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Differential effects of language attrition in the domains of verb placement and object expression*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2011

CRISTINA FLORES
CRISTINA FLORES*
Affiliation:
University of Minho, Portugal
*
Address for correspondence: Departamento de Estudos Germanísticos e Eslavos, Instituto de Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade do Minho, Campus de Gualtar, 4710-057 Braga, Portugalcflores@ilch.uminho.pt
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Abstract

This study investigates the differential effects of language attrition in two diverse linguistic domains: verb placement and object expression. Linguistic phenomena at the syntax – discourse interface, such as object expression, have been shown to be more vulnerable to attrition than narrow syntax properties, such as verb placement. This study aims to test this hypothesis by analysing spoken data from Portuguese–German bilinguals who have moved away from the dominant German environment. The results show that the speakers who have lost continued German input after the age of eleven years exhibit difficulties regarding object expression in German but do not reveal any relevant syntactic deficits in the domain of verb placement.

Keywords

language attritionthe syntax–discourse interfaceobject expressionverb placement
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , July 2012 , pp. 550 - 567
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

The research for this paper was made possible through a grant from the FCT, the Portuguese Council for Research (project reference POCI/LIN/59780/2004). I hereby gratefully acknowledge this support. I also wish to express my sincere thanks to the participants in this study for their support and enthusiasm and to the reviewers for their helpful comments.

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