Rosemarie Tracy

Wege zur komplexen Syntax

Gegenstand des Aufsatzes ist der Erwerb komplexer Satzstrukturen des Deutschen im Kindesalter. Es wird gezeigt, daß das Ausmaß interindividueller und intraindividueller Variation größer ist, als in der Spracherwerbsforschung bisher angenommen wurde. Auf der Grundlage jüngerer Entwicklungen in der Syntaxtheorie werden einige einfache Prinzipien identifiziert, die für diese Variation und die jeweiligen Erwerbsverläufe verantwortlich gemacht werden können. Dabei wird versucht, eine Perspektive zu entwickeln, innerhalb derer linguistische Theorie und Spracherwerbsforschung empirisch relevant aufeinander bezogen werden können.

The acquisition of case morphology in German

This paper traces the acquisition of case morphology and isolates taskstructure variables which influence the course of development. The central factors to be discussed belong to both the language periphery of German (fusion within the specifier system ofNPs, homonymy, degree of perceptual similarity, idiosyncracies) and complexities involving parameters and principles of core grammar (government, abstract case assignment, etc.). It is claimed that the learner constructs the morphological case system by searching for correlations across various linguistic subsystems. The relative straightforwardness with which individual cases correlate with formal grammatical principles turns out to be a reliable index of the difficulties encountered by the learner.

Language Acquisition and Competing Linguistic Representations: The Child as Arbiter

There is an ongoing linguistic debate as to whether or not the V2 effect in German main clauses results from movement of verbs into a head-initial C-head position (see Travis, 1984; Grewendorf, 1988; Vikner and Schwartz, 1991; Reis and Rosengren, 1991). In this paper, we shall link this question to a range of data from child language. We will argue that there are good reasons for doubting that children’s early V2 main clauses should be analyzed as CPs and - even more heretically - we will propose that V2 clauses never need to be reanalyzed as CPs on their way to the adult system.

Where Scrambling Begins: Triggering Object Scrambling at the Early Stage in German and Bernese Swiss German

At a very young age, children are capable of producing utterances, which we could hardly improve upon. The following sentences were spoken by a small German boy named Valle who was about 26 months old at the time:1

The multilingual potential in emerging grammars

Our contribution deals with the nature of childrens earliest word combinations. Based on data from monolingual (German) and bilingual (German/English) children we argue that there is no pregrammatical stage once children move beyond single-word utterances. As soon as words combine, basic organizational principles, such as the binary distinction between head and non-head, are activated and enter into coalitions with other (semantic, pragmatic) levels of representation. In addition we claim that monolinguals behave very much like bilinguals in that initially all children create coexisting grammars. Various types of evidence in favor of this proposal are considered. Convergence comes about when children (assisted by universal grammar) reconstruct derivational relationships linking hitherto independent systems. The overall process is slow, making it possible for us to detect transitional problems. Bilingual language mixing yields important insights into childrens early awareness of cross-linguistic equivalence and contrasts and can be related to specific properties of a childs grammars at different developmental stages.

The Strength of the Weak: Asynchronies in the Simultaneous Acquisition of German and English

SummaryChildren growing up with more than one first language present us with a unique opportunity for raising questions about language acquisition which we could hardly answer on the basis of monolingual data alone. In our contribution we will take a close look at developmental asynchronies, i.e. cases where one of the child’s languages develops faster than the other. On the basis of a longitudinal study involving English and German as first languages, we will show what asynchronies can teach us about the relative complexity of a child’s two input languages. In addition, we will identify clever learner strategies (language mixing, the employment of cross-linguistic placeholders, discourse borrowing) that provide us with interesting insights into bilingual children’s metalinguistic awareness of gaps in one of their linguistic systems.ZusammenfassungKinder, die mit mehr als einer Erstsprache aufwachsen, bieten uns die einzigartige Gelegenheit, Phänomene im Spracherwerb zu untersuchen, die auf der Basis monolingualer Daten nicht geklärt werden könnten. In unserem Beitrag untersuchen wir entwicklungsbedingte Asynchronien, in denen das Kind eine Sprache schneller erwirbt als die andere. Anhand einer Langzeitstudie mit Englisch und Deutsch als Erstsprachen zeigen wir, was uns diese Asynchronien über relative Schwierigkeiten in der verschiedenen Zielsprachen verraten. Außerdem identifizieren wie verschiedene kluge Lernerstrategien (z.B. Mischungen, Platzhalterphänomene und Diskursanleihen), die uns Einblicke in das metalinguistische Bewusstsein der bilingualen Kinder und ihrer Sprachsysteme gewähren.

Bilingual Education: International Perspectives

There is still intensive discussion about bilingualism/multilingualism and its advantages and disadvantages for the individual and for society. More than ever bilingualism appears to be a necessary qualification within an increasingly tightly connected world. At the same time, supporters of bilingual education have to contend not just with those who, like the proponents of the English-only movement in the USA, fear that multilingualism will eventually lead to societal disintegration, but also with those who, in principle, value the mastery of additional languages as a cultural ideal but who are nevertheless concerned about negative consequences for childrens cognitive, linguistic, and emotional development. Against the backdrop of this on-going controversy, this contribution aims at providing an overview of existing models of bilingual education (such as immersion, submersion, transition, and dual-language education) and highlights their motivations and goals.

Mehrsprachigkeit: Vom Störfall zum Glücksfall

Seit gut einem Jahrzehnt ist das Thema Sprache fester Bestandteil bildungspolitischer Debatten und selbst aus der lokalen Presse nicht mehr wegzudenken.

Multitasking: Mehrsprachigkeit jenseits des „Streitfalls“

Drei Gesichtspunkte erscheinen mir bedenkenswert fur den „Streitfall Zwei-sprachigkeit“: Zunachst ist es sinnvoll, daran zu erinnern, dass Ein- und Mehrsprachigkeit Idealisierungen sind und kein absolutes Gegensatzpaar darstellen. Auch die Vorstellung, die Zeit, die man mit einer Sprache verbringt, ginge einer anderen verloren, geht an den Fahigkeiten des Menschen vorbei, in sprachlicher Hinsicht vieles gleichzeitig zu tun. Mein zweites Anliegen beruhrt den Spracherwerb und insbesondere die Mehrsprachigkeit in der fruhen Kindheit. Auf der Grundlage empirischer Arbeiten zu unterschiedlichen Erwerbstypen soll gezeigt werden, wie fruh und souveran Kinder mit der Koexistenz sprachlicher Kenntnissysteme umgehen konnen und was man daraus lernen konnte, um befurchteten Defiziten entgegen zu wirken. In einem weiteren Schritt frage ich, inwieweit es moglich ist, auf der Grundlage eines Minimalkonsenses eine vorschulische und schulische Mehrsprachigkeitsforderung auf den Weg zu bringen, von der alle Kinder nachhaltig profitieren.

Transfer versus coexistent systems

Compared with the wealth of investigations on monolingual language acquisition, research on early bilingualism still has some catching up to do. Papers such as the one by Natascha Muller show us what may be gained if results from both areas are integrated within one theoretical framework, in this case current generative theory.