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Aims and objectives: This study investigates the acquisition of referential expressions for direct objects by child heritage speakers of Polish living in Germany. Our main research questions are how object expression develops in bilingual children and whether their path or pace of acquisition differs from monolingual children. Methodology: We investigate the use of referential expressions in an elicited production task. In all, 39 Polish-German bilingual children participated in the test. Data and analysis: We compare the data of four age groups of bilingual children – 3- to 4-year-olds, 5- to 6-year-olds, 7- to 8-year-olds, and 9- to 10-year-olds – to each other and to monolingual children at the respective ages. For the analysis of participants' responses, we ran a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) with a multinominal dependent variable. Findings: The results show that child heritage language (HL) speakers of Polish display knowledge of semantic and pragmatic constraints of object realization from early stages on. However, from age 5 and up to age 9 to 10, they still produce high rates of inappropriate null objects and show a deceleration in the development of this knowledge, compared to monolingual children. This protracted development is attributed to reduced input in the HL, mainly due to the enrolment in the majority language school. Originality: This study is the first to investigate the development of referential expressions for direct objects in child heritage speakers of Polish in the age span 3 to 10 years. Significance: The study relates the higher rates of null objects in the bilingual production to the varying degrees of exposure to the HL during language development. Deceleration in the pace of object acquisition by the HL speakers at the age of 5 to 6 years is attributed to a prolonged stage of acquisition of integrating rules of syntactic and pragmatic knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explorations of attrition attempt to gain insight into linguistic representations in the brain and to understand what supports the consolidation of information in memory so that language knowledge is retained, even after long periods of language disuse. In this study the role of extra-linguistic factors in influencing levels of knowledge retention over a long period of incubation is investigated along with the question if support for savings can be found, i.e., is seemingly forgotten knowledge in fact still intact and, therefore, may be accessed again. Four adults from Ireland currently living in Germany who had not had contact with the Irish language in approximately 30 years were tested on their knowledge of Irish lexical items and interviewed in depth on their experiences of learning Irish. Understanding language loss has important implications for the L2/FL education domain and pedagogy. If it can be established what impacts greater retention of knowledge, teaching curricula and methodologies can be revised accordingly to make them more effective with respect to long-term knowledge retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses the question of what happens to internal linguistic variability in a language contact situation by looking at how first-generation Russian immigrants in Germany use two variants of possessive pronouns (reflexive and non-reflexive) for referencing the subject. To what extent does the frequency of the variants, as well as linguistic constraints on their use, remain the same as in the monolingual variety, or change to converge with the structures of the majority language? A forced choice sentence completion task was conducted with 96 adult monolingual Russian and 96 adult bilingual Russian-German speakers to measure the frequency of both variants and the effect of animacy and referentiality of the possessum. The results reveal an increased frequency of the non-reflexive variant in bilingual Russian, indicating convergence with German. At the same time, bilingual speakers observe the same animacy and referentiality constraints on the possessive choice as monolinguals. The effect of linguistic constraints, however, is smaller than the influence of individual speaker-related variables. Overall, our study indicates that convergence in language contact affects the frequency but not the conditioning of the variants and only in some bilingual individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the variation of the polyfunctional linguistic item also across registers and language contact settings. I present findings from a corpus study using the corpus of the Research Unit Emerging Grammars, RUEG for short (Wiese et al., 2019), which provides comparable, register-differentiated data of bilingual and monolingual speakers of German in Germany and bilingual heritage speakers of German in the US. The data suggest that functional variation of a specific lexical item reflects the use of functional features in specific communicative situations. The data further indicate an impact of the societal status that a language occupies in the larger society (majority vs. heritage language) on the distribution of such functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a particular speech style or speaking a language variety such as a multi-ethnolect implies a continuous 'act of identity', i.e. a way of self-positioning through which speakers develop and consolidate a sense of belonging to a group. Starting with this assumption, this paper depicts the close correlations between linguistic variables and definition of macro-sociological categories for multilingual speakers. We will firstly focus on the main peculiarities of a new way of speaking emerging in multiethnic urban Germany (often referred to as 'Kiezdeutsch'), which combines features of a youth language with those of a contact language; then we will examine the major functions of sociolinguistic variation in social meaning construction as well as in the process of shaping one's own linguistic and cultural identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides insights into the language situation of the threegeneration (G1-G3) Albanian language group (n=120) in Germany and Switzerland and presents their attitudes towards varieties of both languages (Albanian-German). According to the results, the respondents are positively disposed towards both languages and attach a high value to them. Standard German achieves the highest values, while dialects of this language come last in the ranking. The results also show that respondents in Switzerland deal with diglossia more openly and are thus better anchored in Swiss society than the Albanian group in Germany. Finally, our data show that most respondents see their future in Germany and Switzerland and that there is no significant correlation between language attitudes and future career prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines language contact phenomena in multilingual chat platforms, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, in order to discuss the role played by the new media. The corpus is comprised of chats written by Italians and Germans aged between 23 and 30 who are settled in Germany. The first results show that the speakers make extensive use of their multilingual repertoire. These findings suggest that central features of the new media, such as interactivity and instantaneousness, enhance linguistic creativity. Concerning the hybrid character of internet communication, the results also show the need for an adjustment of the traditional continuum between spoken and written language as proposed in Koch and Oesterreicher's model (1985; 1994). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Uriel Weinreich’s Languages in Contact (1953), a long series of studies have continued to explore language contact phenomena between different language pairs. However, there is a research gap concerning the study of language contact between German and Arabic, a field which is becoming increasingly important due to the recent huge migration waves from the Arab world towards Europe. This article explores phenomena of language contact between both languages, using online German marriage ads that appeared in the Islamic Online Monthly Newspaper Islamische Zeitung in Berlin from July 2015 to August 2017. The results identify different code-switching practices, mixing practices of lexical and functional categories as well as hybrid compounds and examples of scriptswitching. It shows that while these practices have a referential function, they contribute as well to constructing the social identity of the advertisers as well as to developing a specific language style of the group. The article highlights contemporary communicative practices of migrants with Arabic background in Germany and contributes to the field of intercultural and identity construction studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates Turkish texts from heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany in a pseudo-longitudinal setting, looking at pupils' texts from the 5th, 7th, 10th and 12th grades. Two types of dynamics are identified in the advanced acquisition of Turkish orthography in the heritage context. One is the dynamic of language contact, where in certain areas of the orthography, we find a re-interpretation of Turkish principles according to the German model. However, this changes as the pupils grow up. The second dynamic is the heritage situation. The heritage situation on one side leads to the establishment of new practices, and it also leads to a higher degree of variability of spelling solutions in those areas, where the orthographic system of Turkish poses challenges to every writer, whether monolingual and growing up in Turkey or heritage speaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article presents first results of a pilot study on the syntactic changes in Polish as a language contact in Germany. On the base of the experimental data tests the study examines the syntactic changes in Polish of two diaspora-generations: the so called forgetters and the incomplete learners. The article focuses on the questions: how the situation of languages in contact influences the syntactic changes in the heritage language (Polish) and which status have those syntactic transferences. Other linguistic and sociolinguistic factors, capable to cause the language change in the situation of language contact, are also discussed in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Jezikoslovlje is the property of University of Osijek, Faculty of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses sociolinguistic aspects of multilingual communication and its relationship to globalization. Examples are provided of code switching in narrative conversations among young immigrants to Germany with Turkish backgrounds and the role of age in the attitudes of speakers is described. Social conditions for multilingual speakers are described and dialectic influences on the speech patterns of multilingual speakers are analyzed. The importance of differentiating the role of speakers in narrative conversations is emphasized.

The article examines the history of the extinct western Yiddish language in the Alsace region, southwest Germany, and Switzerland. Information is provided on the interaction between Yiddish and German languages, the existence of High Alemannic structures in Swiss Yiddish and vice versa is described, and analysis of audio recordings of Yiddish is examined. Examples of code switching by speakers of both High Alemannic and western Yiddish are also provided and the role of linguistic minorities in southwest Germany and Switzerland is described.

The article examines the patterns of language usage among Swiss immigrants to East Germany following German reunification in 1990. The author offers personal opinions on his experiences as a Swiss migrant to Leipzig, Germany on the sociolinguistics of contact between Swiss and German languages and contrasts this situation with that faced by German immigrants from countries such as Spain, Portugal, and Turkey. The attitudes of Germans regarding the Swiss dialect are examined and statements from individual immigrants are offered.

This paper responds to what I perceive as a lack of a meso level framework in the study of English in the mediascapes of the 'expanding circle'. I shall make my case on the example of German. Traditionally, most research on German/English language contact is on Angli-cisms, that is, lexical borrowings from English. Other approaches do exist, but Anglicisms research, which originated in the 1960s, still seems the dominant framework and, as most of this work is carried out on mass (mostly printed) media data, it has also become the dominant way of looking at English in the media. I argue in this paper that the Anglicisms paradigm does not account for a range of patterns of national language/English contact. As an alternative, I propose an approach labeled 'English on top', which focuses on the textual positions and discourse functions of English rather than its lexical structure. In a prelimi-nary working definition, 'English on top' is a pattern of bilingual discourse in which English is a complementary code used in addition to ('on top' of) the predominant national language for specific discourse functions. As the discussion shall make clear, it is not the case that the usage patterns this metaphor aims at capturing have never been noticed before, but it does seem they haven't been systematically considered so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration from one country/language/culture to another one is a frequent reason for language contact, linguistic borrowing, bilingualism, and cultural influence. The paper analyses possible types and reasons for migration. Then different waves of immigration to Germany since the 19th century are described, including linguistic effects and cultural problems of integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a specific group of English users in Germany: students studying English at the Freie Universität Berlin. The first section outlines the various domains in which these students encounter English in their daily lives, both within and outside university, as they make and maintain intercultural connections. This analysis suggests that, at least among these university students, English-German bilingualism seems to be the norm. The second section of this paper shows how students' proficiency in English plays a role in their creation, or re-creation, of local, national, European and global identities. What is more, in this small community of students, it seems that the ability to use English is intricately tied in with the (re)definition of what it means to be German, or at least an educated, urban German. Although they constitute a small community, these students' uses of and attitudes towards English highlight some general trends of globalization and provide some insights into the evolving role of English in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines one of the major metalinguistic debates in post-war Germany: the debate about the influence of English on German, an issue which was raised in the 1990s in the German media and has dominated media discussions on language ever since. The analysis demonstrates that the debate is deeply embedded in current socio-political discourses as well as in long-term discursive traditions concerning, on the one hand, the socio-political changes following German reunification in 1989/90, which involved a revision of the concepts of nation and nationalism, and, on the other, the genesis of the concept of nation, which is closely bound up with the history of the educated bourgeoisie and the process of standardisation as well as linguistic purism. It is argued that the debate on Anglicisms, as is the case in many other metalinguistic debates, cannot be regarded in isolation from the socio-political environment and the context of historical usage within which it is embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Collegium Antropologicum is the property of Croatian Anthropological Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)