This study investigates the use of overt and null subjects in Bulgarian in child heritage speakers with L2 German. The alternation of overt and null pronominal subjects in null-subject languages like Bulgarian depends on grammatical and discourse conditions and contrasts with German. Oral narratives were elicited in Bulgarian, comparing the…

In two visual priming experiments, we investigated the relation of form-identical word forms with different grammatical functions in L1 and L2 German. Four different grammatical types (inflected verbs, infinitives, deverbal conversion forms, and countable nouns) were used as primes and their influence on the processing of form-identical inflected…

The aim of this study is to reveal the effect of foreign language learning on mother tongue use. Case study design, one of the qualitative research designs, was used in the study. In order to keep the sample large, 70 pre-service teachers were selected using simple random sampling method among the 4th year undergraduate students studying in three…

Connections between linguistic heterogeneity, educational choices and (family) biographies are complex and ever shifting. With this paper, my aim is to explore the question how social spaces are constructed by multilingual families in migration societies and how they situate social spaces 'in between', thereby challenging both binary and national…

This study investigates for the first time the comprehension of rhetorical questions (RhQs) in bilingual children. RhQs are non-canonical questions, as they are not used to request information, but to express the speaker's belief that the answer is already obvious. This special pragmatic meaning often arises by means of specific prosodic and…

German university degrees, at least in some countries, offer students only German literature courses in addition to language courses. Linguistics is often not a core component of German degree programmes. As a result, students who are not familiar with basic linguistic terminology do not know how languages work, including their mother tongue, or…

There is a scarcity of research into the relationship between speech perception and production from a multilingual perspective. The present exploratory study investigates longitudinally the acquisition of rhotic sounds in 24 adolescent learners who have the same language repertoires (English, German, Polish), with English being their L2, and…

Interactions with classroom friends may be an important contributor to first and second language development, but to date this hypothesis has not been tested. Using a longitudinal design, the current study investigated the relationship between classroom friendships and oral language development in children. In 8 classrooms, we assessed the…

This study is a comparative examination of reading behavior of first-language (L1) Canadian and second-language (L2) Finnish and German readers of English. We measured eye-movement patterns during reading the same set of English sentences and administered tests of English vocabulary, spelling, and exposure to print. The core of our study is a…

The current study examined German spelling errors among students with German as their first language (L1) and those with German as their second language (L2) in Grades 3-4 (elementary school students; n = 127) and Grades 5-7 (secondary school students; n = 379). Five hundred and six students participated in the study. We performed two separate…

German, a West Germanic language belonging to the Indo-European family, is one of the languages of culture and education in Romania. It is spoken by one of 18 recognised minorities in Romania. German has been spoken in Romania throughout history and continues to be spoken today because various German-speaking groups settled in what is now Romania…

Second language (L2) learners make gender errors with possessive pronouns. In production, these errors are modulated by the gender match between the possessor and possessee noun. We examined whether this so-called match effect extends to L2 comprehension by attempting to replicate a recent study on gender predictions in first language (L1) German…

In a recent study, English-speaking L2 learners of German who received explicit instruction made significantly greater improvements in pronunciation and vocabulary than learners who received implicit instruction. Against the backdrop of this work, the present study reports learner preferences and perceptions about implicit and explicit language…

A compulsory foreign language in Finland starts now in Grade 1 instead of Grade 3. The change has forced teachers to adopt new teaching methods. As young learners are not yet literate, teaching should focus on oral skills and awareness of diversity. Video data from 19 early foreign language lessons of five English, German, or French teachers in…

This study examined why current university learners of French, Spanish, Russian, and Japanese, and, for comparative purposes, actual university learners of German, believe that others and why they themselves would study German. Responses were compared against current motivation theories, narratives promoted by academic language programs, research…