Transfer across domains in Dutch heritage speakers. Evidence from a Grammaticality Judgement Task.

Abstract

This study reports on research which aimed to investigate whether the domain of syntax or the domain of lexicon is more prone to transfer in Dutch heritage speakers with German as their dominant language. An online Grammaticality Judgement Task was conducted, in which two syntactic phenomena (word order of three verbs in verb-final clusters and varying orders of subject-direct object in subordinate clauses) and two lexical phenomena (adjective + noun collocations and gender assignment) were taken as empirical materials. Because of differences in language background and language dominance, three different groups were created, of which the first group – the heritage speakers – was the most dominant in German. As hypothesised on the basis of previous research (e.g. Montrul, 2005, 2010b), lexical phenomena appeared to be slightly more difficult for heritage speakers. These speakers, moreover, were influenced by transfer, which also is in line with previous research (e.g. Van Greuningen, 2020; Lemhöfer, Schriefers and Hanique, 2010; Lemhöfer, Spalek & Schriefers, 2008). Cross-linguistic influence was most observed in the cases of lexical stimuli whose German translation equivalent was grammatical, whereas this was not found for syntactic constructions tested here.