Ultimate attainment in the use of lexical collocations among heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany and Turkish-German returnees

Treffers-Daller, J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6575-6736, Daller, M., Furman, R. and Rothman, J. (2016) Ultimate attainment in the use of lexical collocations among heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany and Turkish-German returnees. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19 (3). pp. 504-519. ISSN 1469-1841 doi: 10.1017/S1366728915000139

Abstract/Summary

In this paper we show that heritage speakers and returnees are fundamentally different from the majority of adult second language learners with respect to their use of collocations (Laufer & Waldman, 2011). We compare the use of lexical collocations involving yap- “do” and et- “do” among heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany (n=45) with those found among Turkish returnees (n=65) and Turkish monolinguals (n=69). Language use by returnees is an understudied resource although this group can provide crucial insights into the specific language ability of heritage speakers. Results show that returnees who had been back for one year avoid collocations with yap- and use some hypercorrect forms in et-, whilst returnees who had been back for seven years upon recording produce collocations that are quantitatively and qualitatively similar to those of monolingual speakers of Turkish. We discuss implications for theories of ultimate attainment and incomplete acquisition in heritage speakers.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-pure-test.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/47620
Identification Number/DOI	10.1017/S1366728915000139
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Central Services Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Literature and Languages > English Language and Applied Linguistics
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