Eintrag

Titel

Internal and external factors in the child L2 development of the German determiner phrase

Personen

Holger Hopp

Jahr

2011

Typ

Aufsatz

Periodikum

Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Special issue

ISSN

1879-9264

Seiten

238 - 264

Band

1

Heft

3

Schlagwörter

Determinantien
Deutsch als Fremdsprache
Spracherwerb

Abstract

This paper studies the development of the German determiner phrase (DP) in 60 child second-language (L2) learners of German between the ages of 3;5 and 7;0. We consider case and gender marking as well as gender concord and test for effects of internal (age, age of onset) and external (length of exposure) factors. Further, developmental patterns are compared between child L1 and L2 acquisition. The results show no contingency of child L2 performance and age factors, yet strong correlations with length of exposure. Like child L1 acquirers, child L2 learners are found to proceed through similar developmental stages, and they establish lexical gender distinctions before syntactic case distinctions in inflection. These findings are discussed in the context of current generative approaches and the role of age in child and adult L2 acquisition.

https://grammis.ids-mannheim.de/bdg/75025