Do Children with a Migrant Background Develop Language Deficits in Their First or Their Second Language?

1.

Introduction

The issues of globalisation and hence immigration are ever-increasing topics in Europe. Only recently it was stated that every second student is supposed to have sufficient knowledge of at least one foreign language at the age of 15. An action plan formulated by the European Commission for the years 2004-2006 shows the importance of languages as means for integration and cultural awareness.
“It is a priority for Member States to ensure that language learning in kindergarten and primary school is effective, for it is here that key attitudes towards other languages and cultures are formed, and the foundations for later language learning are laid.” (Commission of the European Communities 2003: 7)

With reference to the educational system it is demanded that two other languages should be learned in schools under the heading of the ‘life-long language learning’ programme. Although today’s countries are already coined by bilingualism and multilingualism the development and maintenance of different languages is still emotionally debated within politics and societies (cf. Meisel 2004:1). This is especially the case in child language acquisition because it is assumed that different language input could negatively influence the cognitive mechanisms and that the children could be trapped between two or more unsteady developed languages. Referring to the situation of children with a migrant background the arguments on the one hand claim that the maintenance of the family language is threatened and on the other hand that the proficiency of the majority language is insufficient to interact within the environment and to proceed academically (cf. ibid.). Recalling the European Commission it is stated that because of the globalisation the knowledge of more than one language is seen as a basic skill and the competence to communicate in languages apart from English takes on an important role. Since children with a migrant background are usually raised with various language, for instance, the family language (minority language), the language of the host country and further languages at school, they bring along apposite characteristics to become multilingual and to fulfill the goal set by the European Commission. However, these different language contacts in various settings also provide difficulties. The input from the close environment like relatives and neighbourhood shapes their language progress. As a result the children with migrant backgrounds happen to enter primary school with serious disadvantages (cf. Driessen, van der Slik & de Bot, 2002: 176). Thus Stanat et al. (2010) reported in their presentation of the PISA tests and the compared results

Introduction

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from 2000 – 2009 that within Europe children with a migrant background still have considerable lacks in majority language competences compared to their monolingual peers. Because these results are often seen as consequences of insufficient language proficiency, this paper scrutinizes the bilingual development of children with a migrant background with the goal to find out how maintenance of the minority language and acquisition of the majority language are best achieved. The question is whether children with a migrant background develop language deficits in their first or second language and if so, why this happens. Thus factors which influence language development are examined whereas age as a main factor is particularly focused next to home language and formal educational impacts. Finally, it should be considered if there is something like linguistically balanced bilingualism and if it could be compared to monolingual language proficiency. The examination paper at hand looks at cases of bilingual children who are exposed to a minority language at home and a majority language in society by birth or in early or late childhood. Furthermore the children’s linguistic development is scrutinised throughout various analyses to show if probable language deficits in their first or second language persist into adulthood. At the beginning of the paper characteristics of monolingual first language acquisition are compared to adult second language acquisition including universal grammar (UG) as the underlying theory. This is done because these concepts serve as a foundation for further empirical findings regarding language development in children. Afterwards the term ‘bilingualism’ is defined and linked to the fact that not every bilingual input results in the successful acquisition of two actively used languages. This sets the basis for chapter 4 in which various studies and their outcome concerning incomplete language development in children mainly dependent on the age of onset of acquisition are described. In the last chapters the topics home language and language attitude are addressed because these factors receive increasing attention across research on linguistic behaviour.

First and second language acquisition

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2.

First and second language acquisition
To make claims about the acquisition and attrition of languages in children with a migrant background, it is important to look at the common suggestions that can be made about acquiring a first or second language and their implications for a bilingual development as the latter undergoes several alterations during the period of acquisition. Furthermore this paragraph scrutinises the role of age and the so called Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) and its function and proposition for reaching ultimate attainment in one or more languages. According to Meisel (2007) the main significance of first language (L1) acquisition is that it is generally successful. Typically every child fully acquires the structural features of the corresponding L1 independently from intelligence, personality and social context. Additionally the L1 is acquired nearly effortlessly without the need for any particular instructed lessons just by communicating with certain reference persons. For all learners the acquisition process takes place gradually and consistently throughout several stages regardless which language is acquired (cf. Meisel 2007: 95). In contrast to these features of L1 acquisition, foreign language learning in adults is presumed to highly vary in levels of competence in the learners and full language proficiency is rarely achieved. Thus the question is which different sources and systems children and adults draw on to acquire and use their language constructions correctly (cf. Bley-Vroman, 1990: 4).

2.1

The Fundamental Difference Hypothesis The theory applied in this context is the Fundamental Differences Hypothesis

(FDH) proposed by Bley-Vroman (1990: 3f) who has defended that child first language acquisition substantially differs from adult second language acquisition referred to as the logical problem of language acquisition and who has also looked at the role of innate devices as a part of a universal grammar (UG) leading to ultimate attainment in child language acquisition. There are 10 varieties discussed in detail by Bley-Vroman (1990: 8-10; Meisel 2011: 194) which indicate the fundamental differences.

1. 2. 3. 4.

Lack of success General failure Variation in success, course, strategy Variation in goals

First and second language acquisition

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5. Correlation in age and proficiency 6. Fossilization 7. Indeterminate intuitions 8. Importance of instruction 9. Negative evidence 10. Role of affective factors Bley-Vroman (1990: 13) has claimed that the L1 is acquired due to innate principles which provide children with the capability to acquire a language with ease. Furthermore as stated by White (2003) children produce more complex output than they could imitate from their received input. The crucial point is whether these innate principles adopted from UG are accessible by adult L2 learners or if their nonavailability is the reason for the mentioned different outcomes in L1 and L2 acquisition. Meisel (2011: 194) states that if adult learners cannot access UG via their L2, they still have a fully mastered L1 where certain UG principles have been shaped and there may be some UG-related information around somewhere.

Table 1, Learning mechanisms available to children and adults (partly adopted from Montrul, 2008: 46)
L1 acquisition by children The Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (Bley-Vroman,1990) Universal Grammar L2 acquisition by adults L1 knowledge

Domain-specific linguistic mechanisms

Domain-general cognitive mechanisms

The main factors demonstrated in these remarks are that there is full access to UG for children and there might be a partial access of UG for adult L2 learners and furthermore Bley-Vroman (1990: 32f; Meisel, 2011: 195) assumes that differences emerging in children L1 acquisition and adult L2 learning are age-related according to the Critical Period Hypothesis. In the following the latter one is addressed and looked at in more detail.

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2.2

The Critical Period Hypothesis Age is the most prominent factor regarding the successful acquisition of a

language. Endless studies with various hypotheses have been conducted to specify the exact function of age ranges for the outcome of bilingual – or second language acquisition and why adult second language learners hardly acquire full attainment of a language comparable to that of native speakers (Bley-Vroman 1989, Johnson&Newport 1991, Schachter 1990; as cited in Montrul 2008: 19). Most of these studies refer to the so-called Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) which neurolinguistically determines an endpoint of being capable of learning a language nativelike as in childhood and whose relevance is still a matter of debate. Birdsong (1999: 2) introduced the CPH by emphasising the fact that there would be not only one critical period for the different grammatical structures in language but more critical periods for individual structures, for instance phonology or syntax (Seliger 1978, Long 1990; as cited in ibid.) or only for pronunciation like presumed by Scovel (1988). The main goal in CPH research from the 1960’s onwards has been to find significant correlations between age, cognitive maturational constraints and the possible outcome of second or foreign language acquisition to prove the hypothesis. Krashen, Long and Scarcella, 1982 (as cited in Birdsong 1999: 2) have found that children learners eventually gain a higher language proficiency than older learners who acquire a second language quicker in the first stages but have a lower ultimate competence. Due to these assumptions researchers tried to find evidence for the Critical Period Hypothesis by showing that there would be a steady decline of competences related to an increasing age of arrival and furthermore show that adult L2 learners never achieve a native-like level of language proficiency in their second or foreign language. Birdsong (1999: 10f) has taken the study of Johnson & Newport (1989) to demonstrate research results in favour of the Critical Period Hypothesis as a reason for a lack of linguistic competence of L2 learners compared to L1 acquisition. Johnson & Newport conducted a study with Chinese and Koreans learning English as their L2 and who had lived in the United States for at least 5 years while their age of acquisition differed from each other. Among the variable results of the grammatical judgement task the decisive finding concerning age was that the competences did not drop linearly with increasing age but that only a certain period affected the ultimate attainment.

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This result was derived from the observed spread of grammaticality scores regarding the subjects’ age of onset of acquisition (AO) which illustrated that a stronger correlation was found in the early arrivals whereas nearly no correlation was found in late arrivals aged 17 or older. This led to the result that maturation constraints the ability to acquire a second or foreign language and admitted as evidence for the existence of a critical period in second language acquisition. Birdsong (1999: 13) has also provided arguments against the CPH by demonstrating further findings from different researches not only referring to the maturational age effect but to cases of nativelike acquisition in older learners of a second language. Van Wuijtswinkel (1994; as cited in ibid.) carried out a study with 12 year old Dutch native speakers who started learning English and was examined using a grammaticality judgement subset of Johnson and Newport (1990). The result was that Johnson & Newport attested native-like competence to 8 of 26 participants in a first group and 7 of 8 participants in a second group of learners. White and Genesee (1996) investigated on French native speakers acquiring English. They tested the subjects on different screening measures and assigned 45 participants nativelike performance in wh-extraction question building and judging

grammaticality of wh-movements. 16 of the 45 participants were again aged 12 or older at their first contact with English. As a last example Birdsong (1992) scrutinised the French language acquisition of 20 native English speakers exposed to the language after puberty (range 11-28 years) and who were living at least 3 years in France with a mean age of arrival at 28.5 years (range 19-48). When judging highly French specific, syntactic structures 6 of the 20 participants achieved a native-like score compared with native speakers (Birdsong 1999: 13).

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2.2

Universal Grammar and language attrition As universal grammar was already mentioned before when talking about

differences in first and second language acquisition it can further be elaborated to provide a basis for research on language attrition as stated in Schmid (2002: 17). In order to stress the causal relation between change in universal grammar and resulting attrition, the principles and parameter view has to be looked at. Chomsky’s concept of UG includes specified principles in every learner for every language and open parameters which are defined during the progress of acquisition according to individual languages (Chomsky, 1981; Seliger & Vago, 1991; as cited in ibid.). Within the theory it is presumed that these parameters prefer a certain value or are set to a default, not marked setting (Sharwood Smith & van Buren 1991; as cited in Schmid: 17). This approach has led to various studies referring to L1 and L2 acquisition raising questions about the parameters’ nature such as are children born with an innate knowledge about universal properties of the linguistic system? if a parameter is set to a specific value, can that setting ever be neutralized (e.g. in L2 acquisition, if the settings for L2 differ from those of L1)? the role of markedness in this context: Can a marked parameter be reset to an unmarked setting in L2 acquisition? (adopted from Schmid, 2002: 17)

Amid the concept of L1 attrition Hakansson (1995; as cited in ibid.) suggested that a parameter gets reset to the unmarked value losing the previously carried L1 value of a grammatical feature. On the contrary Smith & van Buren assumed another idea to explain attrition: They have argued that L1 values will continue to exist because the parameter values are shaped through input and attrition features a lack of contact and thus lack of clues for changing the setting. Hakansson (1995; as cited in ibid.: 18) implemented the parameters approach into her language attrition study on the V2rule in Swedish which is the only study in place applying the parameter hypothesis on attrition. However, she did not manage to prove that default SVO occurred in the subjects’ sentence structure over inversed VS patterns. The subjects emerged to have the same distribution of SVO and VS pattern compared to unattrited Swedish monolinguals.

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3.

Bilingualism In order to identify the apparent origin of problems and concerns of children

with a migrant background raised with more than one language, the term bilingualism used in the following context is further examined and explained. According to Butler and Hakuta (2006: 114) it is a difficult task to find a universal definition for a person who speaks more than one language. Questions could be asked according to the quantity and quality of the use of languages as to which linguistic structures must be controlled to which degree to count as a bilingual. Recently it is less assumed for bilinguals to have a nativelike command of both languages since fluency is complicated to measure and several individuals could count as bilinguals without being rated as native speakers. On the contrary it would not be enough to control meaningful sentences in another language unlike stated by Haugen (1953; as cited in ibid.). This is because not every L2 learner reaches sufficient competences in a foreign language. The adopted in-between position is that individuals who have a certain level of oral and written proficiency in the two languages and are able to implement these skills for communicative purposes with speakers of one or more languages in their environment can be rated as bilinguals (Butler & Hakuta, 2006: 115).

3.1

Types of Bilingualism Becoming bilingual is a difficult process including complex aspects in the

fields of psychological and socio-cultural linguistic competences (ibid.: 114). Within this process several factors play significant roles to achieve full command of the corresponding languages. Montrul (2008: 17) refers to the most influencing factors as
“(1) age of acquisition (early in childhood versus late after puberty), and (2) order or sequence of acquisition in childhood (two languages being acquired simultaneously versus one language being acquired successively, after the other)”

Because of the on-going discussion dependant on the age of acquisition whether a second language is seen as part of the L1 acquired early or a as a separate L2 acquired late, the field of second language acquisition also influences the studies on bilingualism (cf. ibid.).

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Figure 1 taken from Montrul (2008: 18), portrays the various shapes and possible ranges of acquisition. Simultaneous and sequential bilingual acquisition can both be early and happen before puberty. Simultaneous bilingual acquisition is also

Figure 1 Types of bilingualism by age and sequence of acquisition (Montrul 2008: 18)

labelled as bilingual L1 acquisition in Meisel (2004). Although he presumes that the child is exposed to two languages immediately after birth. Sequential means that basic structures of the first language are already controlled when the child gets a second language input which usually happens around the age of 3-4. This classification also shows the overlap with second language acquisition as there is a L1 and a L2 occurring after one another. The L2 acquisition represents the sequential bilingualism which can take place early in childhood or late in adulthood. Early sequential bilingualism is identical to child L2 acquisition and as described in figure 1, lasts over a period of roughly 2 years (4-6) before school access. The subsequent late child L2 acquisition lasts through the period of primary school when the children instructively learn mostly the majority language. The last element is late sequential bilingualism which is equivalent to adult L2 acquisition characterised by previous

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complete L1 acquisition and remaining stabilisation of the L1 throughout adulthood (cf. ibid.). De Houwer (2009: 4-5) has provided different definitions for bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA) and early second language acquisition (ESLA). Firstly she states that the word ‘input’ means speech that is received by children while ‘regular input’ involves almost daily language contact through interaction and catching conversations. BFLA in terms of De Houwer’s definition means steady input straight after birth. The difference from Montrul above is that the time frame for ESLA is the age phase of 1;6-4 years (age = year ; months) whereas formal second language acquisition is said to start at 5 or 6 when (pre-)schooling begins. These different approaches are indeed very interesting regarding later mentioned aspects of the presented studies. In the following Montrul’s types of bilingualism are set as a basis. De Houwer’s claims will be included into later discussions. De Houwer (2009: 6) also raised the question if early language learning, for instance within year 1, turns out to be more like BFLA when children receive input from birth onwards or like ESLA when children start a second language at 1;6. This topic is addressed through statements of Meisel amongst others in the next paragraph.

3.2

Nature of child L2 acquisition White (1990: 60) in a response to Bley-Vroman (1989) stated that the FDH

should be applied to demonstrate differences in adult second language acquisition (aL2) versus child first language acquisition and that there could be an in-between state called child second language acquisition (cL2) with several similarities and differences to L1 and aL2 according to the individual cL2 acquisition processes. Furthermore Meisel (2011: 211) has made certain claims about the nature of child second language acquisition due to the fact that variables like maturation and age cannot provide evidence for a sharp cut only between monolingual L1 and adult L2 acquisition at an exact point in time. Consequently it could be assumed that sequential child bilingual acquisition has both differences and similarities with L1 and aL2 acquisition (cf. ibid.). Meisel has promoted the hypothesis that cL2 learners adopt parts of their grammatical knowledge of the corresponding L1 grammar and that other linguistic knowledge would be similar to aL2 properties. Regarding the CPH as a result of influence on language acquisition by maturation and age, it has

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been stressed that there is not only one period including all changes in acquisition but several sequential phases. These phases could again gather in different periods which explain why cL2 involves cognitive mechanisms of aL2 and L1 development in different degrees conditioned by the age of onset of acquisition (AO). Consequently assuming that L1 equals L2, proficient aL2 learner have some kind of limited access to UG to build specific grammatical domains and assuming that increasing age of onset effects a decline in the chance of accessing certain structures, late cL2 acquisition has more resemblance to aL2 acquisition than early cL2 (cf. Meisel 2011: 211). Since it is not clear which age periods are affected by which critical phases, the topic of cL2 acquisition, possible resemblance to aL2 acquisition and consequences for the success of acquisition will be addressed in the part of attrition in middle/late childhood again. A study by Döpke (1996) seizes on the idea of cL2 acquisition and includes it into the discussion of the existence of a weaker language in bilingual development.

3.3

Incomplete Acquisition As pointed out before late bilingual language acquisition is not as successful

in reaching the ultimate attainment as the L1 acquisition. Montrul (2008: 20) emphasises that an L2 progress will not reach complete linguistic competence if the input is only obtained after L1 acquisition. The incompleteness can emerge in basically two ways suggested by Sorace (1993; ibid.) namely throughout incomplete acquisition versus divergent representation. On the one hand, the interlanguage as a representation of the learner’s progress from first language contact to target language competence completely misses a certain grammatical structure. Thus the learner produces contradictory utterances which are recognised as incomplete acquisition. Divergent representation, on the other hand, means that the structure is available in the interlanguage but the leaner cannot properly implement the grammatical property compared to the linguistic behaviour of a native speaker. In contrast to Sorace who claims that these phenomena are because of the maturational effects explained by the critical period hypothesis in late bilingualism, this paper in the following adopts the view of Montrul (ibid.) concerning the case of incompleteness in early bilingual grammars that is especially featured in immigrant children. The incompleteness may also occur in both, L1 and L2, and within the time frame of the critical period which

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is crucial for reaching the ultimate attainment seen in L1 and early bilingual acquisition. With regard to immigrant children fossilisation presumably appears in the event of reduced or vanished input when the family has to communicate in a new society L2 and the L1 is only used as a home language, called minority language, whereas the L2 is the major language in the host country which is used in schools and the new environment. The term incomplete acquisition henceforth defines the incomplete outcome of language acquisition or language attrition in childhood e.g. the latter may take place if the immense exposure to the L2 begins and L1 age appropriate levels of competence have not been reached. Furthermore it is substantial that synchronic occurrence of attrition and incomplete acquisition are likely to happen for different grammatical properties. Incomplete acquisition can happen, for instance, if a certain grammatical structure A emerged in the input was present in the linguistic proficiency but was never completely acquired, whilst the grammatical structure B has been learnt from input in the L1 early on and is not used anymore, maybe due to onset of L2 input and is uttered wrongly or even not at all at the current age (ibid.: 21). It is also imaginable that the incomplete acquired structure A that occurs infrequently, also undergoes the process of attrition so that the error rates get higher or the structure is not used anymore at a certain time as well. To match these statements to the types of acquiring a language it can be said that simultaneous or sequential child bilingualism (depends on age of onset of acquisition) is open to incomplete acquisition whereas attrition can become present in child and adult bilinguals if it can be proved scientifically that the grammatical structure was available in the output earlier. In short as a next step it should be examined whether children with a migrant background develop language deficits in their weaker language as a result of developing and interrupting L2 acquisition shown in adult L2 learner or if they rather experience language loss in their L1 due to incomplete acquisition and L1 attrition. At the end it should be discussed which factors play significant roles for becoming bilingual and which ways are the best to reach maintenance of the L1 and ultimate attainment of the L2 until adulthood for minority language speaking children and with which compromises they have to deal with (ibid.: 22) As it is the aim to acquire, store and use both languages successfully, the focus is now on the minority and majority languages of children with a migrant

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background and the process of attrition and incomplete acquisition depending on age and input.

4.

Language acquisition and loss – the age factor Although ultimate attainment is possible to acquire when bilingualism begins

early, this paper focuses on instances where the attainment is not completely mastered. First language attrition was compared to second language acquisition (e.g. Sorace, 2005; as cited in Schmid & Dusseldorp 2010: 126) since the observed variations in linguistic behaviour resemble advanced L2 speakers. That means that certain structures occur in the output of L2 speakers and L1 attriters because they cannot access specific rules for grammatical or lexical domains that are generally applied by monolingual speakers. The range of difference within both types of language development (L2 acquisition and L1 attrition) can vary massively regarding the ultimate degree of proficiency or loss. Several researches debate on the question if a L2 learner can become native like or only highly proficient and why some learners do not reach sufficient levels of competence. A lot of factors and variables come into play when scrutinising the acquisition of languages like internal factors (e.g. age of onset of acquisition and use of language) and external factors (e.g. emotional and attitudinal factors) (cf. ibid.). It is questioned which factors have the most impact on either the complete acquisition of a language or incomplete acquisition and being stuck on a low level of competence. Attrition as an expression relates to the alteration of the first language in a bilingual individual who is exposed to a majorly used L2. Several consequences of L1 attrition have been found which are responsible for a changed language use involving lexical or morphosyntactic levels (Schmid & Köpke 2009; Schmitt 2004, 2010; Gürel, 2007; as cited in ibid.: 127), simplification (e.g. Seliger and Vago 1991; cf. ibid.) and speakers hesitations because of insecurity and a lack of confidence (e.g. Schmid & Beers Fägersten, 2010; cf. ibid.). Recalling the topic of this paper, attrition is often connected with migrant populations since often they are confronted with another majority language that is used in a certain society. Due to the fact that monolingual groups mostly have a better language proficiency than individuals who have suffered from attrition a

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variety of tasks could be used to measure the degree of language loss, such as: grammaticality judgements (GJT) (de Bot et al. 1991; cf. ibid.), picture verification tasks (Tsimpli et al. 2004; cf. ibid.:128), cloze or fill in tests (Montrul 2002; cf. ibid.) and free speech or spontaneous interaction looking for morphological, syntactic and lexical diversities (Yagmur 1997; Schmid 2002; as cited in ibid.). Köpke & Schmid (2004: 9) relate to extralinguistic aspects of the various studies of language attrition and their relevance for children with a migrant background who can be simultaneous, early or late bilinguals. The crucial point is that attrition in children means that it affects a linguistic system which is not steady yet. Several studies show that the main factors with the most impact are “the age at the onset of bilingualism and age at the onset of attrition” (ibid.). Concerning to this it has been claimed that there is matching evidence that an L1 system can in fact be harmed massively if the attrition process starts a long time before puberty (e.g. Bode 1996, Kaufmann & Aronoff 1991, Isurin 2000; as cited in Köpke & Schmid 2004: 9). The same counts for the presented results regarding L2 attrition among children (Kuhberg 1992, Olshtain 1986; as cf. Köpke & Schmid 2004: 10). Ventureyra & Pallier (2004; cf. ibid.) had found in their study that children with reduced L1 input before the age of 12 had happened to be unable to maintain hardly any structure of their previously acquired L1. On the other hand various findings support the view that speakers exposed to decreased input above the age of 12 are only barely affected by attrition even if they have largely used their L2 later in life. It turns out that age seems to be an important influential factor although it is not possible to pinpoint the exact point of time when in particular attrition is more likely to take place (cf. Köpke & Schmid 2004: 10). To gain a closer look inside these phenomena the paper subsequently provides several studies throughout the different stages of childhood until adulthood to examine where attrition and/or incomplete acquisition occur while mainly concentrating on the factors age and input.

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4.1

Early childhood The research findings from the previous mentioned studies show that

particularly the early development in children is a decisive factor for the later development of the languages. It is therefore crucial to know which role each language takes in the learners learning environment and when exposure to these language begins. Montrul (2008: 99) introduces the “unbalanced development in early childhood” as a determining distinction between monolingual and bilingual learners of languages and their possible progress in reaching ultimate attainment regarding their input and use. The problem with bilingual children can be that there is theoretically enough input to acquire both languages but it cannot be completely assured. It is rather more likely that one language evolves stronger than the other while this superiority can vary between the two languages during the acquisition process. A closer look at the bilingual speaker’s family language has become a helpful approach to evaluate the different sources of language input (ibid.).

4.1.1

The weaker language The following studies are presented to indicate how a weaker language

develops dependent on the input a child gets during early bilingual development. Montrul (2008) notes that these are cases of imbalanced progress and the destiny of the minor language, especially when the minor language is the language spoken at home not encouraged in the general public.
“Because many minority language-speaking children typically fail to develop ageappropriate levels of vocabulary and grammar in the family language, key questions arise as to the linguistic nature of these delayed and underdeveloped grammatical systems.” (Montrul 2008: 93).

For instance with reference to the acquisition of a first or second language it must be questioned whether the weaker language possesses features of L1 acquisition in childhood or of the adult-like L2 acquisition (Montrul 2008: 93) regarding the different acquisition processes underlying the FDH mentioned earlier. As stated by Montrul (2008:102) it is very difficult to completely control both languages as they are in a steady shift which is proved by Kravin (1992) who conducted a study “of an English-Finnish bilingual child living in the United States” (Montrul 2008: 102). While hearing Finnish from his mother and English from his

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father, the boy quickly adapted to English when he got childcare in English at the age of 1;5. Although the family went to Finland over the summer period twice with the child aged 2;1-2;4 and 5;1-5;4 the boy’s Finish skills decreased drastically until he was 6 years old. Consequently this case study by Kravin (1992) shows that input only provided by one parent might be not enough to stabilise the family’s language knowledge against all the major language influences from the surrounding environment. It seems that some linguistic features were lost due to a continuous lack of input (attrition) and that a full linguistic ability was never reached (delayed- or incomplete acquisition). Schlyter (1993; as cited in Montrul, 2008: 102) carried out a longitudinal study with six Swedish-French bilinguals from Stockholm. Within the families they applied the one-parent-one-language approach and the children were recorded from their third age onwards every half a year while playing. There was a mix of weaker and stronger languages as three of the six were weaker in the minority language (French) and the other three were weaker in the majority language (Swedish) since they were exposed to more input of the French-speaking parent. According to Montrul (2008: 103) the evaluation indicates that the stronger language has a significant higher accuracy percentage than the weaker language, although none of the subjects reach 100%. Resulting from this the tested children are amid their acquisition process. It is assumed that the stronger language follows the L1 acquisition process and the weaker language the L2 acquisition process, but a statement on the further development of the weaker and stronger languages is issued within a closer look on middle and late childhood acquisition later on. Interestingly the study shows that both, not only the minority but also the majority language, are open to delayed development depending on the exposure of input (ibid.). As a last example to show possible resembling patterns of weaker simultaneous acquired languages in childhood and a second language Schleyter and Hakansson (1994), as described in Montrul (2008: 104), conducted a study to scrutinise the V2 acquisition in Swedish of children with different premises: “5 monolinguals, 5 sequential bilinguals or child L2 learners of Swedish (4-5 year olds), and 6 simultaneous French-Swedish bilinguals (3 with Swedish as a stronger- and 3 as a weaker language)”. V2 means that a subject-verb inversion is compulsory if the sentence is fronted by an object or adverbial and in yes-no questions, see (1) and (2) below. The canonical

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sentence structure, without a topic, is S-V, as in (3) and (4). Swedish subordinate clauses do not have S-V inversion (5). Therefore Swedish sentence structures consist of (X)-V-S and S-V-(X).

(1) Nu kommer Now comes he ‘He comes now ' (2) Kommer han? (V-S) Comes he ‘Does he come?’ (3) Han kommer (S-V) He comes ‘He comes.’ (4) Han kommer He comes ‘He comes now.’

han (X-V-S)

nu (S-V-X) now

(5) …eftersom han inte Since he not ‚Since he is not coming…‘

kommer (S-Neg-V) comes

The focus was on sentences with finite verbs either preceding (VS) or following (SV) the subject. Schlyter and Hakansson found that whereas the monolingual children generated 98% accurate V2 sentences, the L2 learners produced ungrammatical XSV structures. Additionally, in contrast to the monolinguals who used SV utterances nearly 60% of the time, L2 children adopted that structure in 90% of the cases. As in the study mentioned before, the simultaneous bilinguals stronger in Swedish behaved more like monolinguals as opposed to the weaker Swedish bilinguals who produced more errors like the L2 learners according to all presented structures (cf. Montrul 2008: 104). Although it is noted that even fewer correct occurrence of utterances of the L2 learners with Swedish as a weaker language have indicated that they are able to formulate those structures, they instead produced V3 (XSV) sentences that do not exist in the children’s language who have a stronger competence in Swedish. This has illustrated a different grammatical system within the group of simultaneous learners between the stronger and the weaker Swedish performers that corresponds to either monolingual or child L2 acquisition (ibid.: 105).

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4.1.2

Attrition or incomplete acquisition According to Montrul (2008: 107) the difference to adults who have fully

attained their linguistic knowledge if L1 attrition arises is that children are amid their language development so that the language loss due to decrease of L1 and increase of L2 exposure can be the process of incomplete acquisition, attrition or both. In the case of L1 attrition Montrul (2008: 109) reports on studies by Kaufman and Aronoff (1991) and Turian and Altenberg (1991) who tried to show the rapid attrition in young children immigrated into a major English environment. They portrayed the linguistic development of Michal, a fluent speaker of Hebrew who had a suitable level of Hebrew proficiency regarding her age. At 2;7 Michal started to visit an English nursery school for three hours a day one month after having moved into the country. The attrition process began soon and Kaufman & Aronoff concentrated on the level of code-switching measurement and created stages of attrition (1)onset of attrition; ages 2;8-3;1, after 4-7 months in L2 setting, (2) bilingual period: ages 3;1-3;2, after 7-8 months, (3) disintegration of L1: ages 3;23;5, after 8-11 months and (4) idiosyncratic template: ages 3;5-4;6, after 12-24 months in L2 environment. The characteristics of the four stages are that first the lexicon was affected when the child fitted English nouns into the Hebrew sentences. In the second stage it seemed that the child had bilingual control of the languages although there are no scientific measures to validate this kind of competence. Interestingly apart from the insertion of nouns and verbs the Hebraic syntax remains stable. At the third stage the child has a diminished use of Hebrew and broad use of English. Additional to the borrowing of verbs, now Michal even changes to nontarget like Hebrew verb forms. The fourth stage illustrates convergence to English as the verbal pattern is blended with English and Hebrew. These are the changes found in the morphosyntactic abilities. The assumptions of this and another similar study are that attrition took place since the grammatical competence of the subjects decreased within the period of one year. However, the researchers did not manage to provide data of monolingual control groups to depict whether the corresponding grammatical structures were ageappropriately acquired so that it is not certain if the structures in question had been fully mastered before they were lost again. Due to this and the fact that the study only scrutinised isolated forms, it is rather difficult to draw a conclusion on the

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amount of attrition. Without further reaching data the decrease in linguistic competence can also be through incomplete acquisition which is further described in the following studies (Montrul 2008: 111). The loss of verbal and nominal inflectional morphology was examined by Anderson (1999, 2001; cited in ibid.). The subjects were two Spanish-speaking siblings with a normal language development – Beatriz and Victoria. Immigration took place at the ages of 3;6 (Beatriz) and 1;6 (Victoria). The children were 4;7 and 6;7 when the data collection began and the longitudinal study lasted 2 years. The home language was Spanish and the children mixed Spanish and English while talking to each other at the beginning of the research, while at the end they mainly used English with each other and spoke Spanish to their parents. Only the older sibling had some literacy experience in Spanish while English literary skills evolved during the time at pre-school and the daycare centre. As mentioned before the study looked at the nominal and verbal inflection, particular in the Spanish gender agreement. There is masculine where most nouns end in –o and feminine gender mostly ending in –a, with several exceptions. The noun phrase agreement exists between the head noun, the adjective and the determiner as shown in (11) and (12).

(11)

La bufanda the-fem scarf-fem ‘The white scarf’ El coche the-mas car-mas ‘The yellow car’

blanca white-fem Amarillo yellow-mas

(12)

Table 2 Percentage of gender agreement errors in the Spansih of two bilingual siblings (adopted from Anderson 1999; cited in Montrul (2008: 112) Age first recording 6;7 4;7 %errors on gender agreement 0% 8% Age last recording 8;5 6;5 %errors on gender agreement 5.8% 18.2%

Beatriz Victoria

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Errors with gender by the two siblings were made as presented in Table X. It can be seen that at the beginning of the recordings Beatriz – 3;6 – behaved like a monolingual learner of Spanish her age and had no errors at all in gender agreement. Victoria generated 8% errors at the first data collection. At the end of the study period the table shows a gradual increase in the amount of errors to 25%, 17.4 and finally 18.2 as a result of the last three sessions. Regarding the different types of bilingualism the older child may be seen as a sequential bilingual due to the age of arrival (AoA, USA 3;6) whereas Victoria, the younger sibling, would be simultaneous bilingual (AoA 1;6). This longitudinal study over only two years portrays that gender matching in Spanish was influenced more in Victoria – earlier AoA of English – than Beatriz. Beatriz shows first language attrition as she managed to command the agreement structure with 100% correct utterances at the beginning of the recordings and at the end she makes 5,8% errors. Although this does not seem a lot it is a crucial figure because after the acquisition of gender concord, which was achieved by Beatriz, this grammatical structure should remain stable. Another benchmark is that more than 5% gender agreement errors count as fossilisation in adult L2 learners. The case of incomplete acquisition and attrition is illustrated by the results of Victoria as seen in the table she produced 8% errors at the beginning of research and had more than twice as much errors after the two year period (ibid.:113). Investigating the results of the error pattern of the two siblings it can be stated that the factors mentioned before, age of onset of bilingualism and time of exposure to L1 Spanish, level of Spanish proficiency before the English L2 acquisition.

4.1.3

The weaker language hypotheses As noted earlier and indeed is claimed in bilingual research regarding

linguistic abilities is that all children are capable of acquiring more than one language without greater difficulties although some of the above mentioned studies show that in certain bilingual settings and circumstances a balanced competence of the language is hardly achieved. Although, for example, Meisel (2004; as cited in Meisel 2007: 495) investigated on the successful outcome of balanced bilingual proficiency as there are often cases where one language is weaker than the other. These non-dominant languages often occur in children in minority language

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environments where input from a larger community is limited and thus language attrition and finally incomplete acquisition are more likely to emerge (Montrul 2008: 123). Meisel (2007: 498f) points out that there are difficulties with defining the term weaker as it can basically refer to the grammatical structures or the preferred use of one language over the other. In the following the term refers to the first-mentioned grammatical structures and this problem is addressed at the end of this paragraph again. Recalling the factors that were dealt with regarding language acquisition namely age of acquisition and quantity and quality of input, it seems to be due to this variables that language dominance changes more quickly in children than in adults. Consequently on the one hand there is the human language faculty which can handle various languages in childhood early on and on the other hand there are different findings on the topic of which competences are genuinely acquired until the age of 45 and how stable the individual structures are (Montrul 2008: 123). Trying to find answers to this problem it is discussed if the weaker language in simultaneous bilinguals is acquired differently than the stronger L1 because of the variable attainments of these languages. Montrul (ibid.) draws a relation “to the Critical Period Hypothesis, or the maturational constraints on language learning” affecting not only L2 acquisition but L1 attrition and incomplete acquisition as well. The Weaker Language as L2 Hypothesis was promoted by Schlyter (1993) and Schlyter and Hakansson (1994) who studied the development of inflectional morphology with French and Swedish bilinguals and found out that the stronger language followed the acquisition process of monolinguals claims that vice versa the weaker language behaves like a second language in the acquisition process. According to the Fundamental Different Hypothesis and the CPH distinguishing child L1 from adult L2 acquisition, emphasised at the beginning of this paper, it is difficult to transfer the concept of adult second language acquisition on the language acquisition of simultaneous bilingual children. This suggestion is also what the critics of Schlyter’s idea contradict (Montrul 2008: 124, Meisel 2007). It is focused that child L1 learners have access to universal grammar whereas adult learner receive their input through their own L1 and general problem-solving skills. Montrul (ibid.) makes clear that the reason why second language learning in adults is not as successful as L1 acquisition in children involves the inability to reset the parameters of UG because of the existence of a critical period which adults have

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already passed. By using the example of Schlyter’s and Hakansson’s (1994) study Montrul questions the theoretical frame of that hypothesis and especially criticises the skill of simultaneous bilingual children to access UG with the stronger L1 to become fully competent and in contrast to avoid UG with the weaker language for which the usual input domains for an L2 learner, L1 knowledge and general cognitive mechanism, are yet to be established. Because of these interdependences of access to UG, the age of acquisition and the unavailability of mechanism to acquire the weaker language as L2 are Montrul’s counterarguments to the weaker language as L2 hypothesis. Meisel (2007: 501; Montrul 2008: 125) particularly focuses on Schlyter & Hakansson’s study of word order (V2, SV and VS) in Swedish and scrutinises the research results itself together with their implications for UG to prove that Schlyter’s proposal is not sustainable throughout their study and that other factors might come in play. After presenting the various results and revaluating the findings Meisel (2007) points out that all the discussed word order structures even if more

infrequently used than by mono- and balanced bilinguals are actually in place and that parameters are set correctly for the weaker language. Although there were some wrongly used word order structures Meisel (2007) claims that the children acquired the language successfully and set the correct UG parameters. The wrong structures are explained by delayed acquisition in the weaker language.
“In brief, the foregoing discussion suggests that the rate of development can indeed be delayed, in some cases quite seriously. Whether this can ultimately lead to incomplete acquisition in that certain phenomena that are typically acquired late will not be acquired anymore, is a question that cannot be answered, based on the available research results. For the time being, delay must be regarded as a quantitative modification of the process of acquisition” (Meisel 2007: 510).

Montrul (2008: 126) states that although there are major lacks of competence within the weaker language grammar such as delay and regression, they could occur due to reduced input and only affect parts of the grammar e.g. the inflectional morphology and not the overall domain of syntax. Furthermore she proposes the weaker language as L1 hypothesis which states that despite lower level in proficiency the weaker language uses the same cognitive and linguistic means as the stronger L1 in simultaneous bilingual children. Like Montrul (ibid.) has stated before when criticising the theoretical frame of Schlyter (1993) she puts emphasis on the age

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factor in early bilingual children who acquire 2L1 with the help of UG and innate mechanisms. The various outcomes of the weaker and stronger language depend on the input and frequency of language use and are not constraint by the lack of access to implicit learning mechanism. To continue the ideas whether the weaker language more resembles the acquisition concepts of rather L1 or L2, a third view has been proposed by Döpke (1996). Döpke (1996: 6) studied a sample of three German-English bilinguals raised in a one parent-one language environment. German was the weaker language and was only spoken by the mothers whereas English was the stronger majority language spoken by the fathers, between the parents and in the overall society. The children counted as simultaneous bilinguals as they could comprehend and produce both languages spontaneously and received input of both languages every day. Recording took place twice a month for 45 minutes to one hour, one session in German and the other in English. Two children started at age 2;0 and the third at 2;2. The weaker language status of German has been shown by stages of progress according to the mean length of utterance suggested by Clahsen, Penke and Parodi (1993/94 as cited in ibid.: 7) in free play and interactions. To compare the found 2L1 patterns with either L1 or L2 Döpke took the varying developmental stages of German acquired as L1 and L2 (Meisel 1991; Clahsen 1994; Schwartz 1991; as cited in ibid.) and demonstrated that 2L1 resembled L1 acquisition at the very beginning. Later on development at stage III for L1 and 2L1 versus stage I for L2 acquisition showed overlap from L1 and L2. Consequently both shaped the 2L1 progress.

L1 Stage III:
• S_Vfin_O • S_aux/modal_OV • pre-verbal negation always NEG_VO • cop/mod/aux_NEG • Vfin_NEG

L2 Stage I:
•S_Vfin_O and S_Vnonfin_O • S_aux/modal_VO • pre-verbal negation =NEG_OV • cop/mod/aux_NEG • some V_NEG stereotypes

2L1 Stage III:
• S_Vfin_O and S_Vnonfin_O • S_aux/modal_VO > S_aux/modal_OV • pre-verbal negation optionally NEG_VO • cop/mod/aux_NEG • Vfin_NEG and Vnonfin_NEG

(adapted from Döpke 1996: 9)

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Ongoing evidence showed (for details see Döpke 1996:11-13) that the 2L1 in the beginning could be compared to L1 acquisition but during the course of development consisted of features of both L1 and L2 developmental paths which even led to delayed approval so that specific structures in 2L1 were acquired incompletely in stage 4 but completely in stage V. The latter mentioned grammatical domain had been acquired in L1 and L2 at stage III and stage II respectively. Döpke (1996: 19) as stated in her title “why 2L1 is not like L2” has demonstrated that the weaker language did not show any features in the developmental stages justifying the resemblance to count as L2 acquisition but she has not supported Montrul’s view of ‘the weaker language as L1’ either. Döpke (ibid.) has claimed
“that 2L1 creates a bridge between L1 and L2: the evidence suggests that the two languages in a simultaneously bilingual context are not processed in isolation from each other, but that the children compare and contrast them.”

In sum, as stated before the language system in simultaneous bilingual or early L2 acquiring children is very vulnerable to input changes and their linguistic competence undergoes rapid shifts like illustrated in the weaker and stronger language use, leading to an incomplete development in the weaker language. The questions that follow these findings is whether the so-called delayed development mentioned by Meisel (2007), can catch up and the language finally becomes fully acquired at the children’s higher age or if it leads to permanent incomplete acquisition. To further amplify discussions on these issues, the influence of the weaker and stronger language use by parents at home and the impact of language support in schools will be examined. As Allen et al. (2006: 578) point out it is very difficult for bilingual children to determine which language should be used and how to maintain both, the heritage language which is spoken at home and more or less within the children’s cultural society or their second, dominant language in the major society that is needed to succeed in the educational system.

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4.2 Middle and late childhood With regard to the middle and late childhood years the progress of the weaker language and the level of L1 loss during the school period are pursued. Montrul (2008: 131) claims that a critical period for first language attrition would exist so that vulnerability to L1 loss becomes less likely with increasing age and later onset of the L2. The following studies are presented in order to find correlations between the children’s age, age of onset of L2 and degree of L1 loss. As the middle childhood means that children start to attend school it will be demonstrated how different concepts of language support in schools influence the L2 acquisition and L1 maintenance by minority-speaking children. As most of the studies in general and the ones presented by Montrul (2008) took place in the USA because of the prolonged, continuing immigration from especially Spanish-speaking people, different school systems have been established which use various approaches to support language maintenance and learning (L1 and L2). The predominant model still does not support any language other than English, though. This is because the main aim has been to convey English as early as possible so that the children are able to academically succeed. The first of two types of school concepts supporting some minority languages are the transitional bilingual programmes which are limited to certain languages. This model concentrates on the first two years of primary school where children get instructions in English and the heritage language. From the third grade on the children are placed in English-only classes (cf. ibid.: 136). By this the transitional schools try to simplify the transition to English only classes through heritage language use for a limited amount of time. Together with the English only concept transitional schools encourage the early adaption to monolingual English education. The second heritage language promoting programme is the double immersion school also called two-way bilingual school. These schools use the heritage language, mostly Spanish, in 40% of the time while English fills the other 60%. This concept is realised until the fifth grade and gives the simultaneous and sequential bilingual children the chance to further progress and maintain both languages. However, it is important to note that the best and fastest way to acquire the majority language is to immerse the children into English only lessons from early on to guarantee academic achievements (cf. ibid.: 137).

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In the next presented study the focus at the end lies on the validity of proficiency scores. The study was carried out by Allen (2007) who tested the development of Inuktitut which is an aboriginal language mainly spoken in Alaska, Siberia and Eastern Canada. The children are taught Inuktitut until grade 2 in schools while in grade 3 the teaching of French and English are used to convey knowledge in schools because these are the official languages. If Inuktitut has been taught further in the school settings depended on the availability of teachers. The competence of young, simultaneous bilingual children (1;8-2;11 years) is reported to be very nativelike and there are no significant overt lacks in language development in the grammatical domains of both, English and Inuktitut (cf. Montrul 2008: 140). Wright, Taylor & Macarthur (2000) examined the transition from kindergarten to school for four years in 62 Inuit children. In the school setting the children either received ongoing input in Inuktitut or the exposure to English or French began. In order to follow the shifts of the corresponding language development a test battery was used as an instrument before and after each academic year to test the children’s language ability. Table 2 shows the proficiency of Inuktitut depending on the mainly used language of instruction (ibid.).

Table 3 Proficiency scores (in percentages) in Inuktitut for Inuit children receiving language instruction in Inuktitut, English or French (adapted from Wright Taylor & Macarthur; adopted from Montrul, 2008: 141). Language of N Kindergarten Grade1 Grad2 Instruction Fall Spring Fall Spring Fall Spring Inuktitut 31 39.04 58.5 57.55 72 75.7 82.99 English 14 37.38 48.12 26.25 56.13 55.41 60.14 French 17 36.56 48.20 46.84 57.54 56.30 65.18

At the beginning of the analyses (Kindergarten, fall) there is no considerable difference in the children’s competences of Inuktitut which can be seen in the percentages 39.04 – 36.56. Afterwards from the Kindergarten test in spring onwards one could observe a significant decline in the Inuktitut competence of the Inuit children using English and French, in contrast to the children who continued to use Inuktitut as a language in school. The overall difference between the children who receive Inuktitut input and the children receiving input in English or French amounts to 20% in the spring of grade 2.

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As the validity of proficiency was mentioned before, it is important to point out that although a decrease of Inuktitut as a native language was attested as a result of increasing exposure to the majority language, Allen (2007) stated that despite these findings children became active bilinguals with Inuktitut as one language (Montrul 2008: 141). Furthermore Allen et al (2006: 593) claimed that there are on the one hand results that showed lack of grammatical knowledge and reduced output but on the other hand some children did not show considerable language decrease in their minority language which could also be dependent on the size of their community group they can use it to interact. The question which proficiency score is the turning point in using a language actively or passively will be addressed in the conclusion again. There are several summaries of studies to follow who illustrate L1 attrition and incomplete acquisition dependent on the changing age of onset of acquisition and language support in schools. In the following analyses the focus lies on the decrease of L1 knowledge and afterwards cases of L2 incomplete acquisition are discussed in 4.3.

4.2.1

L1 attrition and school environment Merino (1983, as cited in Montrul: 141) conducted studies on Spanish-

speaking children visiting English schools without encouraging the further acquisition of Spanish. Measuring the development of a range of grammatical features of English and Spanish (gender, number, tense, word order, relative clauses, conditional and subjunctive) in 41 bilingual children from age 5-10 the outcomes provide statements on the acquisition and loss regarding language production and comprehension. Findings showed gradual progress of English skills in production and comprehension from kindergarten to 4th grade but skill loss in the comprehension of Spanish in grades 3 and 4 compared to the comprehension in grade 1 and 2 although it is not that dramatic. More significantly are the results concerning production as you can observe a drastic fall in Spanish production from 84% to 65% within the school years. Referring to the detailed grammatical structures in production it turned out that the subjunctive and complex verb forms were greatly affected.

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Table 4 (Montrul 2008: 142) English L2 acquisition and Spanish L1 decline in MexicanAmerican children (adapted from Merino 1983) Production Grade K 1 2 3 4 N 9 4 9 10 9 Spanish English 56% 52% 84% 86% 71% 75% 77% 81% 65% 86% Spanish English 73% 86% 86% 75% 80% 76% 89% 85% 86% 88% Comprehension

In order to see the further development, two years later Merino (1993; as cited in Montrul 2008: 142) carried out a second sample including 32 children who also participated in the first study. The methods were the same as before so that the children’s comprehension and production in English and Spanish was tested. Like in the first findings the abilities in English steadily increased for all children whereas the performance in Spanish underwent further massive losses in 50% of the cases, while in 25% the children’s acquisition fossilised without any further development. The grammatical structures of past tense, subjunctive and relative clauses were especially affected in the children who continued their education on English-only or transitional bilingual schools. Montrul (2008: 143) also introduces the use of home languages as indicator of successful language attrition and maintenance. Using only Spanish at home and with peers had a positive effect on the children’s Spanish competence. In contrast, the use of both languages, English and Spanish, at home and with friends caused a drastic loss in the L1 competence. Consequently, it could be seen that majority language use combined with unavailable school support of the heritage language led to language shift and attrition. Introducing a further variable being responsible for language loss Montrul (ibid.) names the low socioeconomic status (SES) of most of the Spanish-speaking children. As it emerged that SES could be associated to the degree of literacy and academic proficiency in primary school apart from being bilingual, this could also be linked to the loss of linguistic competences. Next to the examined school support, in the following paragraph the SES in the Miami area the study was conducted in was higher, as well.

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4.2.2 Minority language support in school Mueller Gathercole (2002a,b,c; as cited in ibid.) carried out an extensive study looking at the kinds of language support in schools and included the SES to find correlations concerning language shift and maintenance. Subjects were simultaneous bilinguals speaking Spanish and English at home and sequential bilinguals using mainly Spanish. Furthermore the following three different school systems, two of them promoting heritage language learning were included: Englishonly, transitional bilingual and dual-immersion. Mueller Gathercole tested gender concord among other grammatical structures. Subjects were 294 children from grade two and five some monolingual English and the others bilingual Spanish-English from low and high SES attending English only or dual immersion schools. For this sample the children as well as a Spanish control group were supposed to rate grammatical judgement of grammatical and ungrammatical oral utterances and to correct the wrongly used structures especially gender agreement in Spanish noun phrases in this case (Montrul 2008: 143). Mueller Gathercole stressed non-typical endings of gender in Spanish. The typical pattern is –o for masculine nouns (el libro “the book) and –a for feminine nouns (la mesa “the table”). The focused non-typical endings included –e (la calle “the street”), feminine –o (la mano “the hand”) and masculine –a (el mapa “the map”). The findings first showed that children were more exact with grammatical sentences than with ungrammatical sentences and monolinguals accomplished the task better compared to bilingual children; the fifth graders exceeded the second graders in solving the ungrammatical sentences. The SES had no effect within this sample although it had an effect in other tested grammatical structures. The SES topic and its validity are addressed in the conclusion again. According to the role of the various school programmes it was said that the two-way bilingual school children had a better proficiency applying gender agreement due to their increased input of Spanish in contrast to the English immersion school children who received more English than Spanish input and showed decreased Spanish competence. This could be seen specifically in the fifth grader regarding the comparison of both school models (cf. ibid.: 144). Additionally a similar result was seen by Montrul & Potowski (2007) who also approve the use of two-way immersion schools in order to keep up the L1 skills of Spanish-speaking children. The study also examined mastering of gender agreement for typical noun endings with the help of two oral production tasks. The

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outcome was that simultaneous children had the highest error rate (60%) followed by the sequential bilinguals (36%) and the monolingual children who produced 0% errors. Despite these errors it is outlined by Montrul (2008: 144) that the Spanish proficiency did not decrease further according to gender agreement but remained at this level of competence unlike Merino’s (1983) study where continuing minority language loss within the school environment has been illustrated. The table shows the variations according to age of onset of bilingualism (simultaneous versus sequential) and the corresponding results of younger and older children. Older simultaneous children aged 9-11 made slightly more errors than the respective younger ones aged 6-8 while the difference is not statistically relevant. Contrasting, older sequential bilingual children constantly performed better than the younger sequential bilinguals (cf. ibid.: 144-145).

Table 5 Percentage accuracy on gender agreement between nouns and ajdectives in an elicited production task (adapted from Montrul & Potowski 2007) Monolinguals masculine feminine overall younger 100 100 100

Simultaneous bilingualsSequential biling. younger 93.2 61.8 77.5 older 95 38 66.5 98 70 84

older younger older 100 98.5 98 70.7 99 84.6

A striking fact is that looking at the overall proficiency of younger simultaneous bilinguals and younger sequential bilinguals the latter ones have an 18% lower overall competence although they should have had more input during the earlier years than the simultaneous bilinguals. Maybe the onset of acquiring the second language has a quite large interfering effect at the beginning. The fact that the overall proficiency increased in the older children demonstrates an impact of school language support on acquisition and maintaining minority language within these early primary school years. For the simultaneous bilingual children it seems to be slightly more difficult to receive sufficient input. The mentioned results on school support of the minority language questions the competence of the majority language. As it is the goal to achieve a high degree of proficiency in both languages in minority language-speaking immigrant children the L2 acquisition is tested later on. In the following the issue of a sensitive phase for language attrition is scrutinized.

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4.2.3

A critical period in language attrition? Besides all the previously discussed dependencies on various input factors,

the age of onset in bilinguals seems to have a great impact. Simultaneous bilingual or early bilingual immigrant children use the host language as their dominant language whereas later bilingual children or adults keep their minority language as the dominant one (Jia & Aaronson 2003; Kohnert, Bates & Hernandez 1999; YeniKomshian, Flege & Liu 2000; as cited in Montrul, 2008: 152). The question is how various age ranges influence a presumed language shift from L1 to L2 and how successful the L2 acquisition or respectively L1 maintenance will be. Montrul (2008: 153) reports on the study by Kohnert, Bates and Hernández (1999) who examined Spanish-dominant sequential bilingual children learning English and their language development in an English school environment. Lexical acquisition was tested because it is seen as a precursor of sufficient language competence communicatively and academically. The tests were built to measure lexical access speed and naming nouns in both English and Spanish to see if there is interference from one language on the other. The subjects were 100 Spanish-English early sequential bilingual children aged 5-22 who were split into age grous: 5-7 years, 8-10 years, 11-13 years, 14-16 years and 18-22 years. All of them received input of Spanish as a home language and started formal contact with English in School (aged 5). To measure the production of Spanish and English lexical access the participants had to name objects like cat, shoe, moon, key, etc. shown on pictures while accuracy and speed of reaction were measured by the examiners. The pictures were divided into blocked conditions that is naming only Spanish or English objects and alternating conditions to gain findings on interference according to the reaction time. The overall results in the blocked conditions demonstrate an increased proficiency in both languages, whereas English had greater gains because of the lower accuracy at the beginning (ibid.). A more detailed look at the findings revealed a transition from Spanish dominant in the youngest subjects, 5-7, over a relatively balanced period from 8-10 and 11-13 to major English dominance in the later years 14-16 and college. Even if English was dominant in adult learners it is notable that

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Table 6 Accuracy and reaction times in Spanish and English lexical access during production (blocked conditions) (adapted from Kohnert, Bates & Hernández; as cited in Montrul, 2008: 153)
Age Group N Spanish (L1) accuracy 60% 78% 79% 71% 87% speed 1307 1198 1148 1154 1109 English (L2) accuracy 38% 70% 75% 87% 96% speed 1360 1125 1117 999 983

5-7 8-10 11-13 14-16 College

20 20 20 20 20

their Spanish proficiency increased again at the very end when they attended college which seems to be due to academic support and use of both languages maybe with peers and family. Kohnert (2002) notes in the abstract of his study investigating the 1 year later performance that gains further increase, more in English than in Spanish, and draws a line to the cognitive development which would be stronger at a later age. Not looking at the shift but only at the sequential acquisition of the L2 English, it is striking that between 8-10 and 11-13 the accuracy increases for 5% leading over a well-established proficiency of 87% aged 14-16 to 96% English accuracy at college age. It can be assumed that on the one hand the acquisition process gradually advances and on the other hand this progress needs a considerable amount of time compared to the previous suggestions. Even if this is not a balanced bilingual seen with the Spanish attainment, the subjects count as proficient bilinguals. Montrul (2008: 154) consequently states that interesting questions would be which factors contribute to the speed of L2 acquisition by children and adults with a migrant background and how the L1 can be maintained or which variables lead to shift in language dominance. On the basis of this study Montrul (ibid.) claims that lexical performance increases in both languages at least until early adulthood. At the time of immigration older children have a higher chance of maintaining a sufficient competence of their L1 while acquiring L2 proficiency. Continuing the issue of pinpointing a more exact age for the relation of age of immigration and loss of L1 skills Hakuta and D’Andrea (1992) presumed that before the age of 10 the L1 is more vulnerable than afterwards and that home language use is vital to keep up L1 competence even throughout High School (cf. Montrul 2008: 155). Hakuta & D’Andrea scrutinised L1 Spanish maintenance in migrant Mexican high-school students (n= 308, mean age 16;4). The idea of the sample is that

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bilingual performance at this age should remain steady while home language use of the family still has a large influence on the students who mostly lived at home. Performance on a variety of tests for vocabulary and grammar proficiencies was measured with a response latency task, a cloze task and a grammaticality judgement test. Additionally the students filled out a questionnaire on linguistic backgrounds to test their language attitude asking for linguistic and personal information, choice of language in different contexts and especially the attitude towards Spanish. The results were similar to that of the previous mentioned study. Students born in Mexico and immigrating to the US aged 10 or older or students having Mexican parents showed a correlation between an earlier age of onset of English and lower Spanish proficiency. The competence scores fell steadily until age 10. Regarding the attitude questionnaire it was found that while Spanish was rather used at home to practice the language, English became the dominant language used outside and with peers (ibid.).

4.2.4

Incomplete child L2 acquisition Recalling the suggestion by Meisel (2011) in paragraph 3.1 it has been stated

that child language acquisition (cL2) uses L1 and aL2 specific linguistic and cognitive mechanisms in the course of development. A crucial question in the research of bilingualism is therefore if child second language is acquired as L1 or rather as adult L2 which also influences the speed of acquisition and hence the ultimate attainment. Having examined the development and loss of the minority language in children with a migrant background, now this paper addresses the fate of the majority language. Although it is difficult to distinguish if this issue belongs to early childhood or middle/late childhood, it is placed at this position for the reason of showing the possible discrepancy between maintaining the L1 throughout the primary school years until it becomes stabilised and at the same time acquiring the majority L2 properly to be academically successful. The first studies that tested the nature of cL2 were related to morphological and syntactic grammatical domains. Pienemann (1981; cf. Meisel 2011: 214) examined three Italian children acquiring German at the age of onset of 8 years and concluded that they did not differ from adult L2 learners. Further studies concentrated on younger age of onsets and the relation of syntax and morphology

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according to a hierarchy of those constructions. It was demonstrated e.g. by Blom (2006) that syntactical domains as VO/OV, V2 placement and subject verb inversion are well acquired if the age of onset is 3-5 years (cf. Meisel 2011: 214). Kroffke, Rothweiler and Babur (2007; cf. ibid.) compared the ages of onset 3 and 6 in Turkish children acquiring German. The results of the studied subject-verb agreement and verb placement show that the older child progressed similar to aL2 development and the younger one developed the structures similar to child L1 acquisition. To gain a more detailed insight into the possible classification of cL2 learners and the corresponding grammatical domains that can help to identify the level of language development I will return to the grammatical role of gender. As seen before gender agreement is a frequently tested phenomenon which is also addressed in the following studies since it has been proved to be a difficult issue for aL2 learners (Andersen 1984, Carroll 1999; as cited in Meisel 2011: 217) and contradictory findings have also been presented for cL2 learners. A study by Pfaff (1992; as cited in ibid.) looked at the acquisition of German in Turkish L1 children aged 2;0. The children attended a bilingual daycare centre and did not acquire anything similar to the target language. Granfeldt, Schlyter and Kihlstedt (2007; as cited in ibid.) found aL2 like development of French gender agreement in Swedish cL2 learners (AO 3;5-6;7). Cornips, van der Hoeck & Verwer (2006, henceforth CVH&V) carried out a study on Dutch gender agreement in child L2 learners attending primary school. As previously has been shown by Hulk & Cornips (2006; cf. CVH&V: 40) gender concord with regard to the specific neuter noun determiner het is acquired late by monolinguals in contrast to the definite determiner de for common nouns. Consequently it was demonstrated that even for simultaneous bilinguals by birth it is more difficult than for monolingual native speakers to acquire that structure. The results in that first study showed that the bilinguals aged between 9;3 and 10;5 correctly applied het in 32%. The sample by CVH&V included 30 children between ages 10;5 and 12;11 years old who visited a primary school within an ethnic minority neighbourhood. The subjects were chosen according to their minority languages Moroccan-Arabic and Turkish because it should be tested whether their native languages contain gender differences in their noun/determiner models as it is the case with Moroccan and it is not with Turkish (cf. Hawkins & Franceschina 2004; as cited in CVH&V 2006: 41).

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The 30 children therefore consisted of 13 bilingual Turkish-speaking children and 12 bilingual Moroccan-Arabic-speaking children and a control group with 5 Dutch monolinguals. The data was collected with picture completion tasks which also included more instruments to measure the correct use of definite determiners, attributive adjectives and relative pronouns with reference to common and neuter items. In the following the findings referring to the determiner noun agreement are stressed. In table 6 the results of the correct/ incorrect implementation of the definite determiners de and het are depicted. It was expected that the common determiner de is produced to a higher degree than the specific neuter determiner het. As suggested in the introduction both, monolinguals and bilinguals have difficulties with this grammatical domain and in the table it is shown that the monolinguals do not score 100% regarding the common determiner de (83.3%). Moreover a significant reduced use of correct structures could be seen in the bilinguals in comparison to the monolinguals particularly applying the more difficult determiner het (42.01% versus 68.8%).

Table 7 The production of the definite determiner (test 1) by the monolingual (n=4) and Turkish/Moroccan children (n=24) (target in grey) monolingual children de het bilingual children de het 48.96% 68.75% 42.01% 23.61%

Response

Neuter N 18.7% 68.8% Common N 83.3% 4.2% (adapted from CVH&V 2006: 44)

As the use of determiners for neuter nouns in the bilingual children is relatively balanced (48.96% and 42.01%) and there is no overuse of the usually faster acquired determiner de and additionally incorrect use of het (23.61%) it was assumed that the bilingual children have established the knowledge that determiners occur according to two classes of Dutch nouns. But it could not be explained in which level of acquisition this process took place. The question is whether the children possibly fossilize concerning the acquisition process of the neuter definite determiner because they are comparatively old (10;5-12;11) (cf. Hulk & Cornips 2006a,b; as cited in CVH&V 2006: 44). In order to make valid statements if cL2 learners are generally able to fossilize in their early developed structures they need to be followed

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empirically into adulthood. Since it is not proved that table 7 represents the final attainment of the acquisition process or only a delay this issue is further addressed in 4.5.2 where a study focusses on (early) child L2 acquisition and the attainment in adulthood.

4.3 Incomplete Acquisition in adults In this chapter it is demonstrated how severe the language attrition and incomplete acquisition can become. It is noteworthy that the goal is not to look for surface lack of minor structures and lexical retrieval problems within a language system and language behaviour but to examine the attrition or fossilization the children with a migrant background can suffer from when L1 input in childhood is not sufficient. The children who are addressed in this paper having a migrant background are a very big and heterogeneous group which makes scientific statements very difficult (Montrul 2008: 162). The studies that examined language deficits in early, middle and late childhood included simultaneous bilinguals, sequential bilinguals (c2L) who have been exposed to the L2 aged 4-5 or older and children who immigrated later and have been exposed to the L2 with 7-8 years or later. To demonstrate the development of language deficits from childhood to adulthood several studies are presented which show to what degree adults suffer from attrition and incomplete acquisition of their L1 that originated from childhood.

4.3.1

L1 attrition and incomplete acquisition According to her Weaker Language as L1 Hypothesis Montrul (2008:167)

has claimed that the development of the weaker language is UG constrained even if certain structures lack representation and the language still is amid development. That means although there are considerable error rates observable in the adult weaker language, the parameters of the corresponding grammatical structures have been set correctly during early childhood acquisition. First the studies from the chapter of middle and late childhood are recalled. These samples analysed the gender agreement of Spanish-English bilinguals and showed that monolinguals have a higher proficiency in mastering gender concord as against the bilingual subjects in school age. Lipski (1993: 161; as cited in Montrul,

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2008: 172) showed that this incompletely acquired structure in as a lack of Spanish competence persisted into adulthood. The Spanish heritage speakers behaved like L2 learners in their rate of errors regarding the match of gender and number. Polinsky (2008b) conducted a study on heritage speakers of Russian who frequently produced gender agreement errors. In monolinguals this grammatical domain is usually acquired at the age of 2;5 – 2;7 so that a persisting failure in adults could be traced back to an early interrupted language development. At the age of 3 gender agreement is reported to be at least partly acquired with adjectives, pronouns and further elements. Although a variety of gender errors continues to develop until the age of 6-7 and apparently schooling leads to the overcoming of these lacks (cf. Montrul 2008: 173). Polinsky (2008b; cf. ibid.) tried to assess whether adult heritage speakers follow the same error pattern like the children and thus if the heritage grammars can be seen as a fossilised L1 grammars. The first of two experiments analysed 12 speakers of American Russian averagely 27 years old and raised in Russian-speaking environments. Nine of them were born within the US whereas three immigrated to the US amid age ranges from 3-5. The test instrument was a list containing masculine, feminine and neuter nouns with gender categories including canonical and non-canonical nouns that were perceived specifically difficult for the monolingual children developing Russian. The task was to assign a given possessive pronoun or an adjective to the nouns. While the monolingual group performed almost 100% correct, the heritage speakers showed a higher error rate in feminine and neuter nouns (nearly 20%) compared to masculine nouns (5%). Except for a special case of stem-stressed neuter nouns, the heritage speakers’ errors resembled the ones made by the children acquiring Russian. More strikingly the structures found in the heritage speakers only reflected the use of masculine and feminine gender whereas the children are often unsure about the use of neuter gender but definitely possess a representation of the neuter concept. Concerning the latter finding it is claimed that adult incomplete grammars are a simplification of the completely acquired grammars in monolinguals (cf. ibid.). The second study analysed the same subjects regarding comprehension. The masculine, feminine or neuter nouns were depicted with correctly or incorrectly inflected adjective. The task was to recognise the correct or wrong matches after hearing them and to press the appropriate key for YES or NO on a computer so that

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reaction and accuracy times could be measured. Again the Russian control group performed like expected with an accuracy of above 97 %. By contrast the tested individuals had error rates fluctuating between 11% with masculine, 30% with feminine and 55% with neuter. Looking at the previously mentioned simplification Polinsky (cf. ibid.: 174) approved that the heritage speakers were divided into two groups. The first group controlling all three genders diversely from L1 children and monolingual mature Russian and the second group with a simplified system of two genders and a lower overall competence. In sum one can see the effect of attrition and incomplete acquisition in childhood in the alterations of grammatical domains in the linguistic behaviour of heritage speakers. Although the core properties like masculine and feminine distinction easier acquired in childhood remain in these adult speakers the non-core marked properties have not been developed or have been lost (cf. ibid.). According to the findings in L1 attrition and incomplete acquisition research Montrul (2008: 193) formulated a hypothesis regarding the age of onset of L2 and the consequences for the degree of attrition:
“If L1 attrition occurs in early (pre-puberty) bilingualism, it would be more severe in simultaneous bilinguals (exposed to the two languages very early) than in sequential bilinguals (when the L1 was acquired before the L2).”

The following studies relate to the findings in adult heritage speakers and different ages of onset of acquisition in order to draw specific conclusions about the correlations mentioned in Montrul’s hypothesis. Flege, Yeni-Komshian and Liu (1999) and Yeni-Komshian, Flege and Liu (2000) are samples which investigated pronunciation and morphosyntactic competence in 240 Korean heritage speakers with English as a second language. At the time of arrival in the US the subjects’ age varied from 1 – 23 years and this was also seen as the age of onset of L2 acquisition while Korean was the language used at home. They were grouped with regard to the AoA and only the first two age groups had not attended school education in Korea while the all other groups had (Subgroups: 1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9, 10-11, 12-13, 14-15, 16-17, 18-19, 20-23). The pronunciation was tested by ten monolingual judges for each language and the task was to produce 5 sentences in English and 5 in Korean and to repeat each of them three times. The ratings included a range from 9 (no accent) to 1 (very strong accent) (cf. Montrul 2008: 194).

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Consistent with results of previously conducted studies there was a negative relation of AoA and the average pronunciation scores in English. Only amid the groups with an AoA between 1 and 8 years there were 17 participants (7%) marked as native speakers while increased AoA meant a decrease performance in English pronunciation for the rest of the subgroups. More importantly with regard to Montrul’s hypothesis are the score distributions for Korean pronunciation to show the degree of attrition and incomplete acquisition among the participants. The results of the perceived Korean pronunciation were reversed as against the English ones. Participants with an AoA of 1-7 scored considerably lower than all other groups. Compared to monolingual Korean speakers it turned out that all subjects showed significant lower results than the control group and no one with AoA < 12 reached nativelike scores. Near nativelike competence was only attested to participants aged 12 or older at their AoA. Looking closer at this middle age range it was observed that an age of arrival before 10-11 led to more competence in English than in Korean whereas an AoA after this period illustrated more competence in Korean than in English. The age period of 10-11, however, did not show a significant tendency towards a better pronunciation in English or Korean (cf. ibid.: 194-195). Thus next to this depicted period for a balanced bilingual development for the subjects aged 9-11 at the time of immigration the provided study supports the idea that degree of attrition or incomplete acquisition is higher the earlier the onset of L2 exposure begins. To show that attrition also affects deeper syntactic structures Montrul (2002; 2008) took on the debate of competence and performance to show that attrition is not only a retrieval problem that affects the surface structures of morphology and syntax but the internal linguistic representations. Spanish speakers, Spanish-English bilinguals and bilinguals born in LatinAmerica who immigrated to the US in late-childhood (8-12) served as subjects for the study carried out by Montrul. Like in the study mentioned before the participants were grouped according to their age of onset of bilingualism: simultaneous bilinguals with AO 0-3 years (n=16), early child L2 learners with AO 4-7 years (n=15) and late child L2 learners with AO 8-12 years (Montrul 2002: 48; Montrul 2008: 196). The goal is to look at the difference of degree of attrition between the simultaneous bilinguals on the one hand and the early and late child L2 learners on the other hand. Montrul divided her study in two parts. Study 1 focused on verb forms and their

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accurate use of preterite and imperfect in written and oral narratives and study 2 used meaning-interpretation tasks focusing on aspect morphology. Results in the written task where the subjects were supposed to fill in a cloze text with correct past verb forms. Compared to the monolinguals who scored 96.5% the simultaneous bilinguals scored 85%. The early and late child L2 learners were in between with scores of 91.33% and 92.06%. The more significant findings were to be seen in the aspectual markers that were interpreted by the subjects. The task consisted of two conjoined sentences and the participants had to rate if a sentence structure seems to be logical or illogical to them. For instance, in (35a) the imperfect in the first part together with the negation in the second part is a logical structure since the two events are not bounded. (35b) instead illustrates an illogical combination because the use of the preterite conflicts with the negation in the second clause (Montrul 2008: 197). (35) a. Pedro corría la maratón de Barcelona pero no participó. Pedro ran-IMPF the marathon of Barcelona but he did not participate b. Pedro corrió la maratón de Barcelona pero no participó. Pedro ran-PRET the marathon of Barcelona but he did not participate ‘Pedro ran the Barcelona marathon but he did not participate in it’

Further examples focused on the slight meaning differences depending on the use of preterite or imperfect that had to be interpreted by the participants by a truth value judgement. The first example in (36) emphasises the difference between the use of static or dynamic verbs, secondly in (37) it was tested whether the heritage speakers could assign that the preterite expresses one-time events as against the habitual meaning of the imperfect and at last in (38) the use of indefinite and specific pronouns formed by imperfect and preterite respectively, was investigated.

(36)

a.

b.

Juan sabía la verdad. Juan know-IMPF the truth ‘Juan knew the truth.’ Juan supo la verdad. Juan know-PRET the truth ‘Juan found out the truth. Pedro robó algo en el autobús. Pedro robbed-PRET something in the bus Pedro robaba algo en el autobus. Pedro robbed-IMPF something in the bus ‘Pedro robbed something in the bus.’

STATIVE

EVENTIVE

(37)

a. b.

ONE-TIME EVENT HABITUAL

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(38)

a.

b.

Se comía bien en este restaurante. se eat-IMPF well in this restaurant ‘One/ We would eat well in this restaurant.’ Se comió bien en este restaurante. se eat-PRET well in this restaurant ‘We ate well in that restaurant.’ (cf. ibid.:198)

GENERIC/INDEF.

SPECIFIC

All bilingual groups showed variations in their proficiency on the sentence conjunction judgement (35) and different competences within their use of preterite and imperfect. The results once again illustrated that the later child L2 learners (50%) performed closest to the native speakers (85%) whereas the early child L2 with 13.33% and the simultaneous bilingual group with 12.5% showed a lack of knowledge due to language loss or incomplete acquisition. The truth value judgement test depicted that simultaneous and early learners performed less accurately than late learners and the native control group. The structures most difficult for the early bilinguals were the stative verbal forms expressed by the preterite (‘I knew’ versus ‘I found’, see 36.), the habitual stories with the imperfect and the interpretation of indefinite pronouns expressed with the imperfect. The individual findings point out that one third of the participants in the simultaneous bilingual and early child L2 groups had considerable difference from the variation range of the monolinguals while most of the late child L2 bilinguals performed within that range (cf. ibid.). In sum, this study also pursued the goal to demonstrate that the level of attrition or retention of the minority language depends on the age of onset of bilingualism. Subjects belonging to the simultaneous bilingual or early child L2 group experienced incomplete acquisition referring to the interpretation of tense/aspect which is related to specific predicates. As these grammatical domains are set high up on the acquisition hierarchy attested in monolinguals, it is likely that the grammatical domains in question remain incompletely acquired by bilinguals. Instead the grammatical structures responsible for this linguistic behaviour might be fossilised because of the early onset of the L2. The participants who attended Spanish schools before immigrating and thus had a later L2 onset (aged >8) reached nativelike proficiencies in the corresponding tasks. In the next paragraph contrasting the L1 attrition in adult early bilinguals it is shown that the majority L2 suffers from incomplete acquisition as well even at an early age of onset of acquisition.

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4.5.2 L2 incomplete acquisition Until now it has been seen that attrition and incomplete acquisition in the minority first language is an important development to be mentioned. Throughout the previous studies the focus has been to demonstrate how vulnerable children with a migrant background are to lose parts of their heritage language. At the same time in most cases it was presumed that the majority language of the host country is successfully acquired in a simultaneous or sequential bilingual way. Within the next paragraph it is examined if second language development in childhood can possibly fail to lead to ultimate attainment even if the language is majorly used in the society, thus showing that the majority language can become the weaker language in early bilingual children with a migrant background. As it is pointed out at the beginning of this paper adult L2 acquisition is thought to be fundamentally different from child L1 acquisition and those adults learning a L2 rarely, if ever, achieve a nativelike competence in the language. The previous research on L2 acquisition including propositions of the CPH has illustrated the relation between the age of onset of acquisition and the acquisition outcome (cf. Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam, 2009: 252) stating that increasing age has a negative effect on the degree of attainment. A crucial question in bilingual attainment is which level of competence is needed to accurately use both languages. This is also particular relevant for the issue of language deficits in children because it is not clear which stage of proficiency is actually sufficient to interact with the society, to be academically successful and to count as a competent bilingual speaker in the two languages. In order to verify the possible nativelikeness of early and late child L2 and aL2 bilinguals Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson’s (2009) study is scrutinised. Different from all conducted studies which had tested nativelikeness before, they applied three different measuring features to investigate language skills “(a) a specified understanding of the concept of nativelikess; (b) initial screening of participants; (c) an in-depth scrutiny of actual linguistic nativelikeness.” The subjects were 195 people with Spanish migrant background who identified themselves as nativelike in Swedish with ages of onset ranging from 24, later adulthood

8.3, 7.6, 5.1, 1.6, 0.4.

The variation between on the one hand the childhood and adolescence and on the other hand adolescence and adulthood were statistically considerable. The majority of 62% who had started to acquire Swedish before the age of 12 but only a minority of 6% Swedish acquirers older than 12 years counted as native speakers. Forty-one, ten adolescent and thirty-one childhood learners with AO ranging from 1-19, of those who were rated native speakers by at least 6 judges continued the tests composed of highly linguistic tasks.
Table 8 Differences in rate of nativelikeness between AO ≤ 11 learners and AO ≥ 13 learners on each of the 10 measures; number (%) of participants; χ2 test (n = 41,df = 1) AO 1–11 (n = 31) AO 13–19 (n = 10) χ2 3.931 8.092 4.437 1.038 0.992 0.397 6.812 0.008 4.385 0.227

Instrument

p .1, ns .1, ns .1, ns

1. VOT production 23 (74%) 4 (40%) 2. VOT perception 22 (71%) 2 (20%) 3. Babble noise test 21 (68%) 3 (30%) 4. White noise test 15 (48%) 3 (30%) 5. GJT (auditory) 18 (58%) 4 (40%) 6. GJT (in writing) 19 (65%) 5 (50%) 7. RT (aud. GJT) 29 (94%) 6 (60%) 8. Cloze test 16 (52%) 5 (50%) 9. Idioms 18 (58%) 2 (20%) 10. Proverbs 5 (16%) 1 (10%) (adapted from Abrahamsson & Hyltenstam: 2009: 287)

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The most significant differences between the younger and older participants are speech production and perception, reaction times and idiomatic utterances (items 1-3, 7 and 9 respectively). The grammatical judgement tasks and the cloze test referring to morphosyntactic domains (items 5,6,8) as well as the proverbs (item 10) are not statistically considerable. Abrahamsson & Hyltenstam (2009: 288) further claimed that as demonstrated in previous studies, AO was the most influential predictor for the finally perceived nativelikeness as against length of residence or length of exposure which showed no obvious impact. Focusing on the older learners, one could see that the detailed analysis of various grammatical structures provided no nativelike competence in any of the subjects although it was also shown that all structures were learned at least to a small extent rejecting that certain structures are not learnable after the critical period. However, the key finding for this paper is the ultimate proficiency and nativelikeness in early L2 learners. Even if most of them were regarded native speakers, 41 of the 107 participants within the childhood category were assigned another native language than Swedish. The use of the grammar instruments illustrated that of 25 of the overall tested 31 subjects who were perceived as nativelike before, only three could be rated as nativelike in all tasks of the test battery. Throughout the history of studies stressing ultimate attainment of L2 acquisition in early learners, not reaching nativelikeness was seen as exception (e.g. DeKeyser 2000; Obler, 1989; as cited in ibid.: 289). Abrahamsson & Hyltenstam furthermore cite a study by Flege et al. (1997) who monitored subjects having a salient foreign accent despite an early age of onset (aged 5-6) and being immersed in the L2 society for 34 years averagely. These examples show that incomplete child L2 acquisition persists until adulthood. Recalling the fact that in the attrition and incomplete acquisition studies regarding the L1 it is assumed that the L2, to a certain extent in simultaneous and sequential bilinguals is acquired automatically and with ease cannot be upheld empirically within the study carried out by Abrahamsson & Hyltenstam (2009: 290). The latter sample showed that an early AO is a necessary rather than a sufficient requirement and that there are indeed some children with migrant backgrounds who suffer difficulties acquiring the language of the host country (cf. Hyltenstam, 1992; Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson, 2003a, 2003b; as cited from ibid.)

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Looking at the AO as a not sufficient but necessary predictor of the ultimate attainment of a second language acquisition in children it can be assumed that external factors such as home language use and attitude gain more importance the older the children get.

5.

Home language use and bilingual competence An overall factor co-existing with simultaneous bilingual acquisition or the

age of onset of sequential bilingualism is the language spoken at home and in the closer, non-school environment of children. A still widely discussed topic is if the parents’ linguistic behaviour could be the cause that their children in some cases only have limited or not at all competence of the majority language and how the degree of language attrition and incomplete acquisition depend on the language pattern used at home. Wong Fillmore (2000) and Portes and Hao (1998; as cited in De Houwer 2007: 411) have stressed that it is vital for children to acquire a language with that they are able to fully communicate with their parents and broader family to coin their family relations.

5.1

Home language input and L1 development As an example of different parental language use De Houwer (2007)

mentioned a revaluation of Yamamoto’s (2001) sample set in Japan investigating 111 Japanese-English bilinguals where at least one parent spoke English (the minority language) at home. During the study the findings showed that only some children managed to become fluent in English and that there was a correlation regarding the parental input pattern and whether or not the children acquired both languages. The parents of successful bilingual children both spoke English at home, or given the same situation one parent sometimes used Japanese next to English as well. The other three models were (a) both parents spoke majority and minority language; (b) majority language as home language and one parent also partly spoke the minority language; (c) one parent-one language pattern. The outcome in all these exemplary cases was the children’s unsuccessful acquisition of the minority language English. De Houwer’s (2007: 412-413) study consisted of data of 3,677 parents and 4,556 children in 1,899 families. The aim was to identify the coherences between the language used at home and the communicative competence in this minority

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language, acquired by the children. The study was located in Flanders a region in Belgium that is formal Dutch-speaking in public-life, media and non-private schools and has a broad ethnic diversity because of second-generation immigrants. The information was gathered with the help of a questionnaire sent to primary schools to be answered by parents of at least one child aged 6-10. The questions to be answered were based on (a) the family’s place of residence, (b) the language(s) spoken at home by the mother, father, and each child living in the home (up to five) and (c) family members’ age and citizenship (cf. ibid.: 413). With the fact that siblings were included into the questionnaire it is assured that the parental input indeed plays a role if the language use within the siblings is similar according to the input of their parents. The results illustrated that typically all children of one family adopted the language models only Dutch, only another language X, or a mix of both. The first results are concerning the investigation on input of the language X by the parents and their approval and use by the children. A highlight of the individual family members’ home language use is that children use the Dutch only pattern more often and the X only pattern less than their adults which is a conversion referring to the input where X only is more frequently used than Dutch only.
Table 9 Parental and children’s individual language use compared (adopted from De Houwer, 2007) Parents Children Difference Factor Dutch only X only Dutch + X Total 551 1,332 1,794 3,677 1,158 967 2,431 4,556 +110.16% −27.40% +35.51% +23.91% 2.1 times more 1.38 times less 1.36 times more 1.24 times more

Note: X, any language other than Dutch.

The table with the compared findings above shows that there is a massive discrepancy between the language input and the actually used language. As it is clear to see in the first line the difference in Dutch only amounts to 110.16% which means that twice as much children use Dutch although at least half the parents provided more than only Dutch input. In contrast the figures portray a decrease of X only of 27% although more children than parents participated in the study. Based on the parents and children ratio the increase of bilingual use of Dutch + X is close to the expectations.

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The second study tries to show the language use of children depending on home language features. Firstly it can be said that there is no correlation of the fact whether the father or mother spoke the language X to the rate of success of the children speaking language X. As mentioned earlier there are five possible input patterns for the parents with at least one minority language and although in all cases there was input of more than one language, a quarter of the families’ children did not speak language X at all but only Dutch (cf. De Houwer 2007: 418).

Table 10 The effect of language input patterns in the parent pair on children’s use of language X (adopted from De Houwer 2007: 419) No Child At Least One Speaks X Child Speaks X N ___________________________________________________________________ 1a: 2× Language X 3.08% 1b: (X + Dutch) & X 6.58% 2a: 2× (X + Dutch) 20.82% 2b: X & Dutch 25.76% 3: (X + Dutch) & Dutch 64.30% All patterns combined 23.85% 96.92% 93.42% 79.18% 74.24% 35.70% 76.15% 1,778 422 243 562 198 353 Input Pattern

The final outcome shown in the overall table 10 adopted from De Houwer (2007) evidently demonstrates that the variation in the home language input influences the language use of children. The most children approved and used language X when both parents provided input for language X and if one parent additionally spoke Dutch like (see 1a+b). Regarding the pattern 2a, b where both parents spoke both languages or applied the one parent-one language model there was still a chance of 75% and more to get the children using the minority language although it is also noteworthy that one out of four fail to implement language X into their output. Striking differences to the aforementioned could be seen in the last pattern where both parents use the majority language and one parent partly the minority language, only one out of three children achieved minority language use. According to De Houwer (2007: 419) the variations between 1 and 2 and 1, 2 and 3 can each be seen as statistically relevant. Looking at the bigger picture this sample demonstrates that the pattern of the home language has a significant impact on the language use and that certain patterns in the input can already contribute to a weaker language development or to passive

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bilingualism (ibid.: 421). Despite the stressed focus on the use of language as a central point, it is not known to what degree in terms of grammatical structures the minority language had been acquired.

5.2

Home language input and L2 development De Houwer’s sample concentrated on the minority language development and

assumed that the majority language would be acquired adequately due to the environmental input. In the following a study by Driessen, Van der Slik and De Bot (2002, henceforth DVS&DB) the opposite case is presented. It has been claimed that certain groups of children with a migrant background do not reach a sufficient L2 competence which means that the majority or host country language is incompletely acquired. As mastering the environment language is seen as necessary to be academically successful findings support the claim that children with a migrant background are disadvantaged when entering primary school also because they might use the minority language in their cultural environment including peers before (Broeder & Extra, 1999; Pels, 2000; as cited in DVS&DB, 2002: 176). The sample of DVS&DB questioned if home language input of L2 Dutch enhances L2 knowledge specifically for school purposes and consequently suggested that family and environmental L2 input increases proficiency scores on language tests. The subjects were Turkish and Moroccan children compared with Frisian, Limburgish and dialect background children and one standard Dutch control group, all together 5867 pupils at age 7-10. Adults with a Frisian or Limburgish background are mostly also competent in Dutch although the proficiencies in their children vary significantly. The research questions interesting for this paper have been
(1) To what extent do primary school pupils from various linguistic backgrounds differ in terms of family, sociolinguistic and language proficiency characteristics? (2) Are there differences in the development of language proficiency of children from various linguistic backgrounds? (adopted from ibid.: 177)

Data in terms of proficiency scores has been collected of pupils from Form 4 (aged 7-8) and two years later having reached Form 6. Together with the focus on several parental background factors like educational level, lengths of residence, paid work, competence of Dutch and their home languages collected with a questionnaire for each mother and father, it was possible to observe the pupils’ development and draw

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an overall picture trying to show correlations between the parents’ background and input and their children’s use of Dutch. Looking at the results of the collected background variables and language scores several statements were made to answer question (1) (ibid.:182). Most parents used Dutch with each other (69%) while 5% of those who indicated Dutch as the home language had a migrant (or mixed) background. The size of the sample provided the chance to individually scrutinise the use of the mentioned languages at home. Moroccan was spoken in 3% and Turkish in 4% of all households. The other results showed 3% for Frisian, 8% Limburgish and 13% dialects. The mean educational level of parents is between junior general secondary education and senior secondary vocational education (cf. ibid.) whereas fathers achieved better education levels than mothers although these figures were drastically dependent on the linguistic background. Lengths of residence of Moroccan and Turkish fathers amounted to 19 years and that of mothers 15 years on average. A significant difference could be seen in the details for employment of fathers (90%) and mothers (45%) with paid jobs. Involving all the six different language groups and compare them regarding the background variables it was demonstrated that speakers of Moroccan and Turkish differed in all inspected factors from the Dutch, Frisian, Limburgish and dialects speakers. However one exception was found in the use of Dutch in several areas because Frisian and Limburgish are majority languages within their regions while Turkish and Moroccan count as minority languages. Thus children in Frisian and Limburgish regions showed fewer implementations of Dutch than Turkish and Moroccan children and children with dialects. The latter ones used Dutch in the most diverse areas. Concerning the first research question the language scores in Form 4 indicated that children of Turkish-speaking parents had the lowest competence and children of Moroccan-speaking parents the second-lowest whereas children of native Dutch-speaking parents reached the highest score. Thus there is a significant difference in language proficiency according to the presented various linguistic circumstances. The gap in language proficiency between children who received Dutch input at home and children who received Turkish or Moroccan input decreased throughout the two years of schooling from Form 4 to Form 6. Referring to the reasons for the differences amid these various language prerequisites this paper focuses on the Turkish and Moroccan families because they are the ones who really illustrate a minority language L1 surrounded by majority language L2 which

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resembles the main idea of all presented studies throughout this work. As mentioned before the parental linguistic background of Turkish and Moroccan children has negative effects on Dutch proficiency compared to Dutch-speaking parents. DVS&DB (2002: 14-17) further emphasized that the factors that according to general knowledge would lead to the lack of Turkish and Moroccan children’s Dutch proficiency like Dutch competence of parents, employment status and Dutch use in children could not be completely responsible for the illustrated variation of Dutch proficiency amid the individual language groups. Looking at the second research question it was stated that lack of parental Dutch input namely Turkish or Moroccan home language use independent of education level and length of residence account for a considerable lower Dutch competence in Form 4 as against Dutch-speaking parents. With regard to the results comparing Turkish and Moroccan findings DVS&DB stressed that the effect in Moroccan children was not as significant as that in the Turkish ones but at the same time not irrelevant, as well. In Form 6 the gap between children of Turkish-speaking parents and children of Dutch-speaking children increased even more throughout the years of attending primary school. The development in children of Moroccan-speaking parents kept pace with the children of Dutch-speaking parents although they also started with lack of knowledge in Form 4, so that the gap in Form 6 was the same like in the beginning. As demonstrated in this paragraph the home language input is crucial for the acquisition, maintenance and incomplete acquisition of language. Although only two studies are mentioned they illustrated the huge variations and outcomes in language development according to various features. The bottom line of these studies will be discussed in the conclusion. In the last item it is examined if there could be an impact of the personal attitudes of people with a migrant background on the result of language acquisition, maintenance and loss and more importantly how language use and contact could contribute to maintenance of L1 when L2 learning sets in.

Societal context and personal attitude

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6.

Societal context and personal attitude Studies of first and second language attrition suggest a range of social and

attitudinal factors that all contribute to the possibility of language loss, such as length of residence; age of first starting to learn the L2; social class; amount, mode, and type of exposure to either language; attitudes towards language learning and the wish to integrate with the host community (Opitz 2004: 396). In the following it should be briefly looked at the cultural contexts the immigrants find themselves in and the possible effects on their linguistic behaviour. Furthermore the factors attitude and motivation are taken into account since it is a widespread prejudice in political discussions that a lack of language proficiency evolves from little motivation and wrong attitude. However, studies, for example by Gardner & Lambert (1972; as cited in Köpke & Schmid, 2004: 12) demonstrated that variables like attitude and motivation among others could have a considerable impact on the degree of language learning. If the mentioned factors as well influence language attrition was tested previously by Waas (1996) who carried out a study on German immigrants in Australia. The ethnic affiliation was tested with regard to the assumption that it would maintain L1 knowledge through interaction with “German clubs or churches, endogamous relationships or language use at work” (cf. Köpke & Schmid 2004: 13). To gather data, self-perception questionnaires were applied which showed that the participants noticed a better language command if they used the language regularly. However, the study failed to prove that actual linguistic proficiency neither in attrition nor in retention is affected by attitudinal variables. Other studies by various researchers (Hulsen 2000; Yagmur 1997; Köpke 2000) found either no correlations between ethnolinguistic factors and linguistic behaviour or the findings presumed an existing influence but the factors could not be isolated in order to formulate and validate a universal hypothesis. Despite the lack of a general sociolinguistic framework a relation of the level of attrition and the impact of attitude persists. Schmid (2002) with reference to a sample of Jews that fled from Germany in the course of the Second World War reported that this traumatization and deliberate non-use of their L1 caused higher levels of attrition. However, this is an extreme case and the findings cannot simply be transferred to other circumstances. A variable that is often linked to attitude is the amount of language use as it is believed that a language is chosen more frequently if a positive attitude can be

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assigned. The assumption that attrition depends on a lack of contact with a language more so than on the length of residence in the host country has been elaborated in various studies (de Bot et al. 1991; Köpke 1999; Schoenmakers 1989; cf. Köpke & Schmid 2004: 14). In most cases the results showed less attrition than predicted, so that it was consequently presumed that the subjects were exposed to sufficient input. In sum, contact cannot really be grasped with single factors since it is a complex phenomenon and self-report methodologies have proven not to be convincing enough (ibid.) With reference to the addressed children with a migrant background attitudinal variables are mostly attributed to societal topics and issues like, for instance, immigration and integration (Ben-Rafael & Schmid 2007; cf. Köpke 2007: 25-26). A crucial point could be the children’s perception of the immigrant situation which could affect their personal cultural context. Furthermore the awareness for the presented difficulties in young children who are confronted with two developing languages must be increased so that a stronger and a weaker language are accepted as a normal state of cognitive development. Retrospectively it can be claimed that the following variables have decisive influence on L1 attrition and L2 incomplete acquisition (Köpke & Schmid 2004: 15).

-

age of onset of L2 acquisition (simultaneous/ early / late bilingual) age at onset of L1 attrition time since onset of attrition level of education attitudes frequency, amount and setting of use of the attriting language

The first three were looked at throughout several studies in the course of this paper and especially the first two are well established amid the methodologies in attrition research. The last three are more difficult to define and until now they cannot be classified within a universal framework. The further implementation will be an issue for further research on attrition and incomplete acquisition in L1 and L2 respectively (cf. Köpke & Schmid 2004: 15).

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7.

Conclusion

With reference to the question that guides this paper I have shown that children with a migrant background are prone to develop language deficits because of attrition and incomplete acquisition phenomena. However next to the studies that provided information on different degrees and variations on the outcome of incomplete language development there have been several factors and theoretical underpinnings that need to be taken up and looked at again. I mainly divided the paper into studies proving attrition and incomplete L1 acquisition versus incomplete L2 acquisition. Firstly, I review the latter mentioned. At the beginning I have narrowed down the idea of bilingual language acquisition by referring to the propositions that describe differences and similarities in first and second language acquisition. The fundamental difference hypothesis which states that child L1 acquisition is different to adult L2 acquisition. The question that is pursued throughout this paper, especially concerning the incomplete L2 acquisition is about the nature of child second language acquisition. Gathering the results of the acquisition stages of cL2 by Döpke and the findings on incomplete acquisition in early child L2 acquisition I presume that the classification of types of bilingualism by Montrul is not justifiable. Particularly within the childhood range where it is claimed that simultaneous acquisition happens from birth to age of 3 years and sequential bilingualism from 4-6 years the age ranges seem too high for me. I think that the separation of L1 and cL2 acquisition happens much earlier and tend to adopt the view of De Houwer who sees the starting point of cL2 acquisition at the age of 1;6 and maybe even earlier. However this is very difficult to measure because there is no real output that can be tested at that age. The studies referring to incomplete L2 acquisition in middle/ late childhood and in adulthood show significant variations in the outcome of language development although the onset of acquisition has begun in early childhood. These variations have mainly been assigned to adult L2 acquisition until now. Furthermore implications of the critical period hypothesis and the use of universal grammar have to adapt to these findings. As the access to UG actually constraints the critical period I assume that because of the examined cases of non-successful or at least delayed attainment of early cL2 acquisition the critical period sets in much earlier. Moreover in my opinion it might then be questionable if access to UG might cease before all parameters were set. That implies that UG is not accessible to the age of 5, like Montrul assumes, but only a

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short period after birth. This would explain the acquisition stages of 2L1 presented by Döpke. I assume that child second language acquisition is constraint by several factors. With reference to the weaker language as L1 hypothesis by Montrul against the weaker language as L2 hypothesis by Schleyter, I think that because of the mentioned reasons, the weaker language also in 2L1 bilinguals can be the result of using mechanisms from L1 and L2 acquisition. As UG is meant to provide answers to the logical problem of language learning as stated by Bley-Vroman a framework that concentrates on the development of languages should be implemented into future research in child second language acquisition. The findings for L1 development show that attrition and fossilisation not only occur in L2 acquisition but also occur in a child’s first language if the child is exposed to a L2 early and the L1 acquisition is not continued in an appropriate way. With the help of different studies I have shown that these effects of L1 development in some cases persist into adulthood to different degrees in the tested grammatical domains. Thus looking at the second hypothesis by Montrul it turned out that there is a negative correlation between the earlier onset of a second language and the increased chance to develop deficits in the linguistic behaviour of the first language later on. With regard to Montrul’s first hypothesis on the existence of a critical period for L1 loss I have demonstrated that L1 attrition becomes less likely if the individual acquires the first language until the age of 10-11. At this age the first language seems to be stabilised and even after a longer period of time being exposed to the majority language and not using the native language, a decrease in L1 proficiency has not been found. A further crucial finding is that language attrition is not only a retrieval problem in the learner’s interlanguage but affects the grammatical competence which could lead a huge language loss compared to monolinguals. Altogether age seems to be a main factor for L1 attrition and incomplete acquisition although other factors like particularly the quality and quantity of language input and use at home and in schools play important roles. The specific problem with the migrant background is that there is a high discrepancy between maintaining the home language and acquiring the majority language of the host country in order to be academically successful. The role of schools in the studies showed that non-reflected language support in schools is not helpful. I my opinion immersion schools that include minority language are unrealistic in the present

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situation. However, specifically the primary schools could provide linguistic playgrounds and increase the awareness concerning different languages other than the majority one. Minority languages could be supported within the first two or three years together with the majority language to achieve active bilingualism as stated by Allen (2007). The overall idea is to help those who have difficulties establishing a bilingual competence and to point out the possible compromise of a weaker and a stronger language. Further research would be interesting with regard to the scores in proficiency tests and the actual performance. Being unbalanced in the bilingual competence can mean that one language is performed targetlike while the other one lags slightly behind. I think that more research needs to be done with reference to child L2 acquisition including direct factors like input and language use. Only afterwards research on the interaction between cL2 acquisition and variables like the socioeconomic status and personal attitudes would be helpful. At the same time research needs to be done on the process of the first language in early childhood. The mismatch is that most parents of minority speaking children only are able to speak the minority language which is good for the L1 maintenance but could delay the process of L2 acquisition and vice versa. In general children should have more time to acquire a language. The study by Kohnert, Bates & Hernández (1999) shows, that the language development in the L1 and
L2 undergoes several changes until reaching a high score of proficiency at college age.

In conclusion the best compromise for me would be if the first language can be used to interact with peers and family in everyday situations. At the same time a sufficient command of the L2 needs to be acquired to proceed in academic contexts. An urgent need is the schools’ awareness and support of multilingualism because all children go to school and it can have a significant effect on the progress of the majority language and on the attrition of the minority language. Further research is needed not only concerning child language development but also incomplete language development and the interaction of the single extralinguistic factors.

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8. 8.1

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8.2

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8.3

Declaration

Ich versichere, dass ich diese Arbeit in der vom Landesprüfungsamt festgelegten Bearbeitungszeit selbstständig verfasst und keine anderen Quellen und Hilfsmittel als die angegebenen benutzt habe. Die Stellen der Arbeit, die anderen Werken dem Wortlaut oder dem Sinn nach entnommen sind, habe ich in jedem einzelnen Fall unter Angaben der Quelle als Entlehnung kenntlich gemacht. Das Gleiche gilt auch für die Zeichensetzungen, Kartenskizzen und Darstellungen. Paderborn, den 30. November 2012

Bibliography: 62 8.3 Declaration Ich versichere, dass ich diese Arbeit in der vom Landesprüfungsamt festgelegten Bearbeitungszeit selbstständig verfasst und keine anderen Quellen und Hilfsmittel als die angegebenen benutzt habe. Die Stellen der Arbeit, die anderen Werken dem Wortlaut oder dem Sinn nach entnommen sind, habe ich in jedem einzelnen Fall unter Angaben der Quelle als Entlehnung kenntlich gemacht. Das Gleiche gilt auch für die Zeichensetzungen, Kartenskizzen und Darstellungen. Paderborn, den 30. November 2012