even among students who had been abroad on a placement in a Spanish-speaking country prior to the data collection. An analysis of the frequency of manner verbs in Spanish corpora shows that one of the key reasons why students struggle with manner is that manner verbs are so infrequent in Spanish. The authors claim that scarce positive evidence in the language exposed to and little or no negative evidence are responsible for the long-lasting effect of transfer on the expression of manner.